Matthäus Nagiller

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Portrait relief of Nagiller on his tombstone at Innsbruck's Westfriedhof (created in 1876 by Engelbert Kolp )

Matthäus Nagiller (born October 24, 1815 in Münster , Tyrol ; † July 8, 1874 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian composer and conductor .

Life

education

Nagiller's musical talent, who came from a simple peasant family, was already evident in his childhood. His first music teacher was the community doctor of Münster, who gave the lively boy the first lessons in violin playing. Because of his excellent academic achievements, his parents sent him to the grammar school in Hall, where he was to be prepared for the clergy. To her chagrin, however, her son was striving for a musical career and, after completing high school, took theoretical music lessons from the choir conductor Pichler in Schwaz. From 1834 to 1836 he attended the Musikverein school in Innsbruck and then became a student of Prof. Gottfried von Preyer at the Vienna Conservatory, who taught him according to the method of the music theorist Simon Sechter .

Teaching in Paris and concert tours to Germany

After training in Vienna, Nagiller went to Paris, where he stayed - with brief interruptions - until 1848 and worked as a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included well-known musicians such as the singer and conductor Julius Stockhausen , the organist Edouard Silas and the clarinetist Iwan Müller. The piano virtuoso Friedrich Kalkbrenner also entrusted his son to him.

In 1846, Nagiller founded the Mozart Society with friends and students, the aim of which was to make the works of German classical music known to a wider audience in France. On March 15, he gave the first public concert in the Loire city, at which he also performed his own compositions.

In the following year 1847 Nagiller went on an extensive concert tour to Germany, which took him to Cologne, Frankfurt a. M., Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg. The reactions to his musical performances varied. While the critics in Leipzig said that Nagiller had prepared the audience a bitter evening, his performances in Cologne and Berlin were received with much applause. In particular, the Symphony No. 1 in C minor was praised as a masterpiece in the public papers. It is still one of the best that a Tyrolean composer has created in the symphonic field.

Return to Austria and stay in Munich

In 1848 Nagiller returned to his homeland, where he settled in Bolzano. From 1852 to 1854 he directed the house chapel of Baron Franz von Goldegg in Partschins .

But the restless and restless artist was soon drawn into the distance again. From 1854 to 1861 Nagiller stayed mainly in Munich, where he became acquainted with Melchior Meyr , Emanuel Geibel and Eduard Ille , who gave him the text for the opera Friedrich with the empty pocket . On May 5, 1853, his large festival mass was performed there in the Ludwigskirche and was very positively discussed (Neue Münchener Zeitung, p. 897). At the beginning of May 1854 he conducted a large “vocal and instrumental concert” in the Odeon with his own works, including his symphony in C minor, the “Concert Overture in D major” and some songs that were also well received (Bayrischer Landbote May 11, 1854) His stay in Munich was interrupted by a concert tour that also took him to Coburg, where he was awarded the gold medal for art and science by the art-loving Duke Ernst II (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) for his musical achievements has been. Despite this award and the recognition he enjoyed in Germany, he was denied the desired position as court or theater conductor there.

In June 1861 Nagiller applied for the management of the Dom-Musikverein and Mozarteum in Salzburg, but this post was given to Hans Schläger . When he was offered the post of Musikverein Kapellmeister in Bolzano six months later, he gratefully accepted the offer. With the income from his activity as a conductor, he financed a concert tour to northern Germany in 1864, where he made the acquaintance of Pauline Cruse in Hamburg, whom he married in Hamburg in November 1864 after only three months of engagement. Since his bride came from a wealthy family, Nagiller was relieved of all financial worries. But the newlyweds also went uphill in professional life. In October 1866 he took over the choir direction at the Innsbrucker Liedertafel and only two months later he was also appointed conductor of the Innsbrucker Musikverein (today the Tyrolean State Conservatory in Hofhaimergasse).

Nagiller's work in Innsbruck

With Nagiller's commitment, the musical life of the state capital experienced the hoped-for revival. However, it was not new compositions with which he delighted the Innsbruck audience, but rather the performance of the works of the composers Handel , Haydn and Mendelssohn Bartholdy , which he held in high esteem , which he staged with enormous effort. Even in Bozen, Nagiller had, with Haydn's Creation , which he performed with a choir of over 100 people and a reinforced orchestra, far exceeded the usual musical staging for a provincial town. But his performances in Innsbruck overshadowed everything that had been there before. Musicians, singers and music lovers were drawn together from all parts of the country. Up to 300 participants and more provided an overwhelming fullness of sound that was rarely heard at the time. For the casting of the solo parts, Nagiller was happy to fall back on external staff, most of whom he recruited from the Munich court theater, but in exceptional cases local soloists were also involved. The oratorios Samson (July 15, 1868), Acis and Galatea (June 5, 1870) and Messiah (June 11, 1872) attracted particular attention , but the oratorios Elias (June 25, 1873) and Paul also filled the concert halls.

Despite these achievements, Nagiller didn't just have friends in Innsbruck. There were also envious people who tried to belittle his successes. This enraged the otherwise peaceable. When the performance of the Missa Papae Marcelli was criticized in one of the local newspapers , Nagiller let the rector of the university, whom he suspected behind the attacks, know “that church music from the music association in the Jesuit church is provided free of charge during academic worship and nothing is done let others persuade them, otherwise the music performances will be stopped entirely ”. Apart from the fact that this criticism - as it later turned out - was addressed to the wrong address and that Rector P. Waldeck and the Jesuits felt completely innocent, it only brought malice to the artist. Even in the obituary that appeared in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten on the occasion of the artist's death, one remembered the “heap of ruthless, bitter enemies who missed no opportunity to cause bitter insults to the worthy man”.

Nagiller died on July 8, 1874 of paralysis . The funeral procession, which was disrupted by gale force winds and heavy thunderstorms, was accompanied by friends from near and far. The artist's remains were temporarily buried in the seventh arcade of the east gallery of the city cemetery and later reburied. His wife Pauline, who after the death of her husband, the composer Ludwig Thuille has added to her house and actively supported, passed away in June 1881. Although she was Protestant faith, her funeral was at her husband's side in the Catholic part of the Innsbruck West cemetery permits . The sculptor Engelbert Kolp created Nagiller's tombstone . It shows the portrait of the artist in profile.

The Ferdinandeum Museum, of which Nagiller was a member, owns a plaster bust of the artist from the widow's estate.

plant

The main focus of Nagiller's compositional activity lay in his church works, and within these in the composition of masses and choral chants that were intended for performance in village churches. Out of these stands out the large-scale festival mass in B flat major, which Nagiller dedicated to the Brixen prince-bishop Bernhard Galura . Of the artist's other works, the symphony in C minor and the settings of the Goethe poems, of which his Mignon in turn , were particularly valued. His dramatic works were not very successful. Of these, only the opera Herzog Friedrich with the empty pocket achieved local fame (first performance in Innsbruck on May 17, 1859).

His contemporaries placed Matthäus Nagiller in line with the composers Johann Baptist Gänsbacher , Josef Netzer and Johann Rufinatscha . However, as the artist got older, he had to realize that there were limits to his compositional skills. In the general flow of cultural development, Nagiller does not represent an indispensable link in its continuous development, but his solid compositions are at least an important part of the musical history of Tyrol.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Signals for the Musical World , Volume Five, No. 18, Leipzig 1847.
  2. ↑ Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung , No. 28, 1847, July 14, p. 483.
  3. ↑ Landshuter Zeitung , 1857, No. 276, p. 1115.
  4. ^ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , November 10, 1864 and February 4, 1865
  5. ^ Reports on the performances of Handel's works in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten on July 16, 1868, June 7, 1870 and June 12, 1872.
  6. ↑ Fliegende Blätter for Catholic Church Music , 1870, 5th year, No. 10, p. 84.
  7. ↑ Extabeilage to Innsbruck News of 14 July 1874th
  8. ^ Description of the funeral ceremonies in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten of July 11, 1874.
  9. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , June 10, 1881.
  10. ^ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , May 17, 1882.
  11. ^ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , May 18, 1859.
personal data
SURNAME Nagiller, Matthew
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Munster , Tyrol
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1874
Place of death innsbruck