1824–1896 · Austria · Romantic
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) was an Austrian composer, organist and music teacher. He is known above all for large-scale symphonies with a rich harmonic language and dense polyphonic texture, as well as for Masses and motets. For players he is also interesting as an organ improviser, whose skill was highly admired in France and England.
Anton Bruckner was born on 4 September 1824 in the village of Ansfelden, near Linz, in Upper Austria. The post of village schoolmaster there had been held since 1776 by his grandfather, and in 1823 this modestly paid but locally respected position passed by inheritance to the composer's father, Anton Bruckner Sr. (1791–1837). He married Theresia Helm, and the couple had eleven children; Anton was the eldest and grew up in a large schoolteacher's family of modest means.
Anton's father gave him his first music lessons. In 1833, after Anton's confirmation, his father sent him to school in the town of Hörsching, led by Johann Baptist Weiss — an organist and keen music enthusiast respected in the area. Under his guidance Bruckner completed his general schooling, became a confident organist, and wrote his first composition, the Four Preludes in E-flat major for organ.
In 1837 Bruckner's father died, and the teaching post, together with the house that went with it, passed to another man. Thirteen-year-old Anton was sent to the monastery of St Florian, where he sang in the boys' choir and also studied the organ and violin. His musical gifts were obvious, but his mother still wanted him to become a village teacher like his forebears, and sent him to the teacher-training seminary in Linz, which Bruckner completed with distinction.
After the seminary, Bruckner took a post as assistant teacher under Franz Fuchs in the town of Windhaag bei Freistadt. Conditions there were harsh: meagre pay and constant reproaches from his superior, which he nonetheless bore without a single complaint or protest. Learning of the young teacher's situation, Prelate Michael Arneth of St Florian monastery transferred him to the same kind of post, but now in Kronstorf, where Bruckner spent the next two years. It was in the Kronstorf compositions of 1843–1845, unlike the few works from Windhaag, that the features of an individual Bruckner style first became clearly apparent.
Bruckner came back to St Florian in 1845. That May he sat an exam qualifying him to assist a teacher in one of the local village schools, and kept studying so that he could later gain permission to teach at higher-level institutions too. He became organist of St Florian in 1848, a post made permanent in 1851, and during these years the monastery mostly performed works by Michael Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Franz Joseph Aumann.
In 1849 Bruckner wrote his first truly major work, a Requiem. He dedicated it to the memory of the monastery notary Franz Seiler, who had supported his musical studies and, after his death, bequeathed Bruckner his own piano.
In 1854 Bruckner travelled to Vienna for the first time and auditioned before the court organist Ignaz Assmayer. He began a truly professional-level musical education only in 1855, starting lessons in counterpoint with the well-known Viennese teacher Simon Sechter. That same year Bruckner won a competition outright and took the post of city organist in Linz. In 1860 he also took charge of the men's choir Liedertafel Frohsinn, and from this time choral works took on an important place in his output. His Mass No. 1 in D minor, written in 1864 when Bruckner was about forty, is considered the composer's first truly mature work.
Bruckner's lessons with Sechter closed with a final exam in 1861, but he did not stop there and took up a new course of study — this one led by the Linz conductor Otto Kitzler, who introduced his pupil to the works of Richard Wagner. In 1865 Bruckner met Wagner in person, and the German master's music and personality left a huge mark on him.
In 1868, after Sechter's death, Bruckner was offered a music-theory teaching post at the Vienna Conservatory. He now poured most of his energy into composing symphonies, and the public's early response was unfriendly, sometimes dismissing them as bizarre and incoherent. Hans Rott and Franz Schmidt were among his pupils there.
As an organist, Bruckner won fame beyond Austria too: his 1869 concerts in France and a 1871 trip to England brought him six performances on the new organ at the Royal Albert Hall and five more at the Crystal Palace. He became a docent at the University of Vienna in 1875, took up the post of organist of the Court Chapel three years later, and in 1886 the emperor awarded him the Order of Franz Joseph.
During his Vienna years, Bruckner became close friends with the philosopher Anton von Eltzelt-Newin and dedicated his Sixth Symphony to him. The composer died in Vienna in 1896; three years later a monument to him was erected there. His sarcophagus rests in the crypt beneath the organ of St Florian monastery, where he had served as organist for many years.
His symphonies — with their dense harmonic language, multilayered polyphony and considerable length — became one of the symbols of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism; Bruckner is known above all for them, as well as for his Masses and motets.
The bulk of Bruckner's creative legacy consists of symphonies and sacred music. He wrote his first truly significant work when he was about forty, and genuine fame came to him even later — at around sixty. There is a view that Bruckner was a weak orchestrator, which for a long time gave others grounds to re-orchestrate his works; today, however, most conductors prefer to perform Bruckner's music from the original text of the scores.
Bruckner's sacred output includes five psalm settings, a Festive cantata, around forty motets, at least seven Masses, and settings of the Te Deum and the Magnificat — the record of a deeply religious man. The three early Masses were small, intended for worship in local churches, while the composer himself considered his Requiem in D minor of 1849 his first work worthy of being preserved for posterity. More often performed are the three Masses of the 1860s: Mass No. 1 in D minor and Mass No. 3 in F minor call for soloists and mixed choir with organ and orchestra, whereas Mass No. 2 in E minor calls for mixed choir together with a small body of wind instruments.
Bruckner also wrote secular works: choral music for men's societies set to German texts, some of it dedicated to friends and tied to weddings or name-days, as well as around twenty songs, almost all of which stayed unpublished. Separate from these are his cantatas on verses by August Silberstein: the early Germanenzug became the composer's first published work, while Helgoland of 1893 was the last one he managed to finish.
While training under Otto Kitzler, Bruckner wrote a March in D minor and three brief orchestral pieces as orchestration exercises, and at the same time an Overture in G minor. These student pieces are occasionally included on recordings of his symphonies today, and already hint at the style he would later become known for.
On the site, only one piece by Bruckner is currently available — the organ Perger Präludium (WAB 129), at an elementary+ level. A beginning organist or pianist taking their first steps into Bruckner's music should start with this one.