Classical Music / Composer's Datebook: September 4
Brief biography of Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer and organist of the Romantic Period. As a composer or as a person, it's not easy to categorize Anton Bruckner. His life and music is full of fascinating yet absorbing paradox. He did not win wide recognition for many years, but is now regarded as one of the great symphonic composers of the 19th century.
Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner spent most of his life quietly teaching and composing. Unlike Wagner who greatly influenced him and he admired, Anton Bruckner was not a man of the world who openly promoted his pursuits. He did not exude the Vienna sophistication although he moved in Viennese circles, remaining much like an outsider until his death on October 1896.
Early Years
Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, September 4, 1824. His music training started at four with lessons in violin. He was the son of a schoolmaster and organist. After his father died, (Bruckner was 13), he became a chorister at St. Florian’s monastery school and an organist at 21 years of age. By this time, he began to compose and went to study in Vienna in 1855. Although he was an outstanding organist, he composed very little for the instrument.
Career & Influences
A staunch Roman Catholic, Anton Bruckner was a deeply religious man who wrote music solely for the church until the age of 40
when he met Wagner, becoming the latter's admirer and friend. Bruckner then took to writing symphonies of epic-length proportions.
Bruckner was cathedral organist at Linz and professor at the Vienna Conservatoire.
In the early 1860s, at 37, he studied with Kitzler whose methods were based on the new composers of the Romantic Movement, such as Beethoven. He was greatly influenced by this and from here, his compositions evolved from the old-fashioned church organist to an innovator of originality. Bruckner's second and final transformation happened after seeing Wagner’s opera Tannhauser in 1865. Amazed at the way Wagner could break the rules of formal composition, at the same time create such overpowering music, was a revelation to him. Bruckner immediately amended his own approach.
His symphonies, as well as his early religious choral pieces (masses and motets), and the late Te Deum still reflect his profound religious outlook. Symphony no.4: The “Romantic”, a traditionally piece of Romantic orchestral work is quite popular too. Symphony no.9, his last, was left unfinished when he died.
Bruckner Legacy
Bruckner achieved success much later than many of his contemporaries. He was overshadowed by Brahms throughout his life. He was already 60 when his first performance of Symphony no.7 finally claimed success. For his place in the history of music, although still refuted by some critics, he has now been considered one of the “Magnificent Seven” Viennese symphonists - the others being Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Mahler.
Anton Bruckner's Symphonic Works:
Symphony in F minor (unnumbered, known as No 00) 1863
Symphony in D minor (known as No 0, revised 1869) 1864
Symphony No 1 in C minor (revised 1891) 1866
Symphony No 2 in c minor (revised 1891) 1872
Symphony No 3 in D minor, Wagner (revised 1877 and 1888) 1873
Symphony No 4 in Eb major, Romantic (revised 1880) 1874
Symphony No 5 in Bb major (revised 1878) 1877
Symphony No 6 in A major 1881
Symphony No 7 in E major 1883
Symphony No 8 in C minor, Apocalyptic (possibly 1887, revised 1890) 1884
Symphony No 9 in D minor (unfinished) 1894
Image Credit:
Anton Bruckner. Karadar.com / Public Domain
Resources:
Music by Frank G. Barker, Windward (1981)
Teach Yourself Series, Classical Music, Helicon Publishing (2000)
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, Edited by Stanley Sadie (1994)
(c) September 2008. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
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