Silbermann, Alphons: Anton Bruckner, A Composer Between Two Chairs
Born in Cologne, he studied musicology, sociology and law at the Universities of Cologne, Freiburg and Grenoble. After he gained his doctorate (Dr. jur.), the rise of Nazism led Silbermann to emigrate to the Netherlands and 1938 from Amsterdam via Paris, where he worked as a waiter, to Sydney. In Australia he started as a dishwasher but went soon from rags to riches with his own fast food restaurant Silver's Food Bars. He actually initiated the first fastfood chain of Australia and was a very successful entrepreneur. His academic career started in 1944 in Sydney at the State Conservatory of Music. As an empirical culture-sociologist he went back to Europe in 1951. In 1958 he returned to Cologne, where he taught at the University. 1964 he taught at the University of Lausanne and later at the University of Bordeaux (1974 1979). This chapter on Anton Bruckner comes from Silbermann's book, "Of Musical Things," published in Australia in 1949. |
