| 0:00 | The 4th movement begins mysteriously with a timpani roll, and a sequence of descending figures in the horns and violins, each based around a decending tritone, and each followed by a cheeky upwards figure on the clarinet. The music stabilizes for a few bars around a B major chord in the bass. Then a screeching “cross motif” bursts in on the violins, built out of a descending sixth followed by a descending tritone (F♯-A-C-F♯). The figure briefly mutates into a descending major figure in a galloping “toccata” rhythm, but the harmonies soon change back to the sixths and tritones of the “cross motif” whilst the music steadily gallops away into the distance in preparation for the statement of the main “theme” Hauptperiode. | |
| 1:16 | The main “theme” of the Hauptperiode (first subject group) is then thundered out. It is based on successive descending sixths from the previous passage. | |
| 2:20 | In the exposition section of Bruckner's “sonata form” symphonic movements, the Hauptperiode is followed by a more lyrical Gesangsperiode. The start of the Gesangsperiod for the last movement of the 9th symphony is extremely cold and spartan, and is still based on the descending sixths of the themes of the Hauptperiode | |
| 2:50 | The “sixths” theme in the Gesangsperiode is then combined with a counter-melody on the violins. | |
| 2:58 | Finally some warmth appears in the Gesangsperiode with a lyrical duet between the two violin sections, with added horns and woodwind. | |
| 4:27 | After further development of the Gesangsperiod motifs, the music begins the build up towards the “Chorale” that constitutes the 3rd subject group of the Exposition. | |
| 5:09 | Eventually we reach the Chorale, which is based on, and begins with, the “farewell to life” motif from the 3rd movement, but builds it into a triumphant climax. | |
| 6:09 | Eventually the Chorale dies away to conclude the exposition, accompanied by some violent dissonances in the brass. | |
| 6:38 | The Development section begins with a lonely flute playing the ostinato that opens the Te Deum, but in the key of E, accompanied by an obsesively repeated figuration in the violins. A sequence of four notes descending in semitones (D-C♯-C-B) is established and endlessly repeated. There are interjections from horns and woodwind.Eventually the note lengths in the chromatic figure are suddenly halved, the music intensifies in a passage descending in semitones, and the trumpets subsequently thunder out out a violently dissonant minor ninth that eventually resolves to an octave. The succeeding passage has some very odd interjections from the bassoon. | |
| 8:06 | But the music then builds with a slow theme on the horn, taken up by the trumpets, resolving onto a rich G♭ major chord. | |
| 8:36 | But the warmth doesn't last, and is succeeded by an odd dialogue, with further weird interjections from the bassoon. | |
| 9:45 | The Development section eventually concludes, but, in place of a plain restatement of the Hauptperiode themes, Bruckner begins a fugue, taking as its subject a version of the main theme of the Hauptperiode (first subject group). | |
| 12:32 | The fugue is eventually succeeded by a very forthright horn theme, which is taken up by the trumpets. (This is one of the principal motifs used by the SPCM “Gang of Four” in building the coda for their performing version.) | |
| 12:32 | A motif alluding to a version of the Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden appears in the recapitulation. | |
| 16:45 | The recapitulation of the Chorale is eventually reached. There is a gap in the bifolios after 18 bars of the Chorale, but an analysis of the source materials led the SPCM reconstructors to make a case that the Chorale continued with an inversion of the “farewell to life” motif. | |
| 18:22 | The final surviving bifolio ends thus. |