Читать книгу Great musicians and their amusing stories - Nadia Koval - Страница 7

Anton Bruckner (1824—1896)

1. Bruckner was born in Ansfelden (then a village, now a suburb of Linz) on September 4, 1824. His father was the local church organist and his mother a singer in the choir. However, he did not begin his formal music training until he was eleven, when he spent the next five years as a choirboy at the monastery of St. Florian.

2. Starting out his professional life as a music teacher, Bruckner made a few attempts at small-scale composition, although it was not until 1848 when he felt inspired to produce his first notable work, the Requiem in D minor.

3. Having been appointed organist at St. Florian, most of Bruckner’s energies remained on teaching and the organ, an instrument upon which he had become widely recognized as one of Europe’s greatest.

4. On attending a performance of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the 38-year-old Bruckner felt driven to make composition his main vocation.

5. Inspired by Wagner’s example, he set to work on an Overture in G minor and the Symphony in F minor, which were followed over the next three years by Symphonies Nos. 0 and 1, and his first indisputable masterpiece, the Mass in D minor of 1864.

6. The sheer strain caused by the hours of constant study, in addition to his professional responsibilities, resulted in an acute nervous collapse early in 1867.

7. Recovered, he took a teaching post in Vienna in 1867 at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. In 1875, Bruckner became the first lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at the University of Vienna.

8. In his diaries, Bruckner kept lists of the girls he fancied (most in their late teens). He had a mania for counting the bricks and windows of buildings, and for counting the numbers of bars in his gargantuan orchestral scores, making sure their proportions were statistically correct.

9. Bruckner’s final years were largely devoted to the composition of the Ninth Symphony, which remained tantalisingly incomplete at the time of his death.

10. Bruckner died on the October 11, 1896 while still in Vienna. His legacy is engraved in the libraries of Vienna, having complete records of his works and revisions. He was decorated with the Order of Franz Joseph on July 1886 while the Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama, and Dance was named in his honor.