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10 things you didn’t know about…
Bruckner
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Bruckner suffered from numeromania, a condition that saw him count the leaves on trees and the windows in buildings.
Ken Russell made a film about it for the South Bank Show, entitled ‘The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner’.
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He wrote eleven symphonies, ten of which he completed.
Confusingly, No. 8 is the last one he finished, as he relegated two works to
No. 0 and No. 00.
No. 9 is incomplete, but among his greatest works.
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Knowing which edition to perform is a constant headache for conductors, as Bruckner revised every one of his
symphonies up until his death.
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Bruckner was a fine organist and one of the greatest improvisers. Sadly for organists, he wrote nothing of note for the instrument.
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Bruckner only started composing seriously from the age of 37, a couple of years older
than Mozart was when he died.
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At his request, Bruckner was buried under the organ at St Florian, where he served
from the age of 24 for seven years.
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Bruckner never married, despite proposing to several women. It’s thought he went to the grave a chaste man.
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Each of Bruckner’s symphonies is huge in scope and ambition – Brahms called them symphonic ‘boa constrictors’.
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Bruckner’s music has suffered from
associations with Hitler,
whose favourite Symphony
was No. 7. It was played on German radio
following his death in 1945.
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A nervous breakdown struck Bruckner in 1866, for which he spent three months in
a sanatorium.
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