Jupiter’s Voice and Bruckner’s Touch

In this richly evocative essay, Emre Aracı retraces the footsteps of Anton Bruckner through Victorian London, conjuring the composer’s singular visit in 1871 to perform on the newly built organ of the Royal Albert Hall—then hailed as “the voice of Jupiter”. From steam-powered instruments and forgotten recitals to blue plaques and the spectral remains of the Crystal Palace, Aracı masterfully weaves music history, memory, and place into a meditation on legacy, sound, and silence.

What reached the ears was nothing less than “the voice of Jupiter”. First heard in 1871, this was the sound of what was then the largest musical instrument in the world — a sound so mighty and sublime that the name became indelibly associated with the vast organ constructed by Henry Willis & Sons for the newly opened Royal Albert Hall in London. How fitting a description it was. Henry “Father” Willis, as he was affectionately known, designed the instrument to stand at the very heart of the hall’s acoustic vision — a triumph of Victorian engineering and craftsmanship that continues to inspire awe to this day.

The Newly Opened Royal Albert Hall and the Henry Willis Organ (from The Graphic, 11 April 1871)

I, too, once heard that thundering Jupiterian voice. As a viola player with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO), I stood upon the Royal Albert Hall’s stage on the evening of 30 March 1990, performing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. I vividly recall the very boards beneath us trembling with its force — an unforgettable sensation.

Emre Aracı, a member of the London Schools
Symphony Orchestra in the 1990s

Our story, however, begins on the evening of 29 July 1871, when a forty-six-year-old musician arrived at the doors of the Albert Hall, eager to breathe life into the newly completed instrument. Having only recently arrived in London, he was impatient to lay hands on the organ’s keys. Yet the hall’s superintendent regretfully informed him that the boilers were running low on steam and that he might play only until the last reserves were spent — for by that hour of the evening, there was no one left inclined to stoke the furnaces with fresh coal. For all the grandeur of its Jupiter-like sound, the organ was, after all, a creature of its age: Victorian to the core, powered by the steam that coursed through its mighty lungs. The visitor — mildly bemused by the explanation — paid it little mind. Lit by flickering lamps, he took his place at the console and began to play. And play he would, with unwavering resolve, until the final breath of steam expired. What unfolded next was wholly unexpected. From within that vast, coliseum-like hall, music of almost celestial quality began to pour forth — music so radiant and deftly played that those nearby gathered round the organ in hushed wonder. The superintendent, moved by what he heard, gave orders without delay: fresh coal was to be fed to the boilers at once.

What began as a mere rehearsal was transfigured into a moment of musical revelation. 

Anton Bruckner’s visit to London began, as was so often the case in the life of this unassuming man, with an episode both curious and unexpectedly peculiar. Behind that provincial countenance and beneath his quietly humble demeanour, the voice of Jupiter – welling up from the profoundest depths of his soul – may already have been resounding in his own ears, though few around him had the faintest inkling of it. Indeed, among those who did know of him, he was regarded less as a composer than as a virtuoso of the organ. It was, in fact, as an organist that Bruckner arrived in London during the summer of 1871, invited to give a series of recitals on the newly installed instrument at the Royal Albert Hall. It would be his first and only visit to the British capital.

Anton Bruckner

That year, as part of the International Exhibition held in London, musicians from across the world were invited to perform at the Royal Albert Hall. Austria selected Bruckner to represent the nation – or rather, he earned the position by successfully passing an audition organised for that very purpose. Not a word of English did he speak, and so he sought someone to accompany him on the journey. At length, a member of the Zimmermann family, whom he knew from Nuremberg, agreed to travel with him. Together, they arrived in London on 29 July and took up lodgings at the Seyd Hotel on Finsbury Square. The Austrian ambassador, Count Apponyi, was duly informed of their arrival.

Today, a commemorative plaque may be found at Finsbury Square bearing Bruckner’s silhouette in relief, yet neither the Seyd Hotel nor the building that once housed it has survived. The Second World War all but erased this historic square from London’s centre, and modern developments were quick to overtake what little remained. Still, despite the loss of its architectural character, one glance at the blue plaque, with Bruckner’s profile cast in bronze, transports the onlooker instantly back to that long-vanished London.

Commemorative blue plaque for Bruckner in Finsbury Square (photo © Emre ARACI)

And so I open page three of The Daily Telegraph from 29 July 1871 and read, in the sixth column, the following announcement: "Royal Albert Hall – Herr Anton Bruckner, organist to the Court of Vienna and professor at the conservatoire of that city, has arrived in London to perform upon the great organ in this hall".

The foundation stone of the Royal Albert Hall – named in memory of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who had died in 1861 – was laid on 20 May 1867, in a grand ceremony attended by the Queen herself. 

The acquisition of the vast tract of land upon which the hall would rise had only been made possible through the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in Hyde Park under Prince Albert’s patronage. That celebrated exhibition – housed in what became known as the “Crystal Palace” – thus played a vital role in the realisation of the Albert Hall.

"The Royal Albert Hall – named in memory of Prince Albert" (© Emre ARACI)

Bruckner gave six recitals at the hall between 2 and 8 August. His largely solo programme comprised works by Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, interspersed with extended improvisations that included material by Schubert and Weber. A striking improvisation on Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” featured in three of the performances. Yet as these concerts took place during the August holiday period, they received little critical attention in the press. The principal critic of The Times was abroad, and Bruckner, it seems, was somewhat disappointed by the lack of notice.

Indeed, it would not be until fifteen years later that his appearance was recalled in print, when C. A. Barry, writing in the 1 June 1886 issue of The Musical Times, penned the following lines in an article on the composer: “In England the name of Anton Bruckner, which is not to be found in any biographical musical dictionary, either English or foreign, that we have been able to consult, will probably only be familiar to a few from the fact that he was one of a number of foreign organists who, by invitation, repaired to this country with the view of exhibiting their skill upon the newly created organ of the Royal Albert Hall and that of the Crystal Palace”.

The same Musical Times, following Bruckner’s death in 1896, would later write that he had been “glorified by some as the Wagner of the Symphony”; yet it also added that “on the other hand, he has been looked upon by the great majority of his critics as a mere learned musical pedagogue, devoid of the divine gift of imagination, whose compositions are so many intricate contrapuntal exercises on a vast scale”. One cannot help but smile, reading such anecdotes now buried in the folds of history.

As we mark the bicentenary of his birth, I find myself wishing to imagine this great composer wandering the streets of London.

Regrettably, however, our knowledge of Bruckner’s impressions of the city during his one-month stay in the summer of 1871 is as limited as that of his London contemporaries’ knowledge of him. Crawford Howie, in his essay “Bruckner – the Travelling Virtuoso” (Perspectives on Anton Bruckner, Ashgate, 2001), notes that in his spare time Bruckner delighted in touring the city in the large, horse-drawn omnibuses of the day.

"Bruckner delighted in touring the city in the large, horse-drawn omnibuses of the day"

Following in his footsteps, I find myself in Finsbury Square, upon the very ground once occupied by the Seyd Hotel. The date, etched into the commemorative plaque before me, reads 29 July — and remarkably, so does the calendar I carry. It is no mere coincidence of inscription, but a precise alignment of history and present: 153 years have passed, and yet it is indeed 29 July 2024. The red double-decker buses — heirs to the age of horse-drawn omnibuses — still trundle merrily through London’s streets, ferrying tourists with a touch of nostalgic charm. And both the Royal Albert Hall and “Father” Willis’s organ remain steadfast, much as they were.

The site of Seyd Hotel in Finsbury Square; "red double-decker buses — heirs to the age of horse-drawn omnibuses — still trundle merrily through London’s streets" (photo © Emre ARACI)

And what of the Crystal Palace? That vast Glass House, which had given life to the very idea of the Royal Albert Hall, was dismantled and transported, piece by piece, to Sydenham in south London following the Great Exhibition of 1851, reopening there in 1854. For many years it would continue to host concerts of remarkable grandeur. Indeed, as I have recounted in several articles for Andante, it was here that Sultan Abdülaziz was received with great ceremony on the evening of 16 July 1867, attending a monumental concert in which Luigi Arditi’s Inno Turco – with words in Turkish – was performed by a British chorus of 1,600 voices strong.

"Crystal Palace was dismantled and transported, piece by piece, to Sydenham" (© Emre ARACI)

Just four years later, it was Bruckner who took his place at the keyboard of the Crystal Palace organ. In the wake of his success at the Royal Albert Hall, the Austrian virtuoso accepted an invitation from August Manns, conductor of the Crystal Palace Orchestra, and between 19 and 28 August gave five further recitals in the great glass edifice. On the evening of 22 August, following what was his fourth recital – said to have been attended by an audience of some 70,000 – he returned to his room at the Seyd Hotel and wrote to his friend Moritz von Mayfeld in Linz. In his letter, he recorded the following:

“Have given ten concerts, six in the Albert Hall, four in the Crystal Palace. Tremendous applause, always unending. Encores required, i.e. I often had to play two extra improvisations at the end … Many compliments, congratulations, invitations. Manns, the conductor of the Crystal Palace concerts, told me that he was amazed and that I must come again soon and send him some of my compositions”. Yet in spite of Manns’s enthusiasm and invitation, Bruckner would, sadly, never return to London.

After visiting Finsbury Square, I made my way to what remains of the Crystal Palace — a site whose abandoned terraces and decaying statuary still preserve, in their silent melancholy, some echo of past splendour.

"The ghost of its grandeur seemed almost to shimmer in the air" (photo © Emre ARACI)

Crystal Palace was lost forever in a devastating fire on the evening of 30 November 1936 — a blaze so fierce that it consumed not only the great structure but also the spirit of an age. And yet, as I stood amid the moss-covered terraces and the silent statues that still linger in their faded splendour, I found myself imagining that vast crystal edifice rising once more from the earth, as though summoned from memory and flame. The ghost of its grandeur seemed almost to shimmer in the air — a vision of iron and glass born anew, fragile yet eternal in the mind’s eye.

A few months after the fire, in the February 1937 issue of The Musical Times, Austrian musicologist Mosco Carner wrote an article on Bruckner’s London organ recitals, concluding with a poignant recollection of the composer’s own words: 

“What my fingers play is forgotten, but what they have written will not be forgotten”.

As those sobering words echo in my ears, I glance once more at the blue plaque in Finsbury Square and read that it was during his stay in London that Bruckner began composing his Second Symphony. In an interview published in Gramophone on 19 February 2024, Riccardo Muti remarked, “Each Bruckner symphony is a conversation with God, a message for the soul. The Second Symphony is no exception”. I find myself thinking how apt that description truly is.

Bruckner by Otto Böhler

Following the completion of his First Symphony, Bruckner had fallen into a deep melancholy, enduring a period of severe depression. The success and applause he received during his visit to London must have restored his spirits, for it was there, in Finsbury Square, that he began work on his Second Symphony — and notably with the Finale, a movement marked by strong, joyful themes and radiant resolution. Opening with the sombre tremolo of violins and violas, the symphony bears all the hallmarks of Bruckner’s mysterious idiom. In the lyrical and dramatic dialogue between strings and winds, opposing themes are woven together in richly contrapuntal textures. The following Andante conveys a sense of sacred peace, a reflection of Bruckner’s deep religious faith, before giving way to a rhythmically vigorous and energetic Scherzo. Frequently referred to as the “Symphony of Pauses” due to its characteristic silences and caesuras between phrases, the Second Symphony shows striking confidence in its handling of orchestral forces. It also clearly reveals the influence of Bruckner’s organ improvisations, with their monumental, cathedral-like sonorities.

After listening to the symphony once more, with full attention, I begin to realise that our knowledge of Bruckner’s time in London is far from limited — for the coordinates of that journey are already inscribed in the notes of this music.

To wander London’s streets from Finsbury Square to the Crystal Palace in the company of Anton Bruckner, the man who gave voice to the sound of Jupiter, is an experience at once exalted and sublime.

The notes once played by his fingers may have faded into silence — but what he wrote will not be forgotten. And indeed, it is his written legacy that endures — a testament, a voice, a map by which we continue to find our way...

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Jüpiter’in sesine hayat veren Anton Bruckner’ in the September 2024 issue (No. 215) of Andante.

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