ANTON BRUCKNER - Alessandro Zignani

ANTON BRUCKNER

The cathedral organist of a provincial city, Linz, now in his forties, writes a Mass that is crowned with great success. The success of that composition in Vienna, as well as the death of his counterpoint professor, who teaches at the local Conservatory, lead him to accept a teaching post in the imperial capital. From that moment on, the uneducated former schoolteacher, with his rumpled clothes and childish attitude of seeing the world as a market square, disseminates monumental symphonies in his dialect, incapable of becoming a literary language, whereas Brahms imposes a penitential return to order. Infatuated with Wagner, he will never realize to what extent Vienna hates anyone who praises the Wort–Ton–Drama. His music, a little archaic, a little visionary, will irritate the guardians of Tradition and the prophets of the "Art of the Future" alike. Bruckner, even today, remains an unexamined mystery. No one has reconstructed his period of isolation among the villages of Voralberg, the Empire's granary and prison of consciences. Few have explored the fateful paths that led him to become an unaware genius. This book relentlessly follows his evolution, identifying in the darkest period of his life the foundation for the blossoming of his masterpieces. In Bruckner, everything happens without his knowledge; yet, his existence has an inescapable course, for anyone who knows how life's traumas can become forces beyond one's own capabilities.

Alessandro Zignani, born in Rimini in 1961, has published more than forty books, including essays, novels, and plays performed by his company, Il teatro delle ombre . A German scholar, he has translated Nietzsche, Trakl, Schopenhauer, and the Nibelungslied. He teaches History of Music.