Nikolaus Betscher

Reich prelate Nikolaus Betscher, around 1800

Nikolaus Betscher OPraem (born October 31, 1745 in Berkheim ; † November 12, 1811 in Rot an der Rot ) was the 45th and last abbot of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Rot an der Rot . He achieved national fame through his work as a composer .

Life

Nikolaus Betscher was born as the only son of the wealthy farmer Matthias Betscher and his wife Salome Schillingerin on the farm Sankt Johann Baptist in Berkheim in the lower Illertal , which was demolished in 2011 , and was baptized on November 1st with the name Leonardus Wolfgangus. As a child, Leonard was admitted to the Rot an der Rot convent school and received his first training there. On November 11, 1765, he took the religious vows there and took the monastery name Nicholas. He was ordained a priest on September 23, 1769.

In the next ten years Nikolaus Betscher held several monastic offices and was pastor in Haslach from 1779 to 1781. In 1781 he is documented as a subprior, in 1782 as a prior , until he got a pastor's post in Haisterkirch again in 1787 . After the death of his predecessor, Nikolaus Betscher was elected abbot of the Red Imperial Abbey on November 3, 1789 and was solemnly installed in his office. The abbey comprised 45 villages, hamlets and farms with 465 serf families and 40 families who were not considered to be serfs. The focus of the holdings was in Rot- and Illertal, a winery in Meersburg and two alpine pastures in Gschwend and Balderschwang in Oberallgäu. At the inauguration, Betscher's parents donated 2,000 guilders to the abbey to enable Johann Nepomuk Holzhey to complete the organ on the west gallery, which had been planned for a long time. In 1792 the instrument could be handed over to its intended use; Betscher's coat of arms is attached to the organ's prospectus.

Due to the dissolution of the mother monastery Prémontré in the course of the French Revolution, Nikolaus Betscher was entrusted with the General Vicariate of the German Order Province of the Premonstratensian Order in 1795, with which the function of the Premonstratensian Abbot General was connected. The abbey in Prémontré lost all of its property, at that time there were 76 abbeys and 633 parishes. The emigrant Herve Julien Lesage (1757–1832) lived in red for 13 months from 1796 and described the abbot as a person with a generous and polite way of life. For a German and a Swabian, he even had a lot of spirit and was a friend of hunting and music. His music was partially rejected by the Convention behind closed doors. On October 10, 1798, the abbot and chapter decided to repay the inheritance that the families of the canons had given to the monastery. On May 20, 1802 Betscher and his prior Rohrer sold the Red House in the imperial city of Memmingen for 3,300 guilders to Johann Sigmund Mayer vom Schwanen.

secularization

In the course of secularization, Count Ludwig von Wartenberg took possession of the former imperial abbey Rot an der Rot on March 1, 1803. Betscher had to put his signature on the expropriation document of his abbey. So the great Napoleonic world politics and the changes brought about by the Enlightenment had an impact on the smallest Upper Swabian spiritual territories. Betscher was allowed to live in the convent buildings until his death in November 1811. He received a modest grave in the cemetery of the Brotherhood Church of St. Johann .

In the 1960s, the then Red Pastor Walter Stemmer arranged for the remains to be transferred to the St. Verena monastery church. The grave is located under the choir of the monastery church.

Appreciation

Mass robe with embroidered coat of arms of Nikolaus Betscher in the Maria Steinbach pilgrimage museum (2012)

Just like the elder Joseph Haydn and in keeping with his own environment, Nikolaus Betscher devoted himself primarily to church music. Many of his liturgical compositions have been handed down and prove that for Betscher, music was not an end in itself, but always served to praise God. In addition to the great Latin texts that Nikolaus Betscher set to music in masses, vespers, requiems and other genres, there is also German church music passed down by him, which is mainly limited to songs for special festivals and pilgrimages. 48 secular social songs against fashion , a sonata and 24 pieces for various instruments complement Betscher's compositional work. The tonal language itself is simple in its polyphony (the multi-part, interwoven structure of the movement), but contains rich melodic ideas that are successfully interwoven and thus lead to a homogeneous whole. Despite the regular harmonic movement that characterizes the individual pieces and identifies them as smooth, pleasing music, Betscher creates niches for himself through charming chromatic and harmonic modulations and reinterpretations, which he can fill with his musical personality and his own style. Nikolaus Betscher must have been an accomplished player of keyboard instruments, because his vocal movements (when exposed to the piano and organ) also lie very nicely "in the fingers", the development of the melody is based on the human hand and testifies to great joy in making music.

His compositions are in the musical field of the pre-classical . The proven friendship with Michael Haydn , Joseph Haydn's younger brother , who made a name for himself in the field of church music , can be heard. In 1791, he commissioned Haydn to compose a chorale manual for the monastery. The result is the antiphonarium ad usum chori Rothensis, which is now kept in the diocesan library in Rottenburg and was performed in 2009 by the local church choir St. Verena (Rot an der Rot) .

Betscher also devoted himself primarily to church music. His compositions show that he was musically up-to-date and that he can be counted among the outstanding composers of Upper Swabian monastic culture.

Works

Betscher's catalog raisonné includes a .:

• Masses (Missa in C, Missa brevis in G, Missa pastoritia)
• Te Deum in D major
• Magnificat in D
• Requiem in C minor
• Psalm 129 "De Profundis"
• Vesperae de Confessore in C major
• Songs ("lament and praises of reason" (1808); society songs "against fashion")
• sonata
• 24 pieces for different instruments

literature

• From the Baroque kingdom of heaven: Music from Upper Swabian monasteries; Andreas Heilinger (1746 - 1809), Salem - Isfrid Kayser (1712 - 1771), Marchtal - Nikolaus Betscher (1745 - 1811), red on the red . Ed .: Association for the Promotion of Music in Oberschwaben eV, Biberach, Riss. Texts Michael G. Kaufmann. Biberach: Association for the Promotion of Music in Upper Swabia, 2002
• Volker Himmelein (ed.): Old monasteries, new masters. The secularization in the German southwest 1803. Large state exhibition Baden-Württemberg 2003 ; Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003; ISBN 3-7995-0212-2 (exhibition catalog and essay volume)
• Benedikt Stadelhofer: Historia imperialis et exemti Collegii Rothensis in Suevia ; Augustae Vindelicorum 1787; Volume 1 and 2
• Hermann Weber: Nikolaus Betscher. Lindemanns Bibliothek, Info Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-88190-544-2

Web links

• Works by and about Nikolaus Betscher in the catalog of the German National Library

Commons : Nikolaus Betscher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• At the grave of the revered, gracious Nikolaus Betscher , grave song by Michael von Jung

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schwäbische Zeitung : Roter remember their last abbot on the weekend of August 9, 2012, accessed on August 9, 2012