Bruckner Week is upon us: tomorrow night the Cleveland Orchestra unfurls the Austrian giganticist's Fifth Symphony, in the first of four Lincoln Center concerts pairing Bruckner symphonies with works of John Adams. (In point of fact, the Eighth Symphony gets a concert unto itself.) While watching a YouTube video of Christian Thielemann conducting the Fifth, I noticed a forlorn comment: "i know seven nation army was inspired by this, but i dont hear the similarity." This refers to a 2003 song by the White Stripes. I'd never thought of it, but, sure enough, the main riff of the song comes straight out of Bruckner's principal thematic material in the first movement. You can hear the figure at 3:48 in the video above; I'm guessing the Whites were inspired especially by the ostinato that gets going in the coda of the movement. Hate to be blunt, but Bruckner rocks much harder. He rocks like Lewisian gneiss.