Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), Austrian composer and organist, born in Ansfelden. From a peasant family, Bruckner took harmony and theory lessons but was virtually self-taught in musical composition. His first work, a requiem mass, was written in 1849. From the age of 21 he taught as a schoolmaster at the Monastery of St Florian, near Ansfelden, becoming organist in 1851, and from 1856 to 1868 he was organist at the Cathedral of Linz. During Bruckner’s residence at Linz he studied briefly with the Viennese authority on counterpoint, Simon Sechter, working seven hours per day in his spare time. Still dissatisfied with his technique, he studied orchestration with a local teacher, the cellist Otto Kitzler, who introduced him to Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. He became a committed follower of Wagner, and found his mature style.

After composing three of his principal choral works—Masses in D minor (1864), E minor (1866), and F minor (1867)—and his Symphony no. 1 in C minor (1866), he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1867, possibly the result of overwork, disappointment in love, and the poor critical reception of his work. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was particularly opposed to his work, to the extent of playing it deliberately badly. He was also fiercely abused by anti-Wagnerian musicians and critics in Vienna, where a battle raged between conservatives, who championed Brahms, and the radicals who followed Wagner. As the musicologist Erwin Doernberg wrote, “Bruckner strayed into the battlefield and became its only casualty.” In 1868 Bruckner was persuaded to succeed Sechter as a professor at the Vienna Conservatory. He was also made court organist, and toured Europe where he became famous for his phenomenal powers of improvisation.

He composed eight further symphonies (leaving his no. 9 unfinished at his death) and many sacred, orchestral, and choral works, but he left little for his own instrument, the organ. It was not until his final years, however, that Bruckner was greatly honoured in Austria, receiving decorations and a salary and pension from the government. The turning point was the first performance of his Symphony no. 7 in 1884, given outside hostile Vienna, in Leipzig, conducted by Artur Nikisch, which became a critical and popular sensation. Bruckner, pious and always unworldly in manner, was deeply insecure in sophisticated Vienna, and allowed many of his friends to alter his scores extensively in the hope of making them more acceptable to musicians and the public. However, he ensured that his own manuscripts survived in the Vienna Court Library, and editions made in the early 20th century by the International Bruckner Society restored the composer’s original intentions.

Bruckner’s music has immediately recognizable fingerprints: hammering ostinatos, murmuring tremolandos in the strings, and sudden eruptions of sound in the brass before a climax is abruptly cut off. His melody and harmony show the modal, static influence of his earliest studies in the old church musical style, as well as the influence of Wagner’s destabilizing chromaticism. His orchestration is noted for the alternate sounding of complete families of instruments, creating chorale-like effects reminiscent of his own instrument, the organ. Bruckner contributed to the development of the sonata form by expanding the thematic material in the first movements of his symphonies. He also amplified the overall scale of the symphony, following the lead of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, writing in a more expansive structure than had been attempted before.