Joseph Rheinberger has for a very long time been only
really known for his organ music. Certainly his contribution to the
organ repertoire is of great importance. The high quality of his twenty
organ sonatas and shorter organ pieces has ensured that his music is
frequently presented in organ recitals and his sonatas have been recorded
several times over the last three decades. But the musical public probably
think of Rheinberger as a stuffy Victorian organist and a pedagogue
not as a composer who wrote prolifically and effortlessly in many genres
whose organ music form but a small but significant part. Even in terms
of the organ Rheinberger was never stuffy and it is a pity that these
works are so often presented on overblown Victorian organs when the
music is, in fact, to be heard at its best advantage on much smaller,
clearer instruments of the kind the composer would have known in many
Munich churches where he performed and where his delicate part writing
can come out properly. All this has stood against him in the eyes of
posterity and it is sad to think of a composer so richly gifted and
with so much to offer discerning music lovers of our own time should
be so woefully neglected and misunderstood. Worse than this, he never
enjoyed more than a parochial reputation even in his own lifetime. An
arch-conservative at a time of traumatic innovation, he won the esteem
of like-minded musicians of the day, but never the universal acceptance
he deserved. His retiring nature and lack of ambition for self advancement
contributed to his neglect. Perhaps it was his own fault.
Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger, the greatest composer ever
to emerge from the tiny principality of Liechtenstein, hemmed in between
Switzerland on the one side and Bavarian and the Austrian Tyrol on the
other, was born in Vaduz on 17 March, 1839. He was an infant prodigy
of extraordinary precocity, holding a post of organist at Vaduz Parish
Church at the tender age of seven and making a sensation with the composition
of a Mass in three parts with organ accompaniment at the age of eight,
yet his parents were not musical and somewhat alarmed at their son's
musical bent. His interest had been kindled by his elder sister's piano
lessons, it being considered a right and proper subject upon which young
ladies should receive tuition at the time and by the age of five he
himself was receiving instruction from Sebastian Pohly, a retired schoolmaster
from Schanders, and absorbing the techniques not only of piano and organ
but also of theory and counterpoint. From that moment there was no stopping
him. His extraordinary self-confidence has been well illustrated in
Harvey Grace's important contribution on the composer published in Grove
IV but ruthlessly and unnecessarily abridged in Grove V. Grace also
edited Novello's edition of the organ sonatas. The performance of the
early Mass led the Bishop of Chur to invite the boy to the cathedral
in order to demonstrate his gifts, asking him to accompany on the organ
a Salve Regina to be sung by the Bishop and the clergy. No sooner had
the performance begun than the child stopped playing and admonished
the Bishop for singing out of tune! his acute critical sense, even at
so early an age, was demonstrated on another occasion when he nearly
smoked out the congregation at Vaduz by throwing copies of some masses
by his predecessor Buhler on the stove in the church because he disapproved
of them. Truly an enfant terrible.
Rheinberger's real chance came about at the age of
ten when turning the music for the leader of an amateur string quartet
named Schrammel. During the tuning, the boy remarked that the A string
sounded a semitone higher than his piano at home. The discovery of this
acute sense of pitch encouraged Schrammel to persuade his father to
allow the boy to undertake serious tuition from the choirmaster at Feldkirch,
some times miles distant, as a resident pupil. The boy went to Feldkirch
to study with Philipp Schmutzer for two years, yet retaining his position
as organist at Vaduz and walking back home every weekend to fulfil his
duties there. In 1850, when still only eleven years of age, he entered
the Royal Conservatory at Munich as a student and remained there for
the next four years, graduating with distinction in 1854.
It was in Munich that Rheinberger was to settle for
the rest of his life. Taking on piano pupils to support himself, he
studied composition with Franz Lachner, the friend of Schubert and a
prolific composer of conservative bent who fundamentally influenced
Rheinberger's own style Five years later, he succeeded his own piano
teacher, Emil Leonard, at the conservatory as professor and the following
year became professor of composition as well. In 1865 the Conservatory
was reorganised and Rheinberger was appointed coach to the court theatre
where he astonished everybody by sight-reading and transposing Wagner's
Flying Dutchman simultaneously. During this time he was also
much occupied as organist at the church of St Cajetan and later at St
Michel's, and took up choral conducting, becoming director of the Munich
Choral Society. In 1867, on the formation of the Royal Music School
under the direction of Hans von Bulow, it is hardly surprising to find
Rheinberger appointed as professor of organ and composition, the title
of Royal Professor being conferred upon him shortly afterwards. His
colleagues included Peter Cornelius and Franz Wullner. In 1877 Rheinberger
succeeded the latter as director of the court church music resigning
his post as conductor of the Munich Choral Society. Had ambition moved
him, he could have accepted the post of director of the Hoch-Conservatorium
at Frankfurt, but his loyalty to the Bavarian Court prompted King Ludwig
II to bestow on him the order of knighthood of St. Michael. Other honours,
too, came his way including the knighthood of Gregory the Great, conferred
on him by Pope Leo XIII, to whom he had dedicated an eight part Mass,
while the University of Munich bestowed on him an honorary doctorate
on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
In 1867 Rheinberger married Franziska von Hoffnaass,
a widow seventeen years his senior and a prominent poetess, singer and
painter with social connections. She was an immense help to him not
only in supplying texts for his many vocal compositions, but also in
handling his extensive correspondence in foreign languages, in copying
his compositions and acting as an astute critic of his works. her open
rejection of Wagner both as a man and musician was not without consequence.
Rheinberger as director of the Royal Court Theatre between 1864 - 7
had enjoyed Wagner's esteem. From then onward he aligned himself with
the more reactionary elements which rejected Wagnerian aesthetics and
' the music of the future' and he turned away from opera although during
his tenure at the Court theatre he had already made his mark with two
notable dramatic works- Die sieben Raben and Turmers Tochterlein.
Hans von Bülow proclaimed Rheinberger to be an
ideal composition teacher 'unequalled anywhere in or near Germany',
and some six hundred composition students flocked to Munich from all
over the world to study with him during the last forty years of his
life, most notable among them being Humperdinck, Wolf-Ferrari, Furtwängler
and Chadwick, not to mention the physicist Max Planck. But his high
reputation as a teacher has tended to overshadow his achievement as
a composer. His compositions -- and we may include his organ works among
them-- combine the then current traditions of Munich church music with
that of the Viennese classics of an earlier age. Their clarity and classic
structure and lack of emotional content mitigated against popularity
at a time when not to worship at the shrine of Bayreuth was tantamount
to mutiny. In 1892 his wife died and ill-health forced him more and
more to retire from public life. He suffered from a lung complaint brought
on by a mountaineering expedition. In his last years he became increasingly
aware that his compositions had become outdated and unwanted. When he
died on 25 November 1901, his remains were carried back to his native
Liechtenstein and buried in the cemetery at Vaduz not far distant from
the house where he was born sixty two years earlier.
Works by Rheinberger have become known such as the
Romantic Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 184, the magnificent Piano Concerto
in A flat, Opus 94. There is also a Symphonic Sonata and two Organ Concertos
as well as an early Symphony named Wallenstein, op. 10, after
Schiller. There is also a 53 minute Florentine Symphony, Op.
87. Two of his Masses have been singled out for special praise, the
Mass in C for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Op. 169 and the Mass in
F minor, Op. 159 for four voices and organ. His enchanting Christmas
cantata Der Stern von Bethlehem, op. 164, to a text by his wife
was recorded by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Robert Heger
with no less soloists than Rita Streich and Dietrich Fischer-Deskau.
The Cello Sonata in C, Op. 92 was also recorded as were these other
items more than two decades ago. Happily today there are many other
recordings available including most of his chamber music, masses and
concertos not to mention the organ works. The Nonet in E flat, Op. 139
also had an 'early' recording together with a Nonet by Lachner and a
piece by Cannabich.
The combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon,
violin, viola, cello and double bass is extremely rare and the number
of significant works written for it can almost be counted on the fingers
of one hand. the serenade-like quality of this combination is at all
times most attractive and it is very surprising that composers have
not be tempted to write for this medium. The first and most familiar
example is Spohr's Nonet in F ,Op. 31 which dates from 1813 which seems
to have stood in splendid isolation until Franz Lachner's Nonet in F
minor appeared in 1875. Rheinberger's Nonet dates from nine years later
and is a gay, charming and tuneful piece, yet expertly crafted with
a perfect understanding of the capabilities of the instruments in the
scoring.
The stuffy organist and pedagogue of popular imagination
wrote shortly before his death, 'There is no justification for music
without melodiousness and beauty of sound ... music never ought to sound
brooding, for, basically, it is the outpouring of joy and even in pain
knows no pessimism.'
Copyright David C F Wright 2002
