Although work on this book has, in the most immediate sense, spanned a little over four years, some of its aims and ideas have had a much longer gestation period. The initial impulse stems from the sense of dislocation that accompanied my first encounter with the critical orthodoxies surrounding Bruckner's symphonies, especially in the older English-language literature, marked above all by a feeling that entrenched views emphasised concepts or criticisms that bore little relation to my own experience of the music. In many ways, the studies comprising this book collectively represent an effort to close this gap: to establish grounds for understanding Bruckner that do justice to an unmediated sense of music-historical and analytical significance that I have never quite managed to reconcile with prevailing debates.

This, however, is not to propose yet another round of Brucknerian revisionism. As I shall argue, the perpetuation of the revisionist impulse has in some respects been one of the most debilitating aspects of the musicological reception of Bruckner. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that the symphonies are still attended by an array of clichés, which hardly contribute beneficially to our understanding of the composer or his work. Whilst many of these preconceptions have lost musicological credence today, their hold on public perception has endured. Two strands of criticism have proved especially durable, and it is hoped that what follows accelerates their demise.