Anton Bruckner - Virga Jesse for Euphonium Quartet [$15]
Grade III 1/2

Program Note:

Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, a farming village in Austria, 1824. His father was the local schoolmaster and played organ for the church as well as violin for taverns to supplement the family’s modest income. The young Bruckner studied music first with his cousin, Johann Baptist Weiss, before joining the monastery of St. Florian as a chorister. Here, Bruckner studied violin, singing, and organ, before leaving in 1841 to teach in a few villages. He returned to St. Florian in 1845 in the position of assistant schoolteacher, where he studied music theory and began composing many works, most famously his Requiem in D minor. He moved to Linz from 1856-1868 to be an organist, where he became a somewhat legendary improviser on the instrument. During his time in Linz he also studied with  Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, and composed a great deal of choral and other works. A period of misfortune befell Bruckner, in which his mother died, he unsuccessfully proposed to Josefine Lang, and he had a mental breakdown, which left him confined to a sanatorium briefly. Upon his release, he left Linz and took a job at the Vienna Conservatory, while simultaneously teaching at University of Vienna, and St. Anna’s teacher-training college for women. Additionally, he was one of three organists in the Hofkapelle, and during this time he composed several important motets including Virga Jesse, as well as several of his symphonies. Bruckner stayed in Vienna until his death in 1896, leaving his legacy of 8 symphonies (with progress on a ninth), as well as a vast number of both sacred and secular choral works.

Virga Jesse is a motet for the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, using text from Isaiah 11. It was premiered in 1885 in Vienna, directed by the composer. The work features a dramatic range of dynamics from pp all the way up to fff. Harmonically, the work often shifts by the interval of a third, and dotted rhythms are one of the primary driving rhythmic forces. Virga Jesse is composed in two sections, with the latter section being an ‘alleluia’ that ends in the key of E.