Anton Bruckner wrote symphonies of cathedral-like grandeur — vast, slow-building structures that critics either worshiped or despised. He was also pathologically insecure, compulsively revising his works based on anyone’s criticism, counting objects obsessively, and proposing to teenage girls well into his sixties. The man who composed some of the most monumental music in the orchestral repertoire was personally one of the most fragile figures in classical music history.

This episode traces Bruckner from his rural Austrian origins through his years as a provincial organist, the symphonies that divided Vienna, and the troubled legacy of works that exist in multiple contradictory versions because he could never stop revising.

• Bruckner’s rural origins, his obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and his late start as a symphonist
• The massive symphonies and the critical war between the Brahms and Wagner camps in Vienna
• The compulsive revisions and the “version problem” that still plagues performers and scholars
• The Nazi appropriation of his music and the complicated legacy it left behind