Posted by Martin Bernhard on May 12, 19101 at 15:23:23:

In Reply to: Re: The Romantic Symphony posted by Erik Eneroth on June 29, 19100 at 02:02:29:

: Bruckner wrote a total of eleven symphonies, but there are only Nine numbered. This is since the two first (called 0 and 00) was rejected by him as early attempts.

Concerning the so-called Number 0: The work was composed in 1869, after the first Symphony (1866), supposedly as a "light"
Introduction to the Vienna public.
Bruckner first entitled it as "second" Symphony, but when he concieved the now-known 2nd Symphony in c minor, cancelled the little d minor Work by writing a big 0 on the Envelope.
It is a common error, that the 1869 score of the "Number 0" should be a second version of a 1865 draft. This legend comes from Bruckner's biographer Goellerich, but there is no proof of it.
The only existing score is the one of 1869. Interestingly, there is also a short fragment of the beginning of a B-flat major symphony Bruckner sketched in autumn 1869 just before beginning the Second Symphony. It has been facsimilated in Goellerich's biography and consists of a charming first theme and the beginning of the second theme.
It has nothing to do with the later 5th Symphony in the same key.

The "0th" little d-minor Symphony is in some respect a forerunner of the 3rd Symphony, Bruckner must have regarded it as too little in its dimensions. There is also a nice story about it, when Bruckner showed the piece to Otto Dessoff of the Vienna Philharmonic, Dessoff asked: "Where is the main theme?"
It has been rumored, that this has been the cause for the annullation of the work, fore shure, it teached Bruckner to abandon the somewhat odd structure of the number 0 main theme and to concieve the themes as in No.3 and 9.

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