3. Linz, 1856–68.

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December 1855, Bruckner performed his first mass as Dom- und Stadtpfarrkirchen-Organist in Linz and on Christmas Eve assumed full-time responsibilities. After he gained the permanent position with a second audition on 25 January 1856, school teaching was officially behind him. Bruckner now entered into a period which was in many ways the most stable and the most free from controversy of his entire career. Compared with the small towns of his early years, Linz was a metropolis of some 27,000 inhabitants. It had a theatre with an orchestra; an active church music establishment with a professional director; two men's choral societies, the Liedertafel Frohsinn and the Männergesang-Verein Sängerbund (established in 1857); and the amateur mixed chorus and orchestra of the Linzer Musikverein. His immediate superior was the Domkapellmeister Karl Zappe, a fine violinist and leader of a resident string quartet. His employer was Bishop Franz Josef Rudigier (1811–84), a man of extraordinary perspicacity and drive, who became one of Bruckner's most loyal and important benefactors. The lasting monument of his tenure as archbishop (1853–84) is the neo-Gothic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, begun as a result of his initiative and completed in 1924. Bruckner composed the Festkantate (wab16) for the cornerstone-laying ceremony on 1 May 1862, and the Mass in E minor (wab27) for the consecration of its votive chapel on 29 September 1869.

Much of Bruckner's time during his early years in Linz was probably absorbed by the new position, which required his performing services at both the cathedral (the Alter Dom) and the Stadtpfarrkirche; eventually he was able to persuade the diocese to engage assistants for some of the work. As early as July 1855 had begun a remarkable episode: a long period of study with the Viennese theorist Simon Sechter, during which Bruckner abstained almost entirely from composing. Already, at St Florian, Friedrich Mayer and the organist Robert Führer, while acknowledging Bruckner's talent as the composer of the Missa solemnis, had impressed upon him the need for more training in technique. The studies with Sechter began with elementary harmony and proceeded through four-part counterpoint to complex canon and fugue. They were carried on by correspondence punctuated by Bruckner's visits to Vienna; these increased in frequency and regularity with the bishop's blessing from 1858. Thousands of pages of exercises survive, testifying to Bruckner's diligence. In a letter of 13 January 1860 Sechter felt compelled to comment that he had never had such an industrious pupil and cautioned him against working too hard.

On 26 March 1861 Sechter signed a certificate declaring that Bruckner's instruction in harmony and counterpoint was successfully completed. A brief flurry of creative activity followed, including the composition of his first masterpiece, the seven-voice Ave Maria (wab6), performed in the cathedral on 12 May 1861 at a celebration commemorating the founding of the Liedertafel Frohsinn. Later that year, consistent with his lifelong preoccupation with diplomas and official credentials, Bruckner petitioned the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna for permission to take an examination to assess his accomplishments in the hope of eventually obtaining a professor's title. The examination was arranged for 21 November in the Piaristenkirche, Vienna. Bruckner was asked to improvise a fugue, after which the Hofkapellmeister Johann Herbeck remarked, ‘He should have examined us!’ In addition to contributing to his legendary reputation as an improviser at the organ, the incident established Bruckner in Herbeck's mind as an Austrian musical force to be reckoned with.

By December 1861 Bruckner had again immersed himself in study – this time of form and orchestration – with Otto Kitzler (1834–1915), the cellist in Zappe's string quartet and conductor at the Linz theatre. Up to this time, with the exception of a few encounters with the works of Mendelssohn and Weber, for example, the repertory to which Bruckner had been exposed was relatively conservative. Until 1856 his own music had included figured bass parts (the Ave Maria with four-part chorus,wab5, was the last score to do so), often with Baroque-like arias and recitatives, and his orchestral scores employed an antiquated order with the brass at the top. Kitzler must be credited with bringing Bruckner up to date with 19th-century musical practices and introducing him to the music of Wagner (specifically Tannhäuser, which Kitzler conducted in Linz on 13 February 1863). Before studying with Kitzler, so far as is known, Bruckner had not attended the theatre.

The studies with Kitzler continued until July 1863. J.C. Lobe's Lehrbuch der musikalischen Komposition, E.F. Richter's Die Grundzüge der musikalischen Formen and A.B. Marx's Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition were used for Formenlehre. Studies began with the structure of cadences and periods and continued through the forms employed by the Viennese classicists – two- and three-part song forms, dances, marches, minuets and trios, rondos, études and sonatas – and concluded with orchestration based on Marx. Written exercises were reinforced by analyses of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Once again the studies were rigorous and Bruckner applied himself with extraordinary zeal. Compositions that he wrote for Kitzler included the String Quartet in C minor (wab111), the Overture in G minor (wab98), the ‘Study’ Symphony in F minor (wab99) and Psalm cxii (wab35) for double chorus and orchestra. There is no evidence that after 1863 Bruckner ever regarded these pieces as anything but exercises. In his own words, his ‘composition period’ began with the completion of the Kitzler studies. He began numbering his masses with the D minor Mass of 1864 (wab26) and the symphonies with the C minor Symphony no.1 of 1865–6 (wab101).

Another important aspect of Bruckner's musical activities in Linz was his participation in the Liedertafel Frohsinn. He joined the chorus in 1856 as a second tenor and was twice its director: November 1860 to September 1861 and again from 15 January 1868 until his departure for Vienna later that year. Contemporary reports indicate that he was an exacting choral conductor, particularly fastidious about dynamics. Under his direction the Frohsinn achieved a number of critical successes, specifically in 1861 at the Sängerfeste in Krems (29–30 June) and Nuremberg (20–22 July). Why he resigned as director in autumn 1861 is not clear; in a letter of 3 October to his friend Rudolf Weinwurm he referred to unspecified ‘nasty slanders’. Later he wrote several compositions for the choir, including Inveni David (wab19), Vaterländisches Weinlied (wab91) and Vaterlandslied (wab92), and on 9 June 1869 – after he had moved to Vienna – he was named an honorary member. The Frohsinn was also an important social outlet for Bruckner, who was a frequent participant in its parties and excursions.

The first composition after the studies with Kitzler was Germanenzug (wab70), a cantata for male voices (soloists and chorus) and brass, written during winter 1863–4 for a competition sponsored by the first Oberösterreichisches Sängerfest in Linz (4–6 June 1865). Much to Bruckner's chagrin his work was awarded only the second prize; his friend Rudolf Weinwurm's Germania was the winner. Now all but forgotten, Germanenzug enjoys the distinction of being Bruckner's first publication; it was printed in 1865 by the firm of Josef Kränzl in Ried as part of the competition prize. After Germanenzug there followed a series of works which moved Bruckner into the front rank of 19th-century composers: the Mass in D minor (June–September 1864), the Symphony no.1 in C minor (January 1865 – April 1866), the Mass in E minor (August–November 1866) and the Mass in F minor (September 1867 – September 1868). Bruckner conducted the première of the D minor Mass in Linz Cathedral on 20 November 1864 and the First Symphony in the Linz Redoutensaal on 9 May 1868. Johann Herbeck conducted the D minor Mass in the Hofburgkapelle on 10 February 1867, the first performance in Vienna of a work by Bruckner.

Meanwhile, Bruckner continued to cultivate his knowledge of and admiration for the music of Wagner, whom he came to refer to as the ‘Meister aller Meister’. He heard Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin and Das Liebesmahl der Apostel in Linz and in May 1865 at Wagner's invitation, went to Munich for the scheduled première of Tristan und Isolde where he met his idol for the first time. When the May performances of the opera were cancelled, Bruckner returned to Linz for the première of his own Germanenzug, only to return to Munich for the opening of Tristan on 10 June. He is believed to have attended every subsequent Wagnerian première. On 4 April 1868, with Wagner's permission, he conducted the Liedertafel Frohsinn in the first performance of the closing chorus from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Nor was his thirst for contemporary music confined to Wagner. On 15 August 1865 he was in Budapest for the first performance of Liszt's Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth and on 16 December 1866 he attended a performance in Vienna of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust conducted by the composer.

The Linz period was not without personal setbacks. On 11 November 1860 Bruckner's mother died. She had sacrificed a great deal by moving to Ebelsberg to work as a servant so that he could attend school at St Florian. Later, Bruckner had supported her financially whenever possible, and he kept her deathbed photograph with him for the rest of his life. Marriage was on his mind throughout much of the time spent in Linz, yet he was as unhappy there in affairs of the heart as he had been at St Florian. On 16 August 1866, in one of the rare emotional outpourings to be found in his letters, he proposed unsuccessfully to a butcher's daughter, Josefine Lang who, at 17, was less than half his age. The most serious crisis occurred in spring 1867; from 8 May until 8 August he was confined to the sanatorium at Bad Kreuzen as a result of a nervous breakdown. One of the symptoms was a number mania: he is reported to have counted such things as beads on necklaces, dots on clothes, windows in the town, leaves on trees and even stars. The specific cause of his collapse is not known, although overwork was certainly a factor. The stress of years of study followed by a period of intense compositional activity as well as the performances of the D minor Mass must have contributed to it. His failure to marry may also have been a cause of his breakdown.

Shortly after his release from Bad Kreuzen, disregarding doctors' orders, Bruckner began work on the Mass in F minor. It is clear that by that time he had become as uncomfortable in the provincial capital as he had been during his final days at St Florian. He began to look for a position elsewhere, though his ambivalence about actually making a move was reminiscent of the months immediately before going to Linz. He wrote to the Vienna Hofkapelle on 14 October 1867, the University of Vienna on 2 November and the Mozarteum in Salzburg on 29 March 1868. Strangely, he did not apply at first for the post of professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory, left vacant by the death of Simon Sechter on 10 September 1867. In May 1868 Johann Herbeck travelled to Linz to persuade Bruckner that he should consider it. Still he hesitated, in part because his income would have been lower than in Linz, and he wrote to Hans von Bülow in Munich about the possibility of an organ position there. Herbeck intervened again to sweeten the Viennese offer by adding organ teaching to the responsibilities at the conservatory and arranging for Bruckner to enter the Hofkapelle as an unpaid organist. Finally, on 28 June, after requesting that Bishop Rudigier reserve the Linz position for him as Friedrich Mayer had done at St Florian 14 years earlier, Bruckner committed himself to Vienna.

Bruckner, Anton