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At the age of 16, he entered a teacher-training school in Linz, and began work as a schoolteacher at St. Florian in 1845. He became the cathedral organist in 1848. At St. Florian he began to compose sacred music. In 1855, he went to Vienna to formally study harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory under Professor Simon Sechter. The next year, he became the cathedral organist in Linz, and began studies in orchestration with Otto Kitzler, a cellist who introduced Bruckner to Wagner's operas.

On his own, Bruckner assiduously studied the music of Renaissance Italian polyphonic masters such as Palestrina and German Baroque composers, especially J.S. Bach. He completed his studies with Sechter in 1861, and began to make a name for himself as a composer and an improviser at the organ. He moved to Vienna in 1868 to take appointments as the Emperor's court organist and to take over Sechter's professorship in harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory.

Bruckner spent the 1870's and 1880's giving masterful organ recitals and composing symphonies. Due to his failing health, he resigned from the Conservatory in 1891, and devoted his last years to work on his ninth symphony. This symphony, sadly, remained incomplete at the time of his death in Vienna on October 11, 1896.

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Bruckner's thirty-odd motets are often ignored but they are a crucial part of his compositional output. They express his devout Roman Catholic beliefs, using the modal chords and long, Gregorian chant-like lines of the Renaissance masters. But the harmonic shifts and compositional techniques display a clearly Romantic sensibility, and the blocks of contrasting sound display Bruckner's roots as an organ improviser.

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Ave Maria

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The gradual Locus iste is used in Mass services for the dedication of a church; the sacrament is a visible manifestation of God's invisible grace. This setting in four parts was written in 1869, to celebrate the dedication of the votive chapel of the cathedral at Linz. It is in a simple but spare three-section setting, with exposition and similar recapitulation separated by an imitative three-part section on the text "irreprehensibilis est" (it is blameless, or without reproof).

Locus / iste / a / Deo / factus / est place / this / by / God / maded / was inaestimabile / sacramentum; priceless / mystery irreprehensibilis / est. without reproof / it is

This place was made by God,   a priceless mystery,   it is beyond reproach.

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The text of Os justi comes from Psalm 37: 30-31. This four-part setting was completed in 1879 (the same year that he began work on the sixth symphony) and dedicated to Ignaz Traumihler, who was music director at St. Florian at the time. Traumihler subscribed to the Cecilian movement, which sought to bring the spare, a cappella choral style of Palestrina back to 19th century Austria. For Traumihler, Bruckner created an extraordinary motet in the Lydian mode, which achieves striking harmonic effects without ever using a single sharp or flat note. The work is in an ABA' structure, with similar music to set the Os justi and Lex Dei segments. It concludes with a plainchant Alleluja.

Os / justi / meditabitur / sapientiam, mouth / of righteous / meditate / wisdom et / lingua / ejus / loquetur / judicium. and / tongue / his / shall speak / justice Lex / Dei / ejus / in / corde / ipsius Law / of God / his / in / heart / his et / non / supplantabuntur / gressus / ejus. / Alleluja. and / not / falter / steps / his / Hallelujah

The mouth of the righteous shall meditate wisdom,   and his tongue shall speak justice.   The Law of his God is in his heart   and his steps shall not falter. Hallelujah.

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This gradual is used as part of the Mass services during Holy Week, on Maundy Thursday, and its text comes from Philippians 2:8-9. This is Bruckner's third setting of this text, completed in 1884 (just after his seventh symphony and Te Deum). It was dedicated to Father Otto Loidol of the Benedictine Monastery of Kremsmünster, who was also the dedicatee of the Locus iste some 15 years before. It is the most symphonic of these four motets, and a prime example of the way that Bruckner gradually develops harmonic tension, building to memorable climaxes and then easing away.

Christus / factus / est / pro / nobis / obediens Christ / made / was / for / us / obedient usque / ad / mortem, / mortem / autem / crucis. even / unto / death / death / on / cross Propter / quod / et / Deus / exaltavit / illum because of / this / and / God / raised / him et / dedit / illi / nomen, and / bestowed / on him / name quod / est / super / omne / nomen. which / is / above / all / names

Christ became obedient for us,   even unto death, death upon the cross.   Because of this, God raised him   and bestowed on him the name   which is above all names.

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• Anton Bruckner home page
  This is a surprisingly good site from the Austrian Tourism Board (!) with a detailed biography and chronology of his works. Alas the bibliography is all German-language works, and the writing on this site suffers a bit in translation.
• Immortal Bruckner (Alex Zhang)
  This page has a brief biography with nifty pictures of places and images from Bruckner's life.

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