Crossroads of Cultural Conflict: Assessing the Influence of the Caecilian Movement in the Music of Josef Gabriel Rheinberger
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger worked as a church musician and composer at a time of both spiritual and musical polarity in the Catholic Church in Bavaria. Living in Munich, he witnessed the Catholic schism produced by the decree of Papal Infallibility in 1870 and the nearly concurrent schism in sacred composition signaled by Franz Xaver Witt’s Caecilian movement at Bamburg. Yet despite his proximity to ecclesiastical styles and concerns, Rheinberger’s style is remembered as divorced from Witt’s Caecilian ideals, with the composer instead producing organ and choral compositions in a “Germanic,” Brahms-ian vein. The Romantic neoclassical influence, so contrary to Witt’s prescribed aesthetics, is considered an omnipresent hallmark of Rheinberger’s sacred work.
The published score of Rheinberger’s Stabat Mater, op. 138, is consistent with this reading. Yet an examination of the autograph manuscript and engraver’s copy gives cause to question whether Rheinberger truly was, as biographer Hans-Josef Irmen anointed him, the “antipode” of the Caecilians. The manuscript includes an unpublished poem by Rheinberger inscribed on the opening page that voices the composer’s newfound piety in the wake of an extended illness. The compositional process evident here suggests that the more Caecilian elements of the piece may not have been coincidental but rather a deliberate manifestation of the composer’s newly strengthened faith. Finally, comparison of the manuscript with the engraver’s copy—prepared by one of his composition students—reveals that some of the more Romantic deviations from the Caecilian style may not have been Rheinberger’s at all. These materials, both of which have been made digitally available by the Bavarian State Library, allows a more nuanced understanding of Rheinberger’s sacred style. Rheinberger may have been a conscious neoclassicist but he was also—at least in the case of Op. 138—very much influenced by Witt’s Caecilian movement.
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger worked as a church musician and composer at a time of both spiritual and musical polarity in the Catholic Church in Bavaria. Living in Munich, he witnessed the Catholic schism produced by the decree of Papal Infallibility in 1870 and the nearly concurrent schism in sacred composition signaled by Franz Xaver Witt’s Caecilian movement at Bamburg. Yet despite his proximity to ecclesiastical styles and concerns, Rheinberger’s style is remembered as divorced from Witt’s Caecilian ideals, with the composer instead producing organ and choral compositions in a “Germanic,” Brahms-ian vein. The Romantic neoclassical influence, so contrary to Witt’s prescribed aesthetics, is considered an omnipresent hallmark of Rheinberger’s sacred work.
The published score of Rheinberger’s Stabat Mater, op. 138, is consistent with this reading. Yet an examination of the autograph manuscript and engraver’s copy gives cause to question whether Rheinberger truly was, as biographer Hans-Josef Irmen anointed him, the “antipode” of the Caecilians. The manuscript includes an unpublished poem by Rheinberger inscribed on the opening page that voices the composer’s newfound piety in the wake of an extended illness. The compositional process evident here suggests that the more Caecilian elements of the piece may not have been coincidental but rather a deliberate manifestation of the composer’s newly strengthened faith. Finally, comparison of the manuscript with the engraver’s copy—prepared by one of his composition students—reveals that some of the more Romantic deviations from the Caecilian style may not have been Rheinberger’s at all. These materials, both of which have been made digitally available by the Bavarian State Library, allows a more nuanced understanding of Rheinberger’s sacred style. Rheinberger may have been a conscious neoclassicist but he was also—at least in the case of Op. 138—very much influenced by Witt’s Caecilian movement.