Who was Anton Bruckner?
This question is probably harder to answer than would be similar questions about Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms or Mahler – to name only composers who, as ancestors, contemporaries or successors of Bruckner, are part of the same stream of Western music history. Most 19th-century composers left personal documents such as correspondence and other prose, in which they disclosed something about themselves and about the way they viewed their art. They wrote vocal music with texts that reflected their literary tastes and the ideas that preoccupied them. Bruckner, on the other hand, was never particularly good with words. As has been frequently noted, his surviving letters, with a few rare exceptions, reveal very little about his inner world. Again with a few rare exceptions, he did not respond to poetry with musical composition. There are many anecdotes about Bruckner’s life, his country upbringing, his devoutness, his odd Upper Austrian dialect, his difficulties in adjusting to life in the capit
