Hugo Gaisser

Hugo Anastasius Gaisser OSB (born December 1, 1853 in Aitrach as Josef Anton Gaisser , † March 26, 1919 in Ettal Abbey ) was a German Benedictine and choral researcher .

Live and act

Hugo Gaisser came from a farming family in the Allgäu. His father Remig (1808–1877) was a butcher, his mother the farmer's daughter Walburga (1823–1882). The paternal grandparents were the Schwanden farmer Remig and Rosalie Häge; the maternal grandparents of the Aichstetten farmer Johann Georg Harlacher and Maria Anna Kirchmann.

Gaisser entered the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron in 1872 , where he learned how to cultivate and research Gregorian chant from Father Ambrosius Kienle . When Beuron Abbey opened a subsidiary in Maredsous , Belgium , he moved there. From 1899 to 1912 he lived in Rome and worked there as a teacher and from 1906 as rector of the Pontificio Collegio Atanasio. The Roman church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci was famous for Byzantine church hymn. It was there that Gaisser discovered Greek chant, which at the time was considered very neglected both in practice and in scientific research, as his life's work.

Gaisser published melodies by Greeks living abroad who lived in Calabria and Sicily. His work is now considered to be partly out of date, but still valuable. He compared Eastern and Western melodies and, for the first time, used a procedure that developed into an important methodological aid. During this time he received a call to the papal commission that edited the Editio Vaticana .

In 1912 Gaisser moved as prior to Saint-André in Brussels and at the same time finished his choral research. When the First World War broke out , he had to leave the country and went to the Ettal Abbey via the Sankt Joseph bei Coesfeld .

literature

• Bruno Stäblein:  Gaisser, Hugo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 40 f. ( Digitized version ).