Gustav Mahler recalled:
After an illness, Bruckner was ordered by his doctor to take a daily hip-bath. Loath to waste time, he would take music paper and compose while in the tub. While absorbed in his work one day, the mother of Rudolf Kryzanowski, one of his pupils, knocked at the door. “Come in!” called Bruckner. Imagine her consternation on entering the apartment to see Bruckner’s portly person in the bathtub naked as the good Lord had fashioned him. As she stood there transfixed, Bruckner politely got up and walked over, dripping, to greet her. Only her shriek and hasty exit made the poor man aware of his condition. And this had to happen to Bruckner, who blushed like a schoolboy if he so much as looked at a woman.
Gustav Mahler, in Natalie Bauer-Lechner: Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler. Leipzig, 1923. Cited in: Lebrecht, Norman (1985) The Book of Musical Anecdotes. New York: The Free Press, p.185.
Composing in the bath
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