Anton Bruckner - Totenlieder (WAB 47 & 48) For Euphonium Quartet
Grade II 1/2
Free Download HERE
Program Note:
Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, a farming village in Austria, 1824. His father was the local schoolmaster and played organ for the church as well as violin for taverns to supplement the family’s modest income. The young Bruckner studied music first with his cousin, Johann Baptist Weiss, before joining the monastery of St. Florian as a chorister. Here, Bruckner studied violin, singing, and organ, before leaving in 1841 to teach in a few villages. He returned to St. Florian in 1845 in the position of assistant schoolteacher, where he studied music theory and began composing many works, most famously his Requiem in D minor. He moved to Linz from 1856-1868 to be an organist, where he became a somewhat legendary improviser on the instrument. During his time in Linz he also studied with Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, and composed a great deal of choral and other works. A period of misfortune befell Bruckner, in which his mother died, he unsuccessfully proposed to Josefine Lang, and he had a mental breakdown, which left him confined to a sanatorium briefly. Upon his release, he left Linz and took a job at the Vienna Conservatory, while simultaneously teaching at University of Vienna, and St. Anna’s teacher-training college for women. Additionally, he was one of three organists in the Hofkapelle, and during this time he composed several important motets including Virga Jesse, as well as several of his symphonies. Bruckner stayed in Vienna until his death in 1896, leaving his legacy of 8 symphonies (with progress on a ninth), as well as a vast number of both sacred and secular choral works.
The two Totenlied were composed in 1852 upon the death of Bruckner’s friend, Josef Seiberl. They are both short elegies in the keys of Eb and F, respectively. The first Totenlied features some interesting chromatic lines that clash in an atypical Bruckner fashion (ms. 6 especially). Both works were originally for a capella SATB choir and feature the same words, replicated below:
O ihr, die ihr heut mit mir zum Grabe geht
und bei meinem Leichnam jetzt versammelt steht,
heftet Sinn und Herzen nicht an diese Eitelkeit!
Sucht nur Gottes Reich und die Gerechtigkeit.
