Bruckner, Anton (1824-96), Austrian composer, son of a village schoolmaster, was destined for a teaching career, but was taught the organ, and at the age of l3, when his father died, he went as chorister to the monastery of St Florian, where he received more systematic training in music.

He composed much while filling various teaching posts, but it was not till the age of 31 that he was appointed organist at Lint Cathedral. He took a severe course of study under Sechter during visits to Vienna, another in orchestration and form under Kitzler at Lint, and only at the age of 40 did he write his first mature work, the Mass in D minor. In 1868 he became professor at the Vienna Conservatory, in 1869 he visited France, and in 1871 England as organ virtuoso.

In 1878 he was appointed to the court chapel, but he was never comfortably off to the end of his life and his works made headway very slowly. He wrote a vast amount of sacred and secular choral music on a small scale, but very little for the piano or organ; his important works are his Masses and Te Deum, the string Quintet, and particularly his 9 symphonies which, though desultory in form, show his greatness by grandeur of conception, splendour of orchestration and expansive melodic beauty. He was too easily induced by his professional friends to revise, cut and rescore the symphonies, with the result that various versions exist to confuse students and to provoke endless quarrels among experts.