(portrait by Josef Büche).]]
Anton Bruckner (4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The former are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies.
Unlike other radicals, such as Richard Wagner or Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music.
His works, the symphonies in particular, had detractors, most notably the influential Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick, and other supporters of Johannes Brahms, who pointed to their large size, use of repetition, Bruckner learned to play the organ already as a child. He entered school when he was six, and proved to be a hard-working student, and was promoted to upper class early. While studying, Bruckner also helped his father in teaching the other children. After Bruckner received his confirmation in 1833, Bruckner's father decided to send him to another school in Hörsching. The schoolmaster, Johann Baptist Weiß, was a music enthusiast and respected organist. Here, Bruckner completed his school education and learned to play the organ excellently. He also wrote his first composition, Vier Präludien in Es-Dur für Orgel for the organ. However, biographists do not regard the work as exceptional; in his youth, Bruckner was gifted, but not a genius. When his father became ill, Anton returned to Ansfelden to help him in his work.
Teacher's education
His father died in 1837, when Anton was 13 years old. The teacher's position and house were given to a successor, and Bruckner was sent to the
Augustinian monastery in St. Florian to become a choirboy. In St Florian, most of the repertoire consisted of the music of
Michael Haydn,
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and
Franz Joseph Aumann.
Symphonies
Style
Bruckner's Symphonies are all in four movements (though he was unable to complete the finale of the Ninth), starting with a modified sonata allegro form, a slow movement, a scherzo in 3/4 time, and a modified sonata allegro form finale. (In the Eighth, Ninth, and one version of the Second, the slow movements and scherzi are reversed. The Fourth features a scherzo in which the outer sections are in 2/4 meter, not the customary 3/4.) They are scored for a fairly standard orchestra of woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two or three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. The later symphonies increase this complement, but not by much. Notable is the use of Wagner tubas in his last three symphonies. With the exception of Symphony No. 4, none of Bruckner's Symphonies has subtitles, and most of the nicknames were not thought up by the composer. Bruckner's works are trademarked with powerful codas and grand finales, as well as the frequent use of unison passages and orchestral tutti. His style of orchestral writing was criticized by his Viennese contemporaries, but by the middle of the 20th century musicologists recognized that Bruckner's orchestration was modeled after the sound of his primary instrument, the pipe organ.
Nicholas Temperley writes in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) that Bruckner
alone succeeded in creating a new school of symphonic writing.... Some have classified him as a conservative, some as a radical. Really he was neither, or alternatively was a fusion of both.... [H]is music, though Wagnerian in its orchestration and its in its huge rising and falling periods, patently has its roots in older styles. Bruckner took Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as his starting-point.... The introduction to the first movement, beginning mysteriously and climbing slowly with fragments of the first theme to the gigantic full statement of that theme, was taken over by Bruckner; so was the awe-inspiring coda of the first movement. The scherzo and slow movement, with their alternation of melodies, are models for Bruckner's spacious middle movements, while the finale with a grand culminating hymn is a feature of almost every Bruckner symphony.
Bruckner is the first composer since Schubert about whom it is possible to make such generalizations. His symphonies deliberately followed a pattern, each one building on the achievements of its predecessors.... His melodic and harmonic style changed little, and it had as much of Schubert in it as of Wagner.... His technique in the development and transformation of themes, learnt from Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, was unsurpassed, and he was almost the equal of Brahms in the art of melodic variation.
Cooke adds, also in the New Grove,
Despite its general debt to Beethoven and Wagner, the "Bruckner Symphony" is a unique conception, not only because of the individuality of its spirit and its materials, but even more because of the absolute originality of its formal processes. At first, these processes seemed so strange and unprecedented that they were taken as evidence of sheer incompetence.... Now it is recognized that Bruckner's unorthodox structural methods were inevitable.... Bruckner created a new and monumental type of symphonic organism, which abjured the tense, dynamic continuity of Beethoven, and the broad, fluid continuity of Wagner, in order to express something profoundly different from either composer, something elemental and metaphysical.
In a concert review, Bernard Holland described parts of the first movements of Bruckner's sixth and seventh symphonies as follows: "There is the same slow, broad introduction, the drawn-out climaxes that grow, pull back and then grow some more — a sort of musical coitus interruptus."
In the 2001 Second Edition of the New Grove, Mark Evan Bonds called the Bruckner symphonies "monumental in scope and design, combining lyricism with an inherently polyphonic design.... Bruckner favored an approach to large-scale form that relied more on large-scale thematic and harmonic juxtaposition. Over the course of his output, one senses an ever-increasing interest in cyclic integration that culminates in his masterpiece, the Symphony no.8 in C minor, a work whose final page integrates the main themes of all four movements simultaneously."
Works
Otto Kitzler, Bruckner's last composition teacher, set him three final tasks as the climax of his studies: a choral work, an overture, and a symphony. The latter, completed in 1863, was then Bruckner's
Study Symphony in F minor. Bruckner later rejected this work, but he did not destroy it. While it certainly reminds one of earlier composers such as
Robert Schumann, it undeniably also bears the hallmarks of the later Bruckner style. Kitzler simply commented that the work was "not very inspired". It was first performed in 1924 and not published until 1973 and is occasionally listed as
Symphony No. 00.
Bruckner's Symphony No. 1 in C minor (sometimes called by Bruckner "das kecke Beserl", roughly translated as "the saucy maid") was completed in 1866, but the original text of this symphony was not reconstructed until 1998. Instead, it is commonly known in two versions, the so-called Linz Version which is based mainly on rhythmical revisions made in 1877, and the completely revised Vienna Version of 1891, which begins to reveal his mature style, e.g. Symphony No. 8.
Next was the so-called Symphony No. 0 in D minor of 1869, a work which was so harshly criticized that Bruckner retracted it completely, and it was not performed at all during his lifetime, hence his choice for the number of the symphony.
The Symphony No. 2 in C minor was revised in 1873, 1876, 1877 and 1892. It is sometimes called the Symphony of Pauses for its dramatic use of whole-orchestra rests, which accentuate the form of the piece. In the Carragan edition of the 1872 version, the Scherzo is placed second and the Adagio third. It is in the same key as No. 1.
Bruckner presented his Symphony No. 3 in D minor, written in 1873, to Wagner along with the Second, asking which of them he might dedicate to him. Wagner chose the Third, and Bruckner sent him a fair copy soon later, which is why the original version of the Wagner Symphony is preserved so well despite revisions in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1888/1889. One thing that helped Wagner choose which Symphony to accept the dedication was that the 3rd contains quotations from Wagner's music dramas, such as Die Walküre and Lohengrin. These quotations were taken out in revised versions.
Bruckner's first great success was his Symphony No. 4 in E flat major, more commonly known as the Romantic Symphony, the only epithet applied to a symphony by the composer himself. The 1874 version has been seldom played and success came only after major revisions in 1878, including a completely new scherzo and finale, and again in 1880/1881, once again with a completely rewritten finale. This version was premiered in 1881 (under the conductor Hans Richter). Bruckner made more minor revisions of this symphony in 1886-1888.
Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 in B flat major crowns his most productive era of symphony-writing, finished at the beginning of 1876. The original version seems unrecoverable and we know only the thoroughly revised version of 1878. Many consider this symphony to be Bruckner's lifetime masterpiece in the area of counterpoint. For example, the Finale is a combined fugue and sonata form movement: the first theme (characterized by the downward leap of an octave) appears in the exposition as a four-part fugue in the strings and the concluding theme of the exposition is presented first as a chorale in the brass, then as a four part fugue in the development, and culminating in a double fugue with the first theme at the recapitulation; additionally, the coda combines not only these two themes but also the main theme of the first movement. Bruckner never heard it played by an orchestra.
Symphony No. 6 in A major, written in 1879-1881, is an oft-neglected work; whereas the Bruckner rhythm (two quarters plus a quarter triplet or vice versa) is an important part of his previous symphonies, it pervades this work, particularly in the first movement, making it particularly difficult to perform.
Symphony No. 7 in E major was the most beloved of Bruckner's symphonies with audiences of the time, and is still popular. It was written 1881-1883 and revised in 1885. During the time that Bruckner began work on this Symphony, he was aware that Wagner's death was imminent, and so the Adagio is slow mournful music for Wagner, and for the first time in Bruckner's oeuvre, the Wagner tuba is included in the orchestra.
Bruckner began composition of his Symphony No. 8 in C minor in 1884. In 1887 Bruckner sent the work to Hermann Levi, the conductor who had led his Seventh to great success. Levi, who had said Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony was the greatest symphony written after Beethoven, believed that the Eighth was a confusing jumble. Bruckner was devastated by Levi's assessment. Bruckner revised the work, sometimes with the aid of Franz Schalk, and completed this new version in 1890. Cooke writes that "Bruckner not only recomposed [the Eighth]... but greatly improved it in a number of ways.... This is the one symphony that Bruckner did not fully achieve in his first definite version, to which there can be no question of going back."
The final accomplishment of Bruckner's life was to be his Symphony No. 9 in D minor which he started in August 1887, and which he dedicated "To God the Beloved." The first three movements were completed by the end of 1894, the Adagio alone taking 18 months to complete. Work was delayed by the composer's poor health and by his compulsion to revise his early symphonies, and by the time of his death in 1896 he had not finished the last movement. The first three movements remained unperformed until their premiere in Vienna (in Ferdinand Löwe's version) on 11 February 1903.
Bruckner suggested using his Te Deum as a Finale, which would complete the homage to Beethoven's Ninth symphony (also in D minor). The problem was that the Te Deum is in C major, while the 9th Symphony is D minor, and, although Bruckner began sketching a transition from the Adagio key of E major to the triumphant key of C major, he did not pursue the idea. There have been several attempts to complete these sketches and prepare them for performance, as well as completions of his later sketches for an instrumental Finale, but only the first three movements of the Symphony are usually performed.
Sacred choral works
Bruckner wrote a
Te Deum, settings of various
Psalms (including Psalm 150 in the 1890s), various
motets (among them settings of
Christus factus est pro nobis and
Ave Maria), and at least seven
Masses. His
Requiem in D minor of 1849 is the earliest work Bruckner himself considered worthy of preservation. It shows the clear influence of Mozart's Requiem (also in D minor) and similar works of Michael Haydn. His early Masses were usually short Austrian
Landmessen for use in local churches and did not always set all the numbers of the ordinary. The three Masses Bruckner wrote in the 1860s and revised later on in his life are more often performed. The Masses numbered
1 in D minor and
3 in F minor are for solo singers, chorus and orchestra, while
No. 2 in E minor is for chorus and a small group of wind instruments, and was written in an attempt to meet the Cecilians halfway. The Cecilians wanted to rid church music of instruments entirely. No. 3 was clearly meant for concert, rather than liturgical performance, and it is the only one of his Masses in which he set the first line of the Gloria, "Gloria in excelsis Deo", and of the Credo, "Credo in unum Deum", to music. (In concert performances of the other Masses, these lines are intoned by a tenor soloist in the way a priest would, with a line of
plainsong).
Other music
,
Wagner,
Schubert,
Schumann,
Weber,
Mozart,
Beethoven,
Gluck,
Haydn,
Handel,
Bach. (Silhouette drawing by Otto Böhler)]]
As a young man Bruckner sang in men's choirs and wrote music for them. This music is rarely performed. Biographer Derek Watson characterizes the pieces for men's choir as being "of little concern to the non-German listener". Of thirty such pieces, Helgoland is the only secular vocal work Bruckner thought worthy enough to bequeath to the Vienna National Library.
The Overture in G minor is occasionally included in recordings of the Symphonies, and it is one of the works Bruckner wrote during his apprentice with Otto Kitzler. At that time he also wrote a March in D minor and three short orchestral pieces. These works already show hints of Bruckner's emerging style.
A String Quartet in C minor was discovered decades after Bruckner's death, but is only of interest as a student composition. The later String Quintet in F major, contemporaneous with the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, has been frequently performed.
There is an orchestral Symphonic Prelude that is sometimes attributed to Bruckner and sometimes to Mahler. It was discovered in the Vienna National Library in 1974 in a piano duet transcription and later orchestrated by Albrecht Gürsching, who did not know the original orchestral score (published by Doblinger, Vienna). It is likely the work of one of Bruckner's students.
Bruckner's Two Aequale for three trombones is a solemn, brief work.
He also wrote Lancer-Quadrille for piano. Among his most unusual and evocative compositions is the choral Abendzauber (1878) for tenor, yodelers and four alpine horns. It was never performed in Bruckner's lifetime.
Bruckner never wrote an opera, and as much as he was a fan of Wagner's music dramas, he was uninterested in drama. In 1893 he thought about writing an opera called Astra based on a novel by Gertrud Bollé-Hellmund.
Although he attended performances of Wagner's operas, he was much more interested in the music than the plot. After seeing Wagner's Götterdämmerung, he asked: "Tell me, why did they burn the woman at the end?" Nor did Bruckner ever write an oratorio.
Reception in the 20th century
Because of the long duration and vast orchestral canvas of much of his music, Bruckner's popularity has greatly benefited from the introduction of long-playing media and from improvements in recording technology.
Decades after his death, the Nazis strongly approved of Bruckner's music because his music was considered by them to be an expression of the zeitgeist of the German volk, and Hitler even consecrated a bust of Bruckner in a widely photographed ceremony in 1937 at Regensburg's Walhalla temple. Bruckner's music was among the most popular in Nazi Germany and the Adagio from his 7th Symphony was broadcast by the German radio (Deutscher Reichsrundfunk) upon announcing the news of Hitler's death on 1 May 1945. This didn't hurt Bruckner's standing in the postwar media though, and several movies and TV productions in Europe and the United States have used excerpts from Bruckner's music ever since the 1950s, as they already did in the 1930s. Nor did the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra ever ban Bruckner's music as they have Wagner's, even recording with Zubin Mehta the Eighth Symphony.
In part because they both wrote long symphonies, and in part because of Bruno Walter's essay, Bruckner and Mahler were often mentioned together in the 20th century.
Bruckner's symphonic works, much maligned in Vienna in his lifetime, now have an important place in the tradition and musical repertoire of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
The life of Bruckner was portrayed in Jan Schmidt-Garre's 1995 film Bruckner's Decision, which focuses on his recovery in the Austrain spa. Ken Russell's TV movie The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner, starring Peter Mackriel, also fictionalizes Bruckner's real-life stay at a sanatorium because of obsessive-compulsive disorder (or 'numeromania' as it was then described),.
In addition, "Visconti used the music of Bruckner for his Senso (1953), its plot concerned with the Austrian invasion of Italy in the 1860s." The score by Carl Davis for Ben-Hur takes "inspiration from Bruckner to achieve reverence in biblical scenes."
Conductors
Among the conductors most associated with the works of Bruckner, going in chronological order, the first to be mentioned should perhaps be
Bruno Walter, who acted as an "ambassador" for Bruckner in the United States; made celebrated recordings of symphonies 4, 7 and 9 late in his career; wrote an
essay on "Bruckner and Mahler".
Otto Klemperer made one of the first two recordings of Bruckner (the adagio of the Eighth Symphony from 1924).
Wilhelm Furtwängler made his conducting debut with the Ninth Symphony in 1906 and conducted Bruckner constantly throughout his career.
Hans Knappertsbusch was unusual in continuing to perform the first published editions of Bruckner's symphonies even after the critical editions became available. Eugen Jochum recorded Bruckner's numbered symphonies multiple times, as did Herbert von Karajan. Günter Wand, in addition to audio recordings, also made video recordings of his Bruckner concerts. Georg Tintner received acclaim late in life for his complete cycle of recordings on the Naxos label.
The Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache did not conduct all of Bruckner's symphonies, but in those that he did produced readings of great breadth (Bruckner Symphony no.8), possibly the longest accounts of the works on record. Although he never made commercial recordings of Bruckner, several recordings of concert performances were released after his death.
Eliahu Inbal recorded an early cycle which featured some previously unrecorded versions. For instance, Inbal was the first conductor to record the 1st version of Bruckner's 3rd, 4th, and the completed finale to the 9th. Daniel Barenboim recorded 2 complete cycles of Bruckner's symphonies, one with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the other with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Bernard Haitink recorded all of Bruckner's numbered symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and re-recorded several symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. Carlo Maria Giulini made a speciality of Bruckner's late symphonies. The late Giuseppe Sinopoli was in the process of recording all Bruckner's symphonies at the time of his death.
More recently Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Christian Thielemann, Mariss Jansons and Benjamin Zander have recorded several Bruckner symphonies.
See also
Bruckner Orchestra Linz
International Bruckner Society
List of Austrians in music
List of Austrians
The Bruckner Problem
Media
References
Bruckner, Anton. Symphony No. 8/2, C minor, 1890 version. Edited by Leopold Nowak. New York: Eulenberg, 1994.
Gilliam, Bryan, The annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi revisionism and the politics of appropriation, in Bruckner Studies edited by Timothy Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw.
Korstvedt, Benjamin M. Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 19.
ed. Stanley Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980), 20 vols. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
ed. Stanley Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition (London: Macmillan, 2001), 29 vols. ISBN 0-333-60800-3.
External links
The life of Anton Bruckner in Chord and Discord, American Bruckner Society, 1940. A very well-written biography, with references to the conflict with the Hanslick/Brahms field, and 19th century Austrian culture and society.
The Bruckner Journal devoted to Anton Bruckner, edited by Ken Ward, caters for lay enthusiasts, musicians and academics. Produced in the UK
Bruckner Discography edited by John F. Berky - Detailed listing recordings of Anton Bruckner's orchestral works. Also includes articles and free downloads
Extensive article (35 pages) by Aart van der Wal on Bruckner's Symphony No. 9, unfinished finale
Classical Net - Bruckner Bio, Recordings, and Essays
UV.es - Anton Bruckner Bibliography
Detailed information on the various editions and revisions of Bruckner's symphonies
Discography and List of Works
MPG.de
Bruckner biography, 19th century Austrian culture and society
Bruckner MIDIs at Classical Archives
Homepage for Bruckner's House museum (Ger)
The Music of Eternity by David B. Hart, First Things
Category:1824 births
Category:1896 deaths
Category:People from Linz-Land District
*
Category:Austrian Roman Catholics
Category:Austrian composers
Category:Romantic composers
Category:Viennese composers
Category:Walhalla enshrinees
![[1896] Hibari x Chrome: Truly deeply Madly](http://web.archive.org./web/20110409042604im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vRzUOYOK7Is/0.jpg "[1896] Hibari x Chrome: Truly deeply Madly")
