ON OCTOBER 13, 1896 I stood among several hundred persons who
had gathered in the Karlskirche in Vienna to bid Anton Bruckner
a last farewell. Beneath the high cupola of the church, in whose
fresco paintings the Heavens open up, Saints descend on clouds
and Angels float gracefully around the gleaming monstrance, stood
the catafalque onto which the coffin was lifted.

From high above the church choir sounded the funereal music
of the Seventh Symphony which Bruckner had composed on the
occasion of Richard Wagner's death. The mighty metal tones of
Bruckner's music ascended solemnly together with the incense
which the priests, in black chasubles, sent up from silver vessels.
The music increased in volume, reaching its climax in the radiant
sounding of the cymbals, heralding the Glory and the Honor.

Bruckner's music became as one with the baroque style of the
church, for it was itself ornate baroque art, just like the church of
Karl the Sixth, in which marble saints guarded the altars, angels
of marble and gold hovered over the chapels and the fresco of
the cupola showed the Heavens.

The composer, at whose coffin the priests were now chanting
monotone prayers for the dead, had spent all his life in such
baroque structures. One of them had been the Convent of St.
Florian. Here, as a young musician, Bruckner had first played the
organ and here he had reverently kneeled in its baroque passages
when the Prelate passed by in solemn procession.

Other similar structures were the domes of Linz, Vienna, and

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