Composer Study: Anton Bruckner

This week's Composer Study was at least as educational for me as it was for the kids.  Our study was very brief this week (time really got away from us in the first half of the week) but was interesting.  We learned about Anton Bruckner.  This is a composer I had heard of, but was really only familiar with his name, and couldn't have listed anything he composed.

Anton Bruckner is known primarily for his religious music.  He spent most of his life in Vienna, teaching and composing, but didn't really fit in with the sophisticated world there.  He had a small group of admirers, including a young Gustav Mahler, but received little recognition for his work until late in his life.  He was caught in a crossfire of sorts, because he was an admirer of the composer Richard Wagner, who was despised by the influential Vienna composer Johannes Brahms.

This is Bruckner's Ave Maria.

Oh, and at the end of last week, when I wanted to watch the DVD of a Verdi opera....  we could not get the DVD to work on any of our players! Boo.  So glad we watched several clips of Verdi's opera compositions online. 

This post is linked at ~a teaching heart~ where we are keeping each other accountable for making time for music in our homeschooling!