Biography (read more)
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was born in Vaduz on 17 March 1839, one of eleven children. He was organist of the Vaduz parish church at seven and had a composition performed the following year, and studied with Philipp M. Schmutzer at Feldkirch from 1849. His father, who had opposed a musical career, relented in 1851 and let him enter the Munich Conservatorium, where he became professor of piano and composition shortly after graduating; when that institution was dissolved he became répétiteur at the Court Theatre, resigning in 1867. That year he married his former pupil, the poet Franziska von Hoffnaaß, who wrote the texts for much of his vocal music; they had no children, and she died on 31 December 1892 after a long illness. He died on 25 November 1901.
He was appointed court conductor in 1877, responsible for the music of the royal chapel in Munich, and when the present Munich Conservatorium was founded he became Royal Professor of organ and composition, a post he held for the rest of his life; poor health made him give up the court directorship in 1894. He was a formidable teacher, with Engelbert Humperdinck, Richard Strauss, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and a substantial contingent of Americans — Horatio Parker, George Whitefield Chadwick, Sidney Homer, Henry Holden Huss — among his pupils. His music, shaped by Bach above all and by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert and Brahms, runs to twelve masses, a Requiem, a Stabat Mater, a Christmas cantata and the motet Abendlied, alongside two operas, three singspiele, two symphonies, chamber music and a large body of organ works.
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