Anton Bruckner - Biography
Anton Bruckner the great symphonist was born on September 4th 1824 in Ansfelden Austria and died on October 11th 1896 in Vienna. His father a schoolmaster and church organist died in 1837. Upon his death father’s death he was educated in the St. Florian monastery outside of Linz Austria he later received a teaching certificate in Linz to become an elementary school teacher at eighteen. Bruckner cannot properly be understood without taking into account his deeply conservative roots in Catholic Northern Austria. He became in addition to his teaching duties the organist at St. Florian. At the age of thirty realizing that his musical skills were provincial he went to Vienna to study with the renowned musical pedagogue Simon Sechter. A unique aspect of Bruckner is that among great composers he had the latest start to developing as an even minor career.
He was nearly forty before he started seriously to compose. The first attempts to compose a symphony resulted in works entitled the Schule or “Study Symphony” and also a work he later entitled the “Nulle” or Symphony Zero. While these are charming minor works they don’t even hint at Bruckner’s future greatness. In the mid 1860’s a transformative event occurred in his life, he discovered the music of Wagner. Though the actual influence of Wagner’s music on Bruckner’s has been exaggerated ,Wagner was the catalyst and model that set Bruckner on his path to become a major composer. In a period of three years in the late 1860’s he composed three masterful settings of the Catholic Mass. In 1869 he composed his first numbered symphony in C minor and in 1872 his Second also in C Minor. These first two symphonies were to set the template for Bruckner’s symphonies that are on a huge scale often over an hour in duration with the structure reminiscent of the first three movements of Beethoven’s Ninth. Also characteristic is the extensive use of brass instruments often with an ecclesiastical sonority (the woodwind imitates bird song).
Someone reading this far will notice almost an almost total lack of personal incident. Bruckner while a skilled musician and a formidable musical intellect barely knew anything about literature, art, philosophy and was devoid of social graces. His life outside of music was devoted to religious contemplation and, mysticism and a healthy appetite for heavy Austrian food and beer. Well into his sixties this naïve man would propose marriage to young women often hotel chamber maids who he would immediately be smitten with and in all seriousness would track down her bewildered parents to present himself as a suitor. His social arrested development caused him to have a lack of confidence in his art that is unique among major composers. This is as good a place as any to bring up the textural problems of the symphonies. With the exception of his Sixth and Seventh his Symphonies exist in different versions, some with revisions that he himself made , others by well meaning young disciples who would convince him that the work which often as not was rejected or received a disastrous first performance couldn’t be performed without cuts and more ‘effective’ orchestration and dynamics. The legitimate authorized versions of his nine numbered symphonies were prepared in the 1930’s by Austrian musicologist Robert Haas and continued in the 1950’s by Leopold Novak.(Prior to that they were performed in the heavily edited versions by his young friends Josef Schalk and Edmund Loewe).
An amusing anecdote sums up his diffidence, the celebrated conductor Hans Richter was rehearsing one his symphonies in Bruckner‘s presence finding an ambiguity in the score he asked Bruckner for a clarification Bruckner who at this point was world famous replied ‘any way you wish Herr Director.
Bruckner starts his second phase with his Third Symphony in D minor dedicated to Wagner with some musical quotes from Wagner. This set him up as the enemy of the Anti – Wagner movement headed by the powerful and fearsome critic Eduard Hanslick. The premiere of the original version of the Third in 1877 was a catastrophic failure with a great majority of the audience waking out. This event contributed to one of Bruckner’s debilitating periods of depression that occurred in periods of stress. During this period he was able to secure a position as a lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at the University of Vienna. It was through his teaching that he met many of his young advocates who were to become the major musicians of the German speaking world (including the great composers Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler). The second phase concludes with his great mature Symphonies numbers 4 in E Flat (Romantic), 5 in B Flat and Six in A Major. The Fourth probably the best known of Bruckner’s works has the famous ‘Hunting Horn’ Scherzo (actually a replacement of the original Scherzo). The Fifth is a huge work a cathedral in sound concludes in a tremendous Fugue and Chorale of overwhelming sonority.
The last phase starts with an undisputed masterpiece, the Seventh Symphony in E Flat (1882-1883). This work has a long Adagio movement which attaches itself to a story that is touching. Bruckner had a premonition that his beloved Wagner was to die and whilst completing the Adagio he received news of Wagner’s death he concludes the movement with a lament for four “Wagner” tenor tubas. This Adagio also has a soaring theme which was to be set to the words of “Non confundar in Aeternum” (never let me be confounded) of the Symphonies sister work the choral setting of the Catholic Te Deum. The Symphony first taken up by the great young conductor Artur Nikisch was to make Bruckner’s name throughout the musical world.
Bruckner spent the next five seven years composing his most monumental symphony the Eighth in C minor. The initial version was viewed as a failure by his friends sending him into another emotional tailspin. He re gathered his strength and thoroughly revised the work which received a triumphant first performance in Vienna in 1892. The work is dedicated to the Emperor Franz Josef the Second. When the Emperor afterwards asked Bruckner if there was anything he can do for him, Bruckner replied that he could ask his bête noire Hanslick not to write so badly about his music. Bruckner health was declining and he couldn’t finish his sublime Ninth Symphony. He completed the first three movements but died in 1896 leaving sketched out fragments of the finale.
What is one to make of this strange man whom Mahler once called ‘half idiot, half genius’? This writer’s description of him as great would be disputed by many outside of German speaking countries. The constant nobility and slow moving structures bore many. But, if one has the patience and listens to a dedicated performance there is a unique spiritual experience which few other composers provide.
