Anton Bruckner

They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not.

Anton Bruckner (4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896) was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets.

Quotes

• They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him?
  • As quoted at The Cult of Genius

Quotes about Bruckner

• We recoil in horror before this rotting odour which rushes into our nostrils from the disharmonies of this putrefactive counterpoint. His imagination is so incurably sick and warped that anything like regularity in chord progressions and period structure simply do not exist for him. Bruckner composes like a drunkard!
  • Gustav Dompke, in the German Times of Vienna (1886), as quoted in Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1965) by Nicolas Slonimsky, p. 80. Also quoted with the attribution in Listening to music: the essential guide to the classical repertoire, by Jonathan Kramer, p. 198.

• Half genius, half simpleton.
  • Hans von Bülow, describing Bruckner. In German "halb Genie, halb Trottel". This description is often, but mistakenly, attributed to Gustav Mahler. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen: "»Halb Genie, halb Trottel«. Hans von Bülows Urteil über Anton Bruckner". In: IBG-Mitteilungsblatt 55 (2000), pp. 21–24.