AThe first thing you notice is the meticulous musical notation. Although the long, hand-drawn bar lines in the scores of his great symphonies are not always completely straight, and the note heads are tilted a little to the left, this font nevertheless reveals the care of its creator: every smaller note value is notated with fully filled spheres, nothing points to the impetuous, energetic notation of Ludwig van Beethoven, nothing to the fleetingness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's scores, which were often written in carriages. This neat and legible musical notation is most reminiscent of that of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Anton Bruckner, who we are talking about here, would probably never have dreamed that all of his major works would be exhibited in the sublime, almost twenty meter high state hall of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) in Vienna around two hundred years after his birth in Ansfelden, Upper Austria . Although the modest composer had bequeathed the autographs of his nine symphonies and several masses to the then court library in his will in 1896, an exhibition in the baroque ambience planned by Fischer von Erlach would have gone beyond the expectations of this musician, who was plagued by self-doubt throughout his life.
This Bruckner exhibition, curated by Andrea Harrandt and Thomas Leibnitz on behalf of the ÖNB, can be seen until January 26, 2025. It is particularly informative because of the numerous original works and historical evidence from Bruckner's time. In addition, it will vary several times over the course of this year, which marks the two hundredth anniversary of Bruckner's birthday on September 4th: the visible pages from the original scores – all nine symphonies are collected – have to be turned over again and again for conservation reasons.
The strictly Catholic modernist
With the title “The Pious Revolutionary,” Harrandt and Leibnitz refer to the field of tension within which the composer moved: On the one hand, strictly Catholic and conservative (you can see his pocket calendar in which he entered his prayers), Bruckner was able to overcome the doubts that were already emerging at the time difficult to understand in the authoritarian Habsburg monarchy, but on the other hand, with his symphonies, the musical gate to later modernity was opened wide. Although he was often ridiculed during his lifetime, many of his contemporaries could not yet understand the great potential of his work.
“The lack of intelligence is what makes Bruckner's symphonies, despite all their originality, greatness, power, imagination and invention, so difficult to understand. Everywhere there is a desire, colossal attempts, but no satisfaction, no artistic solution.” This is how even the composer Hugo Wolf, who was actually well-disposed towards Bruckner, judged his third symphony in D minor, dedicated to Richard Wagner (1873, revised in 1876/77 and 1888/89). .
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