Anton Bruckner & Augustinian Spirituality

The Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle at the Royal Festival Hall, 30 May 2018. Photograph: Monika Rittershaus

Brahms called him a "country pumpkin," the Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick defined his work as a sequence of "empty and dull patches that stretch to unsparing lengths”; his Mass in F was declared unsingable - (he had to pay the Vienna Philharmonic eight months of his own salary to perform it) - but the composer Anton Bruckner persevered. He said:

"They want me to write in a different way. I could, but I must not. Out of thousands I was given this talent by God, only I. Sometime I will have to give an account of myself. How would the Father in Heaven judge me if I followed others and not Him?"

Is such self-assuredness evidence of a vain, self-conceited man - or someone with complete faith in God's providence? Whatever your view, one must admire Bruckner's unswerving sense of vocation!

There can be no doubt that he was a man of great faith. The American journalist and music critic Paul Rosenfeld wrote "No brother in blank Carthusian aisles could have paced sunken further in prayerfulness, God-passionateness and Lenten mood, than Bruckner through the city roads. There was the father in heaven."

During his life, Bruckner's more eccentric expressions of faith were the subject of mockery and fascination in equal measure. Since childhood in a small village outside Linz, he had always knelt in prayer on hearing a bell toll. Max Graf, a writer and critic, attended a counterpoint lecture that Bruckner gave many years later in Vienna. During the lecture, the Angelus bell rang. Graf said that Bruckner fell to his knees:

"He seemed to be transfigured,” he wrote, “illuminated from within. His old peasant face, with the countless wrinkles covering it like furrows in a field, became the face of a priest.”

Bruckner's interest in relics led some to deride him as a necrophiliac. He is said to have touched and kissed the skulls of the exhumed Beethoven and Schubert and kept a photograph of his mother’s corpse in his study.

While in life a source of jest, after his death, Bruckner's curious churchmanship - or rather the lack of it - has been used by some musicologists to evidence a perceived deterioration in the quality of his work; the apparent gaps in his daily prayer diary (partly written in code) held up as an illustration of his loss of faith, mental breakdown and inability to complete his final work.

In May I was very fortunate to hear Sir Simon Rattle conduct the Berlin Philharmonic playing Bruckner's Ninth Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall. Described as Bruckner’s “Farewell to Life” - the performance was Rattle’s penultimate UK appearance before he becomes Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. 

There was a huge amount of energy on stage - Rattle’s fantastic command of the musicians and the vigorous Germanic bowing of the strings all making for a most lively of earthly departures - not unlike Bruckner’s own experience; before he died in October 1896, Bruckner had received the last rites three times (in March 1893, December 1894 and July 1896).

Bruckner dedicated the ninth symphony to:

“Majesty of all Majesties, to the dear Lord, and hope that He will grant me sufficient time to complete it and mercifully accept my gift.”

Sadly, that was not to be; Bruckner died leaving the work incomplete; the final movement has since been reconstructed from fragments and sketches left behind. The Dutch musicologist Aart van der Wahl has written; 

“God is everywhere in the Ninth, it's ample indications demonstrating Bruckner's devotion to and his recognition of God's majesty, in glorious moments of retrospection and farewell, adoration and ecstasy, humbleness and absolution, but also the Last Ordeal, Dies Irae, and the reality of he progressing shadows of death, the course of life coming to its closing chapter.”

However, it wasn’t just his final work which was dedicated to the Lord; Bruckner’s biographer Hans Ferdinand Redlich said "he is perhaps the only great composer of his century whose entire musical output is determined by his religious faith." 

For a time, there was a strong body of academic opinion who believed Bruckner had lost his faith from 1892 onwards, that the ninth Symphony had been composed by a man mentally, physically and spiritually broken; someone who had lost his raison d'être, unable to complete his final work. This theory was put forward by the musicologists Harry Halbreich and Paul-Gilbert Langevin, who said that Bruckner's almost daily prayer entries in his journal stopped at this time. 

The missing entries have now been discovered and show Bruckner's prayers increasing with age, right up to the day before he died. Elisabeth Maier of the International Bruckner Institute in Linz has spent her career analysing his personal diaries. Two years before his death he is recorded as meditating on the words of the anatomist Hyrtl: "Is that which Faith calls the immortal soul of man only an organic reaction of the brain?" Maier writes "A hermeneutic connection between this quotation....and the Ninth Symphony (which Bruckner was composing at the time) cannot be lightly dismissed. In both cases we can detect existential questioning and wrestling with final statements."

Perhaps Bruckner hadn't lost his faith - maybe he was an "extreme explorer" pushing his faith and understanding to the limit in his search for wisdom and truth?

"In his last days his handwriting again becomes a little clearer. On two different pages Bruckner enters his prayers; on the second we find the annotation "D.D.D." which Franz Kosch interprets as (possibly) "Deus Deus Deus" or as a sign of the Trinity. On 10 October 1896, the day before his death, Bruckner prayed at three different times; it is one of the longest, if not the longest, of his prayer entries. Then the man, Bruckner, withdraws into silence.”

Rediscovery of his prayer diaries coincided with a revival in interest in and appreciation of Bruckner's work. In his workshop recording of the Ninth Symphony the celebrated conductor Nicholas Harnoncourt explains that Bruckner’s music arrived in Vienna as if “a stone has fallen from the moon.” His music was unexpected and challenging. Nobody wanted to listen to - or play it. Bruckner is now acknowledged to have been a progressive, right to the end - pushing the boundaries of the symphonic form in length and thematically. 

The organ at St Florians Monastery, Linz

Simon Rattle has said that while Bruckner was not in good health in his later years, he was writing music that was “more revolutionary and extreme than he had ever written before.” Dissonances that were removed in later edits (assumed to be mistakes scored by a deteriorating mind) are now being added back into his scores as authentic parts of the composition.

In his book 'Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers', Patrick Kavanaugh focuses on Bruckner's meekness, concluding; "In time...the public came to love his great works...God had honoured Bruckner for his refusing to retaliate against unjust attack."

Certainly, his ability to withstand the damning verdict of the more vocal members of the Austrian musical scene is impressive. But I wonder, if we take heed of the words of St Paul and “walk by faith, not by sight," - setting aside what we see on the surface as the unusual aspects of Bruckner’s expression of his faith and the critics cat-calling - we might glimpse a deeper spirituality; one heavily influenced by the Augustinian tradition? Saint Augustine said “those who sing pray twice.” After his father’s death, Bruckner was enrolled as a chorister (and later organist) at St Florian’s - an Augustinian Monastery outside Linz.

All Bruckner's work - whether expressly dedicated or not - and his prayers (kneeling in front of the crucifix or praying the Angelus - a prayer in honour of the Incarnation - whenever a bell tolled) seem to have been focussed on Jesus. Perhaps this way of life was a product of his formation at St Florian’s? St Augustine’s writing is described as Christocentric (centred on Christ).

In his Confessions, St Augustine wrote "You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you." The "restless heart" shown in the emblem of the Augustinians, enflamed by the arrow of the Holy Spirit and searching for wisdom in the scriptures, could be seen as representation of the tension between life in the earthly and the heavenly realm that we read of in St Paul's letter to the Corinthians - a struggle to find a balance between prayer and action. Perhaps in Bruckner's approach to his work we find the same tension; evidenced through the composer's attempts to create permanence from the ephemeral, through form and structure. Sir Simon Rattle has remarked; 

“To understand the way Bruckner works you have to think in terms of an architect as much as a composer. As far as I know he is the only composer who would decide on the length of his movement and simply put all the bars on his manuscript not only numbered but also numbered in phrase lengths before any note was in there; like the blueprint of a great cathedral.”

Seeing faith as a journey - one which is to be shared - is an image which can be found at the heart of Augustinian spirituality. St Augustine told his disciples to be "of one mind and heart on the way towards God." Pope Benedict XVI described Augustine’s conversion as “a life-long journey marked by a passionate search for truth.” Bruckner’s journey as a composer (like Augustine’s formation) took a lifetime - he was in his forties by the time he composed his first official ‘symphony' and over sixty by the time his work found serious public recognition.

Bruckner spent many years re-writing his works, apparently in response to criticism. However, he apparently showed no sign of angst or anger when conductors later made changes to his symphonies - believing that the work first and foremost should be performed (a journey to be shared?) Grace is a subject which appears over four hundred times in Augustine's writings; perhaps we see in Bruckner's attitude to the performance of his work a glimpse of this grace; freely giving the music, which he believed to have been divinely inspired, to others to do with as they see fit. Here we encounter other aspects of Augustinian spirituality - that of Divine Providence and recognition of our own free will; the idea that God, all loving and all knowing, is at work in our lives in both what is seen and unseen, but that the gift of free will means we can deviate from His purpose for us. Perhaps it is wrong to suggest Bruckner's lengthy revisions of his work were in response to personal attacks by the Viennese musical fraternity; this would suggest Bruckner placed the will of man before the will of God. Perhaps we should interpret these periods of revision and rework not as a consequence of wounded pride, but as evidence of Bruckner's total commitment to discern God's will - to seek the divine truth in each piece?

Spirituality is the way we live out our faith and interact with the world and with each other; how we live our relationship with God. In Bruckner’s life and work I think we can see a life lived in the Augustinian tradition; a Christ-centred life of prayer and action, a lifetime search for wisdom and truth; supreme confidence in God’s purpose and a spirit of generosity fuelled by His unconditional love for us and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Bruckner died confident in his faith. As St Paul says;

“Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.”

Bible Reading

2 Corinthians 5.1-10

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling— if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

Prayers

A Prayer of Trust in God's Heavenly Promise
St Augustine of Hippo

My God, let me know and love you, so that I may find my happiness in you. Since I cannot fully achieve this on earth, help me to improve daily until I may do so to the full. Enable me to know you ever more on earth, so that I may know you perfectly in heaven. Enable me to love you ever more on earth, so that I may love you perfectly in heave. In that way my joy may be great on earth, and perfect with you in heaven. O God of truth, grant me the happiness of heaven so that my joy may be full in accord with your promise. In the meantime let my mind dwell on that happiness, my tongue speak of it, my heart pine for it, my mouth pronounce it, my soul hunger for it, my flesh thirst for it, and my entire being desire it until I enter through death in the joy of my Lord forever. Amen.

Links
Image : The Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle at the Royal Festival Hall, 30 May 2018. Photograph: Monika Rittershaus

Putting Bruckner in Context - The Irish Times

Berlin Philharmonic/Rattle review – all guns blazing on Simon's farewell tour - The Guardian

The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, Patrick Kavanaugh

Bruckner Studies, Timothy L Jackson 2007 
The Confessions of St Augustine
Events surrounding the death of Anton Bruckner