Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner
_{born 1824 (Ansfelden, Austria)
died 1896 (Vienna, Austria)}

Bruckner's Musical Life

The Austrian composer, organist and teacher Anton Bruckner was a late bloomer who composed all his major works after the age of 39.

Born in Ansfelden, he studied violin and organ from a young age with his father, the village schoolmaster. After his father’s death in 1837, he became a chorister at the monastery-school of St Florian. His family’s poverty made a musical career impossible; instead, he trained as a schoolteacher. Following positions in Windhaag and Kronstorf, he returned to St Florian, where he taught from 1845 and was organist from 1848. During this period, he composed organ and choral works including a Missa Solemnis (1854). In 1855 he became organist at Linz Cathedral, and embarked on a five-year course in harmony and counterpoint with the Viennese pedagogue Simon Sechter. Later, he studied orchestration with Otto Kitzler, who in 1863 introduced him to Wagner’s music. This proved an enormous creative inspiration and led to his first significant compositions.

Moving to Vienna in 1868, Bruckner took up Sechter’s old post at the Conservatory, and from 1875 also taught at the University of Vienna. During the next 28 years he composed most of his greatest works: these included Symphonies Nos 2 to 9, the String Quintet and the Te Deum. For years he struggled to get his orchestral music performed, particularly after the 1877 premiere of the Third Symphony, which had proved disastrous. Only after the 1884 premiere of the Seventh Symphony in Leipzig did he receive the acclaim he deserved. He continued to compose – and to revise his works obsessively – until his death from heart failure on 11 October 1896. He is buried in the crypt of St Florian.

Notable Influences and Friends

Composers Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, J S Bach and the First Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) were among Bruckner’s heroes. Of his contemporaries, it was Richard Wagner whom he admired most. Bruckner dedicated his Third Symphony to him after they spent a convivial (and drunken) evening together. For his part, Wagner considered Bruckner the greatest symphonist since Beethoven.

Richard Wagner

In Vienna, musical loyalties were split between Wagner and Johannes Brahms, and Bruckner’s championship of the former made him enemies. Chief among them was the critic Eduard Hanslick, who repeatedly trashed Bruckner’s symphonies. Brahms himself referred to the compositions as ‘symphonic boa-constrictors’ and to Bruckner as ‘the bumpkin’ – though he admired his work ethic and religious music, and was seen weeping at his funeral.

Despite his difficulties with Brahms’ devotees, Bruckner had a number of distinguished admirers. These included the conductors Hans Richter (the LSO’s first Principal Conductor) and Hermann Levi, and the composers Johann Strauss II, Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler. Mahler was a particular fan, and regularly conducted Bruckner’s compositions, to help ‘this glorious art to the triumph it deserves’.