Edmund Angerer

Edmund Angerer (born May 24, 1740 in St. Johann in Tirol ; † August 7, 1794 in Fiecht Monastery , today in Vomp ) was an Austrian Benedictine priest and church musician .

Live and act

Edmund Angerer was born in St. Johann in Tyrol in 1740 as the son of the school teacher and choir regent Stephan Angerer and received his first musical training from his father in St. Johann, later as a chapel boy in the royal women's monastery in Hall. In 1758 he joined the Fiecht Benedictine monastery and worked there as a choir regent, organist and music teacher.

Portrait of the father Stephan Angerer, unfortunately there is no portrait of Edmund Angerer

In addition to countless sacred works, Father Edmund Angerer also wrote musical plays and operettas . He died as a widely respected musician in 1794 in Fiecht Abbey.

His most famous work is the so-called Berchtolds-Gaden Musick , created around 1765 , which was popular as a kind of "hit" of the 18th century throughout Europe . Edmund Angerer fell into oblivion in the music world soon after his death, and due to the early printed editions of the composition, now known as the Children's Symphony , Leopold Mozart , sometimes even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Joseph or Michael Haydn, were named as composers of this work.

By finding a musical manuscript in 1992, however, Edmund Angerer seems to be clearly proven as the author of this composition . The Australian musicologist Robert Illing countered this in a monograph published in 1994, stating that the manuscript from Angerer's pen could also be a copy and that this does not prove authorship. The fact is, however, that Angerer's Berchtolds-Gaden Musick is the oldest known recording of the so-called children's symphony .

literature

• Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider: Edmund Angerer OSB (1740–1794) from Fiecht Abbey / Tyrol: The composer of the children's symphony? In: Mozart Yearbook 1996, pp. 23–38.
• Robert Illing: Berchtolds gaden musick: a study of the early texts of the piece popularly known in England as Haydn's Toy Symphony and in Germany as Haydn's Children's Symphony, and of a cassation attributed to Leopold Mozart which embodies the Children's Symphony . Illing, Melbourne 1994, ISBN 0-949302-61-9 .
• Helmuth F. Schodl: Edmund Angerer, a composer from St. Johann in Tirol, in: Between Kaiser, Kalkstein und Horn, Local History Contributions of the Museum and Culture Association St. Johann in Tirol, Edition 2, 2002, Edition 3, 2003.

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Edmund Angerer in the International Music Score Library Project
• Works by and about Edmund Angerer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Edmund Angerer on the website of the Museum St. Johann in Tirol