Anton Bruckner’s symphonies have been dubbed “cathedrals in sound”. Others have been less kind. Johannes Brahms described them as “symphonic boa constrictors” due to their great length. Either way, any Bruckner playlist is going to be dominated by his essays in the genre, once considered outlandish but now firmly part of the symphonic canon.
Bruckner was an unlikely symphonist. He came from humble beginnings, born in the tiny Upper Austrian village of Ansfelden, near Linz, in 1824, the eldest of 11 children. His father was the village schoolmaster. Young Anton learnt the organ at an early age. When his father died in 1837, Bruckner was sent to the Augustinian monastery of St Florian to become a choirboy, where he also had lessons in violin and organ. He trained as a teacher and later taught and worked as an organist at St Florian – his spiritual home – and in Linz. “Spiritual” is an apt word; Bruckner composed a lot of choral music and was a renowned organist, even performing recitals at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1874.
In 1868, Bruckner accepted a post teaching at the Vienna Conservatory (Hans Rott, Mahler and Franz Schmidt were among his organ pupils). The move to Vienna was pivotal, as Bruckner shifted his focus dramatically to concentrate his efforts on composing symphonies, writing eleven in all, although only nine are numbered. They are all lengthy, stretching to well over an hour in the case of the Eighth.
The reaction to his music ranged between puzzled and outraged. Bruckner hero-worshipped Wagner and thus found himself caught in the crossfire of the “War of the Romantics” between the supporters of Wagner and of Brahms. The pro-Brahms critic Eduard Hanslick dismissed the Eighth Symphony in the Neue Freie Presse: “Interminable, disorganised and violent, Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony stretches out into a hideous length.”
The reaction in Vienna against Bruckner’s music perhaps also reflected his status as an outsider. With his rural accent and style of dress, Bruckner was viewed as a country bumpkin. Hans von Bülow described him as “half genius, half simpleton”. As an example of his naïvety, when a rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony went particularly well, Bruckner went up to the conductor, Hans Richter, and pressed a coin into his hand. “Take this and buy yourself a beer.”
A lifelong bachelor, despite making many proposals to teenage girls, he led a deeply spiritual life. He was also obsessed with death, keeping a photograph of his mother’s corpse in his teaching room. He also attended the exhumations of both Beethoven and Schubert. Bruckner died in 1896, and was buried in the crypt of St Florian monastery, just below his favourite organ, “God’s musician” to the last.
1Symphony no. 4 in E flat major, “Romantic”
Heading my list is the first Bruckner I fell in love with: the Fourth, specifically the “hunting” Scherzo he composed when he revised the work in 1878. The “Romantic” subtitle was Bruckner’s own and conjures up medieval knights and chivalric deeds, with a magical opening horn call over rustling strings. Bruckner’s beloved Austrian countryside is never far away and, in the middle of the hunt, the riders stop for lunch accompanied by a Ländler. Once it is reached, the coda is masterful, a moment of reverence and grandeur as the work returns to its opening dawn theme.
2Symphony no. 8 in C minor
After his Seventh Symphony – the first real symphonic success during his lifetime – Bruckner embarked upon his Eighth determined to forge his largest creation. It’s a huge work and took Bruckner three years to compose. When he sent the score to Hermann Levi, who had been entrusted to conduct the premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal at Bayreuth, he was completely stumped by it and rejected it, although with a kindly note suggesting a reworking. This threw Bruckner into a bout of self-doubt, but the revised version, dark and Wagnerian in sonority, proved a great success.
3Symphony no. 7 in E major
The opening theme of the Seventh, so he told conductor Hans Richter, came to Bruckner in a dream where his mentor, Ignaz Dorn, was playing a viola: “This melody will bring you success.” According to Bruckner’s own account, “I immediately woke up, lit a candle, and wrote it down.” The Seventh was composed on a spacious scale, much of it composed when Bruckner went to Bayreuth to attend a performance of Parsifal in 1882. The climax of the elegiac Adagio, marked by a great cymbal clash, was said to have been inspired by Bruckner hearing the news that Wagner had died.
4Symphony no. 9 in D minor
Ninth symphonies can be seen as a bit of a curse. Bruckner may have anticipated his own death when he remarked, “I don’t even want to touch the Ninth, I don’t dare, because Beethoven also ended his life with the Ninth.” Bruckner began work on his Ninth in 1887. Progress was painfully slow and he prayed that he would live to complete it. “I have done my duty on earth. I have accomplished what I could, and my final wish is to be allowed to finish my Ninth Symphony. Three movements are almost complete, the Adagio nearly finished. There remains only the finale. I trust that death will not deprive me of my pen.” That wish was not to be. The symphony is usually performed in its incomplete state although – like Schubert’s Unfinished – it has a satisfying “complete” feel.
5Symphony no. 3 in D minor
The year Bruckner started work on his Third Symphony, he travelled to Bayreuth for the premiere of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He took along two scores: the Second Symphony and his work-in-progress Third, which was filled with quotations from Wagner’s operas, intending to dedicate one of them to his hero. Bruckner and Wagner drank so much beer that Bruckner completely forgot which symphony Wagner had chosen and had to write to clarify; “the one with the trumpet?” Wagner later referred to him affectionately as "Bruckner the trumpet". Although the original 1873 version is peppered with Wagnerian quotations, these were removed in the 1877 revision in which the symphony is usually heard.
6Symphony no. 5 in B flat major
Rather than his familiar string tremolando, Bruckner begins his contrapunctally intricate Fifth Symphony with a slow introduction featuring pizzicato cellos and double basses before unleashing a massive string gesture, to which the brass replies grandly. Every Bruckner symphony has a climax – think of the Seventh’s Adagio – but that in the Fifth has to wait until the coda of the formidable finale.
7Symphony no. 6 in A major
The Sixth is the dark horse of Bruckner’s mature symphonies. It was the one work not to suffer the “Bruckner Problem” of several existing versions as Bruckner never revised it. Today, it is performed relatively rarely. The zesty Finale gave rise to Bruckner punning that the Sixth was his ‘sauciest’ symphony: “Die Sechste ist die Keckste”!
8Te Deum
The Te Deum is not one of Bruckner’s early choral works, but was composed in 1881 while he was working on his Sixth Symphony. It is a joyful hymn of praise, which the composer dedicated to the Greater Glory of God, “in gratitude for having safely brought me through so much anguish in Vienna”. Some experts have proposed using the Te Deum as a finale for the unfinished Ninth Symphony, based on a suggestion by the ailing Bruckner himself who realised that he would not live to complete the symphony.
9String Quintet in F major
Bruckner didn’t compose much chamber music, but his String Quintet gets the occasional performance. Joseph Hellmesberger had originally requested a string quartet, but Bruckner composed a quintet instead, adding – like Mozart before him – a second viola part. Hellmesberger and his colleagues found the Scherzo too challenging, so Bruckner composed an Intermezzo, a gentle Ländler, as an alternative. The third movement Adagio is the still centre of the work.
10Quadrille in D major
This was composed for piano four hands but was orchestrated by Wolfgang Dörner especially for the 2024 New Year’s Day Concert, conducted by Bruckner specialist Christian Thielemann, to mark the composer’s bicentenary.
