Anton Bruckner (* 4.9.1824, Ansfelden; † 11.10.1896, Vienna) did not have it easy. Throughout his life, the Austrian composer was plagued by self-doubt. Anton Bruckner came from a simple, rural background. In 1837, after the death of his father, he was accepted as a singing boy at the monastery of Sankt Florian. After several years as a school assistant and self-taught organ and piano studies, he first worked as organist in Sankt Florian, then from 1855 as cathedral organist in Linz. Introduced to music theory and instrumentation via Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, he discovered Richard Wagner as an artistic role model, whom he admired throughout his life and also visited several times in Bayreuth. In 1868 Anton Bruckner became professor of basso continuo, counterpoint and organ at the Vienna Conservatory, ten years later court organist, and finally in 1891 honorary doctor of the University of Vienna. He was considered an important organ virtuoso of an era, but had to wait a long time for recognition as a composer. It was not until the "Symphony No.7, E major", composed between 1881 and 1883, with the famous "Adagio" written under the impression of Wagner's death, that he brought the hoped-for recognition, even if he did not want to accept it in view of his tendency to skepticism and self-criticism. Anton Bruckner was a loner who did not want to follow any school or doctrine. He composed numerous sacred vocal works such as his three masses, the "Missa Solemnis in B-flat minor" (1854), the "Te Deum" (1881-84) and numerous motets. As a symphonic composer, he wrote a total of nine symphonies and many symphonic studies from 1863 onward, tending to revise finished versions several times. Bruckner's orchestral works were long considered unplayable, but they were merely unusually bold for the tonal language of their time, uniting traditions from Beethoven to Wagner to folk music at the border of late Romanticism and modernism. Anton Bruckner composed some 40 motets during his lifetime, the earliest, a setting of Pange lingua, around 1835, the last, Vexilla regis, in 1892. Thomas Doss has collected some of these motets in this volume for symphonic wind orchestra. These motets show for the most part strong characteristics of his personal style, such as in particular his colorful harmony in the first works, which in places is oriented towards Franz Schubert (major/minor alternations, thirds). His later works are characterized by many components, which, in addition to the expansion of the movements, include above all the instrumentation as an outwardly appearing phenomenon and the harmonics as a design feature that works more internally. Some aspects of his work are based on his long period of study, which familiarized him primarily with tradition, but then also gave him insights into the "modernity" of his time (Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz). From this develops his special position, which always seeks the connection between old and new.