Tune in every day at 1:00 this week as we feature the fantastic symphonies of Anton Bruckner, in honor of Anton Bruckner’s 200th birthday.
Trained as an organist at St. Florian monastery in his hometown of Ansfelden, Bruckner would go to be one of the most highly respected organists in Europe. Bruckner studied organ at the monastery and the minutia of music theory, including music going back to Gregorian chant. This understanding of musical structures would play a huge role in Bruckner’s large-scale symphonies. For Bruckner, the architecture of the movement and how the movement fit within the symphony was everything.
Bruckner held the symphony in such high regard that he was in his early forties before he started composing symphonies. Always hyper critical, he would be constantly revising his symphonies after they had been performed, creating in most cases more than one version of the same symphony.
The great conductor Daniel Barenboim has recorded all of Bruckner’s Symphonies three times and has had a love affair with Bruckner for 50 years. He describes Bruckner Symphonies as using a harmonic language that is post Wagnerian, but the form however is Classical, almost Baroque. “It is like you are dealing with three centuries of music all at the same time.”
The first and final movements of Bruckner symphonies are typically large and grand, with Bruckner having composed sub structures within the larger framework of the movements. These structures were missed by early music critics, and Bruckner’s symphonies were chalked off as being without structure; this despite his scherzos being typically in a non-problematic ABA form.
One of the things that did not help Bruckner’s cause with critics and audiences was that he was a rather unusual person. He typically was simply dressed and carried himself and spoke in a way he came off as a country bumpkin to the musical establishment.
He also had a ghoulish side to his character. Bruckner is well known to have had a picture commissioned of his dead mother on her death bed and kept the picture in his teaching studio. When the bodies of Beethoven and Schubert were exhumed to be moved to a different cemetery Bruckner is known to have kissed the skulls of both composers.
Bruckner was incredibly self-critical and self-doubting. He constantly looked for approval from his colleagues and took criticism very much to heart. One of the more well-known stories is that he tipped a conductor in cash for conducting a rehearsal of his symphony Number 4.
Ghoul, country bumpkin, or hyper critical artist; whichever prism you view the character of Bruckner, there is no denying that his symphonies are expressions of both infinite grandeur and utmost introspection. Waves of heroic triumph, combined with music that can be described as quite simply some of the most tender and beautiful music ever written. Grandeur, beauty, and waves of climactic bliss all worked into forms that are vast as the cathedrals that Bruckner played organ in.
Check out this week's Bruckner playlist:
Monday, September 2: Symphony No. 2 in C minor First Movement (1872)
Tuesday, September 3: Symphony No. 4 in Eb Major First Movement “Romantic Symphony” (1874)
Wednesday, September 4: Symphony No. 5 in Bb First Movement flat Major (1876-1878)
Thursday, September 5: Symphony No. 7 in E Major “Lyric Symphony" First Movement (1883-1885)
Friday September 6: Symphony No. 9 in D minor First Movement (1894-1896)
Tune into Intermezzo every day at 1:00 to hear this spellbinding music.