3 last motets

Anton Bruckner (* 4.9.1824, Ansfelden; † 11.10.1896, Vienna) did not have it easy. The Austrian composer was plagued by self-doubt throughout his life. Anton Bruckner came from a simple, rural background. After the death of his father, he was accepted as a choirboy at St Florian's Abbey in 1837. After several years as a school assistant and self-taught organ and piano studies, he first worked as an organist in Sankt Florian, then from 1855 as cathedral organist in Linz. Introduced to music theory and instrumentation by Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, he discovered Richard Wagner as an artistic role model, whom he admired throughout his life and also visited several times in Bayreuth. In 1868 Anton Bruckner became professor of basso continuo, counterpoint and organ at the conservatory in Vienna, ten years later court organist, and in 1891 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna.

He was regarded as an important organ virtuoso of an era, but had to wait a long time to be recognised as a composer. It was not until his "Symphony No. 7 in E major", composed between 1881 and 1883, with the famous "Adagio", written under the impression of Wagner's death, that he received the recognition he had hoped for, even if he did not want to accept it in view of his tendency towards scepticism and self-criticism. Anton Bruckner was a maverick who did not want to follow any school or doctrine. He composed numerous sacred vocal works such as his three masses, the "Missa Solemnis in B flat minor" (1854), the "Te Deum" (1881-84) and numerous motets. As a symphonic composer, he wrote a total of nine symphonies and many symphonic studies from 1863 onwards, although he tended to revise finished versions several times.

Bruckner's orchestral works were long considered unplayable, but for the tonal language of their time they were simply unusually bold sound monuments on the border between late Romanticism and Modernism, uniting traditions from Beethoven to Wagner and folk music. Anton Bruckner composed around 40 motets during his lifetime, the earliest, a setting of Pange lingua, around 1835, the last, Vexilla regis, in 1892. Thomas Doss has summarised some of these motets in this volume for symphonic wind orchestra. For the most part, these motets show strong characteristics of his personal style, such as his colourful harmonies in the first works, which in places are based on Franz Schubert (major/minor changes, third-octave changes).

His later works are characterised by many components, including not only the expansion of the movements, but above all the instrumentation as an outwardly apparent phenomenon and the harmony as a more inwardly effective design feature. Some aspects of his work are based on his long period of study, which familiarised him above all with tradition, but also gave him an insight into the "modernism" of his time (Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz). This gave rise to his special position, which always seeks the connection between old and new.