"The most crucial difference between the symphonies and the church compositions is that the former seem to go beyond religious beliefs to express the more fundamental, primitive stratum of feeling that gave these beliefs birth -- a sense of the awe-inspiring, born of naked wonder, fear and delight of elemental humanity confronted by the mysterious beauty and power of nature and the vast riddle of the cosmos.
Bruckner understood this feeling in his conscious mind, of course, as worship of the incomprehensible God of his religion; but his utter lack of sophistication admirably fitted him to be the unconscious channel of this more primeval feeling, and in acting as this channel he found it necessary to essay more far-reaching symphonic structures than those of any previous music except Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the music dramas of Wagner."
Bruckner understood this feeling in his conscious mind, of course, as worship of the incomprehensible God of his religion; but his utter lack of sophistication admirably fitted him to be the unconscious channel of this more primeval feeling, and in acting as this channel he found it necessary to essay more far-reaching symphonic structures than those of any previous music except Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the music dramas of Wagner."