This September marked the bicentenary of the birth of Anton Brucker (1824-1895).
Bruckner was not just a composer who happened to be Catholic but one whose faith permeates his music deeply. Like several other of the great composers active in Vienna during the classical and Romantic periods—Haydn, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert —he was a cradle Catholic. Like them, he composed masterful Masses and liturgical motets. However, Bruckner’s faith figured far more prominently in his daily life than it did in theirs. Many would argue that it features more prominently in his music too.
This is the first of two articles on Bruckner and will recommend five recordings of his sacred music. A later article will propose five recordings of his symphonies.
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Bruckner was born near Linz in the village of Ansfelden. His father was the local schoolmaster and his first music teacher. The organ was the instrument the young Anton learnt.
When he was sent to school in Hörsching, he had the good fortune to continue his musical instruction under the schoolmaster there: Johann Baptist Weiss, a gifted organist. At the age of twelve, he had already completed his first composition: a setting of the Pange Lingua.
Upon his father’s death in 1837, Bruckner was sent to continue his education as a choirboy at the Augustinian monastery of Sankt Florian, which became his spiritual home.
After attending the teacher-training school, he took up the family trade and started working as an assistant schoolteacher at Windhaag, Kronstorf, and Sankt Florian. In the meantime, he continued his musical education.
One of his responsibilities as assistant schoolteacher was to play the organ and put together a choir and musicians for the liturgical celebrations.
Bruckner continued to study composition, write pieces, obtain qualifications, and work his way up. In 1851, after several years as an assistant organist, he was appointed organist of Sankt Florian. In 1856, he became the organist at Linz Cathedral. Finally, in 1868, he was made professor of Organ and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory.
These appointments were deserved. Bruckner was a world-class organist. In 1869, he gave several organ recitals in France; in 1871, in England. The reports attest that audiences in each country were struck above all by his skills at improvisation. Curiously, though, he wrote little music for the organ.
Bruckner’s real ambition was not to be a world-class organist but a composer of note. His 1844 motet Asperges me is one of the earliest indications. He signed it as “Anton Bruckner, Composer.” He was so set upon becoming a composer that he doggedly undertook a rigorous musical education, notwithstanding the constraints of his job, age, or humble background.
In 1855, he started a six-year correspondence course in counterpoint with Simon Sechter. Sechter was a leading music theorist. Even Schubert had turned to him once for instruction. So assiduous was the organist of Linz that Sechter regarded him the most dedicated of all his students. That is probably why, when Sechter died, Bruckner was picked to succeed him as professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory.
Sechter had advised Bruckner not to compose any music until he had completed his course in counterpoint. The obsequious student complied and so, whereas Schubert died at the age of 32, Mozart at 35, Bruckner began to compose his mature works at the age of 37.
Following his rigorous studies in counterpoint under Sechter, Bruckner turned to Otto Kitzler, the music director of the Linz Municipal Theatre, for instruction in musical form and orchestration. Whereas Sechter gave Bruckner a rigorous grounding in the traditional grammar of composition, Kitzler introduced him to the more experimental Romantic composers of the day, such as Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. Indeed, it was through Kitzler that Bruckner first met Wagner.
Bruckner was deeply impressed and influenced by Wagner’s music. His Third Symphony is dedicated to the older composer and quotes several of his themes. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, and often to his detriment, Bruckner’s committment to Wagnerian artistic ideals was exaggerated. As Dermot Gault observes, “Wagner’s influence is otherwise manifest only in certain generalized aspects of Bruckner’s music from this time onwards: increasing harmonic audacity, fuller orchestration with heavier brass, and a more epic and ambitious approach to musical form.” Apart from these influences, Bruckner pursued his own course, one far removed from Wagner’s. He had no interest in theatre or programmatic music. He composed Masses and sacred cantatas, not operas; four-movement symphonies, not tone poems. The genres he chose are those of the classical period. Though a Romantic composer, his music is imbued with his Catholic spirituality. In Bruckner, there is none of the neo-paganism that initially attracted Nietzsche to Wagner’s music. Nor did he share any of Wagner’s anti-Jewish sentiment. He always treated his Jewish students with respect and esteem.
"Bruckner simply has a lot to say and a language unique to him. Many people relate it to Wagner. If one looks at it properly, however, it only approaches Wagner externally. It is, of course, the language of a contemporary of Wagner, but if you take a close look, it has nothing at all to do with Wagner inwardly. Bruckner's musical precursors are on the one hand Schubert (not forgetting Beethoven in many respects), and on the other hand the great old church composers Palestrina and Orlando, and possibly Monteverdi." Eugen Jochum
Through hard work, Bruckner had won prestigious appointments as an organist and music professor. Through hard work, he composed one of the most impressive, enduring symphonic cycles and body of sacred music of the nineteenth century. There were certain desired successes, however, that he could not achieve by sheer work. He was disappointed by the poor reviews that his works often received, some written in good faith by baffled music critics, others penned with gleeful spite by downright hostile ones, such as Eduard Hanslick. Above all, he was disappointed in love.
Many of Bruckner’s difficulties arose from his psychological limitations. For all the sophistication he acquired as a musician, he was not so proficient when it came to picking up social graces. Even Gustav Mahler, who venerated Bruckner as a composer, considered him “a simpleton – half genius, half imbecile.” It was not just that he cut a bumpkinish and socially naïve figure in imperial Vienna. Even in his home setting, he was clueless and obtuse when it came to certain social mores. He made marriage proposals to many of the young women with whom he was besotted, even when he was over seventy-years old. He was always rebutted. In 1867, he suffered a nervous breakdown. He also developed numeromania. However, his maniacal behaviour only broke under certain circumstances and when he was under stress. Nevertheless, these eccentricities have been exaggerated. Bruckner was deeply kind, intelligent, and could not have been so productive had he been suffering from chronic mental illness.
Of his Ninth Symphony, Bruckner said, “I dedicate my last work to the majesty of all the majesties, the beloved God, and hope that he will give me so much time to complete the same.” Unfortunately, Bruckner died before he could complete the last movement. Fittingly, he was buried under his beloved organ in the Church of Sankt Florian.
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An interesting place to start this survey of Bruckner’s sacred music is his first major work for chorus and orchestra: the Requiem Mass in D minor (1849, revised in 1892), composed to commemorate the anniversary of the death of his friend, Franz Sailer.
Bruckner’s mature works are shot through with the musical idiom of nineteenth-century German Romanticism. The Requiem, on the other hand, sounds as if it had been written forty or fifty years earlier, by an Austrian composer of the classical period. Indeed, it is modelled on Mozart’s Requiem in D minor. Not only is it written in the same sombre key, but also contains citations from that work.
Just as Mozart set “Quam olim Abraham promisisti,” to a fugue, so does Bruckner. Indeed, it is his first detailed fugue, although most of the choral writing is homophonic. Also redolent of Mozart’s Requiem, is the way he uses the trombones to enhance the solemnity of the choral passages.
However, whereas Mozart’s Requiem is his last great work, Bruckner’s is his earliest major work. Nor is it one of his greatest or most distinctive compositions. In fact, it is one of his least distinctive works. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing entry point. Listen to it and then the other works on this list. You will be surprised by the startling difference in style and how much Bruckner developed as a composer.
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