Birdsong, moonlight, planets, poetry, great art: all seem fair enough as inspiration for composers writing new music. But skulls? Somewhat less so. Especially when they’re not just any old skulls, but those that belonged to Beethoven and Schubert. Composer Jay Capperauld has turned to this curious inspiration for his latest piece with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Bruckner’s Skull.

The piece is rooted in Anton Bruckner cradling and kissing the skulls of these two classical music icons when their bodies were exhumed in 1888 before being moved to a final resting place in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. Bruckner was obsessed with death. In this 201st anniversary of his birth, Capperauld’s piece is written as a death-mask homage to the highly unusual Austrian composer, a devout Catholic known mainly for his nine symphonies. ‘The focus is on delving into Bruckner’s mind through the lens of his morbid fixation,’ says Capperauld. ‘I’m interested in why he was driven to what was socially unacceptable, immoral and potentially criminal behaviour. The piece is a psychological and musical exploration of his character.’

Suffering what would now likely be termed OCD, Bruckner was a constant counter, his arithmomania surfacing in totting up how many bricks were in a wall or windows in a building and the number of bars in his own scores, constantly revising them time after time. ‘He had lots of eccentric quirks and fixations and there are lots of anecdotal stories about him,’ says Capperauld. ‘The only picture he had of his own mother was from after she had died. He also requested that the body of his cousin be exhumed so that he could see it.’ That request was turned down, but his fixation with death took him to funeral parlours where he viewed the corpses of complete strangers; he apparently left a part of himself with Beethoven when he lent over his coffin, allowing a lens from his pince-nez to fall into it.

‘The piece is about trying to understand Bruckner from a modern perspective but in a musical way that humanises his behaviour,’ continues Capperauld. There are overt and hidden references to both Beethoven and Schubert in the new piece, including Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 14, Moonlight Sonata, and Schubert’s String Quartet No 14 known as Death And The Maiden. ‘I’m trying to explore all the connections between these composers. One is that Schubert also had an obsession with death. Another is that he requested to hear Beethoven’s String Quartet No 14 on his deathbed. The piece is almost as much about Schubert and Beethoven as it is about Bruckner, and using their music signifies their presence. It’s basically me metaphorically cradling Bruckner’s skull in the way that he did with Beethoven and Schubert.’ 

Through quotations, Capperauld envisions the music as if Bruckner is seeing it through his obsessive character traits, like ‘putting it through a washing machine.’ Straight quotes are looped and augmented or elongated and slowed right down so that it’s hard to recognise the original. Repeated musical refrains are almost meditative, with ritualistic patterns growing from the sort of hyper-romanticism associated with Bruckner. ‘It makes it very unsettling,’ says Capperauld, ‘with a sense of macabre nostalgia in the ghostly, decaying sounds.’ Death and existentialism are recurring themes in his own music: ‘if I wasn’t a composer, I’d have loved to have been a psychoanalyst.’ 

Bruckner’s Skull is on at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Thursday 20 February and City Halls, Glasgow, Friday 21 February; main picture: Euan Anderson.