(Born at Ansfelden, in Upper Austria, September 4, 1824; died at Vienna, October 11, 1896)

Both the admirers of Bruckner and those that dislike his music lay stress on the fact that he was born a peasant and was essentially a peasant to the day of his death, although the Rector Magnificus of the University of Vienna bowed before him when he presented him with the honorary degree of doctor. The detractors find in Bruckner’s peasanthood his salient faults. The former say that by reason of the simplicity and purity of his character Bruckner was as Paul caught up in the body or out of the body, they cannot tell, to the third heaven, caught up into paradise where he heard unspeakable words, which it was not lawful for him to utter, but it was allowed him to hint at them in music. The latter insist that his peasant naÏvetÉ is revealed in his interminable chatter, in his vague wanderings, in his lack of continuity and cohesion in the expression of thought.

The wretched game of politics is still played with Bruckner. Because he worshipped Wagner and because Brahms, or rather Hanslick—who was to Brahms both elephantier and thurifer—was opposed to Wagner, the Wagnerites therefore pitted Bruckner against Brahms and proclaimed the former the great successor to Beethoven in the field of absolute music. As a matter of fact, Brahms was neither bitterly hostile toward Wagner nor did he sneer at Bruckner. There was room for both Brahms and Bruckner—except in Vienna and except in the shaggy breasts of Wagnerites. Hanslick is dead, “the executioner of Bruckner,” as William Ritter characterizes him, “the man who derided all the true glories of the music of his time for Brahms’ sole benefit”; but Hanslick in his lifetime did not kill Bruckner, who had friendly audiences in Vienna before his death, whose fame has steadily grown.

In order to appreciate fully and yet with discrimination the indisputable talent, the irregular, uncontrolled genius of Bruckner, it is not necessary to inquire curiously into Bruckner’s humble origins, or into the character of his father and mother. It was the theory of Sainte-Beuve that the superior man is found, at least in part, in his parents, and especially in his mother; but I doubt in this instance whether an intimate acquaintance with Therese, the daughter of the innkeeper and administrator Ferdinand Helm, at Neuzeng, would explain the inconsistencies and contradictions in her son’s music. She was no doubt a strong, lusty woman, and she bore her husband a dozen children. As for Bruckner being a peasant, poor, now rude in behavior and speech, and now almost cringing in his desire to be courteous, shabbily educated, very few of the greatest composers have been born in rooms of purple hangings, very few have been distinguished for the elegance of their manners or the depth and breadth of their general learning.

The wonder is that Bruckner, the long-ignored, poor, humble school teacher, grotesque in appearance, a peasant in speech and action, should have had apocalyptic visions and spoken musically with the tongues of angels.