Josef Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824 in
the upper Austrian town of Ansfelden. His father was a
schoolteacher and church organist, and Bruckner's
initial studies followed similar lines. When Bruckner
was 13, his father died, and he enrolled in the church
school at St. Florian (some ten miles from Linz) as a
chorister. There, he studied organ, piano, and music
theory.
Bruckner's thirty-odd motets are often ignored but they
are a crucial part of his compositional output. The...(+)
Josef Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824 in
the upper Austrian town of Ansfelden. His father was a
schoolteacher and church organist, and Bruckner's
initial studies followed similar lines. When Bruckner
was 13, his father died, and he enrolled in the church
school at St. Florian (some ten miles from Linz) as a
chorister. There, he studied organ, piano, and music
theory.
Bruckner's thirty-odd motets are often ignored but they
are a crucial part of his compositional output. They
express his devout Roman Catholic beliefs, using the
modal chords and long, Gregorian chant-like lines of
the Renaissance masters. But the harmonic shifts and
compositional techniques display a clearly Romantic
sensibility, and the blocks of contrasting sound
display Bruckner's roots as an organ improviser.
A typical Mass service draws its musical texts from two
sources: a group of texts that are repeated at every
service (the "Ordinary") and a group of texts whose
meaning is specifically applicable to that week or that
service (the "Propers", which include graduals,
antiphons, and responsories).
The gradual Locus iste is used in Mass services for the
dedication of a church; the sacrament is a visible
manifestation of God's invisible grace. This setting in
four parts was written in 1869, to celebrate the
dedication of the votive chapel of the cathedral at
Linz. It is in a simple but spare three-section
setting, with exposition and similar recapitulation
separated by an imitative three-part section on the
text "irreprehensibilis est" (it is blameless, or
without reproof).
Although originally written for Organ and Choir, I
adapted this piece to a non-standard Woodwind quartet
(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet and English Horn).
SHEET MUSIC