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Anton Bruckner
1824 – 1896
Bruckner came from a relatively ordinary peasant background, one which encouraged an almost suffocatingly simplistic view of life and the Catholic faith in particular.
Life and Music
- Hugo Wolf was an unstinting supporter of Bruckner, and Wagner felt that Bruckner was the only composer worthy of comparison with Beethoven.
- Johannes Brahms was reported by his biographer Richare Specht as having dismissed Bruckner as "a swindle that will be forgotten in a few years", describing the colossal late masterpieces as "symphonic boa constrictors".
- Bruckner's father was the local church organist and his mother a singer in the choir. However, he didn't begin his formal music training until he was 11, when he spent five years as a choirboy at the monastery of St Florian (near Linz).
- Starting out professional life as a music teacher, Bruckner made a few attempts at small-scale composition, although it was not until 1848 that he felt inspired to produce his first notable work, the Requiem in D minor.
- Having been appointed organist back at St Florian, most of Bruckner's energies remained on teaching and the organ, an instrument upon which he had become widely recognised as one of Europe's greatest exponents.
- Composition continued sporadically during the 1850s, during which time he spent several years studying in Vienna under the distinguished professor, Simon Sechter.
- On attending a performance of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser in 1863, the 38-year-old Bruckner felt driven to make composition his main vocation.
- Inspired by Wagner's example, he set to work on an Overture in G minor and the (unnumbered) Symphony in F minor, which were gradually followed over the next three years by Symphonies Nos. '0' and 1, and his first indisputable masterpiece, the Mass in D minor of 1864.
- The sheer strain caused by the hours of constant study in addition to his professional responsibilities, resulted in an acute nervous collapse early in 1867.
- Recovered, in 1867 he took a teaching post in Vienna at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. He was also was invited to give one of a series of recitals to inaugurate the new organs at St Epvre, Nancy (1869), Notre Dame (1870) and the Royal Albert Hall (1871).
- In 1875, Bruckner became the first lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at the University of Vienna.
- Between 1875 and 1880 Bruckner spent much of his time in an obsessive revision of several earlier works and began a final run of great masterpieces, including Symphonies Nox. 6-8, the Te Deum and the String Quintet. Bruckners' final years were largely devoted to the composition of the Ninth Symphony, which remained tantalisingly incomplete at the time of his death.
Did you know?
Bruckner took a Vienna Conservatory diploma, at which Johann Herbeck, the chief examiner and distinguished conductor, exclaimed: "He should have examined us! If I knew just one tenth of what he knows, I'd be happy."
