Anton Bruckner began the revision of his Third Symphony after completing the Fifth on 16 May 1876, and continued working on it sporadically until 28 April 1877. Then, after the Vienna Philharmonic rejected the symphony for a third time, Bruckner’s friend Hofkapellmeister Johann Herbeck took matters into his own hands. He arranged to conduct the work himself as part of a concert series promoted by the Society for the Friends of Music (Gesellschaftskonzerte) on 16 December 1877. When Herbeck passed away unexpectedly, Bruckner was forced to conduct the symphony himself. The performance proved to be one of the worst debacles of his career. The players were rude and unreceptive, and the audience left the concert hall in droves. Despite the public fiasco, Theodor Rättig, one of the few people who remained to the end of the performance, offered to publish the work, which represented the first publication of a Bruckner symphony. Two other people who were also there at the end – Gustav Mahler and Rudolf Krzyzanowski – prepared a piano four-hand reduction for Rättig’s publication, which appeared at the end of 1879.