Josef Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, Austria, on Sept. 4, 1824. He died Oct. 11, 1896, in Vienna.
Of all the psalms, perhaps none more clearly calls for musical setting than Psalm 150. Among composers, few could be better suited to set Psalm 150 than Anton Bruckner.
While the gist of the final poem in the Book of Psalms – a call to the faithful to exalt God – may not be unique, the methods may be. “Praise ye the Lord,” we are told, with all the joyful noises man can muster: with the trumpet, psaltery, harp, timbrel, stringed instruments, and cymbals loud and high.
Over the centuries, several composers have heeded that call and devoted their creative gifts to the inspiration of this text. Claudio Monteverdi set the psalm in the mid-1600s. Bach used several of its verses in his motet, BWV 225, “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.” (It was hearing this motet that excited Wolfgang Mozart to learn more about Bach’s works.) Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Cesar Franck all set it.
More recently, Charles Ives, the iconoclastic American who played for years as a church organist, set the psalm in the 1890s – about the same time as Bruckner. In 1930, Igor Stravinsky used Psalm 150 for the finale of his Symphony of Psalms. Beyond the technically classical realm, artists as diverse as Duke Ellington, Jimmy Webb, and the Christian metal band P.O.D. have all found inspiration in its text.
These composers professed their faith in very different ways, some more abstractly, others more overtly. None was more straightforward than Anton Bruckner. The Austrian was regarded by many as embodying the perplexing contradiction of genius and simpleton. Beyond music and religion, so far as they could see, he knew nothing.
That wasn’t the case so much as, except for music and religion, he didn’t really care much. Though much of Bruckner’s musical output comprised symphonies of either heavenly (or infernal, depending on one’s affinity for them) length, it still manages to capture an aura of rapturous mystery. It’s why readers of program notes will be hard pressed to find a guide to a Bruckner symphony that doesn’t use the phrase “cathedral of sound.”
It’s not that his catalogue of sacred works is short. He wrote five psalm settings, a cantata, a Magnificat, about 40 motets, at least seven Masses, and a Te Deum. The majority, though, date from his earlier career, and it’s primarily those written after 1860 – three of the psalms, three Masses, and the Te Deum, that are still performed. The last of them to be composed was the setting of Psalm 150.
Psalm 150 was written in 1892 at the request of Richard Heuberger, a Viennese composer and composer, for the gala opening concert of that year’s International Exposition of Music and Theater. The request was for a short piece for full chorus and orchestra. The concert was in May, but Bruckner didn’t finish the piece in time. It was premiered instead on Nov. 13, 1892.