RUDOLF INNIG

Anton Bruckner - Symphony in F minor (WAB 99)

(ca. 80 pages, 30 €)

Unlike today, Anton Bruckner was known in his time not as a symphonist, but primarily as an organist. At the age of 21 (1845) he was appointed organist at the Augustinian monastery in St. Florian, where he had previously been accepted as a choirboy after the early death of his father in 1837. In 1855 he became organist at the cathedral in Linz and finally in 1869 with the title 'k.u.k. court organist' in Vienna.

In December 1861 Bruckner began further studies in free composition with the Linz theater conductor Otto Kitzler, who was 10 years younger than him, which gave him the decisive impulses for composing symphonic orchestral works.

The Kitzler study book, which was only published in 2014, traces this development on 326 pages with handwritten exercises, sketches and compositions by Bruckner. At the beginning (based on the composition and form theories of E. F. Richter, J. Chr. Lobe and A. B. Marx) there were exercises in period structure and the two- or three-part song form. This was followed by song compositions, sets of variations, a piano sonata, a string quartet and studies in instrumentation based on the Piano Sonata in C minor op. 13 by Beethoven.

The two-year lessons with his friend Kitzler ended in the spring of 1863 with Bruckner's first symphonic works, the orchestral pieces (WAB 96 and 97), the overture in G minor (WAB 98) and the symphony in F minor (WAB 99).

Here are the first pages of the Symphony in F minor in my transcription for organ.