[12.11.1923?]

Aufführung der 4. Symphonie durch das Bayerische Staatsorchester unter Hans Knappertsbusch im 3. Abonnementkonzert der Musikalischen Akademie im Münchner Odeon (*).

 

The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana) übernimmt auf S. 4 die Artikelserie (vgl. zu Bruckner 9.9.1923), in der das Jugendschicksal berühmter Männer dargestellt wird:

"Poor Boys Who Became Great

         By Frederick Houk Law.

              (By Frederick Houk Law)

     "I never had the chance to learn to play well! You see I took only a few lessons and then I gave it up. But people say that if I had kept on I might have made a first class player."

     Well, there was Anton Bruckner, who lived over in Austria less than a hundred years ago. In 1924 the people who love organ music, and who delight in symphonies and masses and requiems, may celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, one of the greatest of organists and one of the greatest composers of organ music. Anton Bruckner came before the world in a most dramatic manner.

     In the town of Linz in Austria there was open a place for an organist. The authorities announced that the place would be given to the man who could play the organ best. Many celebrated musicians came, and played–men who had years of training under the best masters. Then there stepped forward young Anton Bruckner. He was nobody at all. He had had no master worth the mention. His father and mother had died, leaving him to the mercies of a selfish world.

     The lonely boy liked music as he liked life. He actually picked up the art of playing. Then he set himself to it, and without much help, mastered the organ. He was unknown, poor, friendless. He won the competition–for he could play better than the celebrated musicians who had come. He studied more, and lo! he became the organist for the emperor up in Vienna. The years went on, and before he died in 1896 at the age of 72 he had traveled through Europe, playing his own great compositions. His music arose in cathedrals. His symphonies delighted great audiences. He had taught himself, and he had made himself a master!  Why try to excuse shortcomings by saying that you never had a chance to do better. The chance lies in you yourself and not in outward circumstances!

             –————

Next: James Ferguson, Who Made the Sun and Moon Go Around." (**).

 

The Sun Nr. 154 (The Baltimore Sun) bringt auf S. 9 einen Bericht von Hendrik Willem van Loon aus Den Haag in Form von Tagebuchnotizen, in deren einer (vom 23.10.1923) Bruckner erwähnt wird [erste und letzte Zeile sind wie handgeschrieben gedruckt]:

"       H  v  L

                          THE HAGUE, October 18.

SEVERAL thrifty Dutchmen have been in to see me and ask particulars about a certain Edward Bok [... über Friedensaktivisten ...].

                   *    *    *

                                    October 23.

ONE does desperate things in Holland when it has rained steadily for three weeks and when the only choice of amusement is between Mahler's Seventeenth Symphonie and Bruckner's Sixteenth.

     I have gone back to Spinoza.

     I always go back to Spinoza.

     In the arid wilderness of modern philosophy he is the only oasis where pure and unadulterated water can be found by those lucky enough to discover the hidden source.     But this oasis lies many years away [...]

[signiert mit handschriftlicher Unterschrift:]

Hendrik Willem von Loon." (***).