Anton Bruckner was a rather peculiar composer. A first-rate organist, he became a meticulous composer after the age of 37, an advanced age if we remember that Mozart died at 35. In his thirties, aware of his weaknesses in harmony and counterpoint, he decided to take a correspondence course with a renowned pedagogue (the pedagogue in Vienna, Bruckner in Linz). Six years later, he repeated the procedure to refine his knowledge of orchestration.
As a result of this distance learning, by the age of forty, he enjoyed a name for himself. He took up the position of professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, but his simple, folksy, and "unworldly" spirit had not changed. Before the premiere of the Fourth Symphony in 1880, after an encouraging rehearsal, he put a few coins in the hand of the conductor, the very aristocratic Hans Richter, inviting him to celebrate with a beer.
Born in Ansfelden, Austria, in 1824, the eldest of eleven children of a schoolmaster and organist, Anton Bruckner is the author of masses, motets, choral works, and the nine symphonies for which he is best known, monumental, rigorous works of elaborate contrapuntal writing, according to scholars. In 1865, the author attended the premiere of Tristan and Isolde, an experience that transformed him into a fervent admirer of Wagner, until the end of his days. However, the influence, or the "Wagnerian" component of his later work, is still a matter of debate.
A fervent CatholicAnton Bruckner (1824 - 1896)
Bruckner never married, but the Catholic, apostolic and Roman orientation of his religious spirit was not an obstacle for him to develop the curious habit of proposing marriage to blossoming girls who then rejected him, provoking in him an inexplicable annoyance. As the years went by, his imperfection in seduction increased, in parallel with other "eccentricities" that astonished his acquaintances and that today we understand as obsessive-compulsive behaviors. As a result of a crisis, in 1867 he had to enter a sanatorium where he stayed for three months.
But he lived thirty years more. The maestro died in Vienna, in October 1896, with his Ninth Symphony finished in its first three movements.
Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, "Romantic" - Mov 4
It is the only one of his symphonies to which the composer gave a title, which should be understood in the sense that it points to a medieval "romance", such as Lohengrin, or Wagner's Siegfried.
Numerous versions are in existence. The original version dates from 1874 but was never performed or published during the master's lifetime. From that date, Bruckner revised it again and again, until the last modifications in 1887. The opinion of a couple of students was not alien to such a hustle and bustle, who argued the need to make the maestro's music more "friendly" to the listener.
The work has four movements and a total length of about an hour.
Therefore, we present here the coda of the last movement, Finale, in its 1880 version, and marked by the author as "Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell", something like "moved, but not too much", which has become one of the most successful symphonic endings.
The Romanian maestro, Sergiu Celibidache, conducts the Münchner Philharmoniker, 1983.
