Anton Bruckner

the place where Schubert was born and worked, and where so many other famous composers also spent a large part of their working life.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, the Strauss family, Brahms, Bruckner, Schoenberg, the list is really very long.

It's also, of course, the home of the Vienna Boys Choir, founded in 1498. a choir in which both Haydn and Schubert were members when they were boys, and which still can be heard today singing mass at the Hofburg Chapel on Sunday mornings.

I don't think you can just turn up, you'll need to buy tickets, but certainly something to bear in mind.

This is the Composer's Datebook for October 31st.

I'm John Burge.

Since today is Halloween, how about a tale from the crypt with a composer's skull or two tossed in for good measure? Music lovers have always had a thing about composers' skulls.

In 1820, for example, Prince Esterhazy ordered that Haydn's remains be transferred from Vienna to Eisenstadt, only to discover that Haydn's skull was missing.

It had been stolen by two of Haydn's closest friends who had bribed the gravediggers, claiming they did it for pseudoscientific phrenological research.

In 1888, it was the remains of Beethoven and Schubert who were dug up and moved to Vienna's new central cemetery.

Nothing was missing.

But on both occasions, the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner was present and, according to witnesses, managed somehow to lovingly hold the skulls of both Beethoven and Schubert in his hands and speak to them before they were reburied.

And then there is a fugue that carries us to the end, and it's a very... strong finish.

I mean, it's not a huge Bruckner symphonic end, which of course didn't exist.

It feels baroque in a way, especially with the timpani, although it might not be timpani, it might be a different drum 50, 60 years before this.

But it feels like a fugue is a good way to carry us to the end, in part because of what Mozart did before with the fugue and that classical energy that I think you were talking about that is around it that brings us to the end.

Are the famous people from Linz anyone? A composer.

Bruckner, the composer.

That's

the

I might go from one composer to another one, and listen to everything he ever wrote, you know? And then I'm kind of, I'm getting full of it.

I had the periods of Sibelius and Bruckner and Wagner and Mahler and Berlioz.

You know, you know, people like that.

I know.

That's incredible.

And Bernstein, I was one of his assistants for his last concert with Bruckner, 9th, a couple of months before he passed away.

Kleiber, I've seen him...

both in concert and at the opera in Vienna.

And I knew all the Mahler symphonies.

I knew all the Bruckner symphonies.

I thought I knew all of the great horn repertoire.

And then when I went to Berlin to study, um, my music theory teacher used this piece as a-- well, number one, as an, a piece for analysis, but then we had to do a lot of rhythmic and aural dictation from this piece because there are so many, you know, small cells and, and so on.

Like, I didn't know it existed.

I'm half Czech, and I didn't know this music, and it was a big shock.

Um, and then the extract that we just heard, I chose that because, uh, it kind of connects to Bruckner as well, that I think Janáček builds so much tension and excitement through very short motivic cells that are repeated and elaborated upon.

And again, I was listening through the prism of being a horn player at this da-da, da-da, um, phrase, which gets higher and higher and higher, and you think, "When on earth is it gonna stop?" Um, and it, it left a massive impression on me.

Yes.

Um, we know, Robin, that there were a number of contemporary composers who went and, you know, involved people like Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Liszt.

Tell me about the impact that Bayreuth had on these composers.

I mean, it was huge.