Chorus Viennensis & Sonat Vox

International Brucknerfest Linz 2024. works for male choir a cappella by the 200-year-olds Smetana, Bruckner and Cornelius.

Anniversarium MMXXIV

From his youth, Anton Bruckner felt a deep connection to the men's choral societies so characteristic of the 19th century. In the 1840s, he founded male quartets in both Kronstorf and St. Florian, in which he himself took part as second and first bass respectively, and joined the "Frohsinn" choral society in Linz in 1856, where he was subsequently elected choirmaster twice. From 1843 onwards, Bruckner accordingly wrote works for such choral societies for 50 years, i.e. his entire creative life, and was described as early as 1877 in Julius Schuberth's Musikalisches Conversations- Lexicon as a  "significant composer of male choirs with and without orchestra" . His contemporaries Bedřich Smetana and Peter Cornelius, who together with Bruckner form the triad of the 200-year-olds, did the same and created a large number of patriotic, festive, nature, hunting, mourning or love songs for unaccompanied male choir.