This article was updated in September 2024.
Anton Bruckner has been viewed as a fawning acolyte of Richard Wagner’s, which he no doubt was. Yet it must be said that his hero-worship of Wagner amounted to much more than mere artistic reverence. Though Bruckner’s discovery of Wagner’s music aged 38 undoubtedly catalysed his transition from meek church musician to bombastic symphonist, the resulting body of work was far removed from its original inspiration.
Much has been made of Bruckner’s well-documented idolising of Wagner, and this has often worked against the former’s reputation. Bruckner was introduced to the music of Wagner by his teacher Otto Kitzler in 1863. He had until that point been working as a church musician in a monastery, but this immersion in the older artist's epic music dramas set him on the path toward becoming a composer of symphonies. The Wagner connection would come to haunt Bruckner, both posthumously and in his own lifetime. As Bruckner’s name grew, he caught the attention of the influential critic Eduard Hanslick, who invited him to come and work in Vienna. Ironically, Hanslick’s motive had been to promote the work of a classically-oriented composer who would counteract what he saw as the pernicious modernist influence of Wagner. Once the critic learned of Bruckner’s Wagnerian sympathies, however, the Viennese press rounded swiftly on the composer from Linz.
The Wagner connection proved even more unfortunate for Bruckner during the next century, long after his death. Wagner’s political radicalism and evocation of Germanic myths saw him famously appropriated by the Nazis, and in seeking to carve out a suitably Germanic cultural legacy the regime predictably extended its admiration to Wagner’s number one fan, Bruckner. In 1937 a bust of the composer – stood on a pedestal depicting the Nazi swastika and eagle – was erected in the Regensburg Walhalla, the unveiling ceremony being attended by none other than the Führer himself. In a speech during the ceremony, Joseph Goebbels was sure to highlight the Wagnerian elements of Bruckner. With such associations, it’s no doubt that Bruckner’s indebtedness to Wagner has coloured popular perception and performance practices of his work.
Indeed, Wagnerian influences are undeniably present in Bruckner’s work. Before being introduced to Wagner’s music in 1863, and attending the first performance of Tristan und Isolde in Munich two years later – another epiphanic moment – Bruckner had been fascinated by the formalism of Italian and German polyphony. After Wagner, all of these conceptions of order were exploded for Bruckner. He absorbed Wagner’s ideas about expanding the orchestra, particularly in his use of reinforced brass sections (he also employed Wagner tubas in his final three symphonies). Similarly, he introduced Wagner’s harmonic innovations into his own symphonic work. Bruckner attended the Bayreuth performance of the Ring cycle in 1876 and his Third Symphony, sometimes known as his “Wagner Symphony”, quotes heavily from his hero’s work in its original 1873 version, particularly the strings from the Tannhäuser Overture. When Bruckner met Wagner shortly before the publication of his third attempt at a symphony, he showed the scores of both his Second and Third to the older composer, asking which one he’d like to be dedicated to him. In beer-addled high spirits, Bruckner reportedly forgot which one Wagner had specified and had to write to him, asking him to jog his memory. The resulting dedication for the Third Symphony made no bones about who it had been inspired by, reading: “To the eminent Excellency Richard Wagner the Unattainable, World-Famous, and Exalted Master of Poetry and Music, in Deepest Reverence Dedicated by Anton Bruckner”. One gets the feeling that Hanslick’s damning appraisal of the symphony as “a vision of Beethoven's Ninth becoming friendly with Wagner's Valkyries and finishing up being trampled under their hooves” may well have seemed like a compliment to Bruckner.