(James Garratt) Palestrina and The German Romantic

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PALESTRINA AND THE GERMAN

ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
Focusing on the reception of Palestrina, this bold interdisciplinary

study explains how and why the works of a sixteenth-century com-
poser came to be viewed as a paradigm for modern church music.
It explores the diverse ways in which later composers responded
to his works and style, and expounds a provocative new model
for interpreting compositional historicism. In addition to present-
ing insights into the works of Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Liszt,
the book offers new perspectives on the institutional, aesthetic and
ideological frameworks sustaining the cultivation of choral music
in this period. This is the first modern publication to provide an
overview and analysis of the relation between the Palestrina revival
and nineteenth-century composition, and it demonstrates that the
Palestrina revival was just as significant for nineteenth-century
culture as parallel movements in the other arts, such as the Gothic
revival.
J A M E S G A R R A T T is a lecturer in music at the National University

of Ireland, Maynooth, specializing in nineteenth-century German
music, aesthetics and culture. He is also active as a choral conductor.
CAMBRIDGE MUSICAL TEXTS AND MONOGRAPHS
General editors: John Butt and Laurence Dreyfus
This series has as its centres of interest the history of performance and the
history of instruments. It includes annotated translations of authentic
historical texts on music and monographs on various aspects of historical
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Bach Interpretation: Articulation Marks in the Sources
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Musica getutscht: A Treatise on Musical Instruments
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A History of Pianoforte Pedalling
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Music Education and the Art of Performance in the
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Introduction to the Art of Singing by Johann Friedrich Agricola
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One Hundred Years of Violoncello
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MUSICAL PERFORMANCE AND RECEPTION
General editors John Butt and Laurence Dreyfus
This series continues the aim of Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs
to publish books centred on the history of musical instruments and
the history of performance, while broadening the focus to include musical
reception in relation to performance and as a reflection of period
expectations and practices.
Published titles
John Butt
Playing with History: The Historical Approach to
Musical Performance
James Garratt
Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting
Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music
PALESTRINA AND THE
GERMAN ROMANTIC
IMAGINATION
Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music
JAMES GARRATT
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
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477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
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http://www.cambridge.org
© James Garratt 2004
First published in printed format 2002
ISBN 0-511-02917-9 eBook (Adobe Reader)

ISBN 0-521-80737-9 hardback
To my parents
Contents
Acknowledgements page xi
List of abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1 Historicism in nineteenth-century art, aesthetics
and culture 9
Originality: consensus or controversy? 9
‘On the benefit and detriment of history’ 12
Hegel, historicism and the ‘Decay and disintegration of Art’ 28
2 Romanticism and the problem of church music 36
Hoffmann and the Romantic idealization of Palestrina 36
Palestrina and the Romantic new mythology 47
Palestrina and absolute vocal music 52
Palestrina and the modern composer 57
3 The Protestant Palestrina revival 62
Old Italian music, Bildung and the German Singvereine 62
Quasi-liturgical music: Spohr and Nicolai 69
Mendelssohn and the Berlin Palestrina revival 78
Winterfeld and the historical Palestrina 93
Broader trends in performance and composition 98
Palestrina and the primacy of vocal music 109
4 The Catholic Palestrina revival 133
Tradition and reform 133
Witt and the Allgemeine Deutsche Cäcilien-Verein 144
Broader trends in composition: Palestrinianism 161
Completing Palestrina: Haberl, Haller and the Gesamtausgabe 168
Liturgical function and aesthetic value 173
Liszt, Bruckner and the Palestrina revival 181
ix
x Contents
5 Palestrina in the concert hall 214
Palestrina in secular and non-liturgical music 214
Wagner’s ‘Stabat mater’ and the poetics of arrangement 222
Liszt, Wagner and allusion 227
6 Interpreting the secondary discourse of
nineteenth-century music 241
Notes 261
Bibliography 296
Index 311
Acknowledgements
The Palestrina revival has been at the centre of my concerns for the best
part of a decade, and with this book I take leave – at least provisionally –
of this fascinating and extraordinarily rich topic. I would like to thank
everyone whose help and encouragement have sustained my work in
this field. I first began exploring the Palestrina revival via an undergra-
duate dissertation on the church music of Liszt and Bruckner (the sole
copy of which, thankfully, is in my possession), and must thank Roger
Parker, John Warrack and Susan Wollenberg for stimulating my interest
in this topic. Then, having moved from Oxford to the University of Wales
Cardiff, I wrote my Ph.D. thesis under the title of the present book; my
research would not have been possible without the financial support of
a Research Studentship from Cardiff University. I am very grateful to
everyone at Cardiff who gave advice and support, including Kenneth
Gloag, Natasha Page, Robin Stowell, Stephen Walsh, Peter Williams
and especially my doctoral supervisor, David Wyn Jones.
Although based on my Ph.D. dissertation, this book represents a sub-
stantial reworking of my initial ideas; I have also drawn on my more
recent work on historiography and performance practice. Some of the
new material has appeared in other publications: portions of chapters
3 and 6 were first published in my ‘Mendelssohn’s Babel: Romanticism
and the Poetics of Translation’, Music and Letters 80 (1999), 23–49; portions
of chapters 1 and 2 appeared in a different form in ‘Prophets Looking
Backwards: German Romantic Historicism and the Representation of
Renaissance Music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 125 (2000), 164–
204; and various passages of the book (in the age of ‘copy and paste’, it
is hard to be more specific) have appeared in ‘Performing Renaissance
Church Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Issues and Challenges
in the Study of Performative Reception’, Music and Letters 83 (2002),
187–236. I am grateful to the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische
Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, for permission to reproduce Philipp Veit’s
xi
xii Acknowledgements
Die Einführung der Künste in Deutschland durch das Christenthum (left panel:
Italia) as the jacket illustration. This idealized representation of Italy (by
an artist related to two of the protagonists in the book, Felix Mendelssohn
and Friedrich Schlegel), provides a rich and inspiring metaphor for the
present topic.
It was John Butt who suggested that I reshape my dissertation into a
book, and I am very grateful to him and to Penny Souster for the enthusi-
asm with which they have pursued this project. I must also thank my col-
leagues at the National University of Ireland Maynooth for their advice
and assistance, especially Barra Boydell, Patrick Devine and Gerard
Gillen; in addition, I acknowledge with gratitude the work of all the
librarians who have facilitated my research, especially the staff of the
Music Department Resource Centre at Cardiff and of the Russell and
John Paul II libraries at Maynooth. Most of all, I wish to thank Sinéad
Dempsey, who not only typeset the music examples at the very last
minute, but who – in its final stages – tolerated the book’s inexorable
encroachment into what seemed like every minute of our lives.
Abbreviations
AmZ Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

BR Atti del secondo convegno internazionale di studi Palestriniani:
Palestrina e la sua presenza nella musica e nella cultura europea dal suo
tempo ad oggi (Palestrina, 1986), ed. Lino Bianchi and Giancarlo
Rostirolla, Palestrina, 1991.
CK Caecilien Kalender
CU Der Caecilianismus: Anfänge – Grundlagen – Wirkungen.
Internationales Symposium zur Kirchenmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts,
ed. Hubert Unverricht, Tutzing, 1988, Eichstätter
Abhandlungen zur Musikwissenschaft 5.
CVC Vereins-Catalog. (Begonnen 1870.) Die von dem Referentencollegium
des Cäcilien-Vereines für alle Länder deutscher Zunge in den
‘Vereins-Catalog’ aufgenommenen kirchenmusikalischen oder auf
Kirchenmusik bezüglichen Werke enthaltend. (Supplement to FB.)
DC1 Franz Xaver Witt, Reden an den Cäcilien-Verein, ed. Christoph
Lickleder, Regensburg, 1983, Documenta Caeciliana 1.
DC2 Franz Xaver Witt, Das kgl. bayerische Cultus-Ministerium, die
bayerische Abgeordneten-Kammer und der Cäcilien-Verein. 1.
Abtheilung, ed. Christoph Lickleder, Regensburg, 1983,
Documenta Caeciliana 2.
DC3 Christoph Lickleder, Choral und figurierte Kirchenmusik in der Sicht
Franz Xaver Witts anhand der ‘Fliegenden Blätter’ und der ‘Musica
sacra’, Regensburg, 1988, Documenta Caeciliana 3.
FB Fliegende Blätter f ür katholische Kirchen-Musik
HÄ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ästhetik, ed. Friedrich
Bassenge, 2 vols., 2nd edn, Berlin and Weimar, 1965.
HSA Heinrich Heine Säkularausgabe, ed. Fritz Mende et al., 27 vols.,
Berlin and Paris, 1970– .
xiii
xiv List of abbreviations
HSW Johann Gottfried Herder, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard
Suphan, 33 vols., Berlin, 1877–99; repr. Hildesheim,
1967–8.
HW Die Ausbreitung des Historismus über die Musik: Aufsätze und
Diskussionen, ed. Walter Wiora, Regensburg, 1969, Studien
zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 14.
KFSA Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler et al.,
35 vols., Munich, 1958– .
KJb Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch
MGG Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie
der Musik, ed. Friedrich Blume, Kassel, 1949–68, 1973–9.
MGG2 Die Musik im Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie
der Musik begründet von Friedrich Blume, 2nd edn, ed.
Ludwig Finscher, Kassel and Stuttgart, 1994– .
MS Musica sacra. Beiträge zur Reform und Förderung der katholischen
Kirchen-Musik
NG The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols.,
ed. Stanley Sadie, London, 1980.
PGA Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrinas Werke. Erste kritisch durchgesehene
Gesammtausgabe, ed. Franz Xaver Haberl et al., 33 vols.,
Leipzig, 1862–1903.
PK1 Palestrina und die Kirchenmusik im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. I:
Palestrina und die Idee der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie im 19.
Jahrhundert: zur Geschichte eines kirchenmusikalischen Stilideals.
Bericht über ein Symposion in Frankfurt am Main, ed. Winfried
Kirsch, Regensburg, 1989.
PK3 Palestrina und die Kirchenmusik im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. III:
Palestrina und die klassische Vokalpolyphonie als Vorbild
kirchenmusikalischer Kompositionen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed.
Martina Janitzek and Winfried Kirsch, Kassel, 1995.
POC Le opere complete di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, ed. Raffaele
Casimiri et al., Rome, 1939–65, 1973– .
RW Religiöse Musik in nicht-liturgischen Werken von Beethoven bis
Reger, ed. Walter Wiora, Regensburg, 1978, Studien
zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 51.
ZkK Zeitschrift für katholische Kirchenmusik
Introduction
This study explores historicism in nineteenth-century German music,

focusing on the reception of Renaissance church music, in particular the
works of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–94). It explains how
and why the works of a sixteenth-century composer came to be viewed
as the paradigm of church music, assessing and interpreting the relation-
ship between the idealization of his style and contemporary composition.
The approach taken is threefold in nature. First, it confronts and offers
solutions to an aesthetic problem, establishing why nineteenth-century
composers sought to relate their works to the music of Palestrina and
how they were able to justify such relationships in the face of Romantic
postulates of originality, authenticity and contemporaneity in the art-
work. Second, it addresses a historical problem, examining the complex
differing natures of the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals, and
comparing the compositional responses to Palestrina by north German
Protestants and south German Catholics. Third, it addresses a theo-
retical problem, exploring how relationships to earlier musical styles
and materials in nineteenth-century compositions can best be discussed
and understood, proposing a new model for interpreting compositional
historicism.
The Palestrina revival – a phrase used throughout the study to indicate
both the reawakening of interest in Palestrina’s music and its emulation
by nineteenth-century composers – has not been entirely neglected by
modern musicology. Even so, outside Germany and Austria this topic
has had a marginal role within musical scholarship: it has often been
treated as an esoteric oddity, merely an episode in the epic tale of the
decline and fall of church music, of little or no relevance to the main-
stream of nineteenth-century music or modern musicology (the sole con-
tact that many anglophone readers will have had with the issues raised
by the Palestrina revival is through occasional, gnomic remarks in the
translated works of Carl Dahlhaus). In recent years, however, German
1
2 Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination
and Austrian scholars have devoted increasing attention to aspects of
the Palestrina revival: in particular, two collections of papers edited by
Winfried Kirsch have provided much information on the critical recep-
tion of Palestrina’s works in Germany, the liturgical backgrounds to the
Palestrina revival and the relation between it and the works of indi-
vidual composers (especially those associated with the Catholic revival
in Bavaria), while Peter Lüttig has explored the role of the Palestrina
style in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century counterpoint treatises.1 The
present study builds on and challenges ideas that have emerged in re-
cent German studies: in particular, the three problems outlined above
represent a response to what is absent or underdeveloped in previous
discussions of the topic.2 It is the first modern publication to provide an
overview and interpretation of the relation between the Palestrina revival
and nineteenth-century composition, and aims to establish the impor-
tance of this topic to the wider field of nineteenth-century music, thought
and culture; in short, I hope to demonstrate that the Palestrina revival
was just as significant as parallel trends in the other arts, most notably
the Gothic revival and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The picture that
emerges is complicated and multifaceted, a complexity that stands in a
paradoxical relationship with the self-conscious simplicity of much of the
music examined. Such contradictions, however, are fundamental to the
Palestrina revival and to nineteenth-century church music in general.
Of crucial importance in discussing the relation between Palestrina
and nineteenth-century music – both in terms of establishing the inten-
tions of composers who engaged with the ideal that Palestrina repre-
sented and in interpreting their works – is disentangling the meanings
and associations of the term Palestrina-Stil. My concern is primarily with
relationships to the style of Palestrina as evinced in his works, with
nineteenth-century perceptions of that style and with the compositional
reception of specific Renaissance pieces, not with the use of the abstract
and supposedly timeless rules of the ‘Palestrina style’. The employment of
such universal laws of composition is discussed here only in so far as they
were conceived as an accompaniment to and means of more accurately
replicating the style of Palestrina and his contemporaries. A central prob-
lem in previous discussions of this topic is that the distinction between
Palestrina’s style and the ‘Palestrina style’ is even less easily apprehended
in German than in English. While the English phrase ‘Palestrina style’
generally refers to the body of contrapuntal techniques that became, in
part through the mediation of Johann Joseph Fux (1660–1741), a timeless
corpus of rules applicable within a variety of styles, the term Palestrina-Stil
Introduction 3
can refer in nineteenth-century and more recent usage to a wider range
of idioms:
(i) The style of Palestrina as evinced in his works.
(ii) The style of Palestrina and his Roman contemporaries (from now
on, for the sake of clarity, ‘Palestrina’s language’), or of late sixteenth-
century choral music in general.
(iii) The language of Palestrina’s Roman successors or ‘school’, in par-
ticular Felice Anerio (c. 1560–1614), Giovanni Francesco Anerio
(c. 1567–1630), Francesco Soriano (c. 1548–1621) and Gregorio Allegri
(1582–1652).
(iv) The Palestrina tradition, the continuation in Italy of stile antico com-
position as an alternative liturgical idiom throughout the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
(v) The strenge Satz (‘strict style’) of counterpoint outlined in Fux’s Gradus
ad Parnassum (1725) and subsequent treatises.
(vi) The stylus a capella described in Fux’s Gradus, the combination of
components of the strenge Satz with later musical elements that re-
mained in use in south Germany and Austria well into the nineteenth
century.
In exploring the relationships between Palestrina and nineteenth-century
compositions, it is vital that these categories be differentiated, since
they have very different aesthetic implications. It will become clear not
only that these distinctions are ignored in some critical discussions, but
that some nineteenth-century composers relied on this ambiguity as a
means of justifying their cultivation of Palestrina’s language.3
An appreciation of these distinctions is essential in discussing the aes-
thetic problems raised by nineteenth-century church music: crucially,
the question of how composers were able to reconcile the cultivation of
Palestrina’s language with contemporary aesthetic norms. An adherence
to the rules of the strenge Satz need not, of course, result in the impera-
tives of originality, authenticity and contemporaneity being contravened;
similarly, the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella does not suggest
the intention to replicate or even emulate Palestrina. But the presence of
compositions that were intended to replicate Palestrina’s language de-
mands that the aesthetic frameworks underpinning them be scrutinized.
It cannot be assumed that such compositions were somehow exempted
from these imperatives, that church music was not subject to aesthetic
criteria operative in other fields. In addition, the notion that such repli-
cation was justified by a continued adherence to otherwise outmoded
aesthetic conceptions – eighteenth-century doctrines of imitation – does
not provide a plausible explanation of the compositions of the Palestrina
revival.
Chapter 1 provides a broad-based introduction to nineteenth-century
historicism and to the ideational foundations underpinning the criti-
cal, historiographical and compositional reception of early music. In
idealizing Palestrina and elevating his works as a model for modern
church music, critics and musicians deployed a complex range of ideas
derived from many extra-musical sources. As a consequence, it is vital
to locate compositional historicism within broader artistic trends. While
in Chapter 1 the relationship between the historicism and originality in
nineteenth-century art is explored in general terms, the ideas discussed
here are applied more directly to the Palestrina revival in Chapter 2, via
an examination of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s essay ‘Alte und neue Kirchen-
musik’. The purpose here is not to treat the essay to a minute exegesis,
but rather to use it as a point of access to the views of the wider body
of writers who contributed to the idealization of Palestrina. Hoffmann’s
complex answer to the question of how modern composers should res-
pond to this model provides a point of entry to the diverse types of
compositional response examined subsequently.
The second problem outlined above concerns the differing natures of
the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals. Hitherto, the majority
of discussions of this topic have approached it via the works of a single
composer, or by concentrating solely on the Catholic Palestrina revival.
Neither approach is capable of doing justice to the complexities of the
phenomenon as a whole: any attempt to interpret the ramifications of
the idealization of Palestrina for nineteenth-century music must take
into account the activities of both Protestant and Catholic composers,
since to fail to do this would result in a distorted picture of the revival.
At the opposite extreme, to attempt to provide an exhaustive historical
survey of the revival in Germany and Austria would run the risk, given
its widely pervasive nature, of becoming drowned in minutiae of little
interest to the non-specialist. In striving to provide a more balanced
approach, this study does not attempt to present an encyclopaedic sur-
vey of the revival in Germany and Austria, or undertake thoroughgoing
comparisons with similar trends elsewhere in Europe (most notably in
France and Italy).4 Rather, it focuses on the high points of the Protestant
and Catholic revivals: in north Germany, primarily Berlin, from the
mid-1840s to the mid-1860s; and in south Germany and Austria, prima-
rily Regensburg, from c. 1870 to c. 1890. Further, since it is impossible to
explore the relevant works of all composers active within these periods,
Introduction 5
the discussions focus primarily on Protestant composers associated with
the Berlin Domchor and Singakademie (especially Mendelssohn, Nicolai,
Grell and Bellermann), and Catholics associated with the Allgemeine
Deutsche Cäcilien-Verein in south Germany and Austria (especially Witt,
Haller, Liszt and Bruckner). With regard to genre, the liturgical music
discussed is in general restricted to motets and other single-movement
compositions. For both Catholic and Protestant musicians, the repli-
cation or emulation of Palestrina was, in part, associated with specific
seasons of the church year; since motet texts are explicitly linked with par-
ticular seasons and feasts they provide a means of establishing whether,
within one centre or composer’s output, the cultivation of Palestrina was
universal or seasonally restricted. Furthermore, it is in such pieces that
the tension between aesthetic and functional imperatives fundamental
to the Palestrina revival is most pronounced.
Although the two central chapters are devoted primarily to examining
and comparing compositional responses to Palestrina, and to exploring
how individual composers justified the use of earlier artistic materials, the
broader implications of these works are also discussed. Each subsection
introduces either an issue that was crucial in encouraging compositional
historicism, or one of the features that distinguishes the Palestrina revival
from similar contemporary movements, or a problematic factor char-
acterizing the reception of Renaissance music. The Palestrina revival
touches on a huge range of aesthetic, historical and theoretical issues:
the problems surrounding music and moral education, objective versus
subjective historicism, music and politics, value judgement, the sublime,
the process of secularization in nineteenth-century society, and many
others. It should be borne in mind that the discussions of these topics
approach them from the perspective of compositional historicism, and
are not intended as comprehensive interpretations of these wider issues
in and of themselves.
Chapter 3 explores the institutional and ideological frameworks sus-
taining the Protestant Palestrina revival. In addition to discussing how
the ethical concerns of the north German choral societies encouraged
composers to disregard aesthetic criteria, it explores the importance of
quasi-liturgical music as a vehicle for the emulation of Palestrina, exem-
plified in the works of Nicolai and Spohr. At the heart of this chapter is
an exploration of Mendelssohn’s engagement with old Italian music; his
output serves to epitomize the aesthetic and stylistic tensions present in
church music from the first half of the nineteenth century, and illustrates
how composers and their critics wrestled with the problem of authenticity.
In the 1840s and 1850s, perceptions of Palestrina’s language gradually
changed as a result of the proliferation of editions of Renaissance music,
while ideological factors encouraged Protestant reformers to shift their
attention to German music of the Reformation era. These developments
are explored through a consideration of the views of the historian Carl
von Winterfeld and through a survey of the repertory of the Berlin
Domchor. Finally, this chapter discusses how the emulation of Palestrina
was stimulated by the rejection of aesthetic norms: the activities of Grell
and Bellermann represent a counter not only to the idea of absolute
music, but to aesthetic autonomy.
Chapter 4 explores the diverse ideological, liturgical and aesthetic fac-
tors animating the Catholic Palestrina revival. In contrast to the histori-
cist revival of Renaissance music in north Germany, the activities of south
German musicians exhibit a tension between tradition and reform: in the
first half of the century, the revival and emulation of Palestrina coexisted
with the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella. The central focus
is the work of the Allgemeine Deutsche Cäcilien-Verein, the most influential
nineteenth-century movement for church music reform. In addition to
examining the compositions and polemical writings of its first president,
Franz Xaver Witt, the tensions within this organization are discussed: of
particular interest are the views of those, such as Haller, who advocated
the literal replication of Palestrina’s language. The chapter culminates
with a discussion of the wider influence of the movement, examining
the relation between the most significant composers of Catholic church
music – Liszt and Bruckner – and the Palestrina revival.
While Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned solely with liturgical and quasi-
liturgical music, the wider ramifications of the idealization of Palestrina
for nineteenth-century composition are discussed in Chapter 5. Here,
the problems involved in interpreting references to Palestrina’s music or
language in secular and non-liturgical religious works are discussed. In
addition to delineating the specific associations that such references can
access, works by Mendelssohn, Loewe, Liszt and Wagner serve as test
cases for exploring their function and significance.
The third problem addressed – how relationships to Palestrina’s lan-
guage in nineteenth-century compositions can fruitfully be interpreted –
is discussed empirically throughout the study, and a framework for
exploring such relationships is formulated in the final chapter. It will
become apparent that the traditional concepts with which this topic is
discussed, imitation and historicism, prove inadequate for understanding
the complex varieties of stylistic pluralism that are encountered. On the
Introduction 7
other hand, while critical interpretations of this repertory need not be
wholly couched around the intentions of the composers concerned, to
ignore the historical and aesthetic context of the works by approaching
them via critical ideas conceived around later music or other art forms
will not prove satisfactory either. Kevin Korsyn, for example, has ap-
proached the music of Brahms from such a perspective: ‘What appears
modern – or rather postmodern – in Brahms is his recruitment of a
plurality of musical languages. By mobilising a number of historically
differentiated discourses, Brahms becomes “both the historian and the
agent of his own language”. Thus he knew the very modern anxiety . . . of
having to choose an orientation among languages.’5 In Korsyn’s analysis,
Brahms’s compositional confrontation with earlier musical languages is
an act of clairvoyance, a sign of ‘the extent to which Romanticism an-
ticipated our problems’.6 But viewing concern with and employment
of historical discourses as something peculiar to modernism downplays
the importance, even centrality, of stylistic pluralism to Romanticism, a
phenomenon clearly apparent in the repertory discussed here. While it
could well be argued that one justification for studying how nineteenth-
century composers were able to use the music of the past and reconcile
themselves with such use is its relevance to the issues and problems of our
postmodern age, it will become clear that the reverse is not necessarily
the case. The stylistic pluralism in the works examined is the product
of the specific context under discussion; this cannot be disregarded in
interpreting this repertory.
Finally, it is necessary to justify the central premiss behind this
study: the conviction that studying the relation between sixteenth- and
nineteenth-century music can contribute significantly to our understand-
ing of both. This is not the place for a thoroughgoing discussion of
the aesthetics of reception or of competing reception theories; it would,
however, invite misunderstanding if some fundamental issues are not ren-
dered explicit. The main justification for discussing the engagement of
one group of musicians with another is, as with any study of such distant
or remote reception, the light that it sheds on the recipient. Accordingly,
it will be evident that this study is intended primarily as a contribution to
our understanding of nineteenth-century music, aesthetics and culture.
But a further crucial task for reception history is its potential for mediat-
ing between past and present perceptions of a body of art; that is, its use
as a means of understanding present-day conceptions and interrogating
their foundations. Indeed, any discussion of the analytical, critical or
historiographical reception of Renaissance and Baroque compositions
will broach matters fundamental to how we discuss them today. In ad-
dition to acknowledging the potential of reception studies as a means
of redefining the relation between nineteenth-century and modern con-
ceptions, it is vital to recognize the extent to which these matters impinge
on our perceptions of Palestrina, his works and his place in history. It is
often still contended that the reception of sixteenth-, seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century compositions in the nineteenth century need bear
no relation to our engagement with this music: that it is the task of the
music historian to strip away the distortions and misconceptions accrued
in the course of history. But instead of viewing these successive responses
to Palestrina and his music as redundant detritus, to be stripped away
in order to access original truths, we should recognize that his cultural
significance and the meanings of his works subsist in a dynamic inter-
play between past and present. We should recognize – following Hegel’s
dictum that ‘every work of art is a dialogue with all who confront it’ –
that these successive responses ineluctably constitute part of the essence
of his music.7
1
Historicism in nineteenth-century art,

aesthetics and culture
ORIGINALITY: CONSENSUS OR CONTROVERSY?
The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and Palestrina’s

music presents an intractable aesthetic problem: how were composers
and their audiences able to reconcile the compositional use of the music
of the past with the Romantic imperatives of originality, authenticity and
contemporaneity? This discussion approaches the wide range of relation-
ships to Palestrina that are distinguished in the rest of the study in more
general terms: here, the implications of such relationships for these three
postulates – and thus for aesthetic value – are more important than their
specific configurations. But, given the existence of compositions whose
totality is defined by their relation to Palestrina’s language, it is neces-
sary to explore contemporary aesthetic frameworks which not only justify
the partial or transformed use of historical styles in modern art, but also
legitimize or condone the literal replication of an earlier style. While the
composers discussed in later chapters justified their engagement with
the music of the distant past in a variety of ways, one factor is constant:
they conceived the problem of compositional historicism not in isolation,
but in the context of broader artistic trends. Accordingly, in exploring
how art historians, critics and philosophers confronted artistic histori-
cism, the aim is not to construct a spurious Zeitgeist as a background to
contemporary musical activities. Rather, it is to seek provisional solutions
to this aesthetic problem from a wide range of sources, solutions which
will be refined subsequently in relation to specifically musical debates.
The centrality of the concept of originality to post-Enlightenment
aesthetics is indisputable. This concept – uniting the categories of in-
dividuality, novelty and spontaneity – stands diametrically opposed to
imitation and copying: the artist is permitted to learn from, and to be
inspired by the works of the past ‘by a sort of noble contagion’, but
must avoid at all costs any kind of ‘sordid theft’.1 In describing the
9
status of originality in Romanticism, Leonard B. Meyer comments that
‘geniuses are natural innovators (the “Walters”, not the “Beckmessers”,
of the world). And this innate proclivity was encouraged by an ideology
that not only placed a premium on originality and change, but highly
prized individual expression.’2 But to speak of a Romantic ideology of
originality is misleading, if it implies that all contemporary writers, artists
and composers subscribed to a monolithic and unquestioned doctrine.
In early nineteenth-century Germany, conceptions of originality were
the subject of debate rather than consensus.
The ideas of Schopenhauer and Goethe represent two different
stances regarding originality, and a consideration of their views not only
reveals the wide divergence of these opinions but clarifies the issues invol-
ved. Schopenhauer emphasizes the difference between the genius who,
although steeped in tradition is cut off from the world and creates the
original, and the imitator, who – being dependent on the achievements
of others rather than his own instincts – lifts elements of previous works
whole, producing nothing more than collections of undigested material.
The genius, in the moment of inspiration, is able to surrender himself
to the representation of the archetypal forms of nature, becoming ‘the
clear mirror of the inner nature of the world’.3 In contrast, the artist
not possessing the gift of genius can only represent what he has earlier
experienced in concrete form, in nature or in art.4 For Schopenhauer,
there is seemingly no middle ground between originality and imita-
tion; artists lacking the inspiration and spontaneity of genius inevitably
produce reflective, contrived fabrications:
Imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus [imitators, the slavish mob] . . . note
what pleases and affects in genuine works, make this clear to themselves, fix it in
the concept, and hence in the abstract, and then imitate it, openly or in disguise,
with skill and intention. Like parasitic plants, they suck their nourishment from
the works of others; and like polyps, take on the colour of their nourishment.
Indeed, we could even carry the comparison farther, and assert that they are
like machines which mince very fine and mix up what is put into them, but can
never digest it, so that the constituent elements of others can always be found
again, and picked out and separated from the mixture. Only the genius, on the
other hand, is like the organic body that assimilates, transforms and produces.5
Schopenhauer’s conception of originality, while influential and indica-
tive of the changing status of the artwork in the early nineteenth century,
was not shared by all his contemporaries. Goethe repeatedly dismissed
the idea of originality, arguing that no artist could rely solely on instinct
and inspiration: ‘Even the greatest genius would not get far if he wanted
Historicism in nineteenth-century art, aesthetics and culture 11
to owe everything to his innermost self.’6 The idea that the artist can
divorce himself from other artworks and produce a work unconsciously
from the gift of genius is absurd, and ‘so-called creation out-of-oneself ’
(Aus-sich-Schöpfen) produces merely ‘false originals and mannerists’.7
Rather, every artist is a composite being indebted to a multiplicity of
sources, and greatness can proceed only from the ‘appropriation of other
people’s treasures’ (Aneignung fremder Schätze).8 The inevitability of the
author being influenced by his predecessors makes it ridiculous for critics
to attempt to discredit him by criticizing his dependence on their works:
‘It is truly ridiculous’, said Goethe; ‘people might just as well ask a well-fed man
about the beef, mutton and pork which he ate and which gave him strength.
We probably have our own talents, but we owe our development to a thousand
effects of a great world upon us, from which we pick up what we can and what
suits us . . .’.
‘Anyway’, continued Goethe, ‘the world is now so old, and so many significant
men have for thousands of years lived and thought, that little new can be found
and said anymore.’9
The gulf separating Goethe and Schopenhauer, both of whom ex-

pressed these opinions at roughly the same time, is sufficient to confirm
that no unified conception of originality existed in the early nineteenth
century. Further, the complex ways in which such views will be seen to
interact reflects not merely two coexisting mentalities (it would be illusory
to label these positions ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’), but a plethora of com-
peting ideologies. From the perspective of the compositional emulation
of Palestrina, it will become clear that commentators on church music
frequently echoed Goethe’s equation of originality with mere novelty
and mannerism, a gambit that served to buttress the conviction that
it was subservient to other concerns. But if the concept of originality
could thus be diluted and disregarded, the allied imperatives of authen-
ticity and contemporaneity could not be dismissed so readily. In discuss-
ing originality, both Goethe and Schopenhauer formulate their ideas
around adjacent authors and works: they do not distinguish between,
on the one hand, the relation between an author and his contempo-
raries or immediate precursors, and on the other cases where the texts
involved are not chronologically immediate or where the earlier author
has had no significant prior relation to the cultural milieu of the later
one. But while such a distinction is seemingly not important to the con-
cept of originality, the ‘warping’ of history represented by relationships
between nineteenth-century works and the art of the distant past raises
its own aesthetic problems. Such relationships risk contravening impera-
tives which, although often formulated in nebulous terms, were of crucial
importance throughout the nineteenth century: the demand that, to be of
value, a work must be the authentic expression of its author’s convictions
and of the world-view of his age, an authenticity that must be reflected
in the contemporaneity of its forms. It is necessary, therefore, to explore
how authors articulated these criteria in discussing the engagement of
modern artists with the art of the past, and to establish the margins within
which such relationships could be legitimized.
‘ON THE BENEFIT AND DETRIMENT OF HISTORY’
The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and the music

of the distant past cannot be considered in isolation from the rise in
historical consciousness at the beginning of the century and its subse-
quent development. In a provocative interpretation of this paradigm
shift, Michel Foucault argues that as a result of the new awareness of the
historicity of language, objects and man himself, Western civilization was
‘dehistoricized’; a hitherto uniform and essentially unchanging inheri-
tance shattered into a thousand alien pasts; artefacts came to symbol-
ize fragmentation and transience rather than unity and permanence.10
History becomes a strategy of retrieval and repossession: the cherishing
of objects from the past represents an attempted return to origins, an
endeavour to deny the pastness of the past by asserting the pastness of
the present.11
Both nineteenth-century and modern commentators have often ap-
proached the development of this new historical consciousness – the
rise of historicism – by dividing it into two interacting strands, a
method that provides a useful provisional strategy for interpreting
the complex and seemingly contradictory nature of the relationships
between Romanticism and the art of the distant past. These two strands
have been characterized by Walter Wiora as retrospective and relativistic
historicism: on the one hand, ‘increased devotion to earlier times and
their gifts to posterity, for example, the cultivation and copying of varied
styles of old music’ and, on the other hand, the belief that all phenomena
are essentially historical and determined by the circumstances in which
they arose.12 Similarly, Stephen Bann contrasts the subjective ‘desire for
history’ that retrospective historicism represents with the development
of a more objectified, relativistic historical consciousness that emerged
at the same time.13 The tension between these two positions is clear:
while objective historiography sought to represent ‘how it really was’,
it neglected the demands of those whose prime concern was to use the
past as a guide to ‘how it really should be’. It will become evident that
this opposition was a decisive element within Romantic representations
of Palestrina, in that the desire for a malleable myth and source for
compositional renewal interacted uneasily with the impulse towards the
faithful representation of the past.
The relation between these two forms of historicism was addressed
by the music historian Philipp Spitta and, more famously, by Nietzsche.
Spitta’s analysis, in ‘Kunstwissenschaft und Kunst’ (1883), seeks sharply
to distinguish the academic treatment of history from other approaches
to the past, and to disentangle the history of art from contemporary
artistic concerns. Spitta insists that the value of historical scholarship
is not dependent on its potential for reforming contemporary art: the
historian’s task is to seek after truth through the piecemeal reconstruction
of the past, and it is an abuse of history when ‘historical points of view
are elevated and are supposed to serve as criteria for judgement, where
only aesthetic criteria have legitimacy’.14 While he acknowledges that
a crucial part of the historian’s role is the recovery of old artworks for
the present, the scholar must not attempt to dictate present-day artistic
practices through recourse to history: ‘Rules which were authoritative in
the past are not as a consequence still important for the future. The oft-
used phrase “the historian is a prophet looking backwards” [ein rückwärts
gewandter Prophet] is a dangerous half-truth.’15
The most compelling nineteenth-century analysis of the relation
between these forms of historicism, that of Nietzsche, presents a wholly
different perspective. In Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie f ür das Leben
(1874) he depicts subjective historicism as being of benefit to modern life
if not depended on excessively, while it is objective historicism, the treat-
ment of history as a quasi-scientific intellectual pursuit, that is the deviant,
detrimental offshoot from true historical perception. Nietzsche describes
the burden that the historical orientation of his and the preceding two
generations has placed on modern life and creativity; this is the result of
the failure to use history as a means of serving present needs: ‘Certainly
we need history. But our need for history is quite different from that of
the spoiled idler in the garden of knowledge, even if he in his refinement
looks down on our rude and graceless requirements and needs. . . . Only
so far as history serves life will we serve it.’16 The subordination of history
to present-day culture is impossible if history is elevated to the status of
a science, since the need to maintain the dynamics of historical research
and writing results in modern life no longer being ‘the sole ruler and
master of the knowledge of the past’.17 Scholarly objectivity ‘neuters’ the
use of history for life; Nietzsche characterizes objective historians as a
‘race of eunuchs’ guarding the ‘great historical world-harem’, whose vain
pretension to being servants of truth renders them impotent in serving
the present.18 In a typically oracular utterance, he sums up the mistaken
perspective of the objective historian: ‘Overproud European of the nine-
teenth century, you are mad! Your knowledge does not complete nature
but only kills your own. Just measure your height as a knower by your
depth as a doer.’19
In opposition to objective historicism, Nietzsche discusses three ways
in which history may be used to enhance the understanding of the present
and to serve contemporary needs: ‘it belongs to him in so far as he is
active and striving, in so far as he preserves and venerates, and in so
far as he suffers and is in need of liberation’.20 These three kinds of
history – monumental, antiquarian, and critical – constitute the possible
subjective relationships to the past that he perceived in contemporary
life, and are capable of being both of benefit and of detriment to it.
Monumental history serves the present by providing modern man with
a classicizing perspective, forming a chain linking mankind’s highest
cultural and artistic achievements: it provides inspiration through giving
the knowledge that greatness was once possible and may be possible
again.21 Instead of the distortion that arises through the monumental
way of viewing the past, antiquarian history views all past events and
artefacts as equally significant, but is concerned solely with preserving
life, not with generating it.22 In contrast, critical history provides a means
of ‘judging and annihilating a past’ in order to create a new present.23
While, for Nietzsche, these three perspectives combine to form a
complete picture of contemporary subjective historicism, his categories,
taken individually, provide valuable critical tools for assessing the impact
of successive developments in German historicist thought on aesthetics
and criticism. As will be shown in the next chapter, the appropriation
of the ideas, constructions and terminology of earlier art and literary
historiography – exemplified here by the writings of Johann Joachim
Winckelmann, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and
the Romantic circle – played a crucial role in facilitating and shaping the
idealization of the church music of the past, and in encouraging the eleva-
tion of Palestrina. Crucially, Nietzsche’s tripartite scheme also provides a
means of elucidating shifting attitudes towards both the use of historical
elements in modern art and its aesthetic implications.
Monumental history
The twin strands of retrospective and relativistic historicism emerged in
German art history in Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums
(1764), a work whose ideas and language, transmitted both directly
and indirectly, resonate throughout nineteenth-century descriptions of
Renaissance music. This study was considered in the early nineteenth
century to have marked the birth of a new historical sense and outlook;
Winckelmann represents ancient Greek artworks as characteristic pro-
ducts of their cultural context, and describes them in terms of a succession
of styles rather than merely as timeless aesthetic objects. The greatest
significance of Winckelmann’s work for the nineteenth century, and the
factor which most clearly links him to Nietzsche’s monumental history,
is his initiation of a tradition of historical writing whose primary justi-
fication was its relevance to perceived problems in contemporary art:
he viewed his history as ‘no mere narration of successive periods and
developments’, but rather ‘an attempt to produce a didactic system
[Lehrgebäude]’, a means of freeing contemporary art from the inauthentic
restrictions of French neo-classicism.24 Winckelmann’s historical outlook
reflects a critical uneasiness with his own time; he contemplates the dec-
line of art, in a description much alluded to by the Romantics, ‘as a
woman on the seashore gazes after her departing lover without hope of
seeing him again; her weeping eyes follow him into the distance and be-
lieve they can see the shadow of her beloved on the sails of his ship’.25 By
idealizing the art of ancient Greece and placing the zenith of artistic per-
fection in the distant past, he decisively contradicted Aufklärung notions
of linear artistic progress, fulfilling Nietzsche’s description of those for
whom ‘monumental history is the disguise in which the hatred of the
mighty and the great of their time parades as satisfied admiration of the
mighty and great of past ages’.26
In spite of his longing for the past, Winckelmann’s history is orientated
around present-day reform: as Herder saw it, his conception of ancient
Greek and Renaissance art was entirely determined by the desire to
awaken a new Raphael among modern German artists.27 For Nietzsche,
the insistence of monumental historiography on elevating illustrious
models as exemplars for imitation results in a distortion of the past:
those portions of the past considered unworthy of modern attention are
ignored or vilified, while that which remains is ‘reinterpreted according
to aesthetic criteria and thus brought closer to fiction [ freien Erdichtung]’.28
Nietzsche considers that monumental historiography fictionalizes history
by forcing ‘the individuality of the past into a universal form’, in which ‘all
sharp corners and lines are broken off for the sake of conformity’.29 This
notion of fictionalization provides a means of approaching two key con-
cepts that early nineteenth-century commentators on church music ap-
propriated from art historiography: the idea of a golden age in the distant
past and the organic model of narrative construction. Winckelmann’s de-
ployment of these concepts has a firmly didactic role; he presents a triadic
historical scheme consisting of a golden age, its decline and fall, and a
third stage, the hope of a future art and culture revivified through a return
to earlier artistic principles. This basic scheme is underpinned by one
of the most elemental modes of narrative emplotment: the organic model,
the tracing of the successive stages of artistic development by analogy with
the processes of organic life. For Winckelmann, a history of art should
teach its origin, growth, development and fall; using this basic plan of the
life cycle of an organism, he traces the successive stylistic developments
of ancient Greek art.30 The older style lasted until Phidias: it was forceful
but harsh, powerful but lacking in grace, and was hidebound by rules
that distanced it from nature. Art flourished with Phidias and his contem-
poraries; while traits of the older style remain, the ‘great and lofty style’
is freer and more sublime. The age of Praxiteles, Lysippus and Apelles is
characterized by a greater degree of gracefulness and agreeableness, but
the ‘beautiful style’, maintained by their school, descended in the hands
of imitators into mannerism and eclecticism, leading gradually to the
fall of art. Winckelmann employs a similar emplotment in his treatment
of Renaissance painting, and in so doing reveals the malleable nature of
the organic model:
The fate of art in more recent times is basically the same as that of antiquity with
regard to periods: likewise, four chief changes occurred, but with the difference
that art did not gradually decline from its peak as with the Greeks, but rather
suddenly fell back again . . . as soon as it had reached the highest possible level
of perfection in two great men. The style was dry and stiff up until Michelangelo
and Raphael; with these two men the re-establishment of art reached its peak;
following an interregnum ruled by bad taste came the style of the imitators: the
Caraccis, their school, and their followers, and this extended up to Carl Maratta.31
Winckelmann’s organic construction serves two purposes, both of

which were crucial to nineteenth-century representations of Renaissance
music. He characterizes it as a universal model for art history, an in-
evitable natural law whose existence may be presumed in individual
cases even in the absence of evidence; it provides a means of creating a
coherent picture in spite of ‘the shortcomings of our knowledge of ancient
art’.32 Just as important, it serves a didactic purpose, by directing prac-
tising artists towards those beautiful monuments which are most suit-
able for ‘contemplation and imitation’.33 The artists of Winckelmann’s
second golden age, the Italian Renaissance, owed their success entirely
to having learned ‘good taste from its source’, and Raphael attained
his high level of excellence through imitating the relics of antiquity.34
For Winckelmann, ‘the only way for us to become great, and even, if
it is possible, inimitable, is by imitating the ancients.’35 Greek artworks
achieve their status as models for modern art because of their techni-
cal perfection and good taste, not primarily as a result of their venerable
status as relics of a golden age; modern artists and connoisseurs must free
themselves from the prejudice that the only benefit to be gained from
imitating them emanates from the ‘rust of antiquity’ (den Moder der Zeit ).36
Winckelmann does not consider that modern painting can obtain the
chief qualities of ancient Greek and Renaissance art – ‘noble simplicity’
(edle Einfalt) and ‘calm grandeur’ (stille Größe) – merely by being inspired
by it or emulating its spirit; the only way to achieve these qualities is by
transferring the techniques of Greek sculpture directly to modern art.37
It will become clear that the Romantic idealization of Palestrina was,
in some ways, related to the classicizing dimension of Winckelmann’s
monumental historicism, to his view that the value of ancient artworks
lies not in their pastness but in the universal norms of perfection which
their techniques epitomize. It should not be assumed, however, that
the historical origin of Palestrina’s music and language was immaterial
for their nineteenth-century revival. For Dahlhaus, ‘the Palestrina style,
though historical in origin, was extrapolated from his work and placed
outside history. Combining textual intelligibility, a “pure” texture, and
a “seraphic tone”, it was an ideal that burst the bonds of history . . . a
musical verity that would remain true regardless of when it happened to
be uttered’.38 The problematic linguistic identity in German, discussed
earlier, between the style of Palestrina as evinced in his works and the
abstracted Palestrina style is readily apparent here. This identity encour-
ages the view that the Romantic idealization of that language exclusively
reflects a classicizing impulse, the honouring of universal compositional
rules. It will become clear, however, that while the nineteenth-century
cultivation of the Palestrina style can represent an adherence to time-
honoured norms, the appeal to Palestrina’s language is a historicist
‘return to origins’. Winckelmann advocated the imitation of the Greeks as
a means of revealing their true nature, which for him had been obscured
by the prescriptions and proscriptions of neo-classical poetics. Similarly,
the shift in perceptions of Palestrina in the early nineteenth century re-
flects the impulse to reveal the true nature of his language, as distinct
from the contrapuntal abstraction of the Palestrina style codified by Fux.
Winckelmann’s notion that the rejuvenation of modern art requires
not merely the emulation of the spirit of Greek art but the imitation of
its techniques raises problems fundamental to the Palestrina revival.
This notion reflects the continued flourishing in the eighteenth century
of a mimetic model of artistic production, whose tenets were justified
by the belief that to imitate illustrious works of art was analogous to
imitating nature. The replication of Palestrina’s language in nineteenth-
century compositions might seem initially to represent the perpetuation
of this model. For Dahlhaus, church music was exempt in the nineteenth
century from the aesthetic criteria applicable in other fields of compo-
sition, an exemption which granted legitimacy to imitation.39 The idea
that imitation in liturgical compositions could be legitimized by aesthetic
concepts outmoded in other fields cannot be dismissed entirely, but it will
be seen that, in general, church music was not exempted from the postu-
late of originality by virtue of its functionality. The idea of such an exemp-
tion would have granted church music the possibility of attaining value
not in aesthetic terms, but solely in relation to the success with which it
fulfils its function. Not all liturgical pieces were considered to be merely
functional by their composers, and even those that were regarded in this
light risked being condemned by contemporaries as ‘copies’ or ‘slavish
imitations’. Church music as a whole was not exempted from aesthetic
criteria, and consequently the idea that the cultivation of Palestrina’s
language in the nineteenth century represents a continuation of earlier
mimetic conceptions is not unproblematic. Certainly, it does not suffice
on its own as a means of explaining the intentions of Romantic composers
whose works are related to this language.
Antiquarian history
The impact of Winckelmann’s organicism and embryonic relativism is
evident from Goethe’s Italienische Reise: ‘Through Winckelmann we were
urged to separate the various periods and to recognize the different
styles used by different peoples, and to see how they gradually emerged
over the course of time and finally ended in decadence.’40 It was these
aspects of Winckelmann’s writings, rather than his monumentalist con-
ception of Greek art, that were most significant for eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century thought; they provided a means for reassessing the
art of other peoples and periods, crucially the art of the Middle Ages.
Herder, while acclaiming Winckelmann as ‘the best historian of ancient
art’, condemned the didactic thrust of his monumental classicism; for
Herder, the belief that the principles of classical art represent univer-
sal norms is wholly unjustifiable: ‘What legitimacy have the decrees of
praise and rebuke which we shower on all the world as a result of being
besotted with a favourite people of antiquity!’41 Since Winckelmann’s
eye was ‘formed by the Greeks, and his spirit filled with the Greek ideal
of beauty’, he was unable to appraise the art of other nations and periods
on its own terms; Herder considers such prejudices to be omnipresent
in Enlightenment Germany, in that all art that fails to exhibit the Greek
rules of beauty is condemned as barbaric: ‘a Greek temple must there-
fore for us be valued more highly than a Gothic church, Greek beauty
more than Chinese beauty, Greek wisdom in literature and history more
than the passionate enthusiasm [Schwärmerei] of the Arabs’.42
Herder’s relativism provided a means of reassessing medieval and
Renaissance art on what he saw as its own terms, rather than subject-
ing it to criteria derived from classical antiquity. The reappraisal of
Shakespeare, for example, required the realization that the standards
of classical and neo-classical drama were not universal norms, an idea
whose radical novelty can be seen in Herder’s emphatic repetition:
‘In Greece drama developed in a way that it could not develop in the
north. In Greece it was what it could not be in the north. In the north,
therefore, it is not and should not be what it was in Greece.’43 Similarly,
Goethe’s ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’ (1772), the essay which initiated the
German Gothic revival, is reliant on the emancipation of his critical per-
ceptions from the norms of neo-classical taste. Goethe writes that on first
visiting Strasbourg Minster, his head was full of ‘universal perceptions of
good taste’:
Under the heading Gothic, as in a dictionary entry, I had drawn together all
the synonymous misunderstandings concerning the ill-defined, the disordered,
unnatural, cobbled together, patched-up, and overcrowded which had ever come
to my mind. With no more wisdom than a people which terms barbaric all the
world that is strange to it, I termed Gothic whatever did not fit my system.44
Nietzsche expressly identifies Goethe’s interest in Strasbourg Minster

as an example of antiquarian history. Nietzsche’s antiquarian historian
reverences the past as a means of gaining contentment with his surround-
ings and a sense of deep-rootedness; Goethe’s empathetic identification
with the architect of the Minster, Erwin von Steinbach, allowed him
to disregard the precepts of neo-classicism and view the architecture of
the distant past as ancestral: ‘in the tempest of his [Goethe’s] emotions
the historical cloud cover spread between them tore, and for the first time
he saw the German work again “exerting its influence out of a strong
robust German soul”.’45 But while the contentment and security that
antiquarian history can provide are for Nietzsche a positive service to
life, antiquarianism also has negative aspects which greatly contrast it
with classicizing monumentalism. While antiquarian history encourages
the reappraisal of artworks, styles or periods previously viewed as prim-
itive or barbaric, this tendency contains the danger that ‘the time will
finally come when everything old and past which has not totally been lost
sight of will simply be taken as equally venerable’.46 The promiscuous
idolization of everything that is old leads to a ‘blind lust for collecting’,
‘a restless raking together of all that once has been’.47 Nietzsche’s diagno-
sis calls to mind one of the most tangible symptoms of the antiquarianism
of the Goethezeit, described by Theodore Ziolkowski as the ‘museal im-
pulse’: the desire to gather together a hoard of old cultural artefacts
in a temple-like building and call the result a museum.48 Although
the museal impulse, like Winckelmann’s monumentalism, elevates old
artworks to the sphere of timelessness, their indiscriminate veneration –
epitomized by the potpourri nature of the early museum – cannot provide
exemplars for modern artists or encourage new composition. While
Winckelmann’s monumentalism is orientated around the possibility of
modern artistic renewal, antiquarianism stems from a belief in ‘the old
age of mankind . . . the belief of being a latecomer and epigone’: it under-
stands merely how to preserve the art of the distant past, not how to
generate new art or to sustain its possibility.49
Accordingly, the antiquarianism of Goethe and Herder discourages
not only the imitation of classical art, but also the idea that modern
art can be renewed through recourse to old models. Herder dismissed
Winckelmann’s doctrine of classical imitation as a vain delusion, con-
sidering the time of the ‘beloved sweet simplicity’ of ancient art to be
irretrievably lost: ‘the dream of our memories, our histories, studies and
fervent desires will not reawaken it’.50 While both Herder and Goethe
reject Aufklärung notions of artistic progress – in Herder’s phrase, the
assumption that ‘human destiny is marching forward in giant steps’ –
their conception of human and artistic development is nonetheless based
on organic growth: ‘the tender roots full of sap, the slender flourishing
shoot, the mighty trunk, the thrusting entwined boughs, the broadly
radiating airy twigs – see how all these rest on each other and grow out
of each other! . . . If all the branches and twigs wanted to be the trunk
and the roots, what would become of the tree?’51 For Herder, every age
can touch the ‘electric chain of destiny’ at only one point; no country
can ‘take a backwards step and become for a second time what it was
before’.52 Similarly – despite condemning the ideas of originality and
creation ‘out-of-oneself ’ – Goethe dismissed attempts to revive earlier
styles, even if these are transformed through the addition of modern
elements: ‘You choose yourselves a model and mix it with your indi-
viduality: that is all your art amounts to. No thought for any principle,
schools, or successors; all is arbitrary and just as it occurs to you.’53 In
spite of his enthusiasm for Gothic architecture, Goethe condemned the
idea that it could be imitated, believing that further historical and criti-
cal investigations would dispel the desire to copy medieval buildings; it
is a false tendency to seek to bring back to life those aspects of the past
that are treasured, because they developed under ‘completely different
conditions’.54 Thus, for the antiquarian, the relativistic awareness of the
different conditions under which the art of the past was produced pre-
vents any single style being elevated as a universal ideal, or being adopted
as a paradigm for modern art.
Critical history
While the subjective historicism of Winckelmann and of Goethe and
Herder reflects, respectively, a preponderance of Nietzsche’s monumen-
tal and antiquarian histories, the historicism of the Romantic circle
reveals a predominance of Nietzsche’s third category of subjective his-
toricism: critical history. For the Romantic circle – Friedrich and August
Wilhelm Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder,
Novalis and Jean Paul Richter – the revival of the art of the distant
past provided a means of breaking free from more recent tradition:
The genuinely new grows only from the old,
Our future must be founded on the past!
I shall not support the stifling present
I shall bind myself to you, eternal artists.55
A. W. Schlegel’s condemnation of the ‘stifling present’ reveals a critical

attitude towards the artistic and intellectual legacy of the Aufklärung.
For Nietzsche, the modern man of action whose impulses are curbed
by tradition ‘must have the strength, and use it from time to time, to
shatter and dissolve something to enable him to live: this he achieves
by dragging it to the bar of judgment, interrogating it meticulously and
finally condemning it’.56 The judgement and conviction of the immediate
past, and the use of the more distant past as an authority was not of
course unprecedented before the nineteenth century. W. Jackson Bate
comments in relation to English poetry of the eighteenth century that,
for the artist, invoking the art of the more distant past is ‘pleasing because
it is not an authority looming over you but, as something ancestral rather
than parental, is remote enough to be more manageable in the quest for
your own identity’.57 The use of the distant past, the ancestral, permits
one ‘even to disparage the parent in the name of “tradition”’.58 But for
Nietzsche, any attempt to manufacture ‘a past from which one would like
to be descended in opposition to the past from which one is descended’
brings its own problems.59 However successfully a critical historicist is
able to implant a second nature within himself and make his first nature
wither away, ‘second natures are mostly feebler than the first’.60
In his polemical obituary for the early Romantics, Heinrich Heine em-
phasized the extent of their dependency on the art of the Middle Ages
as a means of rejuvenating literature and turning German culture away
from the French Enlightenment.61 He notes that the Romantics’ ideal of,
in Goethe’s ironic phrase, ‘neu-deutsch-religiös-patriotische Kunst’ was
set up in opposition to the French neo-classical tradition, being a reac-
tion against the ‘sober imitation of ancient classical art’; the anti-French
fervour of A. W. Schlegel led him to ‘conspire against Racine in the
same way that Minister Stein conspired against Napoleon’.62 According
to Heine, the Schlegel brothers viewed medieval art and culture as the
only means of providing rebirth for the belated modern writer:
Our poetry [Poesie] is stale, said the Schlegels, our muse is an old woman who
knits, our cupid is no youthful blonde but a shrivelled dwarf with grey hair, our
feelings are withered, our fantasy is spent: we must refresh ourselves, we must
seek out the buried streams of naive, simple medieval poetry, since here bubbles
the draught of rejuvenation . . . They plunged into this miraculous fountain and
drank, slurped and guzzled with profligate greed.63
Friedrich Schlegel explored the predicament of the modern artist and

the role that the art of the distant past should have for modern art in his
Gespräch über die Poesie (1800). Schlegel – or rather his character Ludoviko –
comments that the modern artist lacks a firm foundation for his activity:
‘Our poetry, I assert, lacks a focal point, such as mythology was for the
ancients; and one could summarize all the essentials in which modern
poetry is inferior to the ancients in these words: we have no mythology.
But, I add, we are close to obtaining one or, rather, it is time that we
earnestly work together to create one.’64 Modern art lacks the coherent
and communal world-view that provided the basis of classical and me-
dieval poetry, lacking its basis in religion, which should be the ‘actual soul,
the kindling spark of all poetry’.65 In the absence of such a mythological
foundation, it is impossible for art to have a content; without a relation
to the infinite artworks are ‘quite simply empty and pointless’.66 As a
consequence, such a foundation must be created synthetically, through
recourse to older works and systems of belief: ‘to accelerate the genesis
of the new mythology, the other mythologies must also be reawakened
according to the measure of their profundity, their beauty and their
form.’67
Schlegel and his circle come closest to Heine’s polemical caricature
in discussing how Catholic fine art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
might aid the modern painter seeking to regain such a foundation for his
activities. The conception of old Italian and German painting present in
the criticism of the Schlegels and Wackenroder evinces a complex com-
bination of Winckelmann’s monumentalism and Herder’s relativism.
All three authors condemn or contradict Winckelmann’s insistence that
Raphael’s excellence is the result of his adherence to classical precepts:
for A. W. Schlegel, ‘if one judges modern painters merely by their dis-
tance from or proximity to the ancients one will be unfair to them, as is
undoubtedly true of Winckelmann with Raphael’.68 But while seeking
to divorce Renaissance art from classical principles, they nevertheless
construct golden ages according to the organic model and assert that
the peaks of these periods represent a universal ideal. Schlegel’s golden
age of old Italian painting presents two broad subdivisions instead of
Winckelmann’s four; this scheme is also borrowed, as Schlegel reveals in
commenting that Italian painting is divided into old and new schools,
‘just like Italian poetry’.69 Following Winckelmann’s pattern, Schlegel’s
oldest style of Italian painting is characterized by ‘strict, even meagre
forms in sharp outlines’ and a ‘childlike, good-natured simplicity and
restrictedness’; while the strictness of the older school remains present
up to Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael – alongside Titian, Correggio, Giulio
Romano and Michelangelo – initiated the newer school, and thus is ul-
timately responsible for the ‘ruination’ (Verderben) of art.70 The decline of
art into effect and theatricality begins with the last works of Titian, and it
is doubtful whether later painters and schools have a place in the history
of art.71 Schlegel’s construction, like Winckelmann’s, has a clear didactic
purpose. He shares Winckelmann’s conviction that works of art from
the peak of his golden age remain a valid model for modern painting,
emphasizing that only through the ‘living use of earlier achievements’
can art be rejuvenated and the abuses of the Enlightenment redressed.72
Schlegel’s endeavours to create firm foundations for modern painting
and literature through the idealization of medieval art and, eventually,
by adopting Catholicism were derided by Heine: Schlegel was ‘a prophet
looking backwards [einen umgekehrten Propheten]’, who ‘regarded the agonies
of our time not as the pains of rebirth but as the agonies of death, and fled
from this death-angst into the tottering ruins of the Catholic church’.73
In Heine’s view, the enthusiasm with which Schlegel and his circle em-
braced medieval art not only legitimized and encouraged its imitation,
but resulted in their works consisting of little else: ‘What then was the
Romantic school in Germany? It was nothing other than the revival of the
poetry [Poesie] of the Middle Ages, as it manifested itself in songs, sculp-
ture and architecture, in art and life.’74 According to Heine, Tieck’s novel
Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798) and Wackenroder’s Herzensergiessungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (1797) exhort artists not only to emulate
the ‘piety and childlike quality’ of medieval poetry, but also to imitate
its ‘clumsiness of technique’.75 Despite Heine’s remarks, the Romantic
circle’s elevation of earlier art cannot be regarded as encouraging or
legitimizing imitation. Friedrich Schlegel condemns imitation by link-
ing it with mass-production: imitators are ‘strayed economists’ whose
art is ‘vacuous and tradesman-like [handwerksmäßig]’.76 Similarly, A. W.
Schlegel dismisses the products of imitation as ‘lifeless school exercises’
(tote Schulübungen), since material appropriated from earlier art must be
reborn within the artist in order for it to emerge poetically.77 Signifi-
cantly, the Schlegels and Jean Paul focus their discussions of imitation
on neo-classicism, as if imitation cannot be an issue in Romantic art.
In Jean Paul’s taxonomy, imitation encompasses not only the appropria-
tion of phrases and idioms from Greek poetry but also the attempt
to emulate its simplicity and plainness.78 Furthermore, even uninten-
tional dependency on earlier styles or works is equated with imitation:
Jean Paul introduces the potentially useful concept of ‘reversed’ imita-
tion to describe authors who are so deeply immersed in Greek literature
that the language unconsciously shapes their German prose.79
Crucially, both Jean Paul and Friedrich Schlegel consider the replica-
tion of earlier works or styles not only to be illegitimate in theory but
impossible in practice: even authors who attempt to replicate earlier styles
precisely inevitably include modern elements, with the result that they
produce parodies of the originals. Jean Paul considers the chief offence
of the imitator to lie not in his theft of forms and material, but in his
‘reenactment – often against his will employing parody – of what is most
sacred in the original, the imitation of the innate’.80 Similarly, for Schlegel
the ‘important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit’ can
readily be seen in the imitation of classical poetry.81 The idea that the de-
sire to imitate a work or style results – unintentionally – in parody brings
us closer to establishing how the use of earlier materials could be justified
for the Romantic circle: through the corollary that if the treatment of such
materials is consciously parodic, or at least mediated by the critical reflec-
tion of the artist, it acquires legitimacy. While the imitator responds to the
artworks of the past solely through objective calculation, and the ‘femi-
nine, receptive or passive genius’ described by Jean Paul responds solely
through uncritical creation, Romantic irony offers a means of response
that combines subjective creation and objective reflection.82 The broader
metaphysical and aesthetic ramifications of Romantic irony are explored
later; most important here are its implications for the two central compo-
nents of originality, novelty and spontaneity. While Schopenhauer’s orig-
inal genius creates spontaneously and instinctively, for Friedrich Schlegel
the work of genius must also be the product of reflection: ‘In every good
poem everything must be intentional, and everything must be instinc-
tive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.’83 Irony is not merely the
habitual self-criticism of the artist, a factor that even Schopenhauer saw
as necessary to artistic production, but a mode of reflection pervading
all parts of the artwork and all stages of the creative process: ‘There are
ancient and modern poems that breath the godly breath of irony in their
entirety and in all their parts. . . . Internally, in the mood that looks over
everything and lifts itself infinitely above everything conditioned, even
above its own art, virtue, and genius; externally, in performing the mimic
manner of a mediocre Italian clown [Buffo].’84 But while such reflection
enables artists to free themselves from the contingencies of instinctual
creation, Schlegel nonetheless warns against the opposite extreme of un-
limited arbitrariness, ‘otherwise caprice will turn into self-destruction’;
further, self-creation, the invention and enthusiasm of the artist, must at-
tain fruition before self-restraint is applied.85 The knowing ironic artist
produces Poesie (i.e., literature) that arbitrarily combines spontaneous,
instinctual creation with critical reflection, the naive with the sentimen-
tal, the fruits of inspiration with wilful caprice:
Intention taken to the point of irony and with the arbitrary appearance of self-
destruction is just as naive as instinct taken to the point of irony. Just as the
naive plays with the contradictions of theory and practice, so the grotesque
plays with strange transferences of form and material, liking the appearance of
the random and bizarre and flirting with unconditional caprice.86
The reflection of the ironic creator not only contravenes the postu-
late that originality necessitates spontaneity, but also the requirement for
substantial novelty: instead of being tied to one mode of representation,
form or style, the artist may juxtapose and combine a wide variety of
materials. For Schlegel, modern Romantic poetry must ‘now mix and
now fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and folk
poetry [Naturpoesie] . . . fill and saturate the forms of art with strong cul-
tural material [Bildungsstoff ] of every kind’.87 The poet’s reception of the
cultural products of different ages and cultures has the result that he
contains within himself ‘a whole system of personas’ and can transport
himself arbitrarily into a multitude of spheres: he can tune himself at
will, ‘as one tunes an instrument’ to being ‘critical or poetic, historical
or rhetorical, ancient or modern’.88 Importantly, Schlegel considers the
Poesie of the reflective modern artist to consist not merely of the mixing of
a variety of earlier styles and forms, but to constitute the fusion of poetry
and criticism. The modern poet’s use of earlier styles and elements of
earlier works is not merely the end product of critical reflection, but can
itself embody an act of criticism, indeed, ‘poetry can be criticized only
through poetry’.89 Schlegel represents Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister as the
archetype of both the ironic juxtaposition of disparate materials and of
Romantic Poesie functioning as a critical interpretation of an earlier work
(in this case, Shakespeare’s Hamlet). The relationship between play and
novel is not one of repetition but of supplementation; the poetic critic
that Goethe exemplifies contemplates an earlier work of art and rep-
resents it anew: ‘he will supplement the work, rejuvenate it, and newly
shape it.’90 The ironic attitude of the author is what unifies his disparate
materials and guarantees the originality of his work: originality resides
in the author’s imagination, not in his materials.
Although Schlegel’s conceptions of irony and critique are clearly re-
lated to his desire to establish new mythological foundations for art, these
ideas interact problematically. The ironic adoption of earlier world-views
could not adequately provide the modern artist with the firm foundation
that Schlegel sought, and it will become clear that his later writings –
especially those on fine art – confirm Heine’s notion of a withdrawal into
the certainties of medievalism and Catholicism. Heine’s rejection of the
Romantic circle’s engagement with the past as imitation is, in part, the
result of his more radical conception of irony and critique, which will
also prove important in later discussions. Although he dismissed early
Romantic attempts to duplicate the simplicity of medieval Volkslieder as
resembling ‘artificial spa water’ and ‘German moonshine’, he nonethe-
less viewed the folksong as a touchstone for modern poetry.91 In theory
and practice, Heine advocates two ways for the modern poet to respond
creatively to the medieval folksong. He praised Wilhelm Müller for cap-
turing the spirit of the old song forms without imitating them, through a
‘sensible avoidance of all antiquated expressions and turns of phrase’.92
In addition to the avoidance of the most antiquated elements of me-
dieval poetry, Heine also engages with it through irony, which serves as a
means of asserting the impossibility of naiv poetry in the modern age.93
Heine’s use of an abrupt parodic twist at the conclusion of a Volkslied –
the Stimmungsbrechung – effects a departure from the prevailing style and
mood of the rest of the poem: ‘Heine, at first still a Romantic himself,
moved away from this by affixing to all his poetry the little devil of
frivolous irony which joyfully proclaims: “look how pretty this is, good
people! But don’t kid yourselves that I myself believe in such stuff !”
Almost every one of his beautiful poems ends with such a suicide.’94 This
device can be seen at the end of Wahrhaftig from the Buch der Lieder (1827),
where the final quatrain ironically comments on the neo-medieval topics
and imagery (the joys of spring, minstrels, love songs) of the preceding
lines: ‘But songs and stars and little flowers, and little eyes and moon-
light and sunshine, however much this stuff pleases, it is nowhere near
being the whole world.’95 Heine’s irony is more than a comment on the
futility of modern attempts to manufacture the naiv: it also highlights the
inadequacy of the content and expression of medieval poetry to modern
sensibilities. By subjecting medieval poetry, neo-medievalism and his own
creativity to critique, Heine not only confronts the predicament of the
reflective modern poet but ‘gives evidence of it through every nuance of
his form’.96
While Nietzsche’s conception of critical history can be said to apply
to the Romantic circle’s reaction against its immediate predecessors,
Heine’s critique confronts not merely the immediate past (for him, the
Romantic school) but also its golden age. In assessing the relation be-
tween Romantic ironic reflection and the various ideational strategies
sustaining the compositional products of the Palestrina revival, it will
be necessary to take into account Heine’s brand of irony as well as that
of Schlegel. While it will become clear that the reflective construction
of a mythological basis for modern creation provides a useful perspec-
tive in examining the Palestrina revival, Heine’s subversion of such a
foundation through the ‘little devil of frivolous irony’ may seem a less
helpful means of approaching Romantic church music. Yet the pres-
ence of similarly abrupt stylistic shifts in some of the compositions of
the Palestrina revival will be seen to function in a comparable, if not
identical way. By asserting the presence of modernity within works that
otherwise replicate the language of Palestrina, such stylistic shifts may
suggest that these compositions also reflect the combination of spon-
taneity and reflection, critique and self-critique, embodied by Romantic
Poesie.
HEGEL, HISTORICISM AND THE ‘DECAY AND

DISINTEGRATION OF ART’
It will become evident that the three strands of historicism discussed

above collectively provided an impetus for the revival and idealization of
Palestrina, and individually played important parts in shaping the critical
and historiographical reception of Renaissance music. In addition, clear
relationships exist between the strategies with which Winckelmann and
the Romantic circle justified the use of earlier styles, and the ideas which
shaped compositional responses to Palestrina. It is crucial to recognize,
however, that while Winckelmann and the Romantic circle provided
frameworks within which the use of earlier styles could be legitimized,
these ideas had to compete with more pervasive and compelling aesthetic
criteria. Consequently, while these ideas provide valuable perspectives
for interpreting compositional historicism, they cannot be assumed to
correspond with the ways in which composers justified their engagement
with earlier styles.
A central aspect of these rival imperatives has already become ap-
parent in the relativism of Herder and Goethe: their conception of the
historicity of style is inimical to the warping of history that an artistic
return to origins involves. For some early nineteenth-century critics, the
increasing concern for historicity served not only to militate against com-
positional historicism, but to preclude it entirely: any work dependent
on an earlier style inevitably infringes the demand for contemporaneity
of expression and is thus an inauthentic product of its age. This rigid
stance was advocated by the classicist Ludwig Schorn, in the sole article
dedicated to the subject of originality to appear in the Leipzig AmZ in the
first quarter of the nineteenth century.97 Schorn’s conception of artistic
creation is inimical both to the imitation of classical works and to any
use of materials foreign to the world-view of the modern artist: all art of
value must proceed from the instinct, conviction and unique mentality
of the individual artist. Significantly, Schorn’s censures encompass the
perpetuation of conventions and traditional styles, a process associated in
particular with religious ritual; even if works are the product of a similar
manner of thinking and context to their stylistic model, they ‘no longer
come from the fire of inspiration and are no longer accomplished from
the free contemplation of nature, and therefore must be inferior by far in
value’.98 In order to be grounded in a true relation to nature, all artworks
must be the characteristic embodiment of their age and context.99 To
adopt a style which does not reflect the world-view of the artist and his
community will result in mannerism: this occurs when an artist appropri-
ates the external form of his work ‘from the works of a foreign master, a
distant age or a different people, without being capable of transplanting
himself completely into their ideas and without nature being entirely in
control’.100
Schorn’s emphatic demand for contemporaneity excludes not only
the imitation of earlier styles but also the perpetuation of convention:
his stance would invalidate both the historicist revival of Palestrina’s
language and the continuation of the traditional stylus a capella. His views –
especially the nature of his distinction between form and content in the
artwork – are useful not because they were particularly influential, but
because they provide a point of access to a far more significant body of
ideas, the aesthetics of Hegel and his followers. It is within this framework
that the majority of the composers, historians and critics discussed in this
study explored compositional historicism, whether seeking to repudiate
or to justify it.
Hegel’s most extensive discussion of artistic historicism occurs in the
context of a broader diagnosis of the disintegration of the Romantic
form of art.101 Here, he explores the ways in which recent artistic develop-
ments, particularly in Germany, reflect the initiation of the final phase
of Romantic art (for Hegel, the art of the Christian Western world from
the Middle Ages to the present). This final phase represents the point at
which the disintegration (Auflösung) of the classical ideal – a factor implicit
in all Romantic art – appears explicitly as disintegration: it marks a final
separation of inner content and external appearance, whose identity is a
prerequisite for art being art.102 The ideal of art, the absolute relation of
form and content, is to be found in the art of antiquity, more specifically
Greek sculpture:
The perfection of art reached its peak here precisely because the spiritual was
completely drawn through its external appearance; in this beautiful unification it
realized the natural and made it into an adequate embodiment of the spirit’s own
substantial individuality. Therefore classical art became a completely adequate
representation of the ideal, the consummation of the realm of beauty. Nothing
can be or become more beautiful.103
The ideal of art that the artworks of antiquity constitute for Hegel is not
merely the union of the style of a work and the idea of the artist described
by Schorn, but the product of the synthesis of a complicated array of
dialectics operating on different levels.104 On the highest level, art is the
revelation of the absolute in sensuous form, the embodiment of truth:
‘in the case of the Greeks, art was the highest form in which the people
represented the gods to themselves and gave themselves some awareness
of truth.’105 Classical art gains its place at the pinnacle of Hegel’s system
as a result of the rich spiritual life of the Greeks being reflected in their
art as its substantial and stable content; in their art the Greeks gave
their gods an ‘existent embodiment’ (Dasein) which adequately objectifies
its content: ‘On account of this correspondence . . . art in Greece has
become the supreme expression of the absolute, and Greek religion is
the religion of art itself.’106 The complete identity of form and content
is a result of the stability of Greek religious beliefs and the communality
of their mythology – Schlegel’s ‘firm foundation’ – whose result is that
the content of Greek art is wholly predetermined, and the realization of
the form instinctive: ‘the artist seems only to execute what is already cut
and dried on its own account in essence.’107
The absolute relation of essence and appearance present in Greek
art is not a possibility for art of the Christian era, since the content of
Romantic art transcends sensuous manifestation: ‘art no longer counts
as the highest mode in which truth manifests itself ’.108 While the Greeks’
conception of the divine could be embodied in their art, the forms
of Romantic art cannot provide an adequate vehicle for the absolute:
Romantic art has a determinate content, but there can only be a contin-
gent relation between this content and the form of art.109 But if, at highest
level, the relation between the realms of spirit and the external is con-
tingent, artistic beauty is still dependent on lower-level correspondences
of form and content, and the external form must have the function of
‘referring us back to the beauty of soul’.110 For Hegel, the course of the
Christian Romantic era charts an ever-increasing polarity of form and
content, a divergence moving inevitably and irretrievably towards their
total severance. He identifies the final phase of this dissolution as having
been initiated by his own contemporaries, in whose art can be seen ‘the
severance of the sides whose complete identity affords the proper essence
of art, and therefore the decay and dissolution of art itself ’.111
Importantly, the use of earlier artistic materials need not result in the
dissolution of the relation between form and content. Hegel acknowl-
edges that the modern artist is no longer tied to a particular material
or mode of representation, and in choosing his forms is not restricted
to the styles and resources of the present: ‘For this purpose he needs
his supply of images, modes of configuration, earlier forms of art which,
taken in themselves, are indifferent to him and only become important
if they seem to him to be those best suited to this or that subject-matter
[Stoff ].’112 For Hegel, the use of earlier styles can be either legitimate
or illegitimate: the illegitimate use of historical materials results in an
incommensurability of form and content, or produces a work alien to
the modern world-view.
In a related earlier discussion exploring how dramatists and poets
should treat historical elements in period pieces, Hegel identifies objec-
tive and subjective approaches to the problem of form: the artist can ei-
ther ‘forget his own time and keep his eye only on the past’ or can ‘fashion
his work according to the ideas which coincide with the particular cir-
cumstances of his own time’.113 Neither approach emerges as entirely
satisfactory. Treating materials with objective fidelity to their original
context makes modern German culture ‘too tolerant of foreign oddities’,
and fidelity in external matters can be attained only at the expense of
‘the content of our present-day outlook and contemporary sentiment’.114
Hegel’s interpretation of the faults of objectivity in period pieces can be
related to his attitudes towards the imitation of earlier styles. Like Schorn,
Hegel views the imitation of earlier forms as a type of mannerism, since it
can grasp solely the external aspect of art and thus produce only ‘soulless
and therefore cold repetition and fabrication’.115 Accordingly, Hegel con-
demns Winckelmann’s notions of classical imitation; although Hegel
praises his historical classifications of Greek art, the modern artist who
copies the ‘ideal forms of antiquity as expounded by Winckelmann’ can
produce nothing more than ‘false and empty abstractions’.116 Similarly,
Hegel dismisses contemporary attempts to imitate primitive folksongs,
considering that even if poets are able to empathize with alien customs
and perceptions, such oddities have no value for contemporary culture.117
But modern authors using historical materials must also avoid the
opposite error of excessive subjectivity. In Hegel’s interpretation, the
latter approach resembles Nietzsche’s notion of monumental history: it
places so heavy an emphasis on serving the needs of the present that the
past is falsified.118 While objective fidelity in treating historical materials
results in them being wholly alien to modern culture, excessive sub-
jectivity robs them of their cultural and spiritual value.119 For Hegel,
such ‘stark subjectivity’ in using historical settings, forms and mate-
rials results in parodic juxtapositions and an empty play of ‘deliberate
bizarrerie’.120
While the modern artist is not restricted to using the external forms
of the present, he cannot pick and choose the spiritual basis, the content
of his art: Hegel insists that for the artist, ‘the content must constitute
the substance, the inmost truth of his consciousness’.121 For Hegel, art
must be the product of a subjective inner conception and objective exe-
cution; the combination of a content which for the artist comprises ‘the
inner life of his heart and his imagination’ and the objectifying of this
feeling, which must ‘shine clearly and thoroughly through the external
material in which it has enshrined itself ’.122 This relation is reversed in
the art of the Romantic ironists; their reflection leads not only to ‘stark
subjectivity’ in their choice of forms but to a reflective attitude towards
their spiritual content, which instead of being instinctual and subjective
is objectively chosen, making them a tabula rasa in both content and form.
While Hegel considers such subjective reflection to be a universal ele-
ment in contemporary art, it is the Romantic ironists who epitomize this
tendency and thus the decay and dissolution of art itself. Hegel considers
Friedrich Schlegel’s irony to be a transference to the artistic sphere of
the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the doctrine of the I (ego) as
expressed in the Wissenschaftslehre (1794).123 In Hegel’s interpretation, the
ironic artist considers everything that has value for mankind to be merely
a product of his own power of caprice, to have no existence except in his
subjective ego.124 For the ironic artist, no content counts as absolute or
real but is merely a product of his free choice: ‘And now this skill in living
an ironical artist life apprehends itself as a God-like geniality, for which
every possible thing is a mere dead creature, to which the free creator,
knowing himself to be wholly unattached, feels in no way bound, seeing
that he can annihilate it as well as create it.’125
The modern artist whose ironic reflection has dissolved any substan-
tial spiritual beliefs cannot take on a mentality derived from the past
in order to acquire a firm foundation for his productions. In a swipe at
Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel comments that if reflection has left the modern
artist bereft of a substantial content, ‘no help can be gained by appro-
priating as that substance, so to speak, world-views from the past . . . by,
for example, converting to Catholicism as many have done recently for
the sake of art, in order to give stability to their mind and to give the
character of something absolute to the specifically limited character of
their artistic product in itself ’.126 Hegel acknowledges that under some
circumstances, the artist may legitimately take up a spiritual basis for his
work that diverges from the prevailing world-view of his contemporaries:
the necessity for such a step ‘arises only with the need to turn against the
content that was alone valid hitherto’.127 It is clear, however, that in
Hegel’s conception of critical history, the adoption of earlier world-views
cannot constitute a legitimate means of rebelling against the present.
Both the content and the form of the artwork must be the authentic
expression of the spirit of the artist’s age, sincere religious beliefs and his
firm conviction:
As long as the artist is bound up with the specific character of such a world-
view and religion, in immediate identity with it and with firm faith in it, then
he is also in true seriousness [Ernst] with this content and its representation;
that is, this content remains for him the infinite and true element of his own
consciousness . . . while the form in which he represents it is for him as artist
the final, necessary and supreme manner of bringing to perception the absolute
and the soul of objects.128
Hegel’s insistence that the external forms which the artist adopts must
reflect his world-view and conviction naturally restricts the historical
styles and materials available to him. External forms which are ineluc-
tably linked to a world-view foreign to the modern artist can consequently
not be adopted by him: ‘[if we] nowadays propose to make the subject
of a statue or a painting a Greek god, or, Protestants as we are today,
the Virgin Mary, we are not seriously in earnest with such material. It is
the innermost faith which we lack here.’129 Similarly, while the modern
artist may inform his techniques and style through the study of works
from the distant past, his own productions cannot replicate their mode
of treatment; here, Hegel would seem to be issuing a definite ban on the
literal use of earlier styles: ‘No Homer, Sophocles, etc., no Dante, Ariosto,
or Shakespeare can appear in our day; what was so magnificently sung,
what was so freely expressed, has been expressed; these are materials,
ways of looking at them and treating them which have been sung once
and for all. Only the present is fresh, the rest is dull and stale.’130
Given the importance of the principle of non-repetition to Hegel’s
philosophy of history, it is not surprising that he should reject the rep-
lication of earlier styles. But Hegel’s position is curiously equivocal.
In his earlier discussion on how poets and dramatists should represent the
past in period pieces, Hegel introduced the idea of employing ‘necessary
anachronism’ in treating the materials of the past: the injection of moder-
nity into historical materials in order to render them capable of assimila-
tion into the modern world-view.131 There he states that the true artistic
mode of using historical materials requires that the artist use old forms
‘only as frames for his pictures’.132 But in discussing how the artist can
legitimately respond to historical styles, Hegel’s language is more am-
biguous. Here, he appears to demand that the modern artist’s use of
older forms must exhibit tangible signs that they are the product not of
ironic caprice but of conviction, an evidence that requires the inclusion
of modern as well as historical formal elements:
In the face of this breadth and variety of material we must above all make the
demand that the real presence of the modern spirit [die heutige Gegenwärtigkeit des
Geistes] shall be expressed at the same time throughout the mode of treating this
material. . . . [All] materials, whatever they be and from whatever period and
nation they come, contain their artistic truth only through this living presentiality
[lebendige Gegenwärtigkeit], through which they fill the breast of man with our own
mirror-image and bring truth home to our feelings and imagination.133
Here, Hegel twice asserts the necessity for die Gegenwärtigkeit, the ‘being
present’ or presentiality of the modern spirit within the external form of
a work. Given the centrality of Lutheran theology to Hegel’s conception
of the Romantic phase of art, this neologism has a particular signifi-
cance: for a Lutheran German, it is inseparably linked to Gegenwärtig, the
Lutheran term for the doctrine of the Real Presence.134 In Lutheran
theology, the Eucharistic elements are not merely symbolic, nor are the
bread and wine converted wholly into the body and blood of Christ
(transubstantiation) but contain the Real Presence of Christ in an in-
corporeal form. The evocation of this doctrine problematizes Hegel’s
argument, with the result that he does not propose unequivocally that
the use of historical styles in modern works must reflect the modern spirit
in a tangible way; the receiver can only assume, through faith, that this
modern content is reflected in the form of a work.
Thus, while Hegel is hostile to artistic historicism, the dynamics of his
form/content dualism paradoxically provide a strategy for legitimizing
the use of historical elements, and even for the replication of historical
styles. Further, he serves to encourage the employment of earlier styles,
by emphasizing that the stylistic freedom of the modern artist is no mere
‘accidental misfortune’ engineered by the Romantic circle, but rather
the ‘effect and progress of art itself ’.135 The difficulty of determining
whether a work is the authentic product of the modern world-view has
the result that its form is a mask, whose affinity to its spiritual content can
only be taken on faith. No work can be judged on ‘face value’. The en-
couragement that this Hegelian dualism gives to artistic historicism was
discussed, in a broader context, by Nietzsche. Attributing the cultural ills
of modern Germany to the contradiction of form and content, Nietzsche
argues that form is merely a costume and disguise, serving to conceal
the truth that the content – the German inwardness – has evaporated;
as a result of the burden of history, modern men are mere shadows:
‘If one takes hold of such masks believing them to be real and not just a
puppet . . . one suddenly has hold of nothing but rags and multi-coloured
patches. Therefore one ought no longer allow oneself to be deceived, and
should address them imperiously: “take off your jackets or be what you
seem!”’136 In the arts too the mask, derived from the past, conceals its
counterfeit content: ‘“We feel with abstraction . . . we portray expressions
of feeling which no longer occur nowadays. Shakespeare has spoiled all
us moderns.”’137
Just as Shakespeare provided the most important historical mask for
nineteenth-century drama, Palestrina was, unquestionably, the most
important mask for nineteenth-century liturgical music. While Winckel-
mannian imitation and Romantic irony encourage the use of earlier
artistic materials, it will become apparent that musicians seeking to
justify compositional historicism were more often reliant on Hegelian
conceptions of form and content. By condoning the use of earlier artistic
materials even when the relationship between the resulting artwork and
the modern world-view is seemingly oblique, he creates a framework in
which a modern composer may emulate or even replicate the language
of Palestrina; the composer can justify the return to an earlier form as a
means of regaining the spiritual content of that form, while simultane-
ously reflecting – however intangibly – the spirit of modernity. It must
now be established why composers sought to regain the spiritual content
of Palestrina’s music, and how the need for the mask of Palestrina’s lan-
guage came to outweigh the compelling demands for contemporaneity.
2
Romanticism and the problem of church music
HOFFMANN AND THE ROMANTIC IDEALIZATION

OF PALESTRINA
So far, we have explored the complex strands of historicist thought that

encouraged the idealization and emulation of historical styles in general
terms. It is now necessary to examine the emergence of the Palestrina
revival, establishing how early Romantic commentators on church
music engaged with the ideas and tendencies described earlier. E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s essay ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ (1814) has been chosen
as the framework for this discussion because it provides an exposition
of most of the themes central to the Palestrina revival, not because it
initiated them.1 Hoffmann was neither the first nor the most influential
German Romantic writer to idealize the music of Palestrina and to agi-
tate for church music reform: the significance of his essay lies primarily
in its synthesis of existing ideas on reform and on the revival of old
music. But while much of what Hoffmann wrote had been said before
(in particular in earlier issues of the AmZ ), he was the first author to
single out Palestrina for particular attention and to justify his elevation as
the paradigm of church music through detailed historical and aesthetic
arguments. Moreover, Hoffmann was the first commentator to engage
seriously with the question of how modern composers should respond
to the Palestrina ideal: his response to this problem, while seemingly
fuzzy and impractical, outlines the major issues with which critics and
composers were to wrestle throughout the nineteenth century.
Hoffmann’s essay situates the defects of modern church music within
a broader critique of art and culture. In a move typical of early Romantic
discussions of this topic, his idealization of early church music occurs in
tandem with a polemic against Enlightenment culture: as with the criti-
cal historicism of the Romantic circle, old music is placed at the opposite
end of the moral and religious scale to the art of the Enlightenment.
36
Romanticism and the problem of church music 37
Hoffmann, like the Schlegel brothers, dismisses neo-classical works as
mere shadows, ‘lifeless puppets’ in comparison to older art; he identi-
fies the frivolity and emptiness of modern art as a result not merely
of the Enlightenment, but of the pernicious influence of the French.2
Hoffmann’s condemnation of French culture is more than just a tri-
umphalist response to the defeat of Napoleon’s forces earlier in the year
that his essay appeared; rather, through patriotic rhetoric, he is able to
blame the detrimental effect for German art of the Enlightenment – a
pan-European phenomenon – entirely on the French. While Stephen
Rumph has argued that, in his essays for the AmZ, Hoffmann cloaks ‘his
political sentiments beneath an aesthetic polemic’, it is more important
for the present discussion to see how the political situation provided the
opportunity for the strengthening of a pre-existing aesthetic campaign:
the movement against the values and standards of neo-classicism that had
emerged in Germany well before the Napoleonic wars.3 By identifying
the faults of modern art as the responsibility of the French, Hoffmann,
like the Romantic circle, paves the way for a return to the virtues of a
more distant ancestral art by entirely disowning the parental. In this way,
the reform of art – and the revival of old church music in particular – be-
comes the patriotic duty of the many, instead of the musical and spiritual
desire of the few.
In developing his critique of modern church music, Hoffmann draws
on several themes well established in contemporary debates on this topic.
Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century critics associated the faults
of modern church music with a more general dissolution of traditional
generic distinctions: Herder and Johann Friedrich Reichardt, for in-
stance, considered that composers no longer upheld the basic distinction
between the sacred and the profane, mixing elements of the operatic style
with the church style. Herder argued that church music lost its dignity
through aping the ‘charming, effeminate melodies’ of the court song,
while Reichardt illustrated the disintegration of genres by demonstrat-
ing the similarities between modern Italian oratorio and opera buffa.4
In seeking to define the church style, critics tended to approach the mat-
ter through proscription rather than prescription: as an abstract con-
struct (i.e., when it is not linked to a particular historical paradigm) its
essence lies in its distance from opera. Accordingly, Reichardt and Herder
reject the use of dramatic elements, while Tieck (or rather, his charac-
ter Ernst) insists that church music must shun mimetic and passionate
effects.5 Although neither Herder nor Reichardt seeks to distinguish the
church style from the oratorio style, this distinction was fundamental for
Hoffmann and other nineteenth-century commentators: indeed, a key
aspect of polemical debates on this topic throughout the century was the
belief that, as the aesthetician Ferdinand Hand (1786–1851) put it, ‘not
all religious music, even if it comes from pious inspiration, is suitable
for inclusion within the liturgy of the church, and in circles of cultured
listeners devotion and enthusiasm can be awakened by material which
must be excluded from the church’.6 Although Hoffmann approaches
this distinction less rigidly than other contemporary critics, it nonetheless
has important implications for his argument. For Hoffmann, even the
greatest modern church music bears witness to and is tainted by generic
impurity: while he represents Mozart’s Requiem as a belated remnant
of the true church style, he concedes that some sections of even this work
‘lapse into oratorio style’.7
Crucial to the classification of the characteristics of the church style
was the identification and idealization of models from the past. Among
the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authors who agitated
for the revival of old church music, two broad tendencies can be distin-
guished: an antiquarian and a monumentalist. These tendencies, which
sometimes commingle within the works of individual authors, reflect
the broader tension in contemporary historicism between – to put it
crudely – the relativism of Herder and the classicizing perspective of
Winckelmann. Antiquarian contributors to the debate on church music,
sharing Herder’s conviction that ‘the age of Christian church music is
over’, appeal to the music of the past as a counterbalance to the present,
but do not do so systematically by means of historical narratives; typi-
cally, they merely create lists of unrelated composers or works from the
distant past and contrast them with the degeneracy and generic im-
purity of present-day church music.8 While Glenn Stanley is right to
consider Hoffmann’s ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ as the culmination
of a German literary tradition of panegyrics to Palestrina, this tradition
cannot be viewed as a sustained campaign for the revival of his music
since it consisted of little more than the inclusion of his name in such
seemingly arbitrary lists of ideal composers for the church.9 In fact, in the
two decades preceding Hoffmann’s essay, a bewildering variety of com-
posers from the past were acclaimed as ideal models of church music, and
generally little attempt was made to justify or explain the choices of such
figures as models. The music described in the AmZ as a worthy model
ranges across the entire gamut of church music, from Gregorian chant
to Mozart’s Requiem. In an article from 1808, the ‘Christian simplicity’
of plainchant is recommended for study, since its notes, ‘full of longing’,
still have the power to move the heart, while in 1800 the editor Friedrich
Rochlitz wrote that just as Raphael’s works are the source of modern
painting, Mozart’s should be the source of modern religious music.10
Generally, however, the composers acclaimed by the antiquarian camp
are drawn from two traditions, corresponding to the generic distinc-
tion between the church style and the oratorio style: old Italian music,
and the works of Handel and C. P. E. Bach (and later J. S. Bach). In 1782,
Reichardt recommended the compositions of Lotti, Durante, Leonardo
Leo, Prenestini (Palestrina), Gasparini, Frescobaldi, Fux, Froberger,
Zelenka, Hassler, C. P. E. Bach, Handel, Graun, Kirnberger and
Homilius as suitable for church singing, while in 1791 he provided ex-
tracts by six composers as examples of genuine church music: four Ital-
ians, Palestrina, Benedetto Marcello, Francesco Feo, Nicola Porpora,
and two Germans, C. P. E. Bach and Fasch, are represented.11 The list
of exemplary church composers that Herder gives in his essay ‘Cäcilia’
from 1793 conforms to, and helped to establish, this pattern:
For a poet who wants to write more than just individual hymns for the church,
studying these books [the Old Testament prophets and Psalms] is just as in-
dispensable as studying the unattainable models of old church music . . . is for
the composer. For, Saint Cecilia, with what miraculous and heartfelt notes have
you inspired your favourites Leo, Durante, Palestina [sic], Marcello, Pergolesi,
Handel, [C. P. E.] Bach, and so on! In and through them sacred music resounds
in a full, pure flood.12
Rochlitz’s list of ideal church composers from 1803 is similarly wide-

ranging, though he includes Haydn and Mozart who were to prove
more problematic for later commentators: ‘How church music ought
therefore to be written has been set out further in other places, and the
musician should readily learn from models; these can be found in the
older Italians, the older Germans such as Seb. Bach, Handel, and others,
and also the more recent Germans such as Joseph and Michael Haydn,
Mozart, and others.’13 An unsigned review from 1808 praises the ‘simple,
noble, melodically rich, and yet profound’ church music of the Italians,
naming (seemingly for the purpose of alliteration) Leonardo Leo and
Francesco Feo, alongside German music ‘up to Seb. Bach, Handel, etc.’,
while an article by Christian Friedrich Michaelis from 1814 (the same
year as Hoffmann’s essay) also affirms the importance of the old Italians
and of Bach and Handel, and introduces Johann Kuhnau and Andreas
Hammerschmidt to an already crowded arena of ideal composers for
the church.14 It would clearly be mistaken to view these random lists as
evidence of a systematic approach to the problems perceived in church
music, or of a classicizing approach to music history. Rather, they are
signs of the antiquarian historicism of the Goethezeit, or in Nietzsche’s
words, the indiscriminate veneration of everything that is old that leads
to a ‘restless raking together of all that once has been’.
The first authors to follow a systematic historical plan in outlining their
conception of the church style were Hoffmann and the Heidelberg jurist
Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut (1772–1840), whose book Über Reinheit
der Tonkunst (1824) presents arguably the most influential nineteenth-
century manifesto for church music reform. Although the concepts and
terminology with which they construct their schemes are all individu-
ally present in earlier contributions to this debate (especially those of
Reichardt and Tieck), Hoffmann and Thibaut were the first authors
to employ Winckelmann’s organic emplotment as a means of elevating
Palestrina. Both Hoffmann and Thibaut use this model to construct a
golden age of old Italian church music, encompassing a rise from primi-
tive beginnings, blossoming, development, and gradual decline into deca-
dence. Hoffmann follows Winckelmann in tracing the emergence of his
golden age from earlier art that was hidebound by rules and abstractions;
for Hoffmann, Palestrina’s immediate predecessors (none of whom are
named) were ‘obsessed with harmonic affectations’ and reduced music to
a speculative science.15 While Hoffmann’s golden age emerges ex nihilo,
initiated by Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, Thibaut traces a more gra-
dual rise in the quality and profundity of church music, via Goudimel,
Morales and Lassus.16 Both are united, however, in describing a gradual
decline in church music after Palestrina. Hoffmann’s survey of Italian
music depicts a gradual decline into theatricality:
With Palestrina began what is indisputably the most glorious period in

church music (and therefore in music in general); in ever-increasing richness
it maintained its pious dignity and strength for almost two hundred years,
although it cannot be denied that even in the first century after Palestrina that
lofty inimitable simplicity and dignity sank into a sort of elegance for which
composers strove.17
The transition Hoffmann traces from Palestrina’s ‘lofty, simple style’ to

the elegance of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century stile
antico recalls Winckelmann’s conception of a shift from the great and
lofty style to the beautiful style. A comparable trajectory is presented by
Thibaut, whose golden age comes much closer in terms of duration to
the Winckelmannian prototype (120 years) than that of Hoffmann.18
Even though Hoffmann’s emplotment of developments in Italian
church music was the first to draw on all the components of Winckel-
mann’s organic scheme, the idea of a decline of old Italian music is
present in earlier contributions to this debate. Reichardt argued in 1782
that modern Italian composers, corrupted by opera, were no longer able
to write church music like that of Lotti, Palestrina, Gabrieli, Frescobaldi,
Leo or Durante, but the list he gives does not present a systematic con-
ception of a gradual decline.19 In 1791, however, he comes closer to the
gradual decline represented by Hoffmann and Thibaut: here, Palestrina
is described as the greatest composer in the sublime, ceremonious church
style, while Marcello lacks the ‘great boldness and harmonic richness of
Palestrina’, and the church compositions of Pergolesi evince a disregard
for the ‘lofty school’ (hohe Schule).20 In the same year, Christian Friedrich
Daniel Schubart gave a more precisely delineated account of this decline,
commenting that ‘the second period of Italian music lasts roughly from
the year 1680 to 1750. In it extreme simplicity and splendour were passed
over, and the worldly expression of drama combined with the ashen face
of the church style: and herein lay the first reason for the decline of
music!’21 For Spitta, in the earliest musicological discussion of the
Palestrina revival, the idea of a gradual decline in Italian music originated
with Tieck and Wackenroder: he comments that they created a ‘new
genealogy [Geschlecht]’ for Italian music after Palestrina by approach-
ing it solely from the perspective of tracing his continuing influence.22
In fact, Tieck and Wackenroder add little new to the conceptions of
Reichardt and Schubart. Tieck similarly considers the second period of
Italian music – which he identifies with Leo and Marcello – to constitute
a departure from Palestrina’s ‘pure, sacred path’, while Pergolesi and
his followers reflect the increasing worldliness of church music.23
Significantly, Tieck is the first critic to link his emplotment with similar
trajectories in art history, by comparing the roles played by the imitators
of Pergolesi and Correggio in the decline of music and painting.24
The selection of Palestrina by Hoffmann and Thibaut as the apex
of their organically emplotted golden ages requires explanation, since
not only was little of his music known to German musicians in the first
decades of the nineteenth century, but Allegri and his Miserere were far
more frequently named and discussed by earlier commentators than
Palestrina. Reflecting on this situation, Rochlitz was later to comment
that ‘if fame rested on the quantity rather than quality of adulatory
voices, Allegri would be the most famous master of all [this school], not
excluding Palestrina’.25 The popularity of the Miserere was stimulated
by enthusiastic descriptions of its performance in the Sistine Chapel
during Holy Week, and performances of the work had taken place
in Leipzig in 1810 and Kassel in 1812.26 As a consequence, for earlier
authors it was this work, rather than any composition by or attributed
to Palestrina, that constituted the high point of the Italian church style.
This is apparent in Schubart’s discussion of the history of Italian music,
since in describing the contribution of Italian composers to church
music he does not even mention Palestrina:
Since the earliest times they [the Italians] have defined the church style; as far
back as several centuries ago, Allegri composed choruses and responsorial pieces
of such excellence that one cannot hear them without rapture. His Miserere, which
is still sung today in almost all Catholic churches on Good Friday, is composed
with heavenly feeling, and will never cease having an effect so long as it still
makes hearts glow with devotion.27
Earlier, Herder had alluded to the work in his essay ‘Cäcilia’, while
Wackenroder made the Miserere synonymous with a whole style, evoking
Renaissance church music by describing ‘that old chorale-like church
music which sounds like an eternal “MISERERE MEI DOMINE!”, the
slow, deep chords of which creep along in deep valleys like pilgrims laden
with sin’.28 Although, by the time of Hoffmann’s essay, the Miserere had for
at least two decades been seen to epitomize Renaissance church music,
he downgrades its status, considering its popularity to be the result merely
of the veneration surrounding its performances in the Sistine Chapel.29
In placing Palestrina rather than Allegri at the peak of the church style,
Hoffmann recognizes that a composer known for a single work did not
provide a firm enough foundation for the construction of his golden age:
Palestrina’s stature, vouchsafed by the supposed role of the Missa Papae
Marcelli in the deliberations of the Council of Trent, thus enabled him
to be elevated as a universal ideal. Consequently, Palestrina’s role as the
paradigm of the church style is grounded primarily not in the aesthetic or
liturgical superiority of his music, but in its significance for music history.
Not only do Hoffmann and Thibaut construct their golden ages of
Italian church music according to a pre-existing model, but the termi-
nology with which they describe Palestrina’s style is also borrowed from
art history. Both Hoffmann and Thibaut share Reichardt’s conviction
that the chief character of this style consists of ‘emphatic and often
bold progressions of predominantly consonant chords, whose resolute
impression is neither modified nor weakened by melodic ornaments or
rhythmic diversity’.30 In perpetuating Reichardt’s evocation of starkly
simple homophony, Hoffmann and Thibaut draw heavily on his
language, placing an emphasis on Palestrina’s use of ‘successions of con-
sonant triads’: ‘Without adornment and without the impetus of melody,
chord follows upon chord; most of them are perfect consonances, whose
boldness and strength stir and elevate the spirit with inexpressible
power.’31 Other contributors to the church music debate were certainly
familiar with the contrapuntal Palestrina style as codified by Fux, or with
the Italian and German stile antico traditions: Michaelis, for example,
considered the status of old Italian church music as an ideal vehicle for
the eternal character of religion to stem from its basis in the ‘wonderful
art of counterpoint, canonical and fugal work’.32 But Hoffmann does not
idealize the strenge Satz of contrapuntal theory: rather it is the language
of Palestrina as evinced in his most starkly simple homophonic works
that is elevated as the peak of the church style. Hoffmann considers
Palestrina’s language to be epitomized by a responsory which he quotes
(Ex. 2.1; actually from the Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae by Marc’ Antonio
Ingegneri); it is significant that he quotes only the homophonic first
section of this responsory, omitting its polyphonic second part which
would seemingly contradict his representation of Palestrina’s style.33
Hoffmann’s assertion that this simple piece is representative of the
rest of Palestrina’s output is certainly indicative of the small amount
of his music readily available in this period: half a century later, Franz
Xaver Haberl, the principal editor of the Breitkopf and Härtel com-
plete edition, was to complain that ‘an entirely false idea of the style of
Palestrina has been promulgated for over fifty years through the pub-
lication of solitary four-voice responsories from the matins of the last
three days of Holy Week’.34 In the early nineteenth century, popular
perceptions of Palestrina’s style were entirely defined by the simple ho-
mophonic works in the papal choir’s Holy Week repertory: most of the
small number of Palestrina’s works published and performed in north
Germany in this period were derived from this repertory, such as the
‘Stabat mater’ and Improperia. Crucial to the elevation of these works as
the paradigm of the church style was their powerful effect in the context of
these performances. A spurious Miserere included by Rochlitz in an 1810
issue of the AmZ typifies contemporary perceptions of Palestrina’s idiom
(Ex. 2.2): Rochlitz describes it – in terms that recall Wackenroder’s evoca-
tion of Allegri’s Miserere – as ‘extremely slow, solemn, and sung not strictly
in time, like a chorale’.35 Goethe’s description of Palestrina’s starkly
homophonic Improperia in his Italienische Reise reflects the circumstances
that popularized this music: he acclaimed the Holy Week music as
Example 2.1. Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, ‘Tristis est anima mea’,

Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, bars 1 –16
‘unimaginably beautiful’, considering it to be ‘uniquely suited to the
antique fittings of the papal chapel and to the group of Michelangelos,
the Last Judgement, the Prophets and the biblical history’.36 Similarly,
experiencing these simple homophonic pieces in the Sistine Chapel led
Tieck’s character Ernst to the conviction that, just as for painting and
sculpture, Rome was the home of the ‘true, lofty school of music’.37
While the small number of Palestrina’s works in circulation can ac-
count in part for the emphasis on stark homophony present in the
writings of Reichardt, Goethe and Tieck, this does not suffice as an ex-
planation of the representations of his style by Hoffmann and Thibaut.
Hoffmann, after all, mentions and was familiar with the Missa Papae
Marcelli, while Thibaut discusses this and several other masses, including
the canonic Missa ad Fugam.38 For Peter Lüttig, the language with which
Hoffmann and his contemporaries represent Palestrina’s style is derived –
via Reichardt – from English historiography; he argues that Reichardt’s
evocation of this style is a ‘barely filtered’ repetition of Charles Burney’s
description of the ‘Stabat mater’:
Palestrina begins his Stabat Mater, which is still used in the pope’s chapel, and
printed in the music performed there during Passion week, by three successive
common chords, with sharp thirds, to this base A G F, descending, diatonically; and yet
this modulation is so qualified by the disposition of the parts, and tempered
by the perfect manner in which it is sung, that though it looks unscientific and
licentious upon paper, its effects, of which no idea can be acquired from keyed
instruments, are admirable.39
But while Burney and the German commentators all emphasize the
startling and powerful effect of Palestrina’s progressions of conso-
nant chords, Burney does not present the highly selective reading of
Palestrina’s style offered by Hoffmann and Thibaut (commenting else-
where that ‘Fugue seems as natural to Palestrina, as Rhyme to Dryden’),
and therefore cannot be regarded as the source of it.40 Rather, in focusing
exclusively on Palestrina’s homophony, Hoffmann and Thibaut orient
their accounts of his style around the terminology which Winckelmann
and the Romantic circle had applied to art history. Earlier, Reichardt had
repeatedly invoked Winckelmann’s by then well-known paeans to the
noble simplicity and calm grandeur of ancient Greek and Renaissance
art, as a means of idealizing not merely the music of Palestrina, but also
works by eighteenth-century German composers.41 But with Hoffmann
and Thibaut, Winckelmann’s maxims are reserved for Renaissance mu-
sic, and serve to bolster the historical emplotments that they construct by
Example 2.2. ‘Miserere von Palästrina’
analogy with Renaissance painting. Hoffmann describes Palestrina’s style

as evincing ‘lofty, inimitable simplicity and dignity’, while Thibaut praises
the ‘ancient dignity and simplicity’ of the music of his golden age: for
both authors, these criteria are best fulfilled by Palestrina’s most austerely
homophonic works.42 Even their technical descriptions of Palestrina’s
style recall contemporary accounts of Italian Renaissance paintings, in-
dicating a burgeoning reciprocity between these two revivals: they are
strikingly similar to Friedrich Schlegel’s interpretation of the colouristic
techniques – ‘like pure chords free from all dissonances’ – in a Madonna
by Raphael.43
PALESTRINA AND THE ROMANTIC NEW MYTHOLOGY
The extent to which the mode of emplotment and terminology used by

Hoffmann and Thibaut were borrowed from earlier art criticism was
recognized by contemporaries. For critics baffled by the growing en-
thusiasm for old Italian music, exposing the extent of this dependency
enabled them to dismiss the idealization of Palestrina as mere posturing
on the part of dilettante critics. Johann Gottfried Hientzsch, for instance,
deplored the use of allusions to ancient Greek art and music as a means
of elevating Palestrina as ‘a classical model for all times and all peoples’:
bewildered by such analogies, Hientzsch urgently cautioned his read-
ers to remember that ‘music in Italy around 1555 was entirely different
from that of the Greeks’.44 More significantly, the Swiss composer, pub-
lisher and educationalist Hans Georg Nägeli condemned the elevation
of Palestrina by dilettantes as an arbitrary attempt to manufacture a
musical focus for their enthusiasm for other forms of Renaissance art:
‘It is an understandable error when art enthusiasts, who admire Dante,
Ariosto, Raphael and Michelangelo as great artistic creators, assume
in addition the existence of great artists from that country in the field
of music without really knowing the same and without having proved
it either historically or critically.’45 Nägeli considers this mistaken as-
sumption to be harmless where it occurs in the novels and poems of
his contemporaries, and it can even be delightful, as in the works of
Tieck:
If Tieck believes that he offers the goddess of music the highest homage by
disowning German art, failing to recognize its heroes, and celebrating instead
Palestrina, Marcello and Pergolesi, we can think of Bach, Handel and Stölzel
while reading these beautiful poems and in this way avoid being disillusioned
by the fact that this brilliant idealist – by here idealizing music that is devoid of
ideas – has deceived himself in his passionate fantasy.46
But while such misjudgements are, for Nägeli, acceptable in a novel or a

poem, it is unjustifiable for the authors of critical works to make similar
claims about old Italian music. Nägeli’s critique stems from his progres-
sivist conception of music history: he dismisses the ‘sketchy and shapeless’
(dürftigen und unf örmlichen) works of Palestrina as the products of technical
immaturity, considering them to violate modern aesthetic criteria by
containing so many arbitrary and unessential ingredients.47 Accordingly,
Nägeli argues that while the Germans embraced Italian painting because
Winckelmann had demonstrated its superiority in terms of technique,
no such demonstration has been or could be attempted for old Italian
music.48 Rather, to take Nägeli’s perspective a stage further, for dilettante
critics it is as if the mere placing of Palestrina at the peak of an organi-
cist golden age is sufficient to prove that it too constitutes a universal
ideal.
Nägeli’s conviction that the idealization of Palestrina was merely an
arbitrary response to the enthusiasm of the early Romantics for other
forms of old Italian art provides a hypothesis with which to explore the
emergence of the Palestrina revival. It is clear that the appropriation of
concepts from art criticism provided a means of elevating Palestrina as the
peak of the church style. More complex is the question of why Protestant
critics sought to embrace a foreign, Catholic ideal: why did Hoffmann
choose Palestrina as the paradigm of church music from among all the
other figures proposed over the preceding years, and what ideological
factors encouraged later critics and composers to follow Hoffmann’s
lead? It has already been seen that for the Romantic circle, the art of
the Middle Ages and Renaissance provided the key to modern artistic
renewal: now it is necessary to establish in what ways Hoffmann’s golden
age corresponds with Friedrich Schlegel’s new mythology for art and
literature.
For Schlegel, the absence in modern times of the coherent and com-
munal world-view that provided earlier artists with a firm foundation
for their activity has the result that modern artists must reawaken older
mythologies in order to provide their works with a substantial spiritual
content. Such a modern mythology can only be gained by the revival
of older Christian art and techniques, since the modern artist, to secure
such a foundation for his work, must construct a similar relationship to
the infinite: ‘Only someone who has his own religion, a characteristic
relationship to (and view of ) the universe, can be an artist.’49 Even for
the sincere Protestant composer or painter, Protestantism cannot form
a part of such a mythology; it has been corrupted by Reason and is
too prone to reflection: ‘Catholicism is naiv Christianity. Protestantism is
sentimental.’50 The sole means, in Schlegel’s view, for the modern artist
to achieve such a foundation is through Catholicism, and ‘the greatest
mythical work must again be Catholic’.51 In addition to the two central
components of Schlegel’s mythology – Catholicism and medievalism – an
optional third foundation for artistic production is provided by the
adoption and magnification of a traditional German characteristic:
‘Sehnsucht nach dem Süden’, longing for Italy. Although this had been
an element of German culture since the Renaissance, the attraction of
Italy for the Romantics was dramatically increased: it provided a weak
but tangible link to the naiv culture of the Middle Ages, being viewed as
an enduring remnant of the Holy Roman Empire (an entity whose ide-
alization only increased when Napoleon formally dissolved it in 1806).
Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis and Wackenroder idealized medieval Italian
art and the culture that produced it, contrasting the political and reli-
gious unity that sustained artistic production in the Holy Roman Empire
with the confessional, cultural and political factionalism of modern
Germany.52
Hoffmann, Tieck and other early Romantic commentators underpin
their representations of old Italian music with frequent comparisons to
the golden age of painting. Hoffmann’s identification of medieval Italian
art as the greatest period in painting links his enthusiasm for Palestrina
not only to the tripartite mythology of the Romantic circle, but to the
activities of contemporary German artists.53 The three components of
Schlegel’s new foundation can be seen in practice in the work of the
‘Brotherhood of St Luke’ or the Nazarenes, a group of German painters,
led by Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr, who settled in Rome in 1809.
Inspired by the descriptions of the lives and works of Italian painters
presented in Wackenroder’s Herzensergiessungen, the Nazarenes sought to
challenge neo-classical principles through a return to the techniques
and spiritual fervour of medieval art. Hoffmann’s paeans to the Italian
painters of the ‘early period’ (alten Zeit) parallel the vague periodiciza-
tion of old Italian art underpinning the ideas of Wackenroder and the
Nazarenes.54 Although their golden age of art centres on Raphael and
other early sixteenth-century artists, they sought to represent this ideal
as a product of medieval Catholicism: this process, by extension, allowed
Palestrina to be perceived as a pre-Reformation composer. In the cases
of both Raphael and Palestrina, this historiographical sleight of hand en-
abled these models to conform with the most crucial aspect of Schlegel’s
mythology: the idea that the naiv art of the Catholic Middle Ages pro-
vides the paradigm of the relation between a secure religious foundation
and superlative artistic production. Accordingly, Tieck and Hoffmann
emphasize not merely the religious quality of Palestrina’s music, but
the idea that its greatness stems from having been conceived by a naiv
genius in an age of unreflective belief: that it embodies, as the aestheti-
cian Eduard Krüger later put it, a ‘mentality of unalloyed innocence
[Gesinnung unzerspaltener Unschuld ], a paradise of childhood lost to us’.55
For Tieck, this music possesses a ‘heavenly innocence’, expressing ‘purity
and sanctity of devotion’, while for Hoffmann, ‘Palestrina is simple, true,
childlike, pious, strong, and sturdy; truly Christian in his works like Pietro
da Cortona and our old Dürer in painting, composing was to him a re-
ligious practice’.56 Similarly, Michaelis echoes Winckelmann’s notion of
the innocent optimism or serenity (Heiterkeit) characterizing early art,
and emphasizes that the greatest virtue of early church music is its status
as a product of the golden age of Christianity: ‘The interest of ancient
works does not merely lie in their pastness, in their great antiquity in
itself . . . but in the serious, noble and religious character of their age,
which, at least by composers of works of sacred music, is expressed so
unmistakably.’57
The idealization of medieval Catholicism served a multiplicity of func-
tions in early Romantic literature and criticism. It is necessary, therefore,
to establish whether critics idealizing old Italian music shared Schlegel’s
conception of naiv Catholicism, or were merely invoking a fashionable
literary topos. In Schlegel’s view, the painting of Raphael and his pre-
decessors not only demonstrates the necessity of Catholic inspiration for
superlative artistic production, but provides an exemplar of the true pur-
pose of art. For Schlegel – stimulated by Schleiermacher’s Über Religion
(1799) – such painting symbolizes the union of art and religion, an ideal
also exemplified by Dante: ‘the great Dante, sacred founder and father of
modern poetry entered this path, uniting religion and poetry.’58 Similarly,
while Goethe’s ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’ had concentrated on the sub-
lime power and national significance of Gothic architecture, Schlegel em-
phasizes its basis in Catholicism, viewing it as the exemplar of Christian
architecture.59 Schlegel’s desire to revivify the union of art and religion
was shared by the Nazarenes and becomes programmatic in their works.
In Overbeck’s Der Triumph der Religion in den Künsten, and in Die Einführung
der Künste in Deutschland durch das Christenthum by Philipp Veit, Catholicism
is represented as the source of all German art, while in Johann Heinrich
Olivier’s Die Madonna, von großen Künstlern verehrt, Palestrina is included
among the artists venerating the Madonna.60 Similarly, in idealizing
Palestrina, Hoffmann and Tieck represent the service of religion as the
loftiest purpose of music and locate the paradigm of this union in me-
dieval Italy: Hoffmann notes that for the composer, ‘the most sacred
depths of his noble, truly Christian art are first revealed in Italy when
Christianity shone forth in its greatest splendour’.61
Hoffmann’s stance is very similar to that of Schlegel: so similar, that it
may seem to represent – as so often in Hoffmann’s writings – the dogged
pursuance of an ironically assumed posture. Not all Romantic authors,
after all, shared Schlegel’s belief that Catholicism was the sole source
for artistic renewal: many sought merely to exploit the allegorical or pic-
turesque potential of Catholic imagery, or to engage in what he regarded
as ‘whimsical trifling’ (Spielerei der Fantasie) with Catholic symbols.62 In a
discussion from 1846, the (Catholic) poet Joseph von Eichendorff stressed
the plurality of roles assigned to Catholicism in early Romantic literature.
While Schlegel asserted that artistic renewal required the consecration
of the church, other authors located what Eichendorff describes as the
‘Catholic mythology’ within a pantheistic framework: the poet Zacharias
Werner, for instance, ranked Christ alongside Prometheus and assorted
Egyptian, Nordic and Indian gods as mediators between mankind and
the divine.63 Eichendorff notes that a third group of writers, such as
Tieck, sought to disentangle the mysterious and miraculous aspects of
Catholicism from the inconveniences of dogma, while others employed
Catholic elements merely as decoration, assigning only aesthetic valid-
ity to Catholicism.64 The spirit of aesthetic Catholicism identified by
Eichendorff is evident in other aspects of early Romantic culture. It is
reflected in the popularity of the religious plays of Calderón de la Barca –
many of which contain Eucharist scenes – and in the colourful rituals
and monastic intrigues of the Gothic novel. This trend, and in particu-
lar the vogue in the late 1810s and 1820s for converting to Catholicism,
was satirized by Heine in Die Stadt Lukka (1828). Here, Heine dismisses
the paintings of the Nazarenes – ‘the long-haired Christian new German
school’ – as mere parodies of old Italian art; crucially, Heine also links the
early Romantic enthusiasm for Palestrina with the contemporary vogue
for Catholicism, at the moment when the German narrator attempts to
seduce a pious young Italian girl:
I will become a Catholic myself – but only for this single night! Oh, the beautiful,
blest, Catholic night! I will lie in your arms, with a strict Catholic faith in the
heaven of your love; from our lips we shall kiss each other’s lovely confessions,
the word will become flesh, faith will become sensual, in shape and form –
what a religion! You priests! Chant your Kyrie eleison . . . let Palestrina’s mass
resound . . . but as soon as I wake up next morning, I shall rub the sleep and the
Catholicism from my eyes, and again see the sunshine and the Bible clearly, and
be rational, sensible and Protestant, as before.65
Hoffmann’s enthusiasm for old Italian church music is not as su-
perficial as the short-lived fervour of Heine’s narrator for the external
trappings of Catholicism. But some of the stances that he assumes in
‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ are problematic when approached from
the broader context of his musical thought. The elevation of Palestrina
represents the construction of a musical equivalent to the paradigms
provided by Raphael for painting and Dante for poetry: while Tieck
had earlier approached Palestrina with perspectives derived from art
criticism, Hoffmann takes this process of appropriation still further. It
would be mistaken, however, to assume that Hoffmann simply trans-
fers Schlegel’s tripartite mythology to the musical sphere. Rather, his
essay enacts a dialogue between ideas appropriated from the Romantic
school and the problems created by their transference to music history
(in revising this discussion for Die Serapionsbrüder (1819), Hoffmann ren-
ders this dialogic structure explicit). As a consequence, the idealization
of naiv Catholic art represents merely one strand in a complex texture: it
is necessary now to see how this overall texture departs from Schlegel’s
programme.
PALESTRINA AND ABSOLUTE VOCAL MUSIC
In exploring the implications of their golden age constructions for the

reform of art and church music, Schlegel and Hoffmann diverge on a
crucial point. Schlegel’s tripartite mythology is sustained by the convic-
tion that Italian Renaissance art provides a universal model because, in
addition to reaching the highest spiritual level, the paintings of Raphael
are superlative in terms of technique. Not only did the painters of the
older school realize most purely the religious purpose of art, but their
works constitute the ‘fortunate coinciding’ of the characteristic essence
of Christian beauty and technical perfection: ‘Where should the young
artist now find the model for that which is higher, in meaning and
expression, in disposition and arrangement, in general in the manner
of conception and treatment . . . Where else than in the age and the
works in which he recognizes that painting reached the highest peak of
perfection.’66 Hoffmann, however, is not willing to ascribe to Palestrina
the technical as well as spiritual supremacy that he too perceives in old
Italian painting. While he considers that Renaissance painters surpass
modern artists even in terms of technique, modern music is superior
in formal terms to that of Palestrina.67 Hoffmann’s evolutionary con-
ception of musical technique and expression has the result that, unlike
Schlegel, he is unwilling to develop his idealization of earlier art into an
exclusive mythological foundation for modern church music. As a re-
sult, Hoffmann himself comes up against a fundamental problem facing
composers of church music: how to reconcile a progressive principle of
form with a converse teleology of Christian content. In exploring this
problem, Schlegel’s mythology is set in conflict with the aesthetic of ab-
solute instrumental music and the ideology of the sublime: it must now
be established how these latter constructs interact with the idealization
of Palestrina.
Later, it will be seen that, for some nineteenth-century critics and musi-
cians, the idealization of a cappella music stemmed in part from the desire
to erect a vocal paradigm as a counterweight to the primacy of instru-
mental music in mainstream aesthetics and practice. With Hoffmann –
as with Tieck – a cappella choral music and absolute instrumental music
are not simply placed in opposition, but rather are cast in a complex
reciprocal relation. In Tieck’s Phantasus (1812), this bifurcated stance is
articulated through a dialogue: while one character acclaims the a cappella
works of the Sistine Chapel as the highest form of music, another asserts
that ‘it was left to the most recent times . . . to express the marvellous rich-
ness of the human senses in this art, primarily in instrumental music’.68
While Hoffmann also acclaims both modern instrumental and old Italian
vocal works as the highest form of music, he does not compare them di-
rectly in the manner of Tieck.69 Rather, he follows Tieck by pursuing
this comparison via a discussion of the contrasting merits of a cappella
and concerted church music. On the one hand, Hoffmann acclaims the
a cappella performances of the Sistine Chapel as the ideal exemplar for
church music: ‘Praise of the highest and holiest should flow straight from
the human breast without any foreign admixture or intermediary.’70 But
on the other hand, his belief in the infinite perfectibility of music in the
technical and colouristic spheres leads him to resist the conclusion that
orchestral accompaniment has no place in church music: ‘why should we
close our eyes to it when the progressing world spirit [ forttreibende Weltgeist]
has itself conferred this brilliance on our mysterious art?’71 Nonetheless,
for both Hoffmann and Tieck it is a cappella rather than concerted music
that is elevated as a symbol of ideal vocal music, because the former –
paradoxically – can more readily be assimilated within criteria conceived
around absolute instrumental music.
In order to represent vocal music as a vehicle for the infinite – as a
means of ‘saying the unsayable’ in the same way as indeterminate, ab-
solute instrumental music – Hoffmann and Tieck downplay or ignore
the presence of words: the works of Palestrina are not viewed as a com-
bination of text and music but as pure music. Accordingly, Tieck insists
that vocal music, if it does not abjure instruments, must shun orchestral
mimesis and avoid responding to the text in such a way as to become
‘muddy and impure’ (trübe und unlauter): ‘it cannot be melodramatic and
insist on its strength and power, or want to indulge itself in despair,
since here it loses its own spirit and becomes merely a weak imitator
of speech and poetry.’72 Both Tieck and Hoffmann contrast the impu-
rity of modern concerted works with the absence of such conflicts in
a cappella music: Tieck condemns the text illustration present in Haydn’s
oratorios, while Hoffmann stresses that no orchestral mimesis defiles the
purity of old Italian church music.73 In his review of Beethoven’s Mass
in C, Hoffmann directs composers of church music to avoid being dis-
tracted by textual details, arguing that the words of the mass should
provide merely a generalized religious stimulus.74 Elsewhere, he makes
even more explicit the irrelevance of texts in his conception of absolute
vocal music: church compositions communicate through the ‘universally
comprehensible medium of music’, and ‘the words associated with the
singing are only incidental’.75 Although neither Hoffmann nor Tieck
render fully explicit the link between their conceptions of ideal vocal
and instrumental music, this connection was made in a contemporary
discussion by Schleiermacher, who notes that for listeners unacquainted
with Latin, choral settings of the mass have ‘the pure character of instru-
mental music’.76
Hoffmann’s strategy of treating Palestrina’s works as absolute music,
and of thus bringing them closer to his Beethovenian paradigm, serves
several important functions. For Hoffmann, as for the Romantic circle,
the absence of determinate meaning in instrumental music is, in theory,
its most precious and unique virtue. Hoffmann’s critique of modern mu-
sical culture makes clear, however, that this potential has seldom been
realized in practice. By stressing that Palestrina’s religiosity inheres in
his musical language and not in his ‘incidental’ texts, Hoffmann makes
an indirect contribution to his quest to invest modern instrumental mu-
sic with metaphysical import. Accordingly, the implicit association of
Beethoven and Palestrina serves to urge composers to safeguard the ex-
pression of instrumental music, by eschewing the trivial and always striv-
ing to express the infinite. But while Hoffmann urges composers to heed
the eternal, imperishable truths expressed by Palestrina in their quest
to ‘say the unsayable’, these truths are not expressed by modern instru-
mental music.77 Hoffmann does not represent Beethoven’s symphonies
as Christian art. Rather they appear as the most recent embodiment of
‘the prevailing world spirit’ (der waltende Weltgeist); the unknown kingdom
that Beethoven’s Fifth unlocks is not necessarily Christian in whole or
in part, and is certainly not the same as the kingdom unlocked by the
music of Palestrina.78
This distinction, fundamental to Hoffmann’s conception of a revivi-
fied church music, is articulated by reference to Romantic theories of the
sublime. Although Hoffmann invokes the sublime in describing the music
of both Beethoven and Palestrina, the metaphors and imagery deployed
diverge significantly. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, the sublime
provided a means of exploring how art can transcend its human origins
without reliance on Christian doctrine: as Thomas Weiskel argues, it is
dependent on the substitution of divinity with a ‘credible god-term, a
meaningful jargon of ultimacy’ with which to sustain a secularized con-
ception of transcendence.79 In evoking the sublime incomprehensibility
of modern instrumental music, Hoffmann draws on a range of religious
images in order to assert its power to exceed the capacity of the imagina-
tion. Hoffmann’s ‘jargon of ultimacy’, while relying in part on Christian
imagery, provides a vague, pantheistic vision of the supernatural: the
least ambiguous religious reference is a comparison in which Beethoven
opens an unknown kingdom just as ‘Orpheus’s lyre opened the gates of
Hades’.80 Elsewhere, too, Hoffmann’s evocation of sublime terror owes
more to classical mythology than to Christianity: Mozart ‘leads us deep
into the realm of shades. Terror encompasses us, but without torment be-
comes a presentiment of infinity’; his symphonies convey the ‘unending
dance of the spheres’.81
Here, Hoffmann’s infinite consists of a combination of mythologies,
a foundation for the production and reception of art constructed
reflectively from many traditions. In ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’,
Hoffmann provides a very different vision of the transcendental realm
intimated to the listener. When applying the concept of the sublime to
the art of the distant past, he draws on several key ideas from earlier art
criticism. In discussing the earliest art of their golden ages, Winckelmann
and Schlegel explore the ways in which its technical defects – stiffness,
angularity and severity – are mitigated by its grandeur and sublimity:
in reference to the paintings of Jan van Eyck, Schlegel speaks of the
‘Egyptian sublimity and stiffness of these sharp, strict godly images
[Göttergestalten]’.82 Hoffmann’s application of this concept to Palestrina’s
starkly homophonic works similarly presupposes that the grandeur
of their impression outweighs the limitations of their form.83 More
importantly, Hoffmann shares Schlegel’s conviction that such art pro-
vides a naiv Catholic vision of the infinite: for Schlegel, the works of van
Eyck are consequently ‘incomprehensible monuments of a greater and
stricter early world’, while Hoffmann views the music of his golden age as
a remnant of a vanished faith.84 Hoffmann’s descriptions of Palestrina’s
sublime power resemble his evocations of Beethoven: the elemental force
of Palestrina’s ‘bold powerful chords, like dazzling shafts of light’ recall
the ‘burning shafts of light’ that bewilder the listener in Hoffmann’s
review of Beethoven’s Fifth.85 But while Beethoven’s unknown kingdom
is a smothering Hades, Palestrina’s other world provides a less harrowing
presentiment of infinity, proclaiming ‘that love, that consonance of all
things spiritual in nature which is promised to the Christian’.86 The terror
of Beethoven is replaced by a more benign image of transcendence, akin
to that described by an anonymous AmZ contributor in 1809, for whom
a Lassus Magnificat was full of ‘calm sublimity’ (stiller Erhabenheit).87
These two mythologies of the sublime collide in Hoffmann’s review
of Beethoven’s Mass in C. The only music actually described as sublime
is that of the old Italians; these ‘sublime church choruses’ deserve pre-
eminence among church music for their ‘truly sacred style’.88 But in the
ensuing comparison of these choruses with the new concerted idiom,
it is modern church music that is allied with the sublimity of Strasburg
Minster, while Palestrina is compared to St Peter’s in Rome and seem-
ingly relegated to the beautiful:
The grandiose proportions of this building [St Peter’s] uplift the spirit while
remaining commensurable with it, but it is with a strange inner unrest that
the observer takes in the Minster, which rises high into the air with the boldest
convolutions and oddest intertwinings of bustling fantastic figures and flourishes:
only such unease can excite this unknown, wonderful, foreboding feeling, and
the spirit gives itself up willingly to dreams in which it believes it recognizes the
supernatural, the infinite. Now, this is exactly the same as the impression of the
purely Romantic that lives and moves in the fantastic compositions of Mozart
and Haydn.89
In this way, Hoffmann asserts the superiority of modern instrumental
music not merely in the technical sphere, but as a vehicle for transcen-
dence: the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven presents a more
sophisticated vision of the infinite than that of Palestrina, one which fully
reflects the complexities of the modern world-view. While Hoffmann’s
mythology of instrumental music presents a vague, reflective, secular-
ized vision of the supernatural, old Italian music presents a naiv Catholic
vision of the infinite. Palestrina’s music is transcendental, but its
uplifting of the spirit is restricted by its historicity: the transcendental
realm of Palestrina’s music remains commensurable by the standards of
St Peter’s, by those of golden age Catholicism. The content – or rather, to
use Hoffmann’s phrase, ‘characteristic essence’ – of modern concerted
music is for him much richer than that of Palestrina’s music. But it is
precisely this richness that renders it unsatisfactory for the church, and
in some way, through the mediation of Palestrina, the modern composer
must attempt to limit this essence if he wishes to produce true church
music.
PALESTRINA AND THE MODERN COMPOSER
Hoffmann’s triadic conception of the history of the church style is more

complex than the schemes presented by Winckelmann and Schlegel.
Winckelmann’s sequence of a golden age, unambiguous decline, and re-
newal through the revival of earlier techniques is substantially revised:
Hoffmann does not contend that old Italian music alone is suitable for
church use, and rejects the idea that modern composers should replicate
Palestrina’s language. But although Hoffmann’s bifurcated conception of
the sublime and progressive principle of form complicate his argument,
renewal remains predicated on the music of the distant past. Earlier
critics idealizing early church music rarely specified how modern church
composers should respond to it. Hoffmann responds to this problem in
detail, but provides no easy or unambiguous solutions to it. He rejects
the replication of Palestrina’s language on two grounds: because music,
unlike painting, has evolved technically since the Renaissance, and be-
cause modern composers lack the strong, unreflective religious faith of
earlier composers:
It is probably completely impossible for a composer today to be able to write
in the same way as Palestrina, Leo, and later Handel and others. That age,
preeminently when Christianity still shone in its glory, appears to have vanished
from the earth, and with it the holy dedication of the artist. Now a composer
could just as little compose a Miserere like those of Allegri or Leo as a painter
could paint a Madonna like Raphael, Dürer or Holbein.90
Since, for Hoffmann, all music must reflect the prevailing world spirit
in order to be authentic, it is impossible to resurrect the golden age
of Christian art in spiritually different times simply by replicating ear-
lier techniques. Hoffmann’s position is similar to that of Hegel: the
modern artist cannot adopt forms that are foreign to his beliefs and the
world-view of his age, since the validity of his works depends on them
being the product of conviction. For Hoffmann, the insincerity of such
art will be visible in its form; the composer cannot create naiv church
music solely by adopting Palestrina’s language, since ‘the invention of
genuine sacred melodies reveals the weakness of any composer who is
less than sincere; it is the touchstone [Probierstein] of the inner soul’.91
Hoffmann’s rejection of imitation was echoed by other critics in the
decade following his essay. Rochlitz and Gottfried Weber similarly cau-
tion composers of church music to heed the postulates of authenticity and
contemporaneity. Dismissing the view that the style of the old Italian
masters is alone suitable for the church, Weber argues that that the
imitation of it can result only in a caricature devoid of content:
Every age has its own characteristic manner and way of expressing itself; the
forms peculiar to that age, in which people back then expressed themselves
fluently, no longer come naturally to us. Any attempt centuries later to copy
[nachzuäffen] the style of that time can at best produce only a caricature . . . which,
not inspired by the spirit of its models, can only ape their external form.92
While Weber rejects imitation for compromising the historicity of the

artwork, Rochlitz focuses on the issue of conviction, arguing that artistic
inspiration cannot be acquired second hand.93 Both critics also dismiss
musical ‘copies’ as superfluous, given the availability of original works
in this style: Rochlitz amplifies this argument on economic grounds,
contending that while there is a market for paintings in the old Italian style
because the originals are so expensive, the works of the old composers
can be had for a few Groschen.94
Given the rejection of imitation, how might the composer legitimately
respond to the music of Palestrina? Hoffmann’s solution is similar to that
outlined in Schlegel’s 1819 apologia for the art of the Nazarenes, and
a comparison of how their arguments diverge will clarify Hoffmann’s
position. Both critics evoke a future in which a new era of religious art
will emerge, arguing that studying models from earlier ages is essential
if artists and composers are to progress towards this goal. Schlegel, like
Hoffmann, rejects the idea that this new artistic path can be established
simply through the imitation of old Italian art: instead, both authors stress
the importance of a mastery of technique, while Schlegel considers that
success in colouring and fidelity are inborn and cannot be learned from
models.95 Moreover, both critics argue that old art need not be copied,
since modern artists should ideally be able to recover its Christian spiri-
tuality in their own productions without conscious imitation. Hoffmann
argues that through studying the works of great church composers, ‘the
artist gifted with a childlike and pious mind’ will discover his own cre-
ative strength and an appropriate idiom for church music, while for
Schlegel, the study of old art, combined with the ‘godly light of innermost
inspiration’, will give the painter the ability to represent the ‘characteristic
essence of Christian beauty’.96
The views of Hoffmann and Schlegel diverge on a crucial point. While
Schlegel condemns the imitation of old Italian painting as necessarily
resulting in a ‘mannered antiquatedness’ (manierierten Altertümlichkeit) he
praises the revival by the Nazarenes of ancient fresco techniques, and
asserts that if modern art is to regain the spiritual quality of the art of the
Italian golden age, a certain degree of archaism must be permitted.97
For Schlegel – in line with his assertion that to replicate literally is impos-
sible – the onward development of the world spirit does not prohibit the
use of old techniques or the inclusion of antiquated elements; rather, it
guarantees that modern paintings will contain contemporary elements
too, and thus speak validly for the present:
Because the spirit never stands still or remains chained to dead forms . . . we must
not worry that the new Christian art might come out as a mere repetition and
empty imitation of the old masters. Rather, our age and the progressing sensuous
development of the Christian world-view, in accordance with the spiritual mood
predominating at present, will also bear and produce art and a new artistic
epoch characteristic to itself; for this, however – as always in similar cases – real
knowledge of the old Christian art and of its characteristic beauty constitutes a
truly essential and uniquely indispensable element, and the prime condition for
its emergence.98
In contrast, Hoffmann asserts the pastness of his golden age, and in his
conception of the developing world spirit, any type of archaism is illegiti-
mate. He does not seem to share Schlegel’s confidence that the ‘spiritual
mood predominating at present’ will inevitably enter the modern form
and thus prevent the use of elements of old art from having the appear-
ance of copying. While the modern composer must have the standard
that Palestrina sets ‘constantly in his thoughts’, he must not compose
reflectively but solely through inspiration; his composing should consist
‘only in writing down the sacred melodies that pour from his soul as
though in divine ecstasy’.99 The works of Palestrina and his golden age
are of aid to such a composer solely as paradigms of spirituality, not as
precise stylistic models.
In ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ and in his review of Beethoven’s Mass
in C, Hoffmann describes two ways in which old Italian music can aid the
modern composer, through processes that can be labelled sublimation
and suppression. First, Hoffmann argues that the composer who subjects
himself to early church music will find – if he is childlike and pious – that
it will act as a catalyst to aid the revelation of the spiritual style latent
within himself: ‘If the young composer has not been destroyed by worldly
superficiality, he will be uplifted in miraculous ways by the works of the
old masters; yes, he will feel that what was only a confused presentiment
in his mind is brought into clear view.’100 Through this alchemical pro-
cess of being uplifted (erheben), transfigured or sublimated, the modern
composer will discover a suitable external form for church music which
is not at odds with his beliefs or with the developing world spirit, a lan-
guage just as unreflective and sincere as that of Palestrina. Second, and
more practically, Hoffmann notes that one reason why modern com-
posers can no longer achieve the lofty simplicity of the old Italians is
because they take too much pleasure in dazzling listeners through effect;
the modern composer, in order to achieve a style suitable for the church,
must therefore be subject to ‘self-denial’ (Selbstverleugnung).101 To achieve
such simplicity in his own music, the composer must not only devote his
energies solely to this goal – suppressing external motives and the de-
sire to impress – but must also suppress those aspects of modern musi-
cal practice antithetical to the Palestrina ideal. Given that Hoffmann
couches his descriptions of works from his golden age in terms that dis-
tance them from modern concerted works, it is clear what composers
must avoid: chromatic string figuration, ‘so-called striking modulations’,
‘gaudy figures’, ‘feeble melodies’, and an ‘impotent, confusing clamour
of instruments’.102 As has been seen earlier, however, Hoffmann does
not demand that the modern composer’s self-denial includes the total
renunciation of instruments.
Hoffmann’s position is best seen as proscriptive rather than pre-
scriptive; the two processes by which the modern composer can benefit
from older church music, sublimation and suppression, would not have
provided his contemporaries with any easy solutions to the problem
of composing for the church. The idea that the composer must omit
elements of modern musical style was strongly resisted by other critics:
Gottfried Weber scorned the notion that composers should avoid
augmented-sixth chords and other elements foreign to Palestrina’s
language, considering that such ‘dress codes’ (Kleiderordnung) apprehend
merely external matters, not the essence of the true church style.103
Indeed, it is clear that suppression, while providing a means of producing
music that is suitable for the church, does not on its own reestablish the
link to the naiv Christian infinite that Hoffmann considers Palestrina to
epitomize; such a link could only be reestablished through the obscure
process of sublimation. While Hoffmann does not advocate imitation, his
notion of sublimation – combined with his dismissal of the masterpieces
of modern church music as a valid model – offers composers a powerful
incentive to relate their idiom to Palestrina’s language, or at least to
experiment with the use of elements of it in their works.
Critical reviews of newly published church compositions from the
years surrounding Hoffmann’s essay increasingly reflect the ideas of
authors agitating for church music reform. The works included as sup-
plements in the AmZ, and the comments appended to them, suggest that
the main criteria for inclusion were their relevance to this debate and
their success in reflecting the models elevated by Hoffmann and other
critics. In 1817, an a cappella mass by the director of the Leipzig Singverein
Friedrich Schneider was commended to those ‘who are attached exclu-
sively to neither the old and strict, nor the new and brilliant, but who can
take pleasure in that which to a certain extent stands between the two’; in
contrast, an anthology published two years later was dismissed for failing
to reflect the true church style.104 As a result of the growing expectation
that modern church pieces should embody a compromise between old
and new, they increasingly have the character of compositional essays on
the problem of church music: stylistic experiments embodying a tension
between historicism and contemporaneity, and between aesthetic and
functional demands.105 Hoffmann’s vision of a revivified church music
does not distinguish between how Catholic and Protestant composers
should respond to the Palestrina ideal; indeed, such practical matters
are largely foreign to his concerns. It is clear, however, that Protestant
composers faced an additional problem: as Eichendorff put it in rela-
tion to the Romantic circle, ‘they had to translate themselves into the
Catholic idiom, since it was not their mother tongue’.106 For this reason,
in exploring subsequent developments in the Palestrina revival and in
discussing the various ways in which nineteenth-century church music
reflects these tensions, Protestant and Catholic compositions must be
approached separately.
3
The Protestant Palestrina revival
OLD ITALIAN MUSIC, BILDUNG AND

THE GERMAN SINGVEREINE
In examining the relation between the idealization of Palestrina in north

Germany and modern composition, two categories of works must be
distinguished: pieces written for performance in the Protestant service,
and quasi-liturgical works intended for secular choral societies. The
ideological and institutional foundations underpinning quasi-liturgical
music must be discussed first, since the performance and emulation
of Renaissance music were initiated not in churches but in Singvereine.
Of these, the most significant for the Palestrina revival were the Berlin
Singakademie, founded in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Fasch (1736–1800) and
directed from 1800 by Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), and Thibaut’s
Singverein in Heidelberg, which flourished in the second, third and fourth
decades of the nineteenth century.
In the activities of Thibaut and Zelter, the desire to bolster traditional
generic distinctions led to the elevation of earlier works in the church
and oratorio styles as models of musical purity. A key role for their choral
societies was to restore musical taste through the performance of music
epitomizing the true nature of these styles, and thus to provide models
for more widespread reform. The activities of the Berlin Singakademie
were to provide an important stimulus for the reform of music in the
city’s churches, and Zelter compared its chief task – ‘to cultivate the
serious style of church music and to preserve the few relics of it in their
dignity’ – with Palestrina’s role as a reformer of church music.1 Neither
organization, however, was concerned primarily with improving the
state of Protestant liturgical music; rather, the cultivation of early
church music was considered to serve a broader cultural role. Both
Thibaut and Zelter regarded their activities as part of a wider process of
artistic renewal, and their ideas closely correspond with the concerns of
62
The Protestant Palestrina revival 63
contemporary cultural reformers – most significantly, Schiller and
Wilhelm von Humboldt – who championed the importance for art for
Bildung, the self-cultivation of the individual, and for Volks-Bildung, the
cultural regeneration of the populace. The relation between the hel-
lenized humanism of Schiller and Humboldt and the idealization of
a cappella music is discussed in greater detail later: here, it is necessary
to address the broader implications of the idea of Bildung for the
Palestrina revival. It will become evident that in the conception of
Bildung articulated by Thibaut and Zelter, the requirements of aesthetics
are subjugated to those of ethics: it was the elevation of ethical concerns
that fostered the composition of quasi-liturgical music and encouraged
the replication of earlier styles.
In 1809, Humboldt – at that time Prussian minister for education and
religious affairs – acclaimed Zelter’s Singakademie as a model of the soci-
etal benefits resulting from the cultivation of church music.2 Humboldt
emphasizes the significance of the ‘serious and solemn church style’ as
a tool for shaping the national character, considering that no other art
is capable of having such a beneficial effect on even the lowest members
of society, or of creating such a ‘natural bond between the upper and
lower classes’.3 Zelter himself described the Singakademie as a ‘temple of
virtue [Tugendtempel ] for young and old, for the joy of all the inhabitants
of Berlin’, considering it to resemble a utopian aesthetic state predi-
cated on the freedom of the individual within a brotherhood of equals.4
Similarly, Thibaut emphasizes the universal benefits that musical re-
forms would bring, arguing that ‘nothing is more capable of having an
effect on the masses [das Volk] than elevated music’. 5 But if Zelter and
Thibaut were committed in principle to the ideal of musical renewal
for the benefit of the masses, their choral societies made little direct
contribution to this cause. Both organizations were socially exclusive,
functioning as quasi-religious institutions, temples to the neohumanist
cult of Bildung. The Berlin Singakademie – whose members in this period
included the Mendelssohn family, Schleiermacher (a tenor), and the fu-
ture Reichskanzler Otto von Bismarck (a bass) – restricted membership
to those who ‘possess the required level of moral and artistic cultiva-
tion [sittlichen und Kunst-Bildung]’, while Thibaut similarly insisted that
only singers of an ‘elevated moral tendency [höhere moralische Richtung]’
could be admitted.6 Moreover, both organizations preserved their pri-
vate character by seldom performing in public; guests, limited to ‘refined
friends’ (veredelte Freunde), were admitted to hear Thibaut’s choir only four
times a year, and those with uneducated or shallow tastes were excluded
( Jean Paul’s request to hear the choir, for instance, was rejected ‘because
his vacillating, restless nature is not suited to serious music’).7 These orga-
nizations not only provided their members with a musical supplement to
the meagre fare offered in most Protestant churches, but offered a spiri-
tual substitute for the dry rationalism of the contemporary Protestant
service.8 The function of Thibaut’s Singverein as an aesthetic substitute
for conventional religion is evident in a pensée recalled by his biogra-
pher: ‘My music room is my temple: there Marcello supplies me with a
text for my edification, Handel inspires me with a sermon, with Palestrina
I venerate my God, and our religious language and effective religion is
music.’9
The sequestered character of both organizations is indicative of their
function as counterweights to the perceived degeneracy of contemporary
musical culture. This role was fundamental in determining the reper-
tory of these choirs. The idealization of old Italian music by Thibaut
and Zelter reflects two elements crucial to their thinking: the moralism
underpinning their conception of the purpose of art, and their reliance
on the aesthetics of feeling in evaluating artworks. For both musicians,
the moral significance of music derives from it being a language of feel-
ings. The elevated feelings expressed in serious music provoke a similar
state in the soul of the listener, and thus provide a direct means of im-
proving the morals of the individual and of society: ‘this improvement
exists in an activity of inner powers of the soul, whereby man in himself
becomes more perfect and therefore more noble.’10 Both Thibaut and
Zelter condemn modern music for being unable to contribute to such
ennoblement; Zelter laments that music has declined into being a mere
luxury, nothing more than an empty pastime, while Thibaut complains
that ‘our music has no kind of moral influence whatsoever, aside from
the encouragement of vanity, addiction to dancing and lasciviousness’.11
Considering there to be a precise correspondence between the moral
purity of a musical work and the state that it produces in the listener,
Thibaut argues that some modern compositions have as detrimental an
effect on the souls of listeners as poison would have on their bodies:
It can be claimed without exaggeration that half of our music is unnatural,

a branch of mathematics without an element of life, a sham which brings
glory only to nimble fingers and such a mixture of unhealthy ingredients that
it may be asked in all seriousness whether or not music does us more harm
than good. . . . The most deadly poison is acclaimed under the exalted name of
effect, this spasmodic, contorted, exaggerated, intoxicating, maddening trickery,
unleashing everything evil in man and threatening eventually to destroy entirely
music in its true sense.12
In condemning the degeneracy of modern musical culture, Thibaut
and Zelter focus their arguments on the increasing predominance of
instrumental music, concentrating in particular on the vacuity of in-
strumental virtuosity. Here, their arguments diverge significantly from
the otherwise similar tirades against modern frivolity articulated by
Hoffmann. Instead of viewing modern instrumental music and early
a cappella music as complementary ideals, they cast them as antitheses:
both Zelter and Thibaut viewed their choral societies as counterweights
to the predominance of instrumental music in modern culture. Although
neither Thibaut nor Zelter share the intense antipathy towards instru-
mental music that we shall encounter in the writings of their pupils, both
depict the rise of instrumental music in the previous half-century as a
cause not only of the decline of church music, but of music in general.
Both Zelter and Thibaut approach instrumental music from a Kantian
perspective, considering that only in combination with language can
music attain purposiveness and contribute positively to culture.13 Zelter’s
argument – which was later to be intensified in the writings of his pupil
Grell – is that ‘mere playing or the production of notes’ (blosse Spielen oder
Notenmachen) is not an end in itself, being powerless in the absence of a con-
ceptual object.14 For Zelter and Thibaut, the language of feelings that
music represents can be activated effectively only through the mediation
of concepts; without these, music descends to ‘empty strumming and fid-
dling’, and a musical work can be no more than a ‘practice piece’.15 As a
consequence, rather than treating Latin works as analogues to absolute
instrumental music in the manner of Hoffmann, Thibaut considers their
texts to provide the conceptual element essential for Bildung: ‘Music can
have no better helpmeet than a good text, since purposive texts attune
the soul to that which music develops further. . . . If composers have been
inspired by magnificent words, then this will have an obvious influence
on their compositions, and what can compare to the human voice when
noble thoughts move the soul of the singer.’16
In the practical activities of Thibaut and Zelter, the assertion of the
primacy of vocal music against modern instrumentalism is reflected in
their championing of the a cappella idiom. This resulted not only in the
cultivation of Renaissance and stile antico church music, but also in the
omission of orchestral instruments in performances of concerted works.
In Zelter’s case, this involved the rearrangement of eighteenth-century
works for a cappella forces: in the first decade of the nineteenth century,
he arranged Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum for eight-part a cappella choir
(replacing the English text of the original with the Latin), and similar
treatments were applied to works by Haydn, Jommelli, C. P. E. Bach and
J. S. Bach.17 Although Thibaut did not produce similar arrangements,
he too considered that the omission of instruments enhanced concerted
works, arguing that the majority of works in the oratorio style could
be performed with ‘vocal forces alone’ (bloß durch Sänger).18 Crucially, in
the usage of Thibaut, Zelter and contemporaries, the phrases a cappella
and ‘for voices alone’ rarely signified unaccompanied performance, but
merely the exclusion of orchestral instruments. Thibaut provided a piano
accompaniment for a cappella works, while in the Berlin Singakademie, the
habitual use of a keyboard doubling the voices was sometimes supple-
mented by a single cello or double bass (the wholly unaccompanied
performance of Renaissance music did not become the norm for the
Singakademie until the 1850s).19
The elevation of a cappella church music as a counterbalance to
modern instrumentalism also governed the concert programming of
these societies. This is especially apparent in the development of histori-
cal concerts, whose content and method of organization functioned as a
corrective to the purposelessness of modern virtuoso music. In Germany,
as elsewhere in Europe, the programmes of historical concerts were fre-
quently ordered chronologically, a gesture seen – according to Monika
Lichtenfeld – as a critique of the ‘potpourri programmes’ of virtuoso
concerts; in the Paris concerts of the 1830s arranged by François-Joseph
Fétis, for instance, such chronological sequences were applied not only
to individual concerts, but to extended concert series.20 Thibaut’s pro-
grammes, while equally didactic in intent, were organized differently:
they were often governed by what Baumstark describes as the ‘antithetical
principle’ (das Prinzip der Gegensätze), by which works of a similar scope
from different periods were juxtaposed and comparatively evaluated.21
Thibaut’s programme for 30 July 1828, for example, placed a Sanctus by
the contemporary Munich court organist Caspar Ett after an ‘Osanna’ by
Lassus, while Palestrina’s four-part motet ‘O Domine Jesu Christe’ was
followed by Mozart’s ‘Ave verum corpus’; similarly, on 18 March 1829, an
Agnus Dei by Mozart was appended to a programme otherwise entirely
devoted to Palestrina.22 The pedagogical and polemical functions of
such comparisons were inextricably linked, since – given Thibaut’s
deterministic conception of the inexorable decline of church music after
Palestrina – a neutral survey of successive styles was inconceivable.
Such oppositional strategies pervade Thibaut’s commentaries on
old Italian compositions: these are formulated in terms that stress their
distance from the degeneracies perceived in modern church music.
Accordingly, in discussing old Italian settings of the Miserere, Thibaut
argues that their serenity and restraint is the result of the absence of the
generic mixing present in more recent church music: ‘In them there is
not, from love of supposed artistry, a striving after contrasting effects, but
through the constant, pure recurrence of restrained chant the music de-
velops simply, preserving a uniform character which, being linked to the
pious state of the soul, moves but does not disturb.’23 These comments
provide a point of access to a crucial aspect of Thibaut’s aesthetic stance:
his dependence on the (Rousseauesque) opposition of nature and artistry.
Thibaut’s dismissal of modern virtuoso music as unnatural stems from
the incompatibility of artistry and the arousal of feelings: only music that
evinces ‘instinctive, pure inspiration’ can contribute to the ennoblement
of man.24 Indeed, even works by Palestrina that exhibit excessive artistry,
such as the canonic Missa ad fugam, are dismissed.25 In elevating old
Italian homophony as a medium for Bildung, Thibaut repeatedly invokes
natural imagery and analogies: in a particularly telling example, he com-
pares a Magnificat by Palestrina to the singing of nightingales, arguing
that the effect of both is enhanced through thinking and dreaming freely
rather than listening attentively.26 Here, Palestrina’s works emerge as a
kind of mood music, whose value as a source of calmness and consolation
outweighs their artistic dimension.27 Similar priorities are apparent in
Thibaut’s discussions of later stile antico works: ‘a young man, who had
many wrong-headed ideas, cried out ecstatically after hearing a mass by
Lotti, “this evening no man could be my enemy!”’28 The moral power
of old church music illustrated by this anecdote is derived, according to
Thibaut, not from artistry and striving after effect but from the suppres-
sion of artistic impulses: while the church music of modern composers
is luxuriant and worldly, music in the true church style exhibits mod-
eration and self-denial: ‘everything should be modest, serious, worthily
sustained, thoroughly refined, and dispassionate’ (alles soll mäßig, ernst,
würdig gehalten, durchaus veredelt und leidenschaftlos sein).29
It is clear that despite the views of several modern commentators, the
revival of early church music by these choirs cannot be understood sim-
ply as its transference from the functional to the aesthetic realm. In 1900,
Richard Hohenemser argued that in such societies, old church composi-
tions were revivified as ‘autonomous musical creations’ and ‘judged ac-
cording to their purely musical value’, a view that has been perpetuated in
recent scholarship.30 This interpretation downplays the ethical function
that was assigned to this music: while the notion of Bildung was in general
predicated on the autonomy of the artwork, the Bildungsidee animating
these choral societies represents the perpetuation of eighteenth-century
conceptions of artistic and generic function, affective evaluation and a
view of art centred on the recipient rather than the object. Only later, in
the writings of Grell, was this ethical framework directly pitted against the
idea of aesthetic autonomy; this tension, nonetheless, is already implicit
in the views of Thibaut and Zelter.
Here, it is necessary to locate the problems that this ethical frame-
work creates within broader debates on the purpose of art. For Hegel,
art occupies a conceptual space midway between entertainment and
instruction: at the extremes, art descends into being merely a trifling
diversion or a didactic tool.31 Exploring the dangers inherent in viewing
art as a medium for purifying the passions, instruction or moral improve-
ment, he notes that in recent years the latter has increasingly been seen
as the supreme goal of art.32 Hegel argues that those who propagate such
ideas are not satisfied to view moral improvement as a by-product of art
but assert that this is its substantial purpose: as a consequence, not only
are its other aspects – ‘pleasure, entertainment and delight’ – declared
inessential, but the aim of art is degraded to being a mere means to a goal
that lies outside of art.33 Hegel rejects this idea robustly, arguing that the
purposes of instruction and improvement do not determine the concep-
tion of artworks, and cannot provide a criterion for their evaluation.34
Conversely, in the writings of Thibaut and Zelter, ethical concerns
achieve primacy in the evaluation of early church pieces and in their
proposals for modern reform. Neither Thibaut nor Zelter explore in de-
tail how modern composers should respond to the models of the church
and oratorio styles: for the most part, they merely entreat composers
to heed generic distinctions and, as Thibaut put it, to ‘take on again
something of the beautiful, lovely spirit which has brought us so many
calming, cheering and innocent melodies’.35 It is clear, however, that the
potential of a piece for Bildung overrides certain aesthetic criteria. While
Hoffmann insisted that modern church pieces must reflect the prevailing
world spirit, Thibaut dismisses as vainglorious the idea of ‘progressing
with the spirit of the age’ and equates originality – in a manner similar to
Goethe – with mere affectation and gimmickry.36 Moreover, Thibaut’s
view that the purity of old Italian music derives from the absence of
artistry encourages composers to disregard artistic concerns in the
pursuit of this ideal. It will become clear that the prizing of ethical con-
cerns over aesthetic criteria (including originality) and of simplicity over
artistry were crucial in shaping modern compositions for these choral
societies.
QUASI-LITURGICAL MUSIC: SPOHR AND NICOLAI
In seeking to categorize settings of liturgical texts, nineteenth-century

and modern commentators generally differentiate them in functional
terms. Writing in the last quarter of the century, Eduard Hanslick and
Spitta polarize functional liturgical music and religious compositions
conceived for the concert hall: both argue that in the latter, liturgi-
cal texts provide merely a poetic framework for the construction of
‘autonomous musical works’, music that is – in Hanslick’s phrase –
‘of the church but not for the church’.37 Such polarizations, polemical
in intent, over-simplify matters. In addition to this basic distinction bet-
ween liturgical and non-liturgical works (large-scale concerted masses
and requiems, for instance), a third strand must be distinguished: quasi-
liturgical works which, while written for the concert hall, conform
with the restrictions and evoke the aura of liturgical music. Although
nineteenth-century Protestant composers frequently composed pieces
for the Catholic liturgy, many of their Latin a cappella settings were des-
tined primarily for Singvereine. Quasi-liturgical music, more than any other
strand of religious composition, provided composers with a medium for
stylistic experimentation. Free from the practicalities of writing for the
Protestant service, composers were able to explore contemporary ideals
of the church style in more abstract terms. In composing for Singvereine,
composers were nonetheless subject to the restrictions imposed by the
aesthetic views of their directors: the ideals of the ‘strict style’ (gebundnen
Styl ) and of a cappella performance advocated by Zelter, or the more
stringent emphasis on simplicity recommended by Thibaut.38
In addition to the use of a cappella forces, quasi-liturgical pieces often
contain stylistic relationships to the old Italian church music performed
by these societies. Here it must be noted that while Thibaut and Zelter
elevate Palestrina as the paradigm of the church style in their writings,
his music occupied a relatively minor role in their practical activities:
German and Italian Baroque compositions, in particular Italian stile antico
works, dominated the repertories of both choirs. As a consequence, it was
in general stile antico compositions that served as stylistic models for quasi-
liturgical pieces, as is apparent from Fasch’s sixteen-part mass (modelled
on a mass by Orazio Benevoli (1605–72)), and Zelter’s Latin motets
(here, it is worth noting that Goethe emulated Zelter by composing a
Latin motet ‘resembling one by Jommelli’).39 From the 1820s, however,
composers of quasi-liturgical pieces increasingly experimented with ele-
ments of Palestrina’s style, in some cases seeking to replicate it literally.
The diversity present in the compositional responses to Palestrina can
be seen in works by Otto Nicolai (1810–49), today best remembered for
his opera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, and Louis Spohr (1784–1859),
both of whose conceptions of quasi-liturgical music reflect the views and
activities of Thibaut and Zelter. Nicolai, a pupil of Thibaut’s protégé
Bernhard Klein, was a member of the Berlin Singakademie from 1829
to 1833, and presented this choir with copies of his Psalm 54 (1834)
and ‘Pater noster’ op. 33 (1836). Spohr’s Messe f ür 5 Solostimmen und zwei
f ünfstimmige Chöre op. 54 (1821) was composed for Thibaut’s Singverein but
received its first performance from Zelter’s choir.40
Nicolai and Spohr, like many of their contemporaries, were exposed
to Renaissance Italian music in two different contexts, the German
Singvereine and the Sistine Chapel. While Spohr heard the papal choir
on only a handful of occasions in 1816 and 1817, Nicolai’s appointment
as organist at the chapel of the Prussian legation in Rome (1833–6) fos-
tered a deeper engagement with Palestrina: encouraged by the Prussian
minister resident in Rome, Christian Karl Josias Freiherr von Bunsen
(1791 –1860), Nicolai took counterpoint lessons from the choir’s direc-
tor Giuseppe Baini (1775–1844) whom he considered to have ‘a perfect
knowledge of Palestrina and of old music’.41 While Nicolai’s enthusiastic
descriptions of the papal choir’s performances reflect the language of
Hoffmann and Tieck, Spohr’s assessments are more ambivalent: these
contrasting stances are paralleled in their compositional responses to
Palestrina. For Nicolai, the performance tradition of the papal choir
represented an ideal model for the interpretation of Renaissance music;
he precisely equated the choir’s current practices with the manner of
performance that Palestrina had in mind, arguing that German choirs
seeking to perform this music must emulate its traditions.42 In contrast,
Spohr approached the idea and the reality of this unbroken tradition
with scepticism, comparing the choir’s singing unfavourably with that
of the German Singvereine.43 Although Spohr shared Goethe’s conviction
that works in the ‘pure church style’ are precisely suited to this con-
text, his initial responses show little enthusiasm for the unaccompanied
idiom: ‘I have once again convinced myself that voices and instruments
united are far more effective in church than purely vocal music, which
always remains somewhat monotonous.’44 The contrast between the
views of Nicolai and Spohr is most evident in regard to the most contro-
versial aspect of the choir’s performances, the ornamentation applied to
Renaissance and stile antico works. Nicolai considered the embellishments
employed to be centuries old, comparing them with the naiv features of
medieval Italian painting and acclaiming them as the product of true re-
ligious conviction.45 Conversely, Spohr dismissed the ornamentation in
the context of a broader critique of the choir’s performing tradition: ‘Can
this be the arcane manner of performing these old compositions, which
is said to be known only to this choir and which has been passed down
through tradition? Of course not! Only modern Italians could be capable
of singing so barbarically, since while they have an ear for melody, they are
incredibly ignorant in everything concerning harmony.’46 Importantly,
however, neither Nicolai nor Spohr maintain these stances unequivocally.
In spite of his enthusiasm for the performances of the papal choir, Nicolai
was unwilling to follow Bunsen in elevating Palestrina against more re-
cent music: ‘one should not as a consequence despise that which is new.
Beethoven, Mozart and Handel are as great in their way as Palestrina is
in his.’47 And Spohr’s later experiences of the Holy Week services, in par-
ticular the performance of Allegri’s Miserere, at least partially converted
him to this music.48
Spohr’s most revelatory encounter with old Italian music occurred in
Heidelberg, not in Rome; in October 1820 he heard Thibaut’s Singverein,
and studied scores from Thibaut’s library of early music at the piano:
Until this time I knew nothing of this music, except what I had heard in the
Sistine Chapel in Rome, and was therefore very grateful to the Hofrat [Thibaut]
for allowing me to attend the rehearsals of his society, where I got to know some
of the old works that were being carefully prepared by his choir. . . . The simple,
impressive style of these works made a great impression on me, and I requested
his permission to study the scores thoroughly. Each day I took advantage of
this privilege, and was able to learn a great deal about the part-writing and
harmonic practice of the old masters. As a result of this, I felt like attempting a
piece of polychoral church music alla cappella, and I carried this out the following
summer in Gandersheim by composing my ten-part mass, op. 54.49
The relation between Spohr’s mass and the old Italian pieces that he
encountered in Rome and Heidelberg is more complicated than these
comments suggest. Indeed, it may seem that the only point of contact
between the work and old Italian music is its unaccompanied idiom;
Spohr’s omission of instruments represents the suppression of an aspect
of modern musical practice in order to conform with the Palestrinian
ideal (his earlier comments on the constraints of the unaccompanied
idiom confirm that this constituted an act of self-denial). Aside from the
dialogic double-choir textures in the Credo (bars 54–66), few passages in
the mass suggest the unmediated use of elements of Palestrina’s language:
as Ulrich Konrad has noted, it is clear that Spohr did not intend to
produce a stylistic copy.50
Spohr’s further comments on the mass in his autobiography have been
regarded as the key to this problem, but their meaning is ambiguous:
‘Certainly I did not attempt to move in the simple triadic progressions of
the old masters; on the contrary I used the rich modulations of Mozart’s
later manner, probably too much for the thing to be practicable.’51 While
the reference to Mozart’s late style has been viewed as signalling Spohr’s
intent to produce an entirely modern work, it seems unlikely that Spohr
invokes Mozart – a composer dead for thirty years – to signify his piece’s
contemporaneity.52 Rather, this description suggests that, as with the
later ‘Historical’ Symphony no. 6 in G (1839), Spohr is appropriating
not one historical style, but two styles, those of Palestrina and Mozart.
In his autobiography Spohr criticized Thibaut’s rejection of the church
music of Mozart, contending that Mozart’s Requiem was superior to
all the early church music that he had heard.53 Spohr’s mass could be
seen as an attempt to demonstrate the liturgical validity of ‘Mozart’s
later manner’, by combining it with elements of the unimpeachable style
of Palestrina. While the chromatic melodic lines and colourful suspen-
sions of the Kyrie, for example, evoke the style of the Requiem, the
vocal textures, treatment of imitation and bold consonant chords bear
some relation to the old Italian works that Thibaut made available to
Spohr. As a consequence of its stylistic pluralism, the mass bears little
direct resemblance to Thibaut’s paradigms of the church style, while the
technical difficulty of the work rendered much of it inaccessible to his
choir and other amateur groups. Nonetheless, Spohr’s mass – dedicated
to ‘the German choral societies’ – was conceived as a compositional
manifesto for their ideals and represents the first significant example of
quasi-liturgical music.54
Nicolai’s quasi-liturgical pieces evidence a very different relation to
Palestrina. The stylistic gulf between these works and his contemporary
orchestral compositions is extraordinarily wide, and his ‘Pater noster’ –
written shortly after he began taking regular lessons from Baini in 1835 –
comes close to the literal replication of Palestrina’s language. In spite of
Nicolai’s proximity to Baini, the relation between their compositions and
the music of Palestrina is significantly different. Baini’s compositions for
the papal choir have sometimes been viewed as a historicist return to
Palestrina’s language, ‘an anachronistic and impossible reinstatement of
the past’.55 This view is misleading, to say the least: Baini’s music does
not constitute a ‘reinstatement’ of the past, but is rather the perpetuation
of an idiom that had been in continuous use in the Sistine Chapel since
Palestrina’s death (and was thus not anachronistic in this context). Baini
himself emphasized this continuity of tradition in his Memorie storico-critiche
della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1828–9), asserting that
Palestrina’s successors have maintained ‘the spirit and tradition of his
teaching, his living influence’ up to the present day.56 Baini’s perpetua-
tion of the Palestrina tradition constitutes the use of modern harmonic
and melodic elements within the framework of the stile antico rather than
a replication of the historical language of Palestrina. Nicolai was aware
of the distance between Palestrina’s language and Baini’s stile antico com-
positions; this can be seen in his description of Baini’s ten-part Miserere,
where he notes that it ‘contrasts greatly with the customary older compo-
sitions of the Sistine on account of its modern modulations’.57 Elsewhere,
Nicolai presents a more forthright analysis of the relation between this
piece and Renaissance church music, condemning the unprepared disso-
nances, diminished-seventh chords and banal melodic figures that render
it ‘as unlike Palestrina [unpalestrinasch] as is possible’.58
In contrast to Baini’s perpetuation of the stile antico tradition, Nicolai’s
‘Pater noster’ engages directly with the music of Palestrina. While
Konrad has linked this motet to Venetian polychoral music on the
basis of its double-choir scoring, it bears closer relation to two works by
Palestrina in Nicolai’s possession: a (probably spurious) ‘Pater noster’ and
the ‘Stabat mater’, both also for double choir.59 Nicolai’s handling of this
texture, in particular the combining of individual and paired parts from
both choirs, closely resembles the varied procedures found in the ‘Stabat
mater’; in addition, his treatment of hemiola rhythms and use of a single
contrasting section in triple time reflect this model. Aside from a brief
passage of imitative writing (bars 87–100), the ‘Pater noster’ also shares
the predominantly homophonic idiom of this work; Nicolai’s cultivation
of homophony reflects not only the privileging of this idiom in contem-
porary German criticism, but also the views of Baini, who represented
Palestrina’s homophony as a return to the imitation of nature following
the empty abstractions of his predecessors.60 Nicolai’s studies with Baini
included a grounding in modal composition, and the harmonic idiom
of this motet suggests an attempt to replicate Palestrina’s modal prac-
tice. In addition to melodic modal colouring (see Ex. 3.1) and the use
of quasi-modal progressions in which secondary chords predominate,
modal harmonic parameters operate at a structural level. The internal
cadences are on the first, fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of the scale, a
Example 3.1. Otto Nicolai, ‘Pater noster’, bars 88–100
scheme consistent with Palestrina’s handling of the ionian mode, and

these cadences seldom function as vehicles for tonal modulation (the one
exception being the section in the dominant, bars 12 to 24; as a result of
this, the piece as a whole evinces a fusion of modal and tonal practice).
Nicolai’s model-based approach to replicating Palestrina’s language is
also apparent in his treatment of tied notes and smaller note values:
Example 3.1. (cont.)
this testifies to his intent to evoke Palestrina’s sound world rather than
to abide by the timeless rules of the strenge Satz. Nicolai frequently ties
notes to subsequent notes of less than half their length, and also ties
notes of lesser value to following notes of greater value: the resulting
syncopations – impossible in sixteenth-century notation – would have
been frowned on by theorists of the strenge Satz, for whom the regulated
alternation of arsis and thesis was a paramount consideration.61 With
regard to dissonance treatment, Nicolai’s handling of smaller note values
is in general free, and it is significant that he omits some of the more
archaic aspects of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment such as the conso-
nant fourth idiom (though not notae cambiatae). Here, it is useful to com-
pare the ‘Pater noster’ to a later, more eclectic piece for the Catholic
liturgy, the Offertorium in assumptione beatae Mariae Virginis op. 38 (1846). In
the Offertorium, the replication of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment in the
stark bicinium passage (including a cadential nota cambiata) contrasts with
the mellifluous parallel thirds and rhythmic pairing of the voices in bars
33–4, more redolent of the Romantic partsong (see Ex. 3.2).
The aesthetic problems created by these two compositions are com-
plex. On the one hand, ‘Pater noster’ can be viewed as a historicist return
to origins in opposition to Baini’s corruption of the stile antico: a return to
the original purity of Palestrina’s language unsullied by the extraneous
additions of those who regarded themselves as his descendants. But on
the other hand, the ‘Pater noster’ and to a greater extent the Offertorium
themselves depart from Palestrina’s language, through the inclusion of
features that cannot simply be explained as unconscious ‘mistakes’. While
the departures from Palestrina’s dissonance treatment and part-writing
in the ‘Pater noster’ may well have been unintentional, aspects of the
harmonic practice in this motet and in the Offertorium resist explanation
in these terms.
Here it is helpful to return to the criteria expounded by Rochlitz
in discussing ‘new-old compositions’ (neu-alten Musikstücke).62 Seeking to
Example 3.2. Nicolai, Offertorium in assumptione beatae Mariae Virginis

op. 38, bars 24–36
discourage imitation, Rochlitz sets out a series of guidelines for composers

who intend to emulate the revival of earlier styles and techniques present
in recent painting. He advises composers to avoid harmonic emptiness
(that is, to refrain from replicating the most archaic features of older
styles), and to abstain from the eclectic combining of elements drawn
from a number of earlier styles: the crude part-writing and abrupt chord
progressions common in old Roman music should only be reproduced
(nachbilden) in pieces done completely in this style.63 Rochlitz’s most signi-
ficant requirement – as with Hegel – is that composers should also include
something ‘peculiar to the modern age’ (eigentlich Modernen) in order to
avoid producing pieces whose forms are entirely divorced from the mod-
ern world-view.64 Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, while fulfilling the first two of
these criteria, is nonetheless problematic when measured by the third:
only its brief excursion to the dominant can be viewed as the conscious
inclusion of a modern element. Conversely, while the Offertorium surely
contains sufficient modern elements to satisfy this requirement, it may
seem to offend against the complete congruence of old and new that
Rochlitz also demands.65 Nicolai himself was aware of the aesthetic
problems created by his ‘Pater noster’; this is evident in the circum-
stances surrounding its planned performance in a concert spirituel of the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on 2 April 1838.66 The motet was
to have been included in a historical concert devoted to Nicolai’s own
works in older styles. In addition to his overture on ‘Ein’ feste Burg’ in
the style of the eighteenth century, the ‘Pater noster’ was billed as being
‘in the style of the seventeenth century after old Roman studies. Model:
Palestrina’.67 By explicitly identifying the piece (it is no longer a ‘work’)
as a study, Nicolai sought to place it outside of aesthetic criteria and
make a virtue of its replication of an earlier style: its legitimacy is derived
from the degree of success with which it serves pedagogical and ethical
purposes, not from whether it is aesthetically valid.
MENDELSSOHN AND THE BERLIN PALESTRINA REVIVAL
The compositions of Nicolai and Spohr reflect not only the increasing
interest in the music of the past, but the growing awareness of the his-
toricity of musical styles. For composers and other artists of the Vormärz,
the awareness of the availability of a plethora of earlier styles posed
intractable problems: this is especially clear in architecture, where the
question ‘in what style should we build?’ centred on choosing an orien-
tation from a multiplicity of competing historical ideals.68 The extent
of styles available to contemporary architects is vividly apparent in Karl
Friedrich Schinkel’s design (1815–16) for a memorial cathedral in Berlin to
those who died in the wars of liberation.69 Schinkel’s solution to the prob-
lem of choosing from among the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Gothic
styles was to combine all three, thus unifying in one design the three forms
of art – Symbolic, Classical and Romantic – that Hegel later identified
in his lectures on aesthetics. While no musical composition from the
1810s exhibits a degree of eclecticism comparable to that of Schinkel’s
design, the exploration of historical musical languages also emerged in
this period. Although isolated works by earlier composers exhibit the use
or evocation of historical styles – such as Beethoven’s String Quartet in
A minor op. 132 (Heilige Dankgesang) and Missa solemnis – it is the works of
Felix Mendelssohn that best represent this tendency. His output provides
the closest musical analogue to that of his fellow Berliner, Schinkel, in
architecture, and his engagement with earlier styles was a central as-
pect why, in Schumann’s words, he was the musician ‘who most clearly
appreciated the contradictions of his age’.70
The activities of Zelter, and to a lesser extent Thibaut, were funda-
mental to the development of Mendelssohn’s historical orientation and
conception of the church style. Indeed, the defining impact of Zelter and
his Singakademie on Mendelssohn was summed up by his father Abraham,
who noted that ‘without Zelter, your musical tendencies would be entirely
different’.71 Both Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn had started composi-
tion lessons under Zelter in 1819 and were admitted to the ranks of the
Singakademie in October 1820. The impact of this choir’s performances
of old Italian music and of the views of Zelter is readily apparent in the
young Mendelssohn’s conception of the true church style. In a letter from
1825, he echoed Hoffmann’s criticisms of Cherubini’s Mass in F, conside-
ring it to be ‘as jovial [lustig] as he is grumpy; that is, beyond all measure’,
while he found the church music of Jean-François Le Sueur (1760–1837)
‘even more jolly and galant’ than that of Cherubini, and an Agnus Dei
by Hummel is again ‘too jovial’.72 Mendelssohn’s ideas on church music
were reinforced by his reading of Thibaut’s Über Reinheit der Tonkunst and
by his acquaintance with its author, whom he acclaimed for showing him
how to appreciate old Italian music.73 Importantly, however, it was the
wonders of stile antico music, not the works of Palestrina, that Thibaut
revealed to Mendelssohn. In recounting their meeting, Mendelssohn
refers to a passage from Thibaut’s book describing the powerful effect
of Scarlatti’s ‘Tu es Petrus’; Mendelssohn’s own setting of this text (1827)
and his other quasi-liturgical pieces for the Singakademie from these years
bear a closer relation to stile antico church music than to Palestrina.
Mendelssohn’s ‘Tu es Petrus’ (published posthumously as op. 111) has
often been linked to Palestrina in the critical literature. Wulf Konold
argues that the work represents an attempt to evoke Palestrina’s sound
world with modern resources, viewing the use of the orchestra as creating
a reflective mediation of Palestrina’s language; similarly, Judith Silber
considers that the orchestral scoring demonstrates Mendelssohn’s hostil-
ity to the imitation of Palestrina by establishing a critical distance from his
style.74 While the stylistic orientation of the work is admittedly complex,
its imitative textures bear little relation to Palestrina’s polyphony, let alone
to early nineteenth-century perceptions of his style. Thus, orchestra or
not, it seems unlikely that Palestrina provided a model for this work: as a
consequence, the distance between this piece and Palestrina’s language
cannot be seen to represent a critique of more literal nineteenth-century
responses to this language. But if Palestrina’s polyphony did not provide
a model for ‘Tu es Petrus’, then neither is it related to the fugal idiom
which – via Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der
Musik (1771 –9) – formed the basis of Mendelssohn’s lessons with Zelter.
Rather, the contrapuntal portions of the work are more closely related
to the early eighteenth-century Italian stile antico, or to the German stile
antico tradition epitomized by the second ‘Kyrie’ of Bach’s Mass in
B Minor. Similarly, while the contrapuntal sections of Mendelssohn’s
Te Deum (1826) have been linked to Palestrina’s polyphony, they have
more in common with Baroque German and Italian church music
(the primary models for this work were Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum
and ‘Dettingen’ Te Deum, both performed under Zelter in the early
1820s).75 If the contrapuntal passages of the Te Deum and ‘Tu es Petrus’
are related primarily to eighteenth-century models, their homophonic
portions nonetheless reflect early nineteenth-century conceptions of
Palestrina; the same is true of Mendelssohn’s ‘Hora est’ (1828), which
perpetuates the sixteen-part a cappella texture of Fasch’s mass. The
‘Sanctus’ from the fourth movement of the Te Deum, ‘Tibi cherubim’,
presents two different types of reference to Palestrina’s homophonic
style: double-choir dialogues (bars 43 to the end) and successions of slow-
moving root-position chords with fragmentary imitations (bars 32–42).76
If these passages recall the simplicity and restraint that Thibaut prized in
Palestrina, the bold progressions in bars 67–71 of ‘Tu es Petrus’ re-create
the sublime shafts of light that Hoffmann perceived in Palestrina’s
homophony.
The historical orientation reflected in these pieces is different from
that embodied in Mendelssohn’s later works. Rather than consciously
engaging with diverse historical styles, these pieces represent the assimi-
lation of the music that surrounded him in his youth: as a result in part
of his association with the Singakademie, the music of the past formed a
‘living present’ and his conception of music history resembled a ‘colourful
kaleidoscope’.77 In the absence of a sense of the historicity of styles,
Mendelssohn approached the works of the past in terms of their aesthetic
impression and of the generic criteria passed on by Zelter. Accordingly,
his compositional responses to earlier music cannot be understood in
terms of historicism, but rather constitute the forging of a means of ex-
pression from timeless exemplars. While Georg Feder seems to view all of
Mendelssohn’s output from this perspective, a group of factors at the end
of the 1820s and beginning of the 1830s transformed Mendelssohn’s his-
torical orientation and the nature of his engagement with earlier music.78
As a result of his conversations with Goethe, his deepening knowledge
of music history and his exposure to a wealth of earlier art during his
travels between 1829 and 1833, Mendelssohn increasingly approaches
works and styles as historically contingent: the exemplars of the church
and oratorio styles recede into a foreign past, becoming ideals to set
against the present.
As a result, the composition of religious music became a series of
engagements with earlier styles: a salvage operation with the aim, as
Mendelssohn’s father put it, of ‘combining old ways of thinking [alten
Sinns] with new materials’.79 It was following Mendelssohn’s exposure to
the performances of the papal choir that his conception of the true church
style became firmly focused on Palestrina. Just prior to this, however, he
completed three pieces for the Berlin Singakademie – published as the
Drei Kirchenmusiken op. 23 – that testify to his concern with finding an ap-
propriate style for church music. These three works approach this con-
cern in different ways: ‘Aus tiefer Noth schrei’ ich zu Dir’ op. 23 no. 1
consists of four movements in the manner of a Baroque chorale motet
flanking an independent aria, while ‘Ave Maria’ op. 23 no. 2 seems more
related to Viennese Classical church music. The function of the ‘Ave
Maria’ as a compositional essay on the problem of church music is evi-
dent in the comments of Mendelssohn’s father, who treated the work as
a somewhat unsuccessful stylistic exercise. Approaching the work from
a perspective resembling the views of Thibaut, Abraham Mendelssohn
condemns its central and closing sections for their excessive artistry, con-
sidering this to detract from the ‘simple, pious yet truly Catholic style’
of the rest of the piece.80 More obliquely, he warns against viewing
Catholicism as a source of artistic renewal, condemning Protestant set-
tings of the Latin mass and urging Mendelssohn to avoid the mistakes
of the Nazarenes, who attempt to regain the religiosity of the fifteenth
century through mannerism and topsy-turvy perspective.81
If the ‘Ave Maria’ presented a defective solution to the problem of com-
posing church music, ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’ op. 23 no. 3 proved
more successful. Mendelssohn himself commented on the liturgical
orientation of the piece, considering that it ‘puts on the mien of a cantor
[ein Cantorgesicht]’ and describing it as ‘one of the best church pieces I have
written’.82 This work can be viewed as an attempt to create an ideal
fusion of two traditions of liturgical music, the Protestant chorale and
old Italian homophony, a dual orientation reflected in Mendelssohn’s
description of it as a ‘Lutheran chorale for eight voices a capella’.83
The chorale portions of the work reflect not the style of Bach’s harmo-
nizations, but the nineteenth-century ‘reformed’ chorale, the return to
the supposed simplicity and suitability for congregational singing of the
chorales of the Reformation period advocated by Thibaut and, among
others, Mendelssohn’s organ teacher August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869).
There is a reciprocal relation between early nineteenth-century ideas on
chorale reform and the idealization of old Italian homophony: Thibaut,
for instance, condemned the contrapuntal artistry present in Bach’s
chorales, championing simple harmonizations consisting mostly of root-
position chords.84 The severe chorale harmonizations in ‘Mitten wir im
Leben sind’ provide an exemplary realization of this ideal; the stark
chordal writing of the remainder of the work, however, more closely
resembles the Palestrinian homophony present in Mendelssohn’s earlier
quasi-liturgical pieces, and the handling of the eight-part texture has also
been compared with Palestrina’s practices.85 None of the sections in this
work presents the kind of compositional engagement with old Italian mu-
sic exhibited in Mendelssohn’s later liturgical music. Even so, it is clear
that the work represents a response to contemporary ideals of church
music reform: it complies with Abraham Mendelssohn’s demand for a
combination of old and new free from the mannerism of the Nazarenes,
providing an austere new exemplar of the church style.
If Mendelssohn’s quasi-liturgical pieces enabled him to explore the
nature of the church style in the abstract, his exposure to the ceremonies
of the Sistine Chapel led him to contemplate the special requirements
of liturgical music. Mendelssohn’s descriptions of the papal choir’s
performances – which he approached, rather self-consciously, with the
scepticism of Goethe rather than the enthusiasm of the Romantic circle –
repeatedly emphasize a single point: that the starkly homophonic music
performed in Holy Week, while artistically restricted, is perfectly attuned
to its liturgical context. In attempting to explain the effect of the Holy
Week performances, Mendelssohn concludes that it is not the music
alone that produces the awed audience reaction, but the ceremonies as
a whole.86 In a letter to his family, written after experiencing the Holy
Week services in 1831, Mendelssohn develops this idea further, view-
ing the music as an inseparable part of a larger Gesamtkunstwerk.87 He
singles out Palestrina’s Improperia for particular praise, echoing Goethe’s
comments in the Italienische Reise on the union of music and liturgical
action that occur on Good Friday at the adoration of the Cross: ‘It seems
to me, after only a single hearing, that it is one of the most beautiful
compositions by Palestrina, and they sing it with quite remarkable af-
fection. . . . I could well understand why the Improperia made the greatest
impression on Goethe; it is really the height of perfection, since music,
ceremony, and everything are in complete accord.’88
The significance of the Improperia for Mendelssohn is the ideal nature
of its fusion of musical quality and liturgical suitability. His conviction that
this ideal was attained solely by old Italian music is again evident in the
musical reforms that he initiated in the Catholic churches of Düsseldorf
when he was municipal music director there: reacting adversely to a
liturgical performance of a mass by Haydn, and finding ‘not a single
tolerably serious mass, nothing by the old Italians’ in the local archives,
Mendelssohn travelled to Elberfeld, Bonn and Cologne in order to obtain
Palestrina’s Improperia, the Miserere settings of Allegri and Tommaso Bai,
and other old Italian pieces.89 Significantly, Mendelssohn considered
these works to represent a liturgical ideal not only for the Catholic ser-
vice, but also for Protestant church music. In a letter to the Evangelical
pastor Ernst Friedrich Bauer, Mendelssohn discussed the problematic
role of music within the new Prussian liturgy, introduced following the
unification of the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions:
True church music – that is, music for the Evangelical service that has a place
in the course of the liturgical ceremony itself – seems to me to be out of the
question, not merely because I cannot at all see where in the service music
should have a place but because I cannot conceive that any such place could
exist. Perhaps you have something to tell me which will clarify matters, but up
until now I do not know – even if I leave aside the Prussian liturgy [of 1829]
which omits all such things, and will probably not be permanent or last even in
the short term – how we can make music an integrated part of the service, and
not merely a concert which stimulates devotion to a greater or lesser extent.90
Here, Mendelssohn makes a clear distinction between non-liturgical re-

ligious works and music suitable for liturgical performance: indeed, he
creates an exaggerated opposition between autonomous works (he cites
the St Matthew Passion) and music that is subordinated to functional con-
cerns (the ‘old Italian pieces for the papal chapel’). But if Mendelssohn’s
evaluation of the latter is more ambivalent than in his earlier comments
on the Improperia, he nonetheless concludes that these pieces are the sole
true church music. Even if the music of Palestrina did not fully meet
his requirements for the union of the artistic and functional spheres, it
provided the point of departure for his own later liturgical music.
Mendelssohn and the Berlin Domchor

The majority of Mendelssohn’s later church compositions – includ-
ing the Drei Psalmen op. 78, the Sechs Sprüche op. 79 and the Deutsche
Liturgie – were written for performance by the newly reformed Domchor
(cathedral choir) in Berlin, following Mendelssohn’s appointment in
1842 as Generalmusikdirektor to the Prussian court with responsibilities for
church music and oratorio performances. All these works engage with the
issues discussed in his letter to Bauer, representing a series of attempts
to re-create the ideal epitomized by the Improperia within the modern
Evangelical liturgy. These pieces exhibit a complex and varied relation
to Palestrina’s language, and served as models for other Protestant com-
posers seeking to conform with this ideal.
It has often been assumed that the brevity of Mendelssohn’s associa-
tion with the Domchor (he resigned in the summer of 1844) and his dissat-
isfaction with his position in Berlin are evidence of a lack of sympathy
with the conception of the church style operative there. Mendelssohn’s
conflict with the cathedral authorities has been attributed to a dichotomy
between the demands of functional liturgical music and his orientation
towards autonomous religious works conceived for the concert hall:
Wolfgang Dinglinger, for instance, considers that Mendelssohn viewed
the circumstances at the Hof- und Domkirche as inimical to art.91 The po-
larization of art and functional music present in such assessments seems,
however, to oversimplify both Mendelssohn’s conception of church music
and the orientation of the Domchor. The clergy, courtiers and musicians
associated with the Domchor did not advocate a functional approach to
liturgical music, but rather sought to foster church music that simulta-
neously satisfied aesthetic and functional demands. The reform of the
liturgy and of the Domchor in 1843 can be seen as an attempt to restore
a significant aesthetic dimension to the Evangelical service, in order to
redress the faults of the liturgies introduced in the 1820s: these reforms
perpetuate Schleiermacher’s conviction that even if congregations are in-
sensitive to art, it is capable of having a positive effect on them.92 Indeed,
in 1853 the court preacher Friedrich Adolph Strauß noted that as a re-
sult of the improved quality of its music, the Domchor had succeeded
in attracting lapsed Protestants back to the Church.93 Mendelssohn’s
frustration with the new liturgy and conflicts with the clergy were not
motivated by a hostility to this reforming agenda: it is clear that he sym-
pathized with the desire to improve liturgical music and to distinguish its
requirements from those of the concert hall. Mendelssohn, admittedly,
was frustrated by the limited opportunities for choral music within the
service and had no interest in composing chorale arrangements for the
congregation; nonetheless, his appointment as Generalmusikdirektor pro-
vided an opportunity to put his earlier theories on true liturgical music
into practice, and to continue the line of experimentation represented
by ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’.
Mendelssohn’s intention to create works combining liturgical suitabil-
ity with the qualities associated with the music of Palestrina can be seen
in a letter to Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Redern, the Generalintendant in
charge of the music at court, in which he asked to delegate the compo-
sition of some of the psalms for the new liturgy to other composers. He
writes that this task should only be assigned to ‘German composers who
have proved themselves through earlier works in the church style’; each
psalm must be a ‘genuine liturgical [echt kirchliche] composition’, ‘without
any instrumental accompaniment (a capella)’, and the composers must
bear in mind that ‘the destination of these compositions for the service
makes it desirable that they be declamatory and treated with the least
possible word repetition and figuration, so that the sense of the words
is comprehensible to the listeners’.94 While here Mendelssohn implicitly
links his conception of liturgical music to the ideal that he considered
Palestrina’s Improperia to represent, a more explicit identification of the
historical orientation of his psalms is given in an (albeit ironic) account
by Fanny Hensel: ‘For the Domchor Felix has composed the second psalm
[op. 78 no. 1] for eight voices a capella; very beautiful, very Gregorian
and Sistine-like [sixtinisch].’95 The relation between the Drei Psalmen and
old Italian church music is more complex than Hensel’s comments sug-
gest. Some scholars have viewed them as exercises in the Palestrina style,
while others share Moritz Hauptmann’s belief that they bear no re-
lation to historical styles or models.96 Other commentators have ar-
gued that Mendelssohn’s late liturgical music exhibits a combination
of elements of Palestrina’s language with Mendelssohn’s own style; in
contrast, for Rauol Meloncelli this music does not employ Palestrinian el-
ements directly but presents a transfigured, idealized vision of Palestrina’s
language.97 Given this plurality of stances, it must be determined whether
these pieces represent a direct engagement with this language in the
manner of Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, or whether Mendelssohn’s desire to
conform with this liturgical ideal resulted in a more oblique response
to it.
A key aspect of the stylistic orientation of these psalms is the suppres-
sion of elements of Mendelssohn’s customary idiom. This characteristic
was denounced in a contemporary critique by Krüger, who considered
the psalms to epitomize Mendelssohn’s failure as a composer of church
music. He condemns them as products of false humility and sham
naivety, dismissing Psalm 22 op. 78 no. 3 in particular for its prosaic
character and ‘didactic asceticism in shades of grey’ (didactische Ascetik
in grauem Ton).98 The ascetic impulse identified by Krüger is, however,
only a factor at a localized level. In terms of structure, these substantial
works resemble Mendelssohn’s earlier multi-movement psalm cantatas;
indeed, the final section of Psalm 43 ‘Richte mich, Gott’ op. 78 no. 2 is
a transposed variant of the opening of the final chorus of Psalm 42
op. 42 (1837). The varied tonal schemes present in the Drei Psalmen
indicate that Mendelssohn’s desire to conform with the Palestrinian ideal
did not involve a restriction of large-scale tonal relationships. Each of the
psalms follows a trajectory from tonic minor to major; it is the use of the
tonic major as a culminatory gesture – an essential part of Mendelssohn’s
style – that serves most clearly to distance these psalms from their old
Italian models. In contrast, Mendelssohn’s approach to harmony at a
localized level suggests the impulse to emulate these models through the
suppression of aspects of his customary style; this is especially apparent
in the minor-key portions of the psalms. In Psalm 2 ‘Warum toben die
Heiden’ op. 78 no. 1, the opening sections evince a restrictive approach
to harmony and melody; in addition to emulation through suppression,
Mendelssohn evokes the music of the Sistine Chapel through carefully
prepared dissonances (mostly 4–3 suspensions), root-position harmonies
and brief passages of imitative writing. In the section in the tonic
major ‘Küsset den Sohn’ (bars 112–40), these features are combined
with elements more characteristic of Mendelssohn’s style, such as the
‘feminine’ cadence, and rhythmic and harmonic sequences. As a result
of this stylistic contrast, the work engages with the Palestrina ideal on
two distinct levels: while the conception of all the sections of the psalm
reflects this liturgical model, the evocation of ‘Sistine-like’ severity in
the minor-key sections appears to serve a musico-dramatic function.
In this psalm, Mendelssohn’s re-creation of the sound world of the
Sistine Chapel is aided by the use of stylized plainchant. The stylized
chant used in the fifth section (bars 112–40) resembles a psalm tone that
Mendelssohn quoted in a letter describing the Holy Week services in
1831; he described it as the first tonus (it is closer to the second psalm
tone) ‘in which one half of the verse ends G A G and the other G E G’.99
The stylized chant used in bars 121 –38 of Psalm 2 is related to the first
half of this psalm tone and creates a striking effect, serving as a textual
and musical counterpoint to the material of the soloists. Accordingly,
Mendelssohn’s use of chant, like his evocation of Palestrina’s language,
forms part of a broader musico-dramatic conception. Mendelssohn’s
handling of the eight-part idiom in all three of the psalms reflects the
impact of the papal choir’s Holy Week performances. In describing the
choir’s performance of Palestrina’s Lamentations, Mendelssohn partic-
ularly praised the slow, almost imperceptible merging of one chord into
another.100 Several passages in each of the Drei Psalmen seem calculated
to replicate this effect, through the use of sustained pedal notes and
chords in one group of voices against material in the other group.
Psalm 22 ‘Mein Gott, warum’ op. 78 no. 3, first performed on Good
Friday in 1844, provides a synthesis of Mendelssohn’s approaches to re-
creating the Palestrinian ideal in an Evangelical context. The text of
the work and the occasion of its first performance prompted him to en-
gage compositionally with the Holy Week music of the Sistine Chapel,
in particular Allegri’s Miserere. Mendelssohn’s preoccupation with the
penitential music of the Sistine Chapel is most apparent in the opening
section, bars 1 –57. The responsorial structure of this section, in which
the full choir responds chordally to solo intonations, is modelled on old
Italian Miserere settings,whilethetenorsoloist’sintonations seem intended
to evoke plainchant psalm tones (an impression heightened by the indi-
cation ‘recit.’). The responses to these intonations resemble the passages
of falsobordone – the chordal recitation of liturgical texts based on root-
position triads, harmonizing a psalm tone in one of the parts – present
in the Miserere settings of the Sistine Chapel. In bars 27–30, Renaissance
falsobordone is more explicitly evoked, since here Mendelssohn harmonizes
his psalm tone instead of presenting it as a solo line (here the chant
melody is in the second tenor part). In addition, the extended final
cadence of this section, bars 53–6, can be regarded as an intensifica-
tion of the types of cadential dissonance present in Allegri’s Miserere
(see Ex. 3.3).
In addition to the use of a choral psalm setting as an introit, the Berlin
cathedral liturgy stipulated the performance of a Spruch (a short biblical
text or verse) after the reading of the Epistle. Mendelssohn’s Sechs Sprüche
op. 79 were composed for this purpose and four of them (nos. 1, 2, 4
and 6) were performed in the winter of 1843–4 alongside Mendelssohn’s
psalm settings. While all six of these verses exhibit relationships to early
Romantic perceptions of Palestrina, it is the verses with penitential texts
Example 3.3. Felix Mendelssohn, Psalm 22 ‘Mein Gott, warum’

op. 78 no. 3, bars 52–6
that elicited re-creations of elements of his language from Mendelssohn.

The second verse in the collection, ‘Herr Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’,
performed on New Year’s Day 1844, contains several elements re-
lated to this language: the simple imitative writing, bold successions of
root-position chords and restricted use of dissonance recall the simplicity
and restrained dissonance treatment of the ‘Gloria Patri’ from Psalm 2
(Ex. 3.4). The music of the Sistine Chapel is evoked here by the simple
Example 3.4. Mendelssohn, ‘Herr, Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’ op. 79 no. 2,
bars 6–17
suspensions in bars 9 and 10, and by the chord repetitions of bars 10–17
in the manner of falsobordone. The fourth verse in the collection, ‘Herr,
gedenke nicht’, was performed on Passion Sunday 1844 and revised the
following year. Here, the penitential text prompted chains of Palestrinian
root-position chords, in bars 12–19; in addition, as with Psalm 22, the re-
sponsorial structure is derived from Allegri’s Miserere. The last of the Sechs
Sprüche, ‘Um unsrer Sünden’, was performed on Good Friday 1844. The
highly restricted homophony of this short verse again recalls the Miserere
and Palestrina’s Improperia; moreover, the emphatic harmonic shift from
tonic minor to relative major harmonies in bars 12–13 seems to be a
conscious echo of the opening chords of the Miserere.
In Mendelssohn’s psalms and Sprüche, both the use and weaker evo-
cation of elements of Palestrina’s language play a part in his attempt to
re-create the liturgical ideal that the music of the Sistine Chapel repre-
sented. What is less clear is how Mendelssohn was able to reconcile the
use of elements of earlier languages with Romantic aesthetic imperatives.
Contemporary critics were also troubled by the problems involved in
understanding the relation between Mendelssohn’s religious works and
the music of the past. The most significant contemporary discussions of
these relationships, other than those of Mendelssohn himself, are those
of Heine; a consideration of how Mendelssohn and Heine addressed this
question can clarify matters.
The importance of Heine’s views to this matter has hitherto been un-
derestimated, since his comments have generally been dismissed as part
of a broader polemic against the composer. Heine’s attacks, which focus
specifically on St Paul, condemn the oratorio for its insincerity and for dis-
playing a disunity of content and form: according to Heine, Mendelssohn
uses ‘mimicking [Nachäffung] of the grand historical style’ as a means ‘to
construct academically [wissenschaftlich] the spirit of Christianity’.101 For
Heine, Mendelssohn’s use of external forms copied slavishly from Bach
and Handel results in his works lacking artistic truth; they are character-
ized by ‘a great, strict, very stern seriousness, a resolute, almost relentless
dependence on classical models, the finest, cleverest calculation, intellec-
tual lucidity, and lastly, a total lack of naivety’.102 Here, Heine’s criticisms
are clearly linked to his rejection of the attempt by the Romantic school
to create a new art, and mythological basis for that art, entirely through
artifice; just as Heine condemned the enthusiasm of the Romantics for
Catholicism as hypocrisy, and the imitation of medieval Volkslieder as pro-
ducing ‘German moonshine’, so he condemns Mendelssohn’s religious
compositions as the product of false belief and the mimicry of older
works. This link is made explicit in a later article:
[Mendelssohn] always reminds us of the great question, what is the difference
between art and falsehood? We admire this master in the main for his great
talent for form, for stylistics, his gift for making the most extraordinary things his
own, his charmingly beautiful craftsmanship, his fine lizard-like ear, his sensitive
antennae, and his serious – I might almost say passionate – indifference. If we
look for an analogous phenomenon in a sister art, we find it in poetry, and it
goes by the name of Ludwig Tieck. This master, as well, always knew what were
the most excellent things, in order to reproduce them in writing or declaiming,
and even understood how to manufacture the naive.103
Here, Heine unambiguously links Mendelssohn with the irony of the

Romantic circle. Mendelssohn’s religious music is the product of irony,
since it combines naive instinctual creation and reflection; this is what
Heine means in his puzzling comment that Mendelssohn evinces
‘passionate indifference’: the arbitrary combination of spontaneous in-
spiration and critical reflection that he condemns in the art of the
Romantic circle. Heine considers Mendelssohn’s works to be the product
of both artistry and fabrication since the quality of his external forms is
not matched by a substantial content. While Mendelssohn is proficient
in the technical sphere, he can manufacture religious art only through
reproducing earlier, unreflective forms of church music.
Mendelssohn’s own preoccupation with exploring and defining the
nature of the relationship between his religious works and the music of the
past suggests a fear not only of being perceived as an imitator, but also of
being seen as a reflective ironist. The shift in his historical orientation that
occurred during his years of travelling was accompanied by a heightened
concern for this question. In response to criticisms that some of the
works written in Italy showed too great a dependency on the works of
Bach, Mendelssohn contemplated the relationship between his works
and earlier music; his ideas seem equally pertinent to the relationship
between his later liturgical works and the music of Palestrina and his
school. In a letter from 1831 to his friend Eduard Devrient (1801 –77) he
wrote, concerning his recent sacred music:
If it has similarity to Seb. Bach, again, I cannot do anything about it, for I wrote
it just according to the mood I was in; and if the words put me in a mood
similar to that of old Bach, so much the better. I am sure you do not think that
I would merely copy his forms, without the content; if it were so, I should feel
such distaste, and such emptiness, that I could never finish a piece.104
Mendelssohn’s most emphatic defence of his work occurs in a letter to
Zelter from 1830:
In your last letter you seemed to fear that I might possibly be led, through my
admiration for one of the great masters, to apply myself too much to church
music and abandon myself to imitation. This, however, is quite definitely not
the case. . . . Nothing is valid except that which has flowed in deepest sincerity
[Ernst] from the innermost soul. . . . If the object alone has not given rise to the
work, it will never ‘pass from heart to heart’ and consequently imitation is the
same as the most superficial appearance of the most foreign thoughts. Certainly,
no one can prevent me from enjoying and continuing to work at what the great
masters have bequeathed to me, because not everyone should start from scratch,
but it should however be a continued working from one’s own powers, not a
lifeless repetition of what already exists.105
Two points that Mendelssohn makes in these passages are especially
significant. First, he denies that the relationship between his works and
earlier music is one of imitation, since he sees imitation as copying the
‘form, without the content’. The corollary to this is that Mendelssohn
attempted to achieve a similar spiritual content in his works, without
merely copying the external forms of earlier works. Second, he consid-
ers his works to represent a creative continuation of the substance of
these earlier works, rather than imitation. Such defences strikingly re-
veal the extent of the impact that Mendelssohn’s friendship with Hegel,
and knowledge of his aesthetics, had on the young composer’s views
and compositional practice. His anxiety that his church music would
be seen as containing a disunity of form and content shows an aware-
ness of Hegel’s requirement that the appearance of a work embodies
the substance of the artist’s consciousness. Mendelssohn’s concern with
demonstrating that his church music originated in ‘deepest sincerity from
the innermost soul’ is an attempt to show that similarities to older works
present in his music are the product of a comparable religious spirit, a
mutual spiritual content. He implicitly distances his activities from the
reflection of the Romantic circle, arguing that such similarities are not
evidence of an attempt to manufacture a religious content merely by
reproducing the external features of earlier religious works; his compo-
sitions are the product of conviction (Hegel’s Ernst) rather than caprice,
and were written spontaneously, ‘according to the mood I was in’, rather
than through a conscious intention to use older forms.
Crucially, however, Mendelssohn does not deny that earlier religious
music forms a basis for his own productions. He does not claim that
his works represent a ‘transfiguration’ – to use Meloncelli’s term – or
sublimation of earlier compositions or styles, but rather admits that they
present a continuation of certain formal elements of earlier works. He
emphasizes that his music does not replicate the mode of treatment
present in earlier pieces in any literal sense, but is rather a ‘continued
working’ on them within a modern context. Mendelssohn’s methods of
referring to Palestrina’s language in his liturgical music are, as has been
seen, widely varied, but generally involve the use of elements of the earlier
language rather than a weaker form of evocation of Palestrina’s sound
world. Nevertheless, these works can be said to confirm Mendelssohn’s
own analysis that his church music constitutes not merely the ‘foreign
thoughts’ of others, and neither are their forms merely the ‘lifeless rep-
etition’ of earlier works; they constitute a re-creative transplantation of
elements of Palestrina’s language into an Evangelical liturgical context.
WINTERFELD AND THE HISTORICAL PALESTRINA
The 1830s witnessed a shift in the nature of both the revival of old music
and its reception by Protestant composers. The placing of Palestrina
at the zenith of an organically constructed golden age of church music
remained central to Protestant representations of Renaissance music
throughout the nineteenth century. But while Palestrina continued to
epitomize conceptions of the church style, the increasing amount of early
music being published and the work of music historians and polemi-
cists led to a reevaluation of first his Italian, then his German con-
temporaries. Central to this process was the increasing importance of
both objectivity and relativism in the work of German music historians;
from the 1830s the monumental subjective historicism epitomized by
Hoffmann’s idealization of Palestrina competed with the objective his-
toricism of those seeking to portray more accurately the relation between
Palestrina and his contemporaries. It is in this decade that, as Nietzsche
put it, the ‘greedy curiosity’ of music historians began to be directed sys-
tematically towards the ‘countless minutiae of life and works’, and here
that the conflict between subjective and objective historicism becomes
endemic.106
It is with the jurist and historian Carl Georg Vivigens von Winterfeld
(1784–1852) that the objectivity advocated by Humboldt and Leopold
von Ranke was first applied to Renaissance music history, challenging the
monumental historicism of earlier Palestrina reception. His first book,
Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina (1832), functions as a critique not merely
of Baini’s Memorie storico-critiche but of the Palestrina-centred approach to
Renaissance music of which it is the most extravagant epitome. Baini’s
monograph on Palestrina, considered by Spitta to combine diligent docu-
mentary research with ‘an astonishing immaturity of judgment’, is the
most comprehensive attempt to place Palestrina at the centre of an or-
ganic model of music history; as Spitta remarks, Baini regards all music
prior to Palestrina as merely a lowly preparatory stage, while every-
thing after him represents a ‘contemptible decline’ (schnöder Verfall ).107
Winterfeld responds to Baini’s ‘great critical – or, rather, somewhat un-
critical’ monograph on Palestrina in two ways.108 First, he presents what
he considers to be the most worthwhile aspects of Baini’s ideas in a literal
or paraphrased form in order to provide a distillation of the facts that is
not contaminated by Baini’s critical opinions. Second, Winterfeld criti-
cizes what he considers most misleading in Baini’s study and puts forward
his own blueprint for a revisionist approach to Renaissance music.
Central to Winterfeld’s critique of Baini is his assertion of the necessity
for objectivity and impartiality in music history. While Baini has fulfilled
one aspect of the art historian’s task – the connecting of Palestrina and
his works to the circumstances of the time – his attempt to prove the
supremacy of Palestrina’s music in historical terms leads him to fail to
differentiate between historical facts and his own opinions:
it will be harmful and misleading for future research in this field if the author’s
views and opinions – which are neither consistently dependable nor impartial –
are not distinguished from the factual content, and if this pure matter of genuine
lasting worth is not extracted so that it can be submitted to the judgment of
informed and unbiased friends of art.109
Winterfeld’s Rankean belief in the possibility of ‘pure’ objective facts

leads him to attack three central aspects of Baini’s study so as to
‘serve justly the history of art’: the idea that the superlative success of
Palestrina’s music is derived from its imitation of nature, Baini’s method
of categorizing Palestrina’s works into ten styles and, most crucially, his
view of Palestrina as the towering, unique genius of his age.110 In his quest
to counter the latter view, Winterfeld employs the legalistic language and
scrupulous impartiality of the Prussian high court judge:
For, because of the great respect which he inspires in us, we must avoid if
possible the appearance of having, without hesitation, passed sentence on his
preconceived opinions wherever we do not agree with him. . . . Yet our author
has a special devotion to his hero – even so, incidentally, it may be possible
to be impartial – and probably a biased patriotism which would hand to his
home town [Rome] before all others the Palm of Glory, cloud his vision, and
transform him from a historian into a panegyrist.111
In countering Baini’s view of a Renaissance dominated by Palestrina,
Winterfeld identifies the inconsistencies and omissions that result from
Baini’s preconceptions; he notes that in wishing to orient everything to
the greatest praise of his hero, Baini ‘mires himself in contradiction’, for-
getting that – in an epigram worthy of Ranke – ‘the unadulterated voice
of history is the surest panegyric’.112 Winterfeld saps at the credibility
of Baini’s picture of Renaissance music by highlighting the distortions
that result from overemphasizing Palestrina’s stature and diminishing
that of his contemporaries, and by relentlessly exposing factual errors.113
In opposition to Baini’s idealization of Palestrina, Winterfeld argues that
Palestrina’s contemporaries can be divided into four schools, the Flemish,
the German, the Roman, and the Venetian, and that music developed as
a result of the interactions between them rather than because of the work
of a single dominant figure: he identifies Willaert, Andrea and Giovanni
Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Lassus, Senfl and Praetorius as masters alongside
Palestrina.114 Winterfeld continues this revisionary process in his more
well-known study Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (1834), where he iden-
tifies Lassus, Palestrina and Giovanni Gabrieli as the greatest composers
of sacred music of their time.
It should not be assumed that Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to the
music of the Renaissance marks a complete departure from the sub-
jective historicism of earlier Protestant Palestrina reception, or that his
judgments are entirely subjugated to the objectivity that he advocates.
Crucially, Winterfeld’s conception is still dependent on the idea of a
golden age of church music, although in his hands this does not focus
primarily on Roman or even Italian composers, but rather constitutes the
blossoming of art in all four of the schools he identifies. As with Hoffmann
and Thibaut, Winterfeld’s model is bolstered by analogies to develop-
ments in Renaissance painting, but while earlier commentators had
sought to construct a musical equivalent to Raphael, Winterfeld argues
that the presence of a plethora of great painters in this period renders
absurd the idea that only one great composer flourished.115 Winterfeld’s
organicist emplotment, unlike that of Hoffmann, is enunciated explicitly
through the use of metaphors derived from the life cycle of flowering
plants: he traces the growth of his golden age from its ‘flourishing buds’
(gediehene Knospe) or shoots (Keime/Sprosse), via its blossoming (Blüthe), to
its eventual wilting (abwelken).116 Like Hoffmann and Baini, Winterfeld
considers music from the period before his golden age to consist of dry ab-
stractions, dismissing the music of the earliest figures in his four schools
as artificial, constituting not a ‘living development’ of plainchant but
merely a laboured embellishment of it.117 Furthermore, Winterfeld does
not question Palestrina’s legendary status as the saviour of church music,
and his perception of what constitutes the characteristic qualities of
Palestrina’s music diverges little from that of earlier commentators.
Within the first few pages of his book he inserts a lengthy digression
from his summary of Baini’s account of Palestrina’s life in order to eu-
logize the Improperia; in spite of his extensive knowledge of Palestrina’s
output, Winterfeld perpetuates the notion that the simple homophonic
pieces sung in the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week epitomize his style.
In addition to sharing the idea of a golden age of church music in
the mid-sixteenth century, Winterfeld perpetuates earlier conceptions of
its gradual decline. Winterfeld concurs with Baini that the developing
independence of instruments, chromaticism, and declamatory operatic
styles were responsible for the wilting of the diatonic system and the strict
style, and for the decline of church music; like Hoffmann, however, he
rejects the idea that a more general decline in music occurred.118 His
mode of constructing his golden age by reference to the life cycle of flow-
ering plants is in part explained by his treatment of this decline, since in
Winterfeld’s conception, the wilting of the older style is accompanied by
the budding of the newer: the decline of the older style is thus represented
as an inevitable outcome in the cyclic alternation of degeneration and
renewal.
The organic model was central to Winterfeld’s later revisionary
approaches to Renaissance music: crucially, it provided the means of
constructing a golden age of German church music to rival those of
Hoffmann and Thibaut for old Italian music. Within the gradually
widening revival of Renaissance music, it was Winterfeld’s championing
of Lutheran composers from the century following the Reformation –
especially his lionizing of Johannes Eccard – that provided the most
important challenge to Palestrina as the paradigm for the Evangelical
liturgy. This development was sustained by a significantly different ideo-
logical matrix to that which underpinned the idealization of Palestrina:
it reflects the increasing cultural nationalism of the mid-nineteenth
century and constitutes a reaction against the aesthetic Catholicism of
the early Romantics.119 In Winterfeld’s case, it was Prussian rather than
German nationalism that nourished this revival, combined with a desire
to demonstrate that Protestant composers equalled the achievements of
Catholics in the golden age of church music.
Earlier discussions have focused on Winterfeld’s elevation of Eccard –
dismissed by Spitta as ‘a charming and tender, but narrowly restricted
talent’ – to the level of a ‘German Palestrina’, or ‘Prussian Palestrina’,
or Protestant ‘antipope to Palestrina’.120 It is important to bear in mind
that Winterfeld does not use any such formulation himself, nor does
he compare Eccard with Palestrina directly; significantly, however, in
promoting Winterfeld’s research, his friend Krüger used the by then
well-worn phrase the ‘German Raphael’ in reference to Eccard.121
Nonetheless, Winterfeld does emphasize in more general terms that
German Renaissance compositions are the equals of their Italian coun-
terparts: ‘In these works can be found a characteristic strength and
living freshness which, in their field, puts them on exactly the same
level as the great Italian masters of the same period.’122 In Der evangelische
Kirchengesang (1843–7), Winterfeld argues that true Evangelical church
music emerged only with Eccard’s Preußischer Festlieder (1598); despite
rejecting Baini’s notion of a Roman school of music with Palestrina at its
head, he constructs a similar Prussian school encompassing composers
who perpetuated the Festlied and Eccard’s manner of chorale setting un-
til the mid-seventeenth century.123 Aside from this limited perpetuation
of Eccard’s manner, Winterfeld traces the decline of Protestant church
music through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: even Schütz
and J. S. Bach reflect the weakening of church music, and thus cannot
share Eccard’s status as the paradigm of Protestant art.124
As with Hoffmann and Thibaut, Winterfeld’s extraordinarily deter-
ministic emplotment is orientated around present-day reform. He em-
phasizes that only if the music of his blossoming period is revived will
Protestant churches again possess sacred music; furthermore, as with all
the earlier writers who constructed monumental golden ages, he con-
siders it no vain hope to expect a new artistic blossoming of church
music through a return to the principles and spirit of Eccard and his
successors.125 It is clear that Winterfeld’s construction of a golden age of
Reformation church music was not intended to complement the golden
age of old Italian music as a paradigm for the liturgy, but to provide
a Protestant substitute for it. In stressing that true Protestant church
music constitutes the union of the chorale with its artistic elaboration,
he implicitly distances old Italian music from the liturgy, within which it
cannot be an organic component. Elsewhere, Winterfeld is more explicit
in arguing that Lutheran music from the Reformation should constitute
the primary paradigm for Protestant church music; while maintaining
that old Italian music should not be excluded from the Protestant ser-
vice, he argues that it should never be accorded an unjustifiable primacy:
‘why should we not consider as first and dearest that which developed in
closest and nearest connection with our fatherland and our church: why
should our attention only be directed to that which belongs to a foreign
people and a different confession?’126
BROADER TRENDS IN PERFORMANCE AND COMPOSITION
The impact of Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to Renaissance music

and to church music reform is evident in the activities of the Berlin
Domchor.127 The choir’s repertory in the 1840s and 1850s does not sug-
gest that German Renaissance pieces increasingly supplanted old Italian
music, nor was the primacy of Palestrina as an ideal for Protestant
church music challenged in this period. Rather, the eclectic repertory
of the Domchor represents the commingling of different conceptions of
the church style. In addition to exploring how the choir’s repertory
reflects changing perceptions of Renaissance music, it is necessary to
see how modern composers responded to these developments. While
Mendelssohn sought to emulate the homophonic pieces performed in
the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week, the works of other composers writing
for the Domchor suggest a more extensive and sophisticated knowledge of
Renaissance church music.
The reform of the music and liturgy of the Hof- und Domkirche in 1843,
instigated by Friedrich Wilhelm IV and his adviser Bunsen, resulted at
first in an eclectic mixture of musical elements, few of which had any
traditional basis within the Lutheran or Calvinist confessions. While most
liturgies represent the accumulation of diverse musical elements added
gradually over time, the deliberations of Friedrich Wilhelm and Bunsen
resulted in the creation of a liturgy based on historicism rather than
tradition. The musical components of the new services can be seen as an
attempt to reproduce the repertory and ethos of the German Singvereine
within a liturgical context, providing a belated realization of the visions
of Hoffmann, Thibaut and Zelter. The music for Christmas Day 1843,
for example, juxtaposed ‘reformed’ settings of three Lutheran chorales,
two a cappella compositions by Mendelssohn (Psalm 2 op. 78 no. 1 and
‘Frohlocket, ihr Völker’ op. 79 no. 1) and a chorus from Handel’s Messiah,
‘Uns ist zum Heil ein Kind geboren’ (‘For unto us a child is born’).128
The criteria governing the repertory quickly became more stable, the
most important requirement being ‘unity of style – to be precise, the true
church style’: as a result, solo pieces, oratorio choruses and the use of
instruments were proscribed.129
The cultivation of solely unaccompanied choral works was a decisive
step in the reform of Protestant church music, since only a small minority
of earlier commentators had advocated it dogmatically. This develop-
ment reflects the impact of the views of Bunsen, Winterfeld and Grell on
the reform of the Domchor: as a consequence, the concerted music used
in the earliest services under the new liturgy receded in favour of Italian
and German Renaissance compositions, seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Italian stile antico works and German Baroque chorale motets.
The breadth of Renaissance music within the choir’s repertory can
be seen from the relevant volumes of the collection Musica sacra, pub-
lished in the 1850s as a means of spreading the ideals of the reformed
cathedral liturgy.130 In the three volumes of early and modern church
music edited by the director of the Domchor, (Heinrich) August Neithardt
(1793–1861), Palestrina is the most represented Renaissance composer,
while a large proportion of the remaining works are by his immediate
successors or from the Italian stile antico tradition (by Felice Anerio,
Giuseppe Corsi, Francesco Durante and Antonio Lotti).131 Significantly,
in addition to a small number of German Catholic pieces from the
Renaissance (by Lassus and Handl), nearly one third of the older works
are by German Protestant composers from the century following the
Reformation (including motets by Eccard, Schütz, Michael Praetorius
and Melchior Franck); not only does the presence of these works reflect
Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to church music reform, but the majo-
rity of them are drawn from the collections of pieces appended to his
Johannes Gabrieli and Der evangelische Kirchengesang.
The catholicity (in both senses) of the reformed liturgy and music was
viewed with suspicion by some commentators.132 Indeed, the perfor-
mance of old Italian music within the Evangelical liturgy proved contro-
versial and problematic. Earlier writers championing the validity of per-
forming Palestrina within the Protestant service, such as Thibaut, tended
to approach this issue from an ecumenical perspective: Thibaut attributes
hostility to Catholic music to sectarian bigotry, arguing that if the opin-
ions of a few ‘anxious custodians’ (ängstliche Türhuter) of the Protestant
church are heeded, not only this music but ‘all the masterpieces of Gothic
architecture and painting must come under the Protestant anathema
for being products of the Catholic faith’.133 While Friedrich Wilhelm
and Bunsen shared Thibaut’s aesthetic Catholicism, Winterfeld asserted
the universal validity of old Italian music in different terms; he argues
that Palestrina’s works are ‘not strongly or irrevocably attached to the
consciousness of any one particular confession’ since, as products of the
Counter Reformation, they were shaped by the repercussion of Lutheran
ideals.134 If the ideological objections to the performance of these works
could readily be finessed, it nonetheless created practical problems.
Winterfeld was vehemently opposed to the adaptation of Renaissance
compositions and felt qualms even at the performance of Palestrina with
German texts, arguing that translations transform such works into pale
shadows of the originals.135 But the employment of old Italian music
within the Protestant service was dependent on a process of translation,
sometimes involving drastic alterations. An example of the methods em-
ployed can be seen in an adaptation of Palestrina’s Improperia, produced
by Bunsen for use in the chapel of the Prussian legation in Rome and
included in the reformed repertory of the Domchor.136 Both Mendelssohn
and Nicolai commented unfavourably on the experimental liturgy that
Bunsen had introduced to the legation chapel: Mendelssohn viewed its
fusion of Protestant and Catholic elements as very defective, while Nicolai
commented that ‘Bunsen’s chapel, if it were to be arranged entirely
after his manner of thinking, would seem as different from a Protestant
church as a bird is from a horse!’137 Bunsen’s desire to fuse Catholic and
Protestant ideals is clearly apparent in his adaptation of the Improperia:
portions of the original are omitted and replaced by a simple, reformed
harmonization of the chorale ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’. In addition,
the adaptation introduces the alternation of passages for choir and con-
gregation, which also served to bring the piece closer to contemporary
Evangelical ideals.138
Many of the modern compositions performed by the Domchor also
reflect the impulse to fuse Catholic and Evangelical ideals. In the
years following Mendelssohn’s resignation, composers for the choir
continued to engage with old Italian music and a significant minority
of compositions replicate Palestrina’s language or are modelled on
specific old Italian works. From the 1850s, however, composers began to
respond to the new paradigm elevated by Winterfeld and his followers.
Winterfeld’s work had – as Krüger points out – decisively contradicted a
notion fundamental to the idealization of Palestrina: the early Romantic
assertion that religious devotion in art is not possible without Catholic
inspiration.139 The golden age of church music was increasingly seen to
encompass sixteenth-century Lutheran compositions, whose new status
as exemplars was acknowledged in the preface to one of the collections
associated with the Domchor: ‘alongside the older choral pieces . . . newer
ones have also found a place, which in general are composed in the spirit
of the church and also more or less according to the well-founded rules
of writing of the first century after the Reformation’.140 In seeking to
recover the religious content of Renaissance church music, composers
for the Domchor faced not merely a choice of historical paradigms but had
to contend with competing aesthetic stances. Neither Friedrich Wilhelm
nor Bunsen were apparently troubled by the aesthetic implications of
compositional historicism: this is evident in the warm reception given to
a performance of Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’ in 1844, which led to him being
offered Mendelssohn’s position as Generalmusikdirektor.141 In contrast,
Winterfeld – arguing from a Hegelian perspective – urged composers
to avoid replicating Renaissance idioms. Although he demands that
modern composers serve as vessels for the rebirth of the ancient church
style, the replication of earlier forms is proscribed:
Nothing can be expected from efforts which are capable of perceiving the essence
of the church style merely in the external formal outlines of the old masters,
imagining that the rebirth of this style can be achieved through toiling at the
stunted copying of them. Every form becomes defunct as soon as the spirit no
longer breathes life into it, no matter how gloriously the spirit may once have
embodied itself in this form. It would be better for choral singing in our churches
to fall completely silent than for such soulless apparitions [wesenlosen Schemen] to
haunt us!142
In examining the relation between the modern repertory of the

Domchor and Renaissance music, this survey focuses primarily on Neit-
hardt’s Musica sacra volumes and on a three-volume collection of psalm
settings edited by Emil Naumann (1827–88), a pupil of Mendelssohn
who served as Hofkirchenmusikdirektor from 1850 to 1872.143 With regard to
stylistic orientation, the psalms, motets and Sprüche in the collections of
Naumann and Neithardt fall into five groups: (i) pieces in the Liedertafel
style (i.e., works resembling the contemporary secular partsong) or in
other modern idioms; (ii) works which conform with the Palestrina ideal
through the suppression of certain modern elements; (iii) works which
evince a number of elements derived from the language of Palestrina
and his Italian contemporaries but which do not replicate this language
literally or in their entirety (i.e., works which evince a mixture of styles);
(iv) works whose totality is informed by relations to this language or
which are modelled on specific old Italian compositions; and (v) works
related to German Renaissance and early Baroque models.
All these works bear the mark of the Palestrina ideal through their
unaccompanied idioms and predominantly slow tempos. But not all
exhibit more substantial relationships to old Italian music: a number
of motets (such as those by Wenzel Gaehrich and Carl Loewe) and
several of Neithardt’s psalms unequivocally follow the Liedertafel style.
In Neithardt’s settings of psalms 47 and 24, the vertically conceived
part-writing, passing chromaticisms and repetitive rhythms are distant
from the Palestrina ideal; for his more austere contemporaries, the thor-
oughly secular nature of the latter work would not have been redeemed
by the naive allusions to Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus in its final bars.
While the Liedertafel style is predominant in only a handful of pieces, a
larger number perpetuate traditional motet styles and can be charac-
terized as conservative but not historicist. In addition, around a third of
the modern pieces in these volumes reflect contemporary conceptions
of the church style without replicating elements of Palestrina’s language.
These pieces epitomize Hoffmann’s notion of self-denial in church music
and fulfil Thibaut’s demand for moderation and restraint: elements of
contemporary musical syntax are suppressed as a means of attaining the
noble simplicity of Palestrina. The subdued idiom resulting from such
suppression is evident in the opening bars of Neithardt’s Psalm 72. Here
the chromaticism and melodic freedom of his two Liedertafel psalms are
replaced with restrained, mostly conjunct lines; while certain elements
associated with Palestrina’s language are present, such as an emphasis on
root-position chords and restrictive dissonance treatment, these elements
do not on their own suggest a close relation to this language.
Roughly a third of the motets and psalms evince closer relationships
to Renaissance church music. The nature of these relationships is very
varied, ranging from short passages that include several elements of
Palestrina’s language to works that attempt to replicate it throughout.
The limited evocation of Palestrina can be seen in Neithardt’s motet ‘Sei
getreu, bis an dem Tod’ and settings of psalms 54 and 66. In Psalm 54,
elements of Palestrina’s language are restricted to the use of a long chain
of roots in the central section and a passage evoking falsobordone; similarly,
‘Sei getreu’ and the middle section of Psalm 66 give the visual impres-
sion of old Italian music through their white notation and double-choir
textures, but aside from a short passage of stylized suspensions (Ex. 3.5)
the harmonic idiom bears little relation to Palestrina. The re-creative ap-
proach to Palestrina’s language that is present in Mendelssohn’s psalms –
which in parts exhibit an eclectic fusion of two languages – is only appar-
ent elsewhere in the collection in Karl Reinthaler’s Psalm 70, Naumann’s
Example 3.5. August Neithardt, Psalm 66 ‘Jauchzet Gott’

op. 10 no. 2, bars 56–69
Psalm 23 and Nicolai’s ‘Ehre sei Gott’. In these works, this language is
a defining element throughout or for substantial sections, although the
exact relation between the two languages present is subject to constant
variation. Here, Palestrinian elements are incorporated within a modern
harmonic context; harmonic restrictions at a local level occur within the
context of wide-ranging tonal schemes.
The psalms most closely related to Palestrina’s language are the works
by Grell (psalms 51, 90 and 130), Naumann’s Psalm 19 and Neithardt’s
Psalm 67; in addition, three of Naumann’s responsorial settings for choir
and congregation bear close links to old Italian music. Of these pieces, six
have penitential texts: psalm 67 was performed on Maundy Thursday,
psalm 22 was sung in Holy Week, psalm 90 was performed only at fu-
nerals, while psalms 51 and 130 were performed on Bußtage (days of
repentance). The linking of the language of Palestrina with lamenta-
tion indicates the power that the papal choir’s Holy Week performances
continued to exercise on the German imagination: it suggests that this as-
sociation both encouraged and justified an engagement with old Italian
music in penitential works.
In the majority of these pieces, it is the homophonic idiom of the
papal choir’s Holy Week music that is replicated. Naumann’s Psalm 130
and Neithardt’s Die Worte des Erlösers are particularly interesting in this
connection, since they are modelled on specific works from the papal
choir’s repertory. As Naumann notes, all six of his essays in Psalmodie –
which present a new genre alternating choral and congregational
singing – were modelled on Allegri’s Miserere. In the preface to his
collection of psalms, Naumann describes the problems created by
Friedrich Wilhelm’s desire for congregational participation in the psalm
singing.144 Having rejected recitation in the manner of Anglican chant
because of its lack of artistic significance, Naumann was sent to Rome
by the king in order to observe the psalm performances of the papal choir.
Although Allegri’s Miserere involves the alternation of choral polyphony
and falsobordone rather than of choir and congregation, Naumann ele-
vated this work as a model for responsorial singing fusing congregational
participation and artistic worth. In attempting to transform old Italian
practices into contemporary German psalmody, each of Naumann’s
six pieces responds to this model in different ways. Naumann’s setting
of Psalm 130 bears the closest resemblance to his avowed model since,
in addition to providing a structural template, the Miserere is alluded
to in the second and third of the choral passages (see Ex. 3.6). As in
Mendelssohn’s psalms, this piece diverges from old Italian models as a
result of its tonal trajectory: it is suffixed with a ‘Gloria Patri’ section in
the tonic major, thus transplanting early seventeenth-century material
into a modern expressive context. Naumann’s Psalm 1 evinces a different
kind of stylistic pluralism. While the structure of the piece is again appro-
priated from the Miserere, the primary stylistic model for the falsobordone
passages and choral responses is the reformed Evangelical chorale. This
fusion of Catholic and Evangelical elements is also present in Neithardt’s
Example 3.6. (a) Gregorio Allegri, Miserere, bars 13–17
Die Worte des Erlösers, modelled on Palestrina’s Improperia (or rather, on

Bunsen’s arrangement of it). Both works set a similar series of biblical
excerpts responsorially, and both share a highly restricted chordal idiom:
the choral portions of Neithardt’s piece (which, like Bunsen’s arrange-
ment, alternates passages for choir and congregation), evoke Renaissance
homophony. The most striking feature of Neithardt’s piece is its stylis-
tic pluralism: his re-creation of Palestrinian homophony is alternated
with responsories by Grell in the style of the ‘reformed’ chorale, and
suffixed with a chorale harmonization by Bach (‘Wenn ich einmal soll
scheiden’ from the St Matthew Passion). This eclectic combination of
Catholic and Evangelical ideals can be viewed as an epitome of the
Musica sacra collection, and of the new Evangelical liturgy as a whole.
Among the works in this collection, it is those by Grell that come closest
to replicating Palestrina’s language literally. Each of his three psalms
presents a distinct response to Renaissance church music, although they
share the use of predominantly homophonic writing and refrain struc-
tures. The simplest of these pieces is Grell’s Psalm 51, a setting of the
Miserere text. Here, Grell adopts the responsorial structure of Allegri’s
Miserere in addition to evoking its falsobordone textures. While all three
psalms engage with Palestrina’s dissonance treatment and modal prac-
tice, Psalm 51 evinces a less restricted harmonic palette than the other
two psalms, including chromatic chords and other elements foreign to the
aeolian mode. If this psalm represents a relatively free response to
Example 3.6. (b) Emil Naumann, Psalm 130 ‘Aus der Tiefe’
op. 14 no. 2 bars 11 –20
the Holy Week music of the Sistine Chapel, Grell’s other settings evince
a more sophisticated knowledge of Renaissance music and replicate
Palestrina’s modal practices. In Psalm 130, Grell’s harmonic resources
are entirely limited to triads formed on the degrees of the mixolydian on
F: the intermediate cadences do not confirm modulations but emphasize
the important degrees of this mode. Similarly, Grell’s Psalm 90 stays
within the harmonic limits of the transposed dorian mode. While – as
Example 3.7. Eduard Grell, Psalm 90 ‘Herr Gott du bist’

bars 84–92
with Grell’s other psalms – this piece is predominantly homophonic, a

short section of dense polyphonic writing is included in its final section
(Ex. 3.7). This is the sole passage in the collection to suggest an inten-
tion to replicate Palestrina’s polyphonic techniques, and also testifies to a
thorough grounding in the strict style of counterpoint (while Naumann’s

Psalm 19 also contains polyphonic passages, these evoke Palestrina’s
sound world more freely without the replication of his techniques or
modal practices). Significantly, however, aspects of this passage (and the
alternation of block chordal writing and pithy, syllabic imitative textures
earlier in the psalm) resemble early seventeenth-century Venetian or
German polychoral music more than Palestrina.
As a consequence, Grell’s Psalm 90 is the only piece in these two
collections that reflects Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to Renaissance
music, if not his elevation of Eccard. But a number of compositions
in another collection, Neithardt’s Sammlung kirchlicher Chorgesänge (1855),
have more in common with late sixteenth-century German chorale set-
tings and motets.145 The homophonic writing in the modern pieces in
this collection frequently resembles that found in the older chorale set-
tings (by Praetorius and contemporaries) published alongside them: this
is especially apparent in the motets by Grell and his successor as organist
of the Nikolaikirche in Berlin, Eduard Kühnast. Aside from these short,
functional pieces – conceived as a means of rendering the ideals of the
Domchor accessible to less proficient choirs – the repertory of the Domchor
does not suggest that, in this period, Winterfeld’s new paradigm had a
significant impact on the compositional reception of Renaissance music.
While other works in these collections may initially suggest German
Renaissance or early Baroque models, this is primarily due to a shared
concern for syllabic text declamation rather than to more significant
affinities.
The repertory of the Domchor in the 1840s and 1850s testifies to
the enduring importance of Palestrina as the paradigm of the church
style. In responding to this model, composers did not merely adopt the
a cappella idiom but pursued a variety of compositional strategies, rang-
ing from the suppression of elements of modern syntax through to the
replication of Palestrina’s modal practices. It is evident, however, that
the cultivation of this ideal was not universal: the continuing associ-
ation of old Italian music with the Holy Week services of the Sistine
Chapel circumscribed the use of elements of Palestrina’s language by
modern composers. As in Mendelssohn’s psalms and Sprüche, it is the
pieces with penitential texts that exhibit the most significant relationships
to this language and to old Italian works. Of the composers represented
in these collections, it is Grell whose works are most consistently and
extensively related to Renaissance music: it is in his music and that of
his pupils that a more universal cultivation of the Palestrina ideal can be
found.
PALESTRINA AND THE PRIMACY OF VOCAL MUSIC
The Berlin Palestrina revival reached its zenith in the work of Grell
and his pupil and apologist Heinrich Bellermann (1832–1903). Their
significance to the revival was not confined merely to their compositions
but was also due to their positions at the heart of the Berlin musical
establishment and their influential theoretical and polemical writings.
Grell was associated with the institutions at the centre of the Palestrina
revival, the Singakademie and the Domchor; he served as cathedral organ-
ist from 1839 to 1857, and as director of the Singakademie from 1853 to
1876. While Grell’s contributions to the revival were largely in the fields
of composition and performance, Bellermann’s embraced music the-
ory and historical musicology as well as composition: his composition
treatise Der Contrapunkt (1862) is the most significant nineteenth-century
codification of the language of Palestrina and of the strenge Satz.
Crucial to the championing of Palestrina by Grell and Bellermann is
their belief in the primacy of vocal music, more specifically of a cappella
singing. Earlier, it has been seen that for Thibaut and Zelter the cultiva-
tion of a cappella music served as a counterweight to the predominance
of instrumental music in modern culture. In the writings of Grell and
Bellermann, the idealization of a cappella singing develops a stage further.
Their views represent the intensification of a conviction that still flour-
ished in the nineteenth century, albeit as a minority view: the Platonic
idea that music and the word are inseparable and that music for in-
struments alone is merely a deficient offshoot from true music. While
Bellermann was willing to grant instrumental works value so long as
they remained governed by the rules of a cappella singing, Grell’s position
was more extreme: without the word, music is dead, meaningless and
soulless, and ‘a genuine musical artwork can exist only in song’.146 His
most important argument against instrumental music – as with Kant
and Hegel – is its inability to express determinate concepts. He ob-
jects to the use of the word Tonkunst, since to view music as the ‘art of
notes’ is to ignore Plato’s logos; Grell argues that sound and musical notes
are not in themselves capable of being music but are only the medium
through which it can be represented.147 Grell perpetuates Zelter’s insis-
tence that every artwork must express an idea, making the use of words
with music ‘absolutely and completely essential’: ‘without the word there
can be no communication of concepts, without concepts no thoughts are
discernible, no understanding or feeling can burst out. . . . Whoever sep-
arates words from music has forgotten that man received his song, his
music from the creator through the gift of speech.’148
To a greater extent even than Zelter, Grell and Bellermann are de-
pendent on the hellenized humanism of the Goethezeit, elevating a cappella
choral music as a substitute for the music of antiquity. Grell adapts the
ancient Greek division of the arts into two classes, the musical and the
technical, assigning poetry, dance and song to the former category and
architecture, sculpture and painting to the latter; the technical arts are
considered inferior, since they can be practised only through the me-
diation of tools and materials.149 Under such an analysis, music for
instruments alone must be ranked among the technical arts: Grell de-
rides musical instruments as tools, utensils and machines, mediators that
prevent the direct flow of music from the soul of man to the listener, com-
paring them to prosthetic limbs.150 Grell’s contempt for musical ‘tools’
reflects the neohumanist antipathy towards industry and technology:
like Schiller and Goethe, Grell elevates ancient Greece as a paradigm
of holistic simplicity, when the community was united in the cultivation
of simple handicrafts rather than divided by the unnatural complexities of
mechanization. Grell condemns his own age as ‘the friend of factories,
products, machines, of the elimination of the direct employment and
practice of man’s powers’; similarly, he inveighs against the industrial
and economic forces that control artistic production, lamenting that in
recent times ‘art has been regarded more as a commodity than as a
medium for the spiritual improvement of man’.151 For both Grell and
Bellermann, ancient Greece provides the model of the true role of art
in society, yet both approach Greek musical practices with ambivalence
as a result of the importance of instrumental playing within them.152 As
a consequence of this, and of the other limitations of Greek music as a
model for modern singing, Grell and Bellermann elevate Palestrina as –
in Lüttig’s phrase – a ‘historical mutation’ of the Greek ideal; indeed,
Palestrina emerges as more Greek than the Greeks, in that his music
provides a more perfect realization of the Platonic ideal than the music
of antiquity.153
In elevating a cappella music, Grell and Bellermann develop a further
strand of thought inspired by German neohumanism: the idea that only
this music can contribute to the improvement of the individual and of
society. Invoking the role of music within the Greek polis, Bellermann
argues that only through the propagation of singing can music regain
its ancient glory, and become a medium for cultural improvement as in
antiquity.154 The primacy of singing as a medium for Bildung is the result
of its universal accessibility: it, alone among the arts, can be participated
in actively by everyone, and only music in the ‘strict style’ (gebundene Styl )
makes possible the completely equal participation of every singer.155 Both
Grell and Bellermann campaigned vigorously for a cappella singing to be
placed at the heart of music education, while Grell envisaged a much
enlargened Singakademie, whose ‘monster concerts’ (Monstre-Konzerten) –
involving up to a hundred thousand singers – would entirely dissolve the
distinction between participants and audience.156
Grell’s ethical conception of vocal music was commented on by his suc-
cessor as director of the Singakademie, Martin Traugott Wilhelm Blumner
(1827–1901); according to Blumner, he was ‘a counterweight of salutary
influence at a time when the blinkered instrumental tendency that he
opposed was dominant, and when virtuoso individualism and the purely
sensuous element in music were increasingly gaining the upper hand
and smothering the purpose of art: to have a cultivating and ennobling
effect on the performers’.157 As is clear from these remarks, the activities
of Grell – and of the Singakademie under him – constitute a counter not
only to modern instrumentalism, but to the idea of aesthetic autonomy.
In Grell’s conception of the purpose of art, the artwork has no intrin-
sic value as an object of passive contemplation; rather, its value stems
from the beneficial effect of artistic activity on the participants: ‘in the
musical arts, the work of art consists more in the uplifting and cultivat-
ing of heart and spirit in the producer [i.e., performer] than in what is
produced, which makes the work of art seem more the effect of art than
the artistic product.’158 Grell’s emphasis on the effect of vocal music on
the performers entirely subjugates the aesthetic dimension of the work:
his consequent rejection of aesthetic norms was fundamental in shaping
his approach to composition.
Grell’s advocacy of unaccompanied singing developed in tandem with
the conviction that Renaissance music provided the sole exemplar of the
true church style. As with Mendelssohn, his early views on the church
style were shaped by Zelter and the Singakademie, but even in the 1820s
his stance was more extreme than that of his teacher. Attributing the
decline of church music to the ‘sounding brass and tinkling cymbal’ of
degenerate instrumentalism, and to the futile desire of composers to be
new and original, Grell championed the unaccompanied performance
of Renaissance music; Bellermann notes that even while singing teacher
for the Königliche Normalsingechor at the court chapel (a position he held
from 1829), Grell insisted that the choir practise without instrumental
support:
In his later years he could not have praised more highly how much he himself
had learned from this tuition, since with time it became more and more clear
to him why the composers of the sixteenth century – Palestrina and Orlandus
[Lassus] etc. – composed according to such strict rules, and that these rules
must form the basis of composition teaching in the present time, and for as long
as men sing in harmony.159
It is clear from this description that Grell’s conception of Palestrina’s lan-

guage was more complicated than that of most of his contemporaries,
and was formed by more than just the simple homophonic works eulo-
gized by the early Romantics. Rather, his conception of Renaissance
church music was informed by an intense study of the rules of the
Palestrina style, partly through the mediation of Fux’s Gradus.
The composition teaching that both Mendelssohn and Grell had
received from Zelter was centred around Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen
Satzes, a treatise orientated around the music of Bach rather than
Palestrina and governed by the harmonic foundation of thoroughbass.
While Bellermann notes that in Grell’s earliest vocal music the treatment
of dissonance is still completely regulated by Kirnberger’s rules, Grell
quickly came to believe that the contrapuntal techniques he had learned
from Zelter did not provide a strict enough foundation in part-writing.160
By the early 1820s, he was convinced that ‘nobody can attain a free, in-
dependent leading of each voice through studying thoroughbass and the
chordal theory of Kirnberger’s method’; when he finally encountered
Fux’s Gradus, he lamented that he had not been exposed to it earlier by
Zelter.161 Grell’s belief that thoroughbass is inadequate as a preparation
for composing church music is evident in a memorandum from 1829
concerning composition teaching at the Königliche Institut für Kirchenmusik.
Here, he argues that church music can be reformed only through tuition
in the strenge Satz, since without the foundation of these rules, liturgical
compositions are ‘doomed to failure and as a rule ridiculous’.162
Grell’s church music was shaped not merely by his expertise in Fuxian
counterpoint, but by a thorough study of old Italian works. His study
and performance of Renaissance music continued during his years as
singing teacher for the Königliche Normalsingechor, encompassing not only
old Italian works, but also Flemish, Spanish, German and even English
motets and masses.163 From 1843 Grell was employed as singing teacher
for the newly reformed Domchor, and it is in the years surrounding the
introduction of the new liturgy that his activities in copying out and
analysing Renaissance music were most intense: in the winter of 1841 –2
he transcribed eighty-one motets from the sixteenth century and earlier,
while by 1845 he had copied out five books of motets for five to eight
voices by Palestrina.164
This intense preoccupation with Renaissance music coincided with
the composition of a substantial body of music for the new Prussian
liturgy. The relation between Grell’s compositions for the Domchor
and Renaissance music has frequently been oversimplified, in general
as a result of the impulse to polarize his approach from that of
Mendelssohn.165 This gambit is already evident in Hohenemser’s dis-
cussion from 1900, which categorizes the relation between nineteenth-
century music and earlier styles into two types: the first, the legitimate
combination of earlier material with a composer’s own style, is apparent
in Mendelssohn’s late liturgical music, while the second, the epigonal
reproduction of earlier styles, is epitomized by Grell’s Fünf sechsstimmige
Kirchengesänge op. 32 and Evangelisches Festgraduale op. 33.166 Hohenemser’s
verdict on Grell was shared by a contemporary critic of these collections,
in a review from 1844.167 This review, which appears under the nom de
plume ‘Wise’, dismisses Grell’s pieces as mere copies of earlier music,
and consequently as superfluous and without value. Concerning op. 32,
Wise writes: ‘These liturgical pieces prove the composer’s competence
in the old, so-called Palestrina style, which in itself is commendable
and indispensable to the proficient composer but appears to us of little
practical worth, inasmuch as we cannot appreciate copies, especially in
music.’168 When discussing op. 33, the idea of copies is again invoked:
‘The compositions collected here are worthily sustained, competently ex-
ecuted, and useful, and we would recommend them as exercises in this
style if it were not for the Italian originals – such as, for example, those
made readily available by Tucher – which must be preferred to copies.’169
Grell’s Drei vierstimmige Motetten op. 34 are dismissed as ephemera which
should never have been published, and were probably only printed be-
cause of Grell’s prominence in the musical life of Berlin: ‘Herr Grell,
who is surely in the position to achieve something more proficient and
worthwhile, should not be allowed to publish this sort of thing: he harms
himself and art.’170
It is clear that for Wise, liturgical music is not exempt from the re-
quirement for originality: compositions for the church, as in other fields
of music, are without value if they copy an earlier style and cannot be
excused on functional grounds. Just as significant is Wise’s confusion
concerning the double nature of the Palestrina-Stil, since this issue is fun-
damental to understanding Grell’s music and ideals. In commenting that
the Palestrina-Stil forms an indispensable part of compositional training,
Wise views it as a compendium of immutable rules that are not tied to
any composer or period. But Wise sees the outcome of composing in this
style as inevitably being the copying of old Italian music, compromising
the aesthetic imperative of originality. This is paradoxical: a set of compo-
sitional techniques cannot be timeless norms and yet inevitably result in
copies of the music of a specific period. Wise fails to differentiate between
the aspects of Grell’s motets that reflect his adherence to the strenge Satz,
and those elements that reflect his intense study of Renaissance works.
These two stimuli must be distinguished carefully in exploring Grell’s
compositions, not least because he and Bellermann relied in part on the
bifurcated perception of the Palestrina-Stil as a means of legitimizing their
practices.
In discussing these collections, Bellermann explored the similarities
and differences between their idiom and old Italian music. He notes
that it is hardly surprising that Mendelssohn mistook Grell’s ‘Lasset
uns frohlocken’ op. 33 no. 1 for a work by Palestrina: the part-writing
is so strict and pure that only an expert could identify how Grell
diverges from old Italian practices.171 These divergences are, according
to Bellermann, restricted to rhythmic parameters: he draws attention to
Grell’s (conscious) use of a greater degree of rhythmic freedom than is
present in Palestrina’s works (such as the use of tied notes in ratios other
than 1:1 or 2:1). More important, however, are the rhythmic divergences
from Palestrina’s language that occur at a less localized level: the almost
constant cultivation of rhythmic and melodic independence in the
individual vocal lines. Although in most of Palestrina’s motets and mass
movements, sections of homophonic writing, polyphony, and fugal imita-
tion are alternated, the pieces in Grell’s opp. 32 and 33 collections evince
what can be described as a constant ‘rhythmic polyphony’: a dense form
of homophony in which all or the majority of voices exhibit rhythmic
independence but are cast according to a framework that is vertically
determined.
Grell’s restricted use of fugal textures and preference for an inter-
mediate texture between homophony and imitative polyphony was,
like his rejection of the stricter rules governing tied notes, a matter of
conscious choice. His preference for ‘coloured or florid counterpoint’
(buntigen oder blumigen Kontrapunkt) reflects not merely his desire for truly
independent part-writing, but the context in which these pieces were
first performed.172 Bellermann recalls that Friedrich Wilhelm IV was a
great connoisseur of old Italian music, ‘and had a particular fondness for
Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, which is, as is well known, composed for
six voices in chiavette, so that nowadays it is best sung in A major’.173 The
king’s command for a German version of this mass to be sung complete
by the Domchor could not easily be heeded, since few of its movements
could be accommodated within the Evangelical liturgy (only the Kyrie
and Sanctus could readily be performed, although the Agnus Dei was
included in the choir’s published repertory). In order to replace the move-
ments omitted and to set to music the other parts of the liturgy, Grell
composed his opp. 32 and 33 collections, noting that these pieces were
‘suitably arranged’ ( passend zusammengestellt) for Palestrina’s mass.174 As
a consequence, Grell adopted not only the key and vocal configuration
of the Missa Papae Marcelli, but also replicated its predominant musical
characteristics, including rhythmic polyphony. In this way, a liturgical
performance of this mass would have constituted a hybrid of sixteenth-
century Catholic and nineteenth-century Evangelical elements.
The contrast between the textures present in the Missa Papae Marcelli
and those in Palestrina’s earlier works was linked in the nineteenth cen-
tury to its supposed role in the deliberations of the Council of Trent; the
Catholic musicologist August Wilhelm Ambros (1816–76), for instance,
focused on the numerous devices deployed in order to animate its pre-
dominantly homophonic – and thus textually intelligible – texture.175
Example 3.8. Grell, ‘Alleluja’ op. 32 no. 4 bars 1 –20
Ambros’s conception of a homophonic framework enlivened by rhythmi-

cally independent figuration is epitomized by the opening of the Sanctus,
and it is with the textures of this movement that Grell’s collections have
the greatest affinity. This can be seen in the ‘Alleluja’ op. 32 no. 4 (Ex. 3.8).
Both of these movements utilize rhythmic polyphony as a means of crea-
ting independence within vocal lines conceived according to a chordal
framework; this is apparent in the harmonically functional bass lines
that Grell’s piece shares with Palestrina’s Sanctus, and in the frequent
rhythmic pairing of the voices. While few of Grell’s pieces exhibit de-
veloped points of thematic imitation (in his view, imitation of both the
rhythmic and melodic profiles of a point), they do contain recurring
melodic and rhythmic motifs. With regard to dissonance treatment,
Grell’s procedures generally observe the restrictions of the strenge Satz: he
rarely replicates aspects of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment whose use is

historically circumscribed, such as the nota cambiata and consonant-fourth
idioms. Grell’s combination of the dissonance techniques of the strenge
Satz with the limited replication of sixteenth-century idioms contrasts
his motets from Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, where the replication of these
idioms occurs without adherence to the stricter rules of contrapuntal

theory.
Grell’s deviations from Palestrina’s textures and dissonance treat-
ment – where acknowledged – have been explained in two ways.
Hohenemser attributes these divergences to the bungled copying of
Palestrina, while Friedemann Milz argues that he deliberately culti-
vated a simplified version of Palestrina’s language, a ‘Palestrina-Stil for
the masses’.176 Although the latter perspective is relevant to other as-
pects of Grell’s output, it seems that here he seeks to avoid the most
antiquated elements present in Palestrina’s music. In spite of replicat-
ing many aspects of Palestrina’s language, the desire to approximate the
idiom of the Missa Papae Marcelli cannot simply be equated with a self-
conscious archaism. This impression is confirmed by the inclusion of
some elements foreign to Renaissance music, the clearest example being
the chains of parallel sixths in the lower voices in bars 29–31 of ‘Herr
Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’ op. 33 no. 3.
Grell’s opp. 32 and 33 pieces, like his Musica sacra psalms, have a modal
basis. This is apparent not just in localized progressions of consecutive
roots, but in the harmonic practice and cadential structure of these works
throughout. Most of the pieces in these collections share the tonal re-
strictions present in the ‘Alleluja’, suggesting the replication of the modal
practice present in the Missa Papae Marcelli and the use of the ionian mode
on A. Although the handling of this mode in the shorter pieces in these
collections rarely suggests tonal ambiguity, the larger motets in op. 33
evince a dual tonal orientation, alternating between the mixolydian on
E and ionian on A. This ambiguity can be related to the way in which the
modal orientation of the model for these motets, the Missa Papae Marcelli,
was defined by nineteenth-century theorists and historians: Baini, for
example, assigned the mass to the eighth church tone on G (i.e., the
hypomixolydian mode).177 Alternatively, Grell’s modal practice in these
motets may suggest an intuitive realization that the mass in its entirety
cannot be assigned to a single mode, but rather alternates between the
ionian and mixolydian modes.178
While all the pieces in Grell’s opp. 32 and 33 contain substantial re-
lationships to Palestrina’s language, it should not be assumed that this
is true of all his church music. Another collection from this period, the
Drei und dreissig vierstimmige Motetten op. 35, exhibits a more complex range
of stylistic orientations. A small proportion of these short, functional
pieces (intended not for the Domchor but for school singing and less com-
petent church choirs) replicate Palestrina’s homophonic idiom, while all
reflect the restrictions of the strenge Satz. The majority of the pieces, how-
ever, are in more recent idioms, while some even suggest the Liedertafel
style. In general, it is the motets with penitential texts that evince close
relationships with Palestrina’s language: Grell’s restricted cultivation of
this language in op. 35 is puzzling, given that op. 32 and especially
op. 33 (which consists of motets for all the feasts of the church year, not
just for Holy Week and Bußtage) suggest that he viewed it as a univer-
sally applicable ideal rather than one whose practical application was
seasonally limited. A solution to the contrasting stylistic orientations of
these collections can be found in an autobiographical note from 1841.
Here, Grell identifies two contrasting styles in his church music: ‘choral
music for the church a Capella’ and works that are ‘not liturgical [nicht
ritual], but in stilo organico and often in entirely free modern manners of
writing’.179 In this description, Grell adopts the Italian terms for differ-
entiating stile antico works (stilo alla capella) from works with more modern
elements (stilo all’organo, the Italian equivalent of Fux’s stylus mixtus); Grell
would probably have been familiar with such terminology not only from
his study of Fux’s Gradus, but from the writings of Baini and Winterfeld.
It is clear from Grell’s autobiographical note that he would have con-
sidered only his works related to Palestrina’s language to be truly suit-
able for the church; those works in op. 35 in stilo all’organo and more
modern styles were primarily intended for school singing and are ‘non-
liturgical’ in character. Consequently, it is clear that while not all of Grell’s
motets evince significant relationships to Palestrina’s language, he viewed
it – unlike any of the composers examined earlier – as a universally valid
liturgical ideal.
Bellermann’s Contrapunkt
If Grell’s liturgical pieces reflect the competing ideals of Palestrina’s lan-
guage and the Fuxian strenge Satz, the tension between them becomes
all-pervasive in Bellermann’s textbook Der Contrapunkt. This work, in its
original version and the extensively revised second edition (1877), was the
standard textbook of the Palestrina style in Germany until the appear-
ance of Knud Jeppesen’s Kontrapunkt (1935), and helped to perpetuate
aspects of the beliefs underlying the Berlin Palestrina revival into the
twentieth century. This success occurred in spite of – or perhaps, be-
cause of – the work’s curiously bifurcated concerns and ambiguity of
focus: on the one hand, it presents a contribution to contrapuntal theory
through its amplification of Fux’s Gradus, while on the other it attempts
to define Palestrina’s language historically. Rather than subjecting one
of these aspects to critique ( Jeppesen highlighted the work’s inadequacy
as a representation of Palestrina’s language, while Heinrich Schenker
performed a similar operation with regard to contrapuntal theory) it
is necessary to explore how they interact.180 In particular, the aesthetic
premisses underpinning this attempted synthesis require clarification,
and we must explore their implications for the compositional practices
of Grell and Bellermann.
Bellermann’s elevation of the Palestrina-Stil as a paradigm for compo-
sition is inextricably linked to his views on the primacy of vocal music.
Although his strictures on instrumentalism never equal the vehemence
of his teacher’s, he shared Grell’s conviction that compositional methods
orientated around the instrumental foundation of thoroughbass cannot
provide a strict foundation in part-writing. Accordingly, the composition
tutors of Kirnberger, Cherubini and Siegfried Dehn are rejected be-
cause of their basis in harmonic rather than true contrapuntal theory; in
addition, the music of Bach and Handel is dismissed as a model of part-
writing ‘because all their choral compositions are calculated around an
instrumental bass’.181 It is the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries
that provides strict instruction since it is written ‘only for pure voices’:
‘It is from this age that we must take up the study of part-writing and
must arrange our practices according to the rules and laws which were
in force at that time.’182 Bellermann’s attitude towards these laws reveals
a dual conception of their worth. The contrapuntal laws that he outlines
are regarded as universally valid rules of composition, but also provide
the means to return to the spirit of the masterpieces of the sixteenth cen-
tury by replicating their language. This dual position, as has been seen
earlier, is paradoxical because of the contradictory nature of its compo-
nents: both the historicist and the classicizing aspects of Bellermann’s
textbook therefore need to be taken into account.
Dahlhaus – in line with his view that nineteenth-century concep-
tions of the Palestrina-Stil reflect a classicizing rather than a historicizing
tendency – sees Bellermann as presenting eternal truths rather than
demonstrating the historicist desire to revivify a musical golden age.183
Certainly, much of the foreword to Der Contrapunkt confirms the view
that Bellermann represents the Palestrina style as a codification of uni-
versally valid rules. The subtitle of Bellermann’s book, ‘instruction for
part-writing in musical composition’, and his summary of the purpose
of the study (to teach composers fluent and correct part-writing), em-
phasize the general applicability of the rules proposed rather than their
historical basis.184 Bellermann confirms this by asserting that the study of
his rules for part-writing will aid the composer of operatic and orchestral
music, as well as church music; moreover, he writes that the rules should
not substitute what can be learned from more recent compositions and
that their observance will not, and should not, automatically bring with
it other aspects of old music:
By no means should our music, as a result of this, obtain again that old form
[Gestalt]; we should only take from it what we cannot learn from studying present-
day music. We should still strive for the flowing individual voices of the ancients,
even though we are entitled in the present time to go beyond the narrow confines
of their rules if our artworks are inspired by other ideas.185
While Bellermann emphasizes the universal applicability of his rules

and their classical, timeless value, this is not the whole story: his
plea for musical renewal through historicist revival is less veiled than
Dahlhaus suggests. Bellermann considers the faults in modern com-
posing to stem from an unwillingness to learn from history, and views
perfect part-writing as the preserve of Palestrina and contemporaries,
the only composers of ‘truly sacred art’.186 Moreover, his rules pro-
vide modern composers with the means to regain the chief qualities
of Palestrina’s music, his sublime simplicity and ‘purest sacred restraint’
(reinsten kirchlichen Keuschheit).187 Like Hoffmann and Thibaut half a century
before, Bellermann explores the musician’s duty to learn from the past by
a comparison with other forms of art: the only way for ‘bad, degenerate,
licentious modern music’ to be redeemed is through the immersion of
modern composers in sixteenth-century music and the study of its strict
rules.188
As with earlier critics and historians, Bellermann’s elevation of
Palestrina is dependent on an organicist golden age emplotment.
Accordingly, in spite of his expert knowledge of early sixteenth-century
music, Bellermann dismisses it as overburdened with complex canons
and too harsh harmonically to serve as a model.189 And, like the early
Romantic commentators, he stresses the decline of church music in the
early seventeenth century, attributing this to the forsaking of the strict
rules of counterpoint.190 It is in the works of Palestrina himself that the
strict rules reach their zenith: ‘A genius like Palestrina did not stand
out from among his contemporaries through overturning the existing
rules of beauty and of pleasing sound [Wohlklanges], but by virtue of the
way in which he – master of these rules – created within these nar-
row limits masterpieces which we must still today admire after three
centuries.’191 It is Palestrina, not Fux, who is ‘master of these rules’, and –
crucially – the validity of the techniques described in Der Contrapunkt is
grounded in their use in the hands of Palestrina and his contemporaries.
Bellermann seldom demonstrates the abstract validity of his rules, but
rather appeals to their use in Renaissance music as their sole authority;
where Fux and the practice found in sixteenth-century music are at vari-
ance, it is Renaissance methods that are recommended. Throughout
Der Contrapunkt Bellermann defends his rules by means of mantras invok-
ing the historical language of Palestrina and his contemporaries: aesthetic
and technical judgements are apparently subjugated to historical criteria.
Not only is the authority for Bellermann’s contrapuntal laws grounded
in historicism, but the compositional effects of his universal rules of
part-writing are also historically circumscribed. While he asserts that
his technical rules are of use in all fields of composition and are not
restricted to the replication of a particular musical language, the twelve
music examples presented at the end of his book contradict his notions
of general applicability. These works, given in full at the end of the 1862
edition, circumscribe Bellermann’s rules to a particular historical pe-
riod, and also implicitly restrict the use that the modern composer can
make of them. Ten works by sixteenth-century composers are given to
illustrate the principles of strict part-writing: four motets by Palestrina,
three by Lassus, one each by Handl and Eccard, and a motet attributed
to Goudimel (actually by Pietro Vinci [c. 1535–84]). The collection of
examples culminates with two pieces by Bellermann himself, a Kyrie
eleison and an eight-part motet ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’. Bellermann’s
pieces in the strict a cappella style – both of which are identified as actual
compositions for the Evangelical service, rather than exercises conceived
to demonstrate a technique – serve to contradict the universal applica-
bility of his rules. For it is clear that while his technical rules are in part
represented as universal norms, they are also conceived as a means of
revivifying a historical ideal: both pieces are intended to replicate
Palestrina’s language as well as to demonstrate the rules of the strenge Satz.
In discussing these pieces, three factors need to be taken into account:
their relation to the contrapuntal rules outlined in his treatise, the extent
to which they replicate Palestrina’s language, and their relation to the
pieces by Grell examined earlier. Although both of Bellermann’s pieces
reflect his concerns with strict part-writing, they do not correspond with
all the rules that he outlines in every detail. As in Grell’s opp. 32 and 33,
Bellermann’s pieces evince a greater degree of rhythmic freedom than
Palestrina’s music through their treatment of tied notes. More signifi-
cantly, Bellermann’s handling of the individual melodic lines often con-
tradicts his rules on successive melodic leaps, with the result that his bass
lines sometimes reflect harmonic considerations rather than his concern
for melodic independence. In other aspects of the strenge Satz, however,
Bellermann’s pieces are stricter in their observation of his contrapun-
tal rules than those of Grell, and occasionally stricter than Palestrina’s.
This is apparent in his treatment of unaccented dissonances, especially
in his complete avoidance of an idiom present in the music of both
Grell and Palestrina, the crotchet auxiliary note. Bellermann bans the
use of this idiom on two occasions in Der Contrapunkt, commenting that
while not uncommon in sixteenth-century music, it is not permissible in
strict counterpoint.192 Bellermann’s prohibition of such dissonances did
not come, as Jeppesen suggests, from an ignorance of sixteenth-century
practices, but rather from a desire for stricter dissonance procedures in
this regard than are present in the music of Palestrina.193 The assertion
here of the rules of the strenge Satz over the language of Palestrina is
reflected in both of Bellermann’s pieces, where such dissonances only
occur in the context of the ornamental resolution to a suspension.
In a previous discussion of ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’ (Ex. 3.9), Peter
Lüttig identifies two aspects of the piece which distance it from
Palestrina’s music.194 He sees Bellermann’s dense textures as exhibiting
not the alternation of homophony and polyphony that is predominant in
Palestrina’s music but rather the simultaneous presentation of both, ar-
guing that ‘strictly speaking, Bellermann has not composed too little like
Palestrina, but too much’.195 In discussing Grell’s motets, it has become
evident that the use of rhythmic polyphony does not represent a hybrid
Example 3.9. Heinrich Bellermann, ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’, bars 10–21
fusion of two of Palestrina’s textures, but rather the exclusive cultiva-

tion of a texture that Palestrina himself used. Even so, Lüttig is right to
distance the textures of ‘Wie der Hirsch’ from Palestrina’s music, since
Palestrina’s eight-part motets are arranged for two choirs, rather than
the voices being treated as a single group. Bellermann himself recog-
nizes this as the usual Renaissance practice, commenting that ‘normally
movement in eight parts is arranged so that one encounters two equal
and complete four-part choirs . . . that in part alternate and in part sing
together forming an eight-voice texture’.196 He seeks to demonstrate,
however, that it is also possible to unite all the voices together in one choir;
he cites Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ as an example of this practice but comments
that this piece evinces a freer manner of writing.197 As a consequence,
‘Wie der Hirsch’ has a clear pedagogical function in the textbook: it
provides an example of a practice for which Bellermann was unable to
find a suitable sixteenth-century model (while this texture is common
in Franco-Flemish music from earlier in the century, he would have
dismissed the possibility of including such a work on the grounds of the
defects he perceived in this repertory). Bellermann’s desire to include an
example of truly polyphonic eight-part writing stems from his insistence
on the necessity of strict and independent part-writing, no matter how
many vocal parts are involved: ‘the ancients were always very strict in
this. In their polyphonic movements every single voice, no matter how
many there may be, was considered to be an independent entity whose
individuality could and should not be confused with that of another.’198
The second aspect of the piece which Lüttig considers to disasso-
ciate it from the language of Palestrina is the chromatic-third rela-
tionship in bar 20 (F-D♭).199 This progression, while distancing the
composition from Palestrina’s music, does not however contradict late
Renaissance harmonic practice as evinced in the works of his contempo-
raries. The use of chromatic-third progressions (a topic explored more
fully in Chapter 4) contradicts neither earlier nineteenth-century rep-
resentations of Palestrina’s language nor Bellermann’s own conception
of it. In Der Contrapunkt, he advises that the chromatic melodic steps
occasionally found in sixteenth-century compositions should not be im-
itated, but does not prohibit the use of chromatic progressions or the
modification of the triad in successive chords based on the same root,
so long as the chromatic modification occurs in a different voice.200
Bellermann’s acknowledgement of the legitimacy of chromatic-third
progressions in sixteenth-century compositions suggests that the pro-
gression Lüttig identifies would not have appeared ‘un-Palestrinian’
to him: its presence does not suggest anything other than an intention
to replicate Palestrina’s language. Lüttig’s concomitant view that this
progression indicates the harmonic determinacy of the nineteenth cen-
tury rather than a sixteenth-century concern with part-writing is more
problematic. It cannot be ignored that Bellermann viewed sixteenth-
century harmony as being entirely governed by the interweaving of inde-
pendent melodies: ‘the chordal combinations [Zusammenklänge] resulting
from the simultaneous sounding of different voices . . . were not accepted
as something existing for itself, but only regarded as the consequence of
such combining of voices [Zusammensingens].’201 But while Bellermann’s
progression may suggest chordal determination rather than the conver-
gence of individual parts that he sees in Renaissance music, the use of
such progressions in the latter is no different in this regard: such pro-
gressions in themselves are evidence neither for nor against harmonic
determinacy.
For Lüttig, Bellermann’s use of chromatic-third progressions and a
hybrid texture fusing homophony and polyphony demonstrates that he
sought to copy ‘the spirit and not the style of Palestrina’.202 It is clear, how-
ever, that these features do not justify this contention, since Bellermann
regarded them as elements of sixteenth-century syntax: moreover, their
presence does not prevent this motet from being one of the most lit-
eral nineteenth-century replications of Palestrina’s language. Although
Bellermann’s ‘Wie der Hirsch’ and Kyrie were originally conceived for
liturgical rather than pedagogical use, their stylistic orientation is by no
means representative of all his output as a composer of church music.
His compositions from the decade preceding Der Contrapunkt engage with
a multiplicity of styles, ranging from old Italian homophony and the
early eighteenth-century stile antico to modern idioms.203 Thus, while
Bellermann and Grell were the most zealous Protestant exponents of the
Palestrina ideal, and the most consistent emulators of his language in
their liturgical works, even in their hands this language remains merely
one option for the composition of religious texts.
Grell’s Missa solemnis

Alongside Der Contrapunkt, Grell’s Missa solemnis, given its first perfor-
mance by the Berlin Singakademie in 1861, is the greatest monument of
the Berlin Palestrina revival.204 Grell’s mass, which uses the sixteen-part,
four-choir a cappella texture previously employed for the Singakademie by
Fasch and Mendelssohn, is written on a huge scale; at 2239 bars it out-
weighs even Beethoven’s Missa solemnis (1932 bars).205 The significance
of this work is not limited to it being the most substantial product of the
a cappella revival and of the Protestant vogue for quasi-liturgical music.
Rather, its importance for the present discussion derives from its complex
stylistic orientation and controversial critical reception.
These topics can be approached via a contemporary critique of
the work – Otto Gumprecht’s review of the first performance – and
Bellermann’s responses to it.206 Bellermann acclaimed the Missa solemnis
as ‘the most perfect model of polyphonic movement’: an exhaustive
compendium of the techniques of the strenge Satz, whose ‘consummate
beauty, perfection of form and profundity of expression are surpassed
by neither modern nor ancient masters in this manner of writing’.207
But for Gumprecht, Grell’s compositional mastery amounts to sterile
academicism, betokening the ‘zealous diligence of the craftsman’ rather
than the spontaneity of genius: while the technical virtuosity of the piece
strives ‘to entangle us in its presentation of itself as the ideal religious
art’, its arid formalism represents a throwback to an earlier stage in the
evolution of music.208 Gumprecht’s Hegelian (or rather, Marxian) anal-
ysis concludes by countering the premisses underpinning the work and
entirely dismissing it as a vehicle for Bildung:
Grell’s mass is a late-born child of the Neapolitan school. It renounces not only
the orchestra, which through the genius of our German masters has become
an inexhaustible kingdom of heightened expressive possibilities, but in addition,
the handling of melody, harmony and rhythm remains confined by the bounds
which the distant past regarded as the eternal limits of art. Just as in all intellectual
spheres there are those who view long outmoded forms and modes of expression
as the peak of perfection, so our art will never lack theoreticians and practitioners
who – like Thibaut and Grell – proclaim the rules observed by the old Italian
masters as unique and inviolable truths.209
Here we encounter a familiar problem: Gumprecht does not differen-
tiate between adhering to the strict rules of counterpoint and engaging
with successive old Italian styles. A similar vagueness is present in more
recent descriptions of the work, which variously view it as being ‘in
the style of Palestrina’, ‘exactly in the pure style of old Italian church
music’, or in Neo-Palestrina-Stil.210 In contrast, Bellermann stresses the
contemporaneity of the work, arguing that its success derives from the
fusion of the strenge Satz with modern melodic and harmonic elements.211
Bellermann’s assessment provides a more accurate view of the work; in-
deed, only the Kyrie evinces a substantial relation to Palestrina’s lan-
guage. Even here, while the sustained imitative writing evokes the sound
world of Renaissance polyphony, Grell’s textures and harmonic prac-
tice do not replicate this language literally. The approach to harmony
and dissonance treatment is much freer than in Grell’s opp. 32 and 33:
while he was able to sustain modal harmonic parameters in some of his
short liturgical pieces, he recognized that functional tonal harmony and
large-scale tonal schemes were essential to sustaining the massive mu-
sical structures of this work. The remainder of the movements engage
with a variety of earlier and contemporary styles, ranging from Bachian
fugue (‘et vitam venturi’) to the Liedertafel style (strongly suggested by the
lilting 64 rhythms of the ‘Quoniam’): all, however, are united by the con-
cern for fluent and independent part-writing. This concern is apparent
even in the most lyrical portions of the work, such as the Benedictus
and Agnus Dei; neither of these movements can in any sense be de-
scribed as re-creating Palestrina’s language, but instead demonstrate
the universal applicability of the procedures for part-writing that Grell
advocated.
While Gumprecht’s critique of Grell’s mass addressed its relation to
old Italian music, the controversy surrounding it focused on another is-
sue. The work was the subject of debate and polemicizing because of its
perceived Catholic tendencies, marking an important shift from the aes-
thetic Catholicism among Protestants earlier in the century towards the
political and cultural hostility towards Catholicism present in Bismarck’s
Reich. In his biography of Grell, Bellermann defended his teacher’s patri-
otic and Evangelical credentials in the strongest terms; in Grell’s defence,
he cites the composer’s response to a letter from a Catholic convert: ‘You
are of the opinion that I have written a Catholic mass. That is not the case!
I wished to make it as Evangelical as possible.’212 These denials mark the
decline of a key feature that facilitated the Protestant Palestrina revival,
the view that the recovery of a naiv Catholic conception of church mu-
sic was essential for artistic renewal. The decline of the north German
vogue for Catholicism and its replacement, in the years surrounding the
foundation of the Second Reich, with hostility to Catholicism as a fac-
tor hindering German unification (a hostility that reached its zenith in
Bismarck’s Kulturkampf of the 1870s) had a demonstrable effect on the
reception of old Italian music. Concurrent developments in the south
German Catholic Palestrina revival identified the reform of church mu-
sic via old Italian models not with the ecumenicism of the restoration era,
but with Catholic particularism and south German separatism; this iden-
tification rendered the explicit linking of the reform of Protestant church
music with Palestrina politically suspect. Lüttig has examined this devel-
opment in relation to the differences between the 1862 and 1877 editions
of Der Contrapunkt, noting that all Catholic overtones were removed in
order to absolve it from denominational suspicion; for Bellermann – a
state employee – to link his life’s work with Catholicism was to risk official
censure.213 Not only Bellermann, but other authors seeking to perpetuate
the Palestrina ideal, such as the liturgist Rochus Freiherr von Liliencron,
had to defend themselves against the charge of Catholicizing.214
If, in Bellermann’s case, Palestrina’s marginalization is overtly linked
to political nationalism, the more general decline in his prominence as
a paradigm for Protestant church music reflects a weaker, more perva-
sive form of cultural nationalism. For Spitta, as for Winterfeld, the im-
peratives of objective historicism necessitated the elevation of German
Protestant models of the church style: ‘whoever wishes to revitalize
Protestant church music should therefore stick to that which in earlier
times was actually Protestant church music.’215 But while Spitta sought
to elevate the cantatas of Bach as the paradigm of liturgical music, it
was the increased interest in the music of Eccard and Schütz that dis-
placed Palestrina, or at least produced a situation where the concept of a
Palestrina revival ceases to be meaningful. While Palestrina remained an
important model for some Berlin composers throughout the century –
such as Grell’s pupils Blumner and Reinhold Succo – it was German
chorale settings and motets of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries that were increasingly to supplant Palestrina as the paradigms
for Protestant church music.
∗
In examining the works of composers associated with the Berlin
Singakademie and Domchor, a complex variety of responses to the Palestrina
ideal has emerged. Within this diversity, several constants are present,
however. The two central factors that encouraged the emulation of
Palestrina – Bildung through quasi-liturgical works and the renewal of
liturgical music – led to a shared concern for simplicity: at the most
basic level, the idealization of Palestrina prompted the renunciation of
instruments and the suppression of elements of modern musical syntax.
Deeper forms of compositional engagement with Palestrina’s language
were dependent on three factors: the stance that composers took within
the gamut of views on the nature of the church style, the extent of their
knowledge of Renaissance music and the aesthetic notions informing
their activities. For some of the composers discussed, engaging with this
language was merely one option for the composition of liturgical music,
an option confined by the continuing association of this language with the
Holy Week services in the Sistine Chapel; for others, however, it was uni-
versally valid. And while the majority of composers responded to the ho-
mophonic works popularized by the early phases of the Palestrina revival,
the compositions of Grell and Bellermann reflect a more extensive en-
gagement with Renaissance music. The dialectical relationship between
the homophonic language unearthed by the early Protestant revival and
the Palestrina style attains a problematic synthesis in the works of Grell
and Bellermann, since they alone among the Protestant composers ex-
amined possessed the necessary knowledge of both Renaissance music
and the strenge Satz. While the literal replication of elements of Palestrina’s
language was justified for Grell and Bellermann by their belief that the
criteria of originality and contemporaneity were subservient to higher
concerns, other composers – especially Mendelssohn – were more trou-
bled by the aesthetic implications of their activities. For Protestant com-
posers, church music as a whole remained subject to the aesthetic criteria
operative in other fields; the literal replication of Palestrina could be jus-
tified only through polemical engagement with these criteria (as with
Grell and Bellermann), or through removing a piece from the aesthetic
realm altogether by identifying it as a ‘study’ (in the case of Nicolai). The
majority of compositions examined evince not the literal replication of
Palestrina’s language, but rather an eclectic combination of old and new
elements; as such they epitomize the tension between the claims of art
and liturgy that underpinned Protestant church music in this period.
4
The Catholic Palestrina revival
TRADITION AND REFORM
In discussing the relation between the Palestrina revival and the com-
position of church music in Catholic south Germany and Austria, sev-
eral distinctions must be borne in mind. Although the work of south
German reformers was naturally stimulated by the ideas and activities
of their north German counterparts, the Catholic Palestrina revival was
sustained by significantly different historical, intellectual and ideologi-
cal foundations. While the idealization and emulation of Palestrina by
Protestant composers was a product of historicism, Catholic church mu-
sic evinces a bifurcated orientation: in addition to the historicist revival
of Palestrina’s music and language, Catholic music reflects Palestrina in-
directly through the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella. As well
as exploring the tension between historicism and tradition, it is neces-
sary to confront the distinct ideological factors that shaped the Catholic
Palestrina revival. While, as has been seen, the strengthening Catholic
particularism in the early years of the Second Reich contributed to
Palestrina being displaced as the paradigm for Protestant church music,
this factor had the opposite effect in Catholic south Germany. Indeed,
it is activities in this period, especially the reforms and music of the
Allgemeine Deutsche Cäcilien-Verein (ACV ), that must form the focal point of
an examination of the Catholic Palestrina revival.
Even though the ACV was the most influential contemporary move-
ment for church music reform, it would be mistaken to view the Catholic
Palestrina revival as synonymous with its activities. This identification
is encouraged by the subsuming of the Palestrina revival under the
vague concept of Cecilianism (Cäcilianismus). This term originated in
the late nineteenth century as a polemical description of the activi-
ties of the ACV; in modern usage it is however much less clearly de-
fined, embracing not merely Catholic liturgical and musical reform but
133
broader developments in nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural
history.1 The rejection of this concept in the present discussion is not
solely the result of its vagueness and of the misunderstandings that it has
provoked: rather, three more important dangers are inherent in the term.
It encourages the exaggeration of the impact of the ACV in the second
half of the century, and helps to perpetuate the representation by this or-
ganization of events earlier in the century as somehow goal-directed and
of importance only in so far as they corresponded with its reforms. In ad-
dition, the concept has helped to foster the idea that trends in Catholic
church music are divorced from the wider currents of contemporary
thought and from events in north Germany. The most harmful aspect
of this concept is the idea – again, derived from the self-representations
of the ACV – that relationships to Palestrina in Catholic compositions
are solely the result of reform and not of the continuation of tradition.
The perpetuation of the stylus a capella tradition in south Germany can-
not be ignored in discussing activities earlier in the century, however, and
even in examining the music and views of the ACV.
The traditional cultivation of the stylus a capella adds an extra compo-
nent to the two main elements present in the north German Palestrina
revival – the historicist revival of the music of Palestrina in concerts, and
the compositional emulation of it in liturgical and quasi-liturgical pieces –
and gives the relation between Palestrina and early nineteenth-century
Catholic music an extra degree of complexity. There is a clear divide and
tension between the historicist revival of Palestrina’s language and the
continuation of what Siegfried Gmeinwieser describes as the unbroken
tradition of composition in the Palestrina-Stil.2 This continuing practice
can be compared with the living influence of the spirit and tradition of
Palestrina’s music that Baini perceived in the perpetuation of the stile
antico in Italy.3 The only non-Italian to be included in Baini’s list of
authors who furthered Palestrina’s teachings is Fux: it was his codifica-
tion of the stylus a capella in the Gradus, rather than Palestrina’s works or
Italian stile antico music, that did most to shape the eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century Palestrina tradition in south Germany and Austria.4
The Fuxian stylus a capella remained an important liturgical idiom until
the early 1800s and, although the use of its techniques was heavily in de-
cline, it did not die out completely until the second half of the nineteenth
century.5 This manner of composition was associated in particular with
Lent, Holy Week and Advent; works in this idiom were performed either
without accompaniment or with organ continuo and string bass (often
supplemented by colla parte instruments), contrasting with the concerted
The Catholic Palestrina revival 135
music performed during the rest of the year. Composition in the stylus a
capella was for early nineteenth-century composers, as for their predeces-
sors, a continuously evolving practice which retained only tenuous links
with the language of Palestrina. While Fux – or rather the teacher in his
dialogue, Aloysius – exhorts his pupil to imitate Palestrina, the stylus a
capella described by Fux and practised by German composers constitutes
not the replication of Palestrina’s language, but the use of elements of his
part-writing within a modern harmonic and tonal context.6 Fux distin-
guishes between the stylus a capella for voices alone and with organ and
instruments, permitting a greater freedom in harmony, part-writing and
structure in the latter type.7 While in both types the part-writing is in
general harmonically determined, this is especially apparent in the freer
style Fux describes through the use of figured bass, sequential writing,
clearly defined cadences, and parts moving in chains of parallel thirds
and sixths: in this way the composer is able, according to Fux, to maintain
the rules of art while attuning his music to the age.8
From the second decade of the nineteenth century, the stylus a capella
tradition coexisted with the revival and emulation of old Italian works
by Catholic composers, and a campaign for the reform of church music
developed which was closely related to the ideas of the north German
Protestant commentators. The fluid exchange of ideas between denomi-
nations is apparent in an essay by C. W. Fröhlich from 1820, which explic-
itly acknowledges the essays of Hoffmann and Michaelis from six years
earlier as important stimuli for the reform of Catholic church music.9
Fröhlich’s discussion of the role that old Italian music has to play in mod-
ern reform entirely ignores the stylus a capella tradition and its seasonal
associations: a fifteen-bar fragment of falsobordone attributed to Palestrina
is quoted and recommended not for penitential seasons but for feast days
throughout the year.10 In arguing that modern composers should adopt
‘the manner of the old church motets and choruses on the psalm Miserere
by Palestrina, Allegri and Bai’ when setting the Kyrie, Fröhlich reflects
not only the views of Hoffmann and Michaelis but also the early Roman-
tic enthusiasm for the music of the Sistine Chapel.11 Central to Fröhlich’s
campaign is not the strengthening of existing traditions but rather a re-
turn to the spirit of sixteenth-century church music, identified explicitly
as the product of the golden age of Catholicism: ‘We must return again
as far as it is possible to the simple, eloquent singing of the ancients, to
their pure child-like sense.’12
The viewing of old Italian music from the historicist perspective of the
Protestant Romantics is apparent even in centres where its performance
was the product of tradition, not revival. This is evident in Vienna, de-
spite a continuous performing tradition of the music of Palestrina and his
contemporaries from the 1700s onwards. A large proportion of the hymns
from Palestrina’s 1589 collection remained in use at the Hofkapelle from
the mid-seventeenth century until at least the 1770s, while all twenty-
seven of the responsories from Ingegneri’s Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae
were a part of the Holy Week commemorations there.13 The presence
of such a tradition may suggest that the idea of a Palestrina revival is not
applicable to activities in Vienna; this view has recently been asserted by
Theophil Antonicek: ‘Renaissance music did not need to be revived in
Austria. Under Karl VI [Emperor from 1711 to 1740] the repertory of
church music at court had encompassed music from three centuries and
the cultivation of old music and of new compositions in its style continued
in this way.’14 What is striking, however, is that early nineteenth-century
musicians sought to redefine their activities in terms of revival and re-
form. Thus, while much of the repertory performed in the Hauskonzerte
of the music historian Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773–1850) consti-
tuted the continuation of a local tradition rather than the reawaken-
ing of the works concerned, his views bear marked resemblances to
those of the north German reformers.15 Kiesewetter acclaimed Thibaut’s
Über Reinheit der Tonkunst as the best literary evocation of the spirit of
Palestrina’s works, while his protégé Franz Sales Kandler (1792–1831)
presented a historicist manifesto for the revival of old music bolstered by
quotations from Tieck and August Wilhelm Schlegel.16 It is clear from
their views that the presence of a tradition of performing older works
did not make Vienna immune to historicist perceptions of this music, or
to the idea of artistic revival.
The interaction between the stylus a capella tradition and the historicist
revival of old Italian music is apparent in the activities and compositions
of the Munich court organist Caspar Ett (1788–1847) and Kapellmeister
Johann Kaspar Aiblinger (1779–1867). Both Ett and Aiblinger were
allied to church music reform through the Munich Cäcilienbündnis der
Hofmusiker, whose members were committed to the revivification of the
true church style.17 A central factor in these reforms was the revival of
the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries, initiated by a perfor-
mance of Allegri’s Miserere in the Michaelshofkirche on Good Friday 1816.
The significance of this event for nineteenth-century church music re-
form has often been exaggerated.18 By this time, after all, concert perfor-
mances of the Miserere were frequent in north Germany, and musicians
were familiar with the long tradition of Viennese performances of the
work.19 While this performance was thus not unprecedented in Germany,
those involved considered it to mark a redefinition of church music
in Munich: Karl Emil von Schafhäutl (1803–90), later to become one
of the most virulent opponents of the ACV, commented in 1834 that
it marked the ‘reawakening’ of ‘the old masters of the 15th and 16th
centuries’.20 Schafhäutl notes that from 1816 onwards Ett performed
works not only by Allegri and Palestrina (the Missa Aeterna Christi munera
was performed unaccompanied in 1821) but also by Giovanni Animuccia,
Goudimel, Lassus, Senfl and Ockeghem (whose Missa cujusvis toni was
sung in 1822).21 Significantly, the cultivation of Renaissance music was
restricted by the traditional seasonal associations of the stylus a capella;
even in Advent and Lent, Renaissance pieces were never predominant,
being performed alongside stylus a capella pieces by Fux, Michael Haydn
and Georg Joseph Vogler (1749–1814).22 During the rest of the year
eighteenth-century and modern concerted works were performed, and
from Easter Sunday to the first Sunday in Advent the repertory was
dominated by the works of Joseph and Michael Haydn, Mozart, Hasse
and Hummel.23
The liturgical music of Ett and his Munich contemporaries exhibits
relationships both to the Fuxian stylus a capella and to the sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century pieces which they revived. In Ett’s output,
aspects of the stylus a capella are juxtaposed with elements drawn di-
rectly from Renaissance church music and with modern idioms. In his
Missa Laetare Jerusalem (1816, rev. 1846), the evocation of Renaissance
falsobordone (inspired by the performance of Allegri’s Miserere) alternates
with the strict part-writing and modern harmonic idioms characteristic
of the stylus a capella; melodic restrictions and the strict treatment of sus-
pensions are combined with rhythmic sequences and an unambiguously
tonal context employing unprepared and diminished-seventh chords (see
Ex. 4.1).24 In contrast, other works draw solely on one of these two stim-
uli. While in Ett’s Miserere, modern melodic elements and harmonies are
combined with old Italian cadential formulas, the part-writing and dis-
sonance treatment in his Missa quadragesimalis (Lenten mass) reflects the
stylus a capella tradition in its simplest form.25
While traditional and historicist elements stand side by side in Ett’s
output, the tension between these two orientations is evident in two
contemporary discussions of his music. In an unsigned appraisal of
activities in Munich from 1834, the reviewer shows a familiarity with
Example 4.1. Caspar Ett, Agnus Dei, Missa Laetare Jerusalem (1846 version), bars 29–39
the tradition of performing a cappella works in Advent and Lent, and a

measure of enthusiasm for the revival of old music by Ett and Aiblinger.26
Nevertheless, the reviewer approaches Ett’s own compositions not as
the perpetuation of a traditional idiom, but as copies of music from the
distant past.27 Dismissing the views of those who believe that the sixteenth
century possesses a ‘monopoly on skill and genius’, the review urges
composers to unite the best of ancient and modern practices and thus to
avoid slavish imitation and plagiarism.28 In responding to this review,
Schafhäutl defends Ett from the charge of historical imitation while
simultaneously acclaiming sixteenth-century music as exemplifying the
true church style: he paradoxically combines an explanation of Ett’s
music in terms of the stylus a capella with a historicist manifesto for church
music reform. Schafhäutl argues that none of Ett’s compositions imitates
sixteenth-century forms: rather they combine an adherence to Vogler’s
harmonic system (as set out in Tonwissenschaft und Tonsetzkunst [1776])
with the ‘free contrapuntal style’, a phrase that seems synonymous with
the Fuxian stylus a capella: ‘Even where he has chosen as a cantus firmus
an unaltered chant melody, he recalls nothing of the old form of the
contrapuntal style – none of its characteristic harmonic progressions
and combinations, modulations and cadences, still less its melodic lines
[Melodief ührungen] – at most the long notes and the wonderful simplicity
and dignity of the style.’29
While Schafhäutl denies that Ett’s music bears a direct relation to
Palestrina, he praises Renaissance music as the zenith of the church
style and considers it to be the primary source of renewal for modern
liturgical composition. In expounding this view, Schafhäutl’s arguments
and language are directly derived from the historicism of the Romantic
circle and the ideas of the Protestant reformers. He concludes his article
with a poem by A. W. Schlegel, and his elevation of Palestrina is couched
in the language of Hoffmann and Herder:
The venerable songs of Palestrina and others are the warmest outpourings of a
soul burning for heaven, in forms that were created and shaped solely to proclaim
the praise of God and not yet profaned in the service of life and pleasure; in
contrast our charming church composers could scarcely dare to attempt to edify
a Christian congregation with their common, effeminate, feeble and sensual
melodies, harmonies and cadences.30
It is only in exploring how modern composers may regain Palestrina’s

qualities that Schafhäutl’s ideas suggest the stylus a capella tradition.
Rather than discussing how composers might emulate Palestrina’s ho-
mophony, Schafhäutl’s solution to the problem of church music lies in the
strict rules of counterpoint.31 Only through the revival of truly indepen-
dent part-writing can church music be renewed: the dignity of the church
style is threatened by the intrusion of any elements indicative of harmonic
determinacy, such as the unprepared seventh chord which appears ‘like
an evil spirit among the heavenly host’.32 Crucially Schafhäutl does not
elevate Fux and his followers as the source of contrapuntal mastery, but
instead insists that this can be learned only from the sixteenth-century
contrapuntists: the Kyrie from Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi munera and
the Sanctus and Benedictus from Lassus’s Missa super Qual donna attende
are cited as models of contrapuntal church music.33 Thus, while counter-
point is represented as the road to the production of true church music,
it is considered to be a skill attainable only through the emulation of
Renaissance works, not via the traditional stylus a capella.
Proske and Musica divina

The commingling of tradition and historicism represented by activities
in Munich is not an issue in Regensburg, where there was no immediately
preceding tradition of performing music in the stylus a capella. Indeed,
the meagre state of music in Regensburg cathedral in the early 1820s
led to an endeavour entirely to replace its traditional repertory with his-
torical works exemplifying the true church style. It is the emphasis on
the revival of Renaissance music that was to prove most significant in
shaping the activities of the ACV later in the century. Just as in Berlin,
the reforms instigated in Regensburg were intended as a model for ac-
tivities elsewhere: the measures sanctioned by King Ludwig I in 1830
were designed to ‘reestablish the old, good style for the improvement of
the singing and music in our churches’, and by the end of the decade the
traditional concerted repertory had been ousted from the cathedral.34 It
was the practical challenge of reforming the cathedral’s music that pro-
voked the activities of the antiquarian and editor Carl Proske (1794–1861),
who – regarded by the king as the ‘best-founded hope for the complete
restoration of choral singing’ – was appointed a canon at the Alten Kapelle
in Regensburg in order to pursue this task.35 Proske’s solution to what
he saw as the invariable degeneracy of modern church composition lay
in the acquisition and publication of earlier music: three extended trips
to Italy in the 1830s cemented his views on church music and provided
material for a series of publications, beginning with editions of Scarlatti’s
Missa quatuor vocum and Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. His most exten-
sive projects were the editions Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum
(the first volumes of which appeared, respectively, in 1853 and 1855);
these were to define Catholic perceptions of old Italian music for much of
the second half of the century, and helped to create a climate for historicist
reform rather than the continuation of tradition in liturgical music.36
Proske’s manifesto for reform was set out in the foreword to the first
volume of Musica divina. The basis for his ideas is a combination of
Romantic historicism and Catholic particularism: he seeks to reinstate
‘true Catholic music’ in the liturgy in place of modern works, which
reflect ‘the profane attractions of an artistic dictatorship from outside
the Church’.37 Proske’s views on the renewal of modern church music
are derived from a complex variety of sources; he acknowledges the
significance of Baini and Winterfeld in bringing about a recognition of
the value of old Italian music, and alludes to Thibaut (writing that in
recent times ‘we encounter men of great zeal who championed purity
in music [Reinheit der Tonkunst] with fiery speech’).38 Just as significantly,
however, he acknowledges the significance of early Romantic literary
critics in prompting the reevaluation of medieval and Renaissance art;
indeed, Proske draws directly on the views of the Romantic circle in
describing how modern artists have returned to older architecture and
painting in order to obtain a religious foundation for their activities:
Not only has the true Christian inspiration of these models been recognized, but
there has become apparent a serious striving – crowned with living successes –
to regain a sacred foundation and thus to guarantee the creative artist a great
and communal wealth of faith as well as the contemplative soul of the Christian.
How much more ought to have occurred a similar and long overdue renewal of
Catholic church music.39
Like Fröhlich, Kandler and Schafhäutl, Proske views the music of

Palestrina and his contemporaries as the product of a golden age of
Catholicism in which ‘genius and religious enthusiasm went hand in
hand’.40 For Proske, the model for all liturgical music should be plain-
chant – ‘the holy scriptures of church music’ – and sixteenth-century
polyphony achieves its primacy not only from the religious dedication
of its composers, but by being a ‘miraculous transfiguration’ (wunderbare
Verklärung) of the chant.41 Palestrina’s absolute preeminence as the ex-
emplar of the church style derives from his status as a reformer in a
‘conservative, truly Catholic sense’; for Proske, the style of Palestrina grew
exclusively from the consecrated ground of the Church, and its innermost
being is entirely governed by Catholicism.42 In arguing for a restitution
of the music and thus the spirituality of the Renaissance, Proske bor-
rows two further themes from the Protestant Romantics: an organicist
conception of Palestrina’s place in music history, and the view that the
repertory of the papal choir provides a model for modern reforms.43
Proske’s idealization of Baini and the papal choir is symptomatic of a
conception of the church style centred firmly on Rome and Palestrina.
Even so, the music of Lassus – acclaimed as a marriage of German and
Roman art – provided a significant secondary focus for Proske’s prose-
lytizing: in an oft-repeated comparison, he is elevated as Michelangelo
to Palestrina’s Raphael.44
While Proske’s ideas on liturgical renewal are orientated primarily
around the revival of sixteenth-century music, his views also interact
with the south German stylus a capella. Proske uses the term Styl à Capella
almost exclusively to refer to the music of Palestrina and contemporaries,
but he also employs it in describing the stile antico tradition: ‘even the
greatest masters of later times, recognizing in the so-called Styl à Capella
the most sublime standard and artistic practice of church music, have
put their genius to the test in it.’45 In commenting on the stylus a capella
tradition, Proske praises composers for retaining elements of the true
church style in their works, yet asserts the impossibility of combining
satisfactorily the forms of sixteenth-century music – which are self-
contained and complete in themselves – with modern components.46 He
describes how composers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
‘still possessing competent mastery of the true church practice, continued
to write works with a similar basis but with obbligato instrumental ac-
companiment’; nevertheless, he considers that ‘as a rule, the pure sacred
principles of the style have been cast aside’.47 Although Proske does not
comment specifically on how modern composers should respond again
to the Styl à Capella, it is clear that more recent works cannot provide mod-
els of the church style: the distinction between ‘sacred gold and profane
accretions [Beisätzen]’ can be learned only from the pure, original form
of this style.48 While Proske’s conception of the true church style is not
therefore orientated around the Fuxian stylus a capella, it is striking that he
links the performance of Palestrina in part with the seasonal associations
of the stylus a capella tradition. Unlike Schafhäutl, however, he goes on to
link the style with a wider range of occasions, noting that the Musica divina
selection has given particular consideration not only to Advent, Lent
and Holy Week, but to the most important feasts throughout the year.49
Proske’s Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum had, in his view, a
double purpose, both monumental and practical.50 His primary con-
cern was with serving the liturgy by producing, in the words of Valentin
von Riedel, Bishop of Regensburg, ‘a collection of true church music
for the use and needs of the entire church year’.51 The liturgical ori-
entation of Proske’s editions is evident in his scrupulous concern for
textual fidelity, which – as Bernhard Janz argues – more closely reflects
the preoccupations of biblical research and exegesis than those of classi-
cal philology: his demand for ‘faithful, true and complete scores derived
from original sources’ stems from his elevation of this music to a
scriptural dignity.52 Proske’s conviction that liturgical needs were bet-
ter served through the revival of old music than through the use of
newly composed works is reflected in his most notorious statement: ‘The
task of a music researcher is more important today than multiplying
the number of musical works by composition.’53 Indeed, he viewed the
task of modern composers – seemingly without aesthetic qualms – as
being to produce ‘worthy copies [würdige Nachbildungen] of these pure,
immortal models’, prohibiting any attempt to compromise the rules
and harmonic practice of this style through the inclusion of modern
elements.54 Proske’s own activities as a composer were highly restricted
and only two compositions by him survive, an ‘Et incarnatus est’ and
a setting of ‘De profundis’.55 These pieces, and the liturgical music of
his protégé Johann Georg Mettenleiter (1812–58), embody Proske’s con-
ception of true church music; slow-moving, root-position harmonies in-
cluding chromatic-third progressions, falsobordone writing and carefully
controlled dissonances. This music bears little relationship to the stylus
a capella; it is symptomatic of Proske’s historical revival, not of tradition,
and anticipates how composers later in the century would respond to
the music unearthed and published by him.
W I T T A N D T H E A L L G E M E I N E D E U T S C H E C Ä C I L I E N - V E R E I N
While the activities of the reformers discussed above contributed sig-

nificantly to the idealization of Palestrina, they made little immediate
impact on the practical reform of Catholic church music and had little
effect outside the centres and churches concerned. Furthermore, these ef-
forts had failed to popularize the idea that Palestrina’s language was
the most suitable medium for church music, and even those composers
whose church music does exhibit relationships to Palestrina did not fol-
low this ideal consistently. The demand for the reform of church music
was nevertheless becoming more widespread, and the indignation of
Cardinal Johannes von Geißel (1796–1864) at the state of church music
led to the matter being discussed at the Cologne Provincial Council in
1860; his views were reflected in the council’s decree that ‘choir directors
should revert to those works which are written in a sublime and devout
style, of which the author in first place is Johannes Aloysius Praenesti-
nus [Palestrina] and second is Orlandus Lassus’.56 But while activities in
Munich, Regensburg and elsewhere had engendered a desire for church
music reform in some quarters, this mentality had little significant prac-
tical effect even after the Cologne Council.
It was through the work of the priest, composer and essayist Franz
Xaver Witt (1834–88) that the proponents of these ideals swelled to a mass
movement. Witt had been inspired by Proske’s reforming ideals during
his time as Musikpräfekt at the seminary in Regensburg, but criticized
his impractical attitude as an obstacle to the propagation of his cause;
dissatisfied that the liturgical revival of Renaissance music had not spread
beyond the cathedral and Alten Kapelle in Regensburg, Witt sought to
‘reshape the entire world of church music’.57 He set out his reforming
agenda in the pamphlet Der Zustand der katholischen Kirchenmusik zunächst in
Altbayern (1865) and through the foundation of two popular periodicals:
Fliegende Blätter für katholische Kirchenmusik (1866) and Musica sacra (1868).
These activities culminated in the foundation of the Allgemeine Deutsche
Cäcilien-Verein, with Witt as general president, in 1868 (known from 1876
as the Allgemeine Cäcilien-Verein für die Länder deutscher Zunge, and since 1956
as the Allgemeine-Cäcilien-Verband für die Länder der deutschen Sprache).
The rapid growth and success of the ACV – whose membership num-
bered over 500 in 1868 and quickly escalated into the thousands – were
stimulated not only by the increasingly widespread desire for reform, but
by wider social and political currents. The ACV has been linked to the
numerous other Catholic movements that flourished in south Germany
from the 1840s onwards, such as the Katholische Arbeitervereine (founded
in 1847) and the Pius-Verein f ür religiöse Freiheit (founded in 1848); these
societies have been seen as reflecting the militant spirit of the papacy of
Pius IX (1846–78), whose zeal in combating opposition to the Catholic
church was manifested most clearly in the proclamation of the Immacu-
late Conception of the Virgin Mary (1854) and the declaration of papal
infallibility (1870).58 The reforms of the ACV, which was accorded papal
approbation in 1870, were frequently linked by contemporaries to the
dogmatic Catholicism of the period; hostile press reports described Witt
as ultramontane and as the ‘Pope of the Cecilians’, while he obliquely
compared himself with the leader of the Catholic Centrumspartei, Ludwig
Windthorst.59 But another important ideological aspect of the society’s
reforms was its role in preserving Bavarian cultural identity in the years
surrounding Bavaria’s absorption into the Reich in 1871, and in assert-
ing the bonds between Bavarian and Austrian Catholics in opposition
to the political realities of Imperial Germany.60 It is not difficult to trace
the relation between the cultural mission of the ACV and the ideological
concerns informing its reception of Palestrina and Lassus. The symbolic
function assigned to these composers by Proske was extended in the
writings of Witt, who similarly represents the music of Palestrina as the
most perfect form of Catholic artistic expression: its supremacy derives
from having been ‘conceived and written in a specifically Catholic spirit’,
and being ‘entirely a property [Eigenthum] of the Catholic church’.61 If
Palestrina provided a symbol for the transcendent and infallible laws
of the Church, Lassus was emblematic of Bavarian self-assertion in the
cultural sphere. For Witt, the importance of Lassus for modern Bavarian
culture renders the propagation of his music a patriotic duty: while Witt
never denies Lassus’s true national origins, he refers to the composer as
‘our compatriot’, who owed his greatness in part to his propitious em-
ployment at the Munich court: ‘as a result of this, Lassus in truth became
a Bavarian.’62
The performance and compositional emulation of Palestrina and his
contemporaries formed only one part of the reforming agenda of Witt
and the ACV. In addition to a cappella choral singing, the ACV sought to
reform and promote all aspects of church music, including plainchant
and – albeit with ambivalence – concerted works and the Kirchenlied in
the vernacular. Witt’s aims in all these areas were shaped by two basic
convictions: that music is the most important form of art because it
most intimately links man to God, and the humanistic idea that music
is the foremost medium for the moral improvement of the masses.63 In
outlining these two convictions in a speech to the second general as-
sembly of the ACV, Witt asserts that the production of religious music
remains the loftiest task of the composer: his concern that all liturgical
music be worthy of its context reflects the view that it is the highest form
of devotional expression for the church.64 Second, he emphasizes the
contribution of church music to the ‘moral improvement of the masses’
(Bildung des Volkes), arguing that the church functions as the place of artis-
tic nurture (Kunstschule) for those who have little other opportunity of
experiencing the effects of art.65 Witt’s arguments here parallel those of
Thibaut, whom he sometimes cites: the very power of music in shaping
man’s morals makes it capable of abuse, and ‘unwholesome [schlechte]
church music has the same malevolent influence as depraved dance
music’.66 The power of music to stimulate the feelings is multifarious,
and the moral quality of a piece of music is reflected precisely in its effect
on the listener: ‘If church music is trivial, coarse, lascivious, this will be
its effect, as with trivial, coarse and lascivious speeches and conversa-
tions; the listeners will be dragged down by the trivial. If the music is
noble, sublime, pious, its effect will be like a noble, sublime, pious ser-
mon, lifting and purifying the listener, filling his heart with feelings of
piety.’67
A prime source of immorality in church music comes from the use of
instruments, since this is susceptible to the corrupting influence of secular
music. Witt’s attitude towards concerted church music and instrumental
music in general is less puritanical than that of some of his contem-
poraries; certainly it would be mistaken to view his position as similar
to that of Grell. While some of Witt’s followers dismissed all concerted
music as ‘pseudo-liturgical’ in character, he took pains not to censure all
such works, differentiating between the ‘Pharisaism’ of Haydn and the
titanic manner of Beethoven and Liszt.68 In condemning the concerted
music of Haydn and Mozart, his arguments diverge little from those
deployed by Hoffmann, Thibaut and other Protestant commentators.
Witt’s criticisms of Haydn and Mozart are based on the congruity of
their sacred and secular works: in a manner recalling Reichardt’s essays
from eighty years earlier, he identified motivic similarities between
The Seasons and the ‘Nelson’ Mass as a means of demonstrating the latter’s
profane aura.69 And as with Hoffmann, Witt’s greatest condemnation
is reserved for those nineteenth-century composers who continued to
imitate the external forms of the Viennese classicists.70 As will become
apparent, Witt’s basis for rejecting this music does not lie in the norms
of the church style elevated by the Protestant early Romantics, but in the
rigid application of liturgical criteria.
In elevating the Palestrina-Stil – which here means the language of
Palestrina and contemporaries, in particular Lassus – as the ideal form
of church music, Witt emphasizes its basis in the chant and its fusion of
aesthetic value and liturgical perfection. Like Proske, he represents its
character as pure and objective, conceived in full accordance with the
spirit of the church:
The Palestrina-Stil is as good as approved by the church. The question as to
whether all modern church music must be similar to this style in its manner of
expression should be answered in the negative. On the other hand it cannot be
doubted that in the Palestrina-Stil the spirit of the church is represented in such
an artistic, sublime, pious and pure way that the modern composer trusting to
produce the same must model himself and purify his contemplation on it.71
Not all of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries displays such
unspoilt perfection. Accusing Proske of blind devotion to the Renaissance
masters, Witt argues that many of their works are neither ideal for the
liturgy nor of great artistic merit, and therefore cannot provide mod-
els for the modern composer.72 The Missa brevis, for example, is de-
scribed as monotonous and weak in expression, while the polyphony
present in other works amounts to little more than musical mental arith-
metic; Witt condemns Palestrina and his contemporaries for indulging
in ‘lyrical diffuseness’ (lyrische Breite), the imitative spinning out of a theme
leading to latitude in the treatment of the text and a neglect of speech
rhythms.73 Equally heinous in Witt’s eyes is the use of extensive cyclic
repetition in the mass, since this leads to an incorrect conception of
particular portions of the text (he especially condemned the Sanctus
and Benedictus of Palestrina’s Missa Dum complerentur for their reiteration
of earlier material).74 Similarly, he viewed many works by Lassus as
unsuitable for modern liturgical use, condemning the ‘Crucifixus’ from
the Missa Puisque j’ay perdu on account of its mannerist concern for con-
trapuntal play.75 Many of these criticisms reflect Witt’s organicist con-
ceptions of music theory and the history of church music: his dismissive
attitude to music before Palestrina was shared by the majority of his
contemporaries, who – as Ambros put it – erected ‘a great wall of China
between the Missa Papae Marcelli and all earlier music through which
passes not the smallest connecting door’.76 Importantly, Witt links the
aspects of Palestrina’s works that he considers defective to the contin-
uation of practices outlawed at the Council of Trent, identifying them
as historically transient aspects of the Palestrina-Stil.77 He considers such
defects, especially the excessively expansive treatment of short portions
of text, to undermine the delicate balance between aesthetic and func-
tional concerns: Witt condemned the Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus and
Agnus Dei of the Missa Hodie Christus natus est as too long and therefore
‘unliturgical, unpractical and unusable’, arguing that the most successful
parts of Palestrina’s masses are in general the Gloria and Credo, ‘where
the length of text compelled him to set it succinctly’.78
Accordingly, it is Palestrina’s simpler pieces and the homophonic por-
tions of larger works that are elevated as exemplars. This can be seen in
Witt’s appraisal of Palestrina’s Improperia and his settings of the ‘et incar-
natus est’, which are acclaimed as the perfect fusion of aesthetic quality
and liturgical suitability.79 In Witt’s writings, three works are consis-
tently described as the summit of Renaissance church music: Palestrina’s
‘Stabat mater’ and Missa Papae Marcelli, and Lassus’s motet ‘Justorum
animae’. Witt considered the ‘Stabat mater’ to be Palestrina’s most ideal
composition, in which the demands of the Council of Trent found their
most perfect realization: he argues, following Baini, that the pathos, tex-
tual clarity and ‘truly liturgical-dramatic flow’ of this work would alone
suffice to make Palestrina eternal.80 His comments on Lassus’s ‘Justorum
animae’ are just as effusive, since he claimed that its effect surpasses that
of all later church music.81 His appraisal of the Missa Papae Marcelli is
however more equivocal: he criticized the second ‘Kyrie’ for being in-
concise and for contravening the mood of the text, but regarded the
‘Christe’ as one of the greatest musical masterpieces and the ‘Crucifixus’
as the finest setting of this text by a Renaissance composer.82 Crucially,
Witt’s praise for this mass and Lassus’s motet focuses on the expressivity of
their textures. Like Grell, Witt distinguishes between thematic polyphony
(the strict imitation of a point) and freer yet more succinct ‘rhythmic
polyphony’.83 In analysing the first ‘Kyrie’ from the Missa Papae Marcelli,
he attributes its success to the interaction of the latter texture and ho-
mophonic writing: rather than presenting developed points of imitation,
rhythmic polyphony – consisting of ‘a thousand little imitations in the
voices’ – alternates with homophonic ‘falsobordone-like’ ( fauxbordonartigen)
passages.84 Thus, for Witt – just as for Grell and Bellermann – it is
Palestrina’s homophony and rhythmic polyphony that constitute the
summit of church music.
‘What must modern church composers avoid?’

In discussing how modern composers should respond to this ideal,
Witt’s arguments are complicated and inconsistent. In contrast to earlier
Catholic commentators, Witt’s ideas on this question bear no relation
to the Fuxian stylus a capella (a phrase he does not use), and he repre-
sents his reforms as compositional renewal from the past rather than the
continuation of tradition. Indeed, it is clear that like other Cecilian com-
mentators, he would have viewed the stylus a capella as a part of the decline
of church music rather than as a source of renewal.85 Furthermore, he
advocated a universal cultivation of the Palestrina-Stil, condemning the
traditional use of stylus a capella music solely in Advent and Lent, and
criticizing in particular practices in Munich.86 In advocating the use of
Renaissance music as a model, Witt commented that the modern com-
poser who was not aware of Palestrina and Lassus was like a preacher
unfamiliar with the church fathers, describing the Missa Papae Marcelli
as ‘my guiding principle, my foundations, and my starting point from
which I build further’.87 Witt was adamant that his own compositional
‘building further’ did not amount to imitation, and he criticized Cecilian
composers whose works he saw as being copies of Palestrina. Yet his own
music has generally been dismissed in similar terms, and his discussions
of the matter may seem – initially at least – to legitimize the replication
of Palestrina’s language.
Witt discussed how composers might legitimately respond to Palestrina
in two essays: ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencompon-
isten’ (1865) and ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu
meiden?’ (1874). As their titles suggest, these essays present distinct per-
spectives on this issue. In the first, Witt is more concerned with demon-
strating the aesthetic and liturgical perfection of the Palestrina-Stil than
with how modern composers should respond to it, with the result that
he does not treat the question of copying with the seriousness evident in
the second essay. Like Hoffmann, Witt considers that the highest praise
should go to the composer in whose works ‘prevails and wafts the spirit
of Palestrina’, but who is able to achieve this spirit through contem-
porary expression.88 He does not suggest how such a union might be
achieved, and emphasizes that Palestrina’s superiority lies not only in
the religious spirit of his works but in the magnificence of their external
forms. His conception of the superiority of Palestrina’s language is re-
inforced throughout the essay, which concludes with what appears to be
an open invitation for modern composers to replicate it:
If a composer has the right stuff in him, he will never ask himself whether he
writes like Palestrina; the text, the liturgy, the religious spirit working in him and
his talent will make the correct expression for the church available to him, and
if he then writes in the contrapuntal form and the modes of Palestrina, he will
not in any way copy, but will only serve his individuality and therefore modern
and contemporary thoughts and feelings, even though he thinks and feels in a
Palestrinian manner.89
Witt’s second essay provides an expansion and justification of this de-

ceptively simple conclusion. As before, his ideas are developed pragmat-
ically, with no reference to the writings of earlier commentators on this
topic. While assessing the foundations of his thinking is difficult, given
his unsystematic approach and casual use of language, a dependence on
Hegelian oppositions of form and content is fundamental to his argu-
ment (although Witt does not refer to Hegel in his writings, he often cites
the works of mid-century authors in the Hegelian tradition, such as Franz
Brendel and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl). Witt’s starting point is the con-
tinued possibility of composing for the church. He vigorously asserts the
validity of modern composers’ efforts, rejecting the notion that modern
feelings and mentalities are incapable of producing works with the same
degree of religious devotion as the old masters.90 Yet there can be no
doubt that the language of Palestrina is more intrinsically Christian than
modern styles, and here lies the dilemma: the works of Palestrina and his
contemporaries are the most suitable choral music for the liturgy, and the
proper model for the efforts of present-day composers, but to copy these
works would result in new compositions being superfluous. Witt concedes
that, as a result of his reforming crusade he – in a ‘certain sense’ ( gewissen
Sinne) – copied earlier music in some of his early pieces: ‘[I] formed
the most one-sided opinions and allowed myself to become too anxious
and followed the Renaissance masters [die Alten] too much, although I
probably never or very seldom descended into being a copyist.’91
Although Witt condemns musical copying, his conception of it is so
restricted and equivocal that his arguments cannot be taken at face value.
His problematic notion of copying centres on three pairs of oppositions:
he differentiates on the one hand between the observance of the rules of
the Palestrina-Stil and the use of sixteenth-century forms, and on the other
between the spontaneous and the reflective use of these forms, while fur-
ther confusion is generated by the instability of his conceptions of form
and content. Initially, he subsumes all legitimate uses of Renaissance
techniques within the rules of the Palestrina-Stil, arguing that copying
is not an appropriate description for an adherence to the strict rules
governing melody and rhythm in Renaissance music: this would be as
foolish, according to Witt, as condemning a writer for following the cor-
rect rules of sentence construction.92 Subsequently, however, it emerges
that he considers a wider range of relationships to Palestrina’s language
to be legitimate than just the use of the timeless rules of the strenge Satz:
Yes, even if someone considered it necessary to keep to the modes of the
Renaissance masters, he is still no copyist, for even these are only rules or limits
within which everything can and should be independent thinking. I cannot change
myself into a man of the sixteenth century; humanity has changed itself in its opinions,
feelings, in its nerves. I cannot tear out my nerves and replace them with sixteenth-century
ones. If, therefore, I think independently, it is now a pure impossibility to be a mere
copyist solely by observing the rules of the ancients. I would become this if I no
longer thought independently: if, while composing, I were to reflect [besänne] on
what Palestrina had created.93
From this it is evident that, in addition to an elastic conception of the
rules of the Palestrina-Stil, Witt’s notion of copying relies on a distinc-
tion between spontaneous and reflective production. This distinction is
illustrated by a series of metaphors and comparisons; in the first, Witt
compares the relation of the modern composer and Palestrina with a
preacher for whom the ideal sermon is also to be found in the works of
his precursors.94 Witt likens a modern rendition of a sixteenth-century
sermon to that of a Palestrina mass; although literal, such acts are un-
consciously penetrated by the modern spirit, and it is this process that
continues to give validity to the performance of the music of the dis-
tant past. While the external presentation of the sermon and mass
are to some extent modified through modern manners of expression,
the content is not changed in such a performance; both sermon and
mass do not through modern performance take on, as their essence, the
‘independent thinking’ of the performers. Conversely, the preacher seek-
ing to create his own sermon may appropriate the external shape and
features of the works of old preachers, but unless there is an intent to
copy, the content of his sermon will evince independent thought. The
forms of these sermons may become second nature to him through study,
but even if the external elements of his sermon are derived from the old
preachers, this does not compromise his independent thought since the
use of these forms was not a self-conscious or arbitrary choice. Similarly,
the modern composer who, through profound immersion in the music of
Palestrina, unconsciously uses elements of his language, is not a copyist,
since this language has become second nature to him; he is not assuming
the language of another but a form prompted solely by his own feelings.
Witt’s position on what constitutes musical copying is thus seemingly
clear: the use of old forms is artistically valid if it occurs spontaneously
and flows directly from the feelings of the artist; only if the modern com-
poser were to adopt old forms consciously, in the knowledge that their
spiritual content did not correspond with his own beliefs, is the value of
the artwork compromised. But Witt’s position is made more problematic
by the instability of his notion of form and content. On the one hand,
artistic form is the external presentation of the artwork, while the con-
tent is its spiritual basis and dimension: elsewhere, Witt expresses this
distinction clearly in a paean to a cappella singing, where he asserts that
this idiom provides the composer with ‘the most suitable form, the most
supple body for his musical soul, so that the inner content [Gehalt] of
his religious feelings tallies completely with the external musical form
[äußeren musikalische Form]’.95 On the other hand, he seems sometimes to
identify form with structure and compositional rules, and content as the
musical input that the composer pours into these frameworks. It is for
this reason that he is suspicious of music that appears to copy Palestrina
literally: because, whether the product of spontaneous or reflective cre-
ation, such pieces are related to Palestrina’s language in such a way that
the presence of individual thought cannot be deduced from the finished
work. Even though, according to the aesthetics of copying that Witt out-
lines, it is possible for a modern artwork without contemporary stylistic
elements to be spontaneous and sincere, the presence of these elements
acts as a reassurance that the work was the product of independent
thinking: ‘as soon as he [the composer] intends to think independently he
will pour his own spirit – of which he may possess a little or a lot – and
therefore that of the nineteenth century into his musical forms . . . he will
embody his ideal in notes.’96
For Witt, questions of copying should not arise, since the ideal which
he advocated, while based on the music of Palestrina, was not identical
to it. Instead of anxiously attempting to reach the level of this model,
the modern composer should remember that he can produce better
music than Palestrina, by avoiding the unsatisfactory elements that Witt
identified in his works: ‘we can learn to set liturgical texts in many ways
more beautifully than Palestrina; we can avoid the faults which spoil so
many old works.’97 For Witt, the modern composer can marry his music to
the text much more successfully than Renaissance composers, by paying
more attention to speech rhythms. Modern composers can avoid the
‘lyrical diffuseness’ of the ancients through conciseness and the exclusion
of lengthy points of melodic imitation. Lastly, modern composers could
improve on Palestrina’s language by linking their works still more closely
to the chant.
The ‘Wittian style’ and the Raphaels-Messe

As Witt’s comments indicate, his liturgical compositions present a variety
of responses to the Palestrina ideal. His works can be divided into two
broad categories: those that, to varying degrees, replicate Palestrina’s
language but which seek to correct the defects that Witt perceived in it,
and those that present a modernized version of this ideal. In exploring
the second category, the nature of what Witt himself described as the
‘Wittian style’ needs to be established. Curiously, Witt reserved this term
for a select group of his compositions, claiming that the style epitomized
by them was initiated by him and was not modelled on earlier church
music: ‘I have never wanted to copy. . . . My opp. 9–12, 32, 33, 48b and
similar pieces can be compared with nothing earlier at all. My style may
not be perfect, but at least it is my own.’98 The works that Witt, in this
and similar lists, elevated as models of this idiom are varied in scope and
style. Neither the Te Deum op. 10 nor the Preces stationum crucis op. 32,
for example, bear a close relation to Palestrina’s language (although
op. 32 no. 9 presents an allusion to the opening chords of the ‘Stabat
mater’): although both works are grounded in the techniques of the strenge
Satz, their chordal textures resemble chant harmonizations rather than
Palestrina’s homophony. Other works in the ‘Wittian style’ engage much
more closely with Palestrina, seeking to adapt his language to conform
with modern expressive and liturgical requirements.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Witt’s Missa in honorem S. Raphaelis
Archangeli (Raphaels-Messe) op. 33, which – acclaimed as a compositional
manifesto for the reforms of the ACV – ranks alongside Liszt’s masses
as one of the most controversial liturgical works from the second half of
the nineteenth century. Witt viewed the work as an attempt to express
the text of the mass and the spirit of plainchant more perfectly than
had been achieved by Palestrina, while the contrapuntist and com-
poser Franz Nekes (1844–1914) acclaimed it as a ‘logical further develop-
ment’ (consequente Weiterentwicklung) of the Palestrina-Stil.99 But while some
commentators compared the mass favourably to works by Palestrina,
others inveighed against its eclecticism, complaining that morsels from
Palestrina and Lassus were thrown together with elements derived from
Wagner and the contemporary partsong style.100 The most significant
critique of the work is that of the Austrian critic and reformer Johannes
Evangelist Habert, who sought to demonstrate the absurdity of view-
ing it as a further development of Palestrina. Habert systematically
explores the ways in which the Raphaels-Messe contravenes Palestrina’s
practices, highlighting the frequent modulations and sequences, abrupt
contrasts, stunted melodies and piecemeal construction that mar the
work, and lamenting the absence of thematic development and contra-
puntal elaboration.101 But while Habert considers these features to testify
to Witt’s incompetence as a composer, it is more useful to explore how
they reflect his reforming agenda.
These issues can be clarified by examining the Kyrie of the work
(Ex. 4.2). Habert dismissed the notion that this movement could be
viewed as a further development of Palestrina, contrasting its poverty of
melodic invention and thematic disunity with the organic growth present
in the Kyrie of Palestrina’s Missa brevis.102 From the perspective of Witt’s
reforms, however, this movement represents the didactic reinvention of
Palestrina’s language. In contrast to the diffuseness that Witt condemned
in Palestrina’s Kyrie settings, the movement is concise, with imitative
polyphony almost entirely avoided (the pithy rhythmic polyphony that
Witt praised in the Missa Papae Marcelli is however re-created in the final
section of the movement). Liturgical concerns are also apparent in the
syllabic text declamation, while the aim of achieving Palestrina’s spirit
through modern expression is apparent in the tonal orientation of
the movement and its pithy melodic idiom: with these means, Witt
sought to create a style that was readily accessible to choirs and
congregations.
The majority of the compositions by Witt that were published as sup-
plements to his journals also represent attempts to combine the Palestrina-
Stil with modern expression.103 In line with Witt’s theoretical views, the
use of chant and modality in these pieces rarely serves as a means of com-
ing closer to Palestrina’s language. A common strategy is the imitative
treatment of a theme derived from chant followed by a homophonic
Example 4.2. Franz Witt, Kyrie, Raphaels-Messe, bars 10–23
presentation of the same point: while the imitation of a chant-based

point recalls Palestrina, the change of texture and hymn-like treatment
distances such pieces from his language. Similarly, Witt often combines
elements of Palestrina’s modal practice with elements foreign to his
music, such as two-bar phrases, choral unisons and rhythmic sequences.
In its most common form, however, the ‘Wittian style’ is characterized by
predominantly homophonic textures and a firm basis in tonal harmony.
Example 4.3. Witt, ‘Salvos fac nos, Domine, op. 34 no. 28, bars 17–28
The most interesting feature of these pieces is their frequent and some-
times abrupt stylistic shifts, and it is not hard to see why Witt’s critics in-
veighed against his eclecticism. A clear example of the contrast between
rhythmically free, quasi-modal progressions and periodic, unambigu-
ously tonal writing is present in ‘Salvos fac nos, Domine’ op. 34 no. 28
(Ex. 4.3). In bars 17–24 Palestrina’s language is evoked through adjacent
roots and secondary chords, while in bars 24–8 the modern elements of
the ‘Wittian style’ such as rhythmic and harmonic sequences characterize
the refrain.
If the stylistic tensions present in the ‘Wittian style’ testify to an attempt
to modernize the Palestrina ideal, other works come closer to the literal
replication of his language. Indeed, contemporary critics condemned
Witt’s works for their epigonal imitation just as often as for their eclec-
ticism, seeking to demonstrate that they were merely an assemblage of
reminiscences from the old masters. Habert, for instance, derided his
Missa in Memoriam Concilii Oecumenici op. 19 (1871) for being a ‘pale copy’
(Abklatsch) and slavish imitation of the ancients, demonstrating that the
Kyrie was assembled from motifs borrowed from Claudio Casciolini,
Lassus and Hassler; he even offers a recipe for composers seeking to
emulate Witt: ‘take an idea from Palestrina, follow through with one by
Lassus, tack on one by Lotti and you have finished the first Kyrie . . . ’104
Although Witt himself conceded that some of his pieces were – in a
‘certain sense’ – copies of earlier music, it is clear that his intent was
to improve on Palestrina’s language rather than to reproduce it. Two
distinct factors motivated the production of these works: the impulse
to create a purified version of this language free from the defects Witt
identified in Renaissance compositions, and the need to provide simple
exemplars of it that could readily be used within the liturgy.
Witt’s motets in this idiom – which, in contrast to those in the ‘Wittian
style’, are generally in white notation – vary widely in their responses to
Renaissance techniques and textures. Many of the simplest consist of ho-
mophonic passages alternated with falsobordone psalm tone harmoniza-
tions, as a means of attaining Witt’s ideals concerning text declamation.
The homophonic writing is often very stark, with little independent part-
writing, and dissonance is restricted to unaccented passing notes and oc-
casional suspensions. Contrast is achieved in several of the shorter motets
through the use of a section in triple time, a gesture that while derived
from Renaissance music rarely resembles it. Indeed, in Witt’s pieces and
in Cecilian compositions in general, it is the handling of triple-time sec-
tions that most distances them from Palestrina’s music, as a result of
their static part-writing, repetitive rhythms, regular phrases and chordal
basis.
Alongside simple homophony, the most common texture in these
pieces is rhythmic polyphony. As in the music of Grell, this may be
characterized as a rhythmically dense form of homophony, in which a
chordal texture with mainly syllabic part-writing is enlivened through
Example 4.4. Witt, ‘Locus iste’ op. 34 no. 153, bars 1 –19
rhythmic independence in one or more of the parts. In its simplest

form, Witt’s rhythmic polyphony exhibits little imitation except for
the occasional repetition of short rhythmic motifs; elsewhere, Witt’s
polyphony is characterized by constant rhythmic imitation and some-
times the imitation of short melodic motifs. Long points of imitation
and fugal passages are rare; where fugal counterpoint is present the
entries of the parts are generally close, and Witt’s fugal polyphony
sometimes has the appearance of a constant stretto. These types of
polyphony can be seen in the gradual ‘Locus iste’ op. 34 no. 153
(Ex. 4.4): in the opening five bars a short rhythmic motif permeates
all five parts, while from bars 6–11 a four-note ‘thematic’ motif ensues,
leading via a short passage of rhythmic polyphony to a more elaborate
cadence.
Witt claimed that the polyphonic movement in Cecilian composi-

tions was less stiff and more singable than in many sixteenth-century
works.105 But Witt’s polyphony often contravenes these criteria, especially
in passages of fugal imitation (among the motets in his Gradualiensammlung
op. 34, this is particularly apparent in the two settings of ‘Benedicta
et venerabilis’ nos. 64 and 65): its stiffness is the result of repetitive
rhythms in the points and their development in regular two-bar phrases.
As elsewhere in Witt’s ‘white-note’ output, the dissonance treatment in
these pieces remains bound by the rules of the strenge Satz; nonetheless,
the frequent use of upper auxiliary notes and chains of parallel thirds
serves to distance this music from Palestrina’s language. And while Witt
criticized other Cecilian composers for the stereotypical manner with
which they approached the emulation of the Renaissance masters, his
own approach to dissonance sometimes results in passages that resemble
species counterpoint more than sixteenth-century polyphony.
BROADER TRENDS IN COMPOSITION: PALESTRINIANISM
Witt’s views on the composition of church music, while highly influen-

tial during his lifetime, should not necessarily be seen as reflecting the
opinions of other composers who were members of the ACV. For Witt –
in theory if not always in practice – the renewal of modern composi-
tion centred on two factors: the emulation but not the literal replication
of Palestrina, and the fusion of artistic quality and liturgical suitability.
For a piece of church music to be worthy of its calling, Witt sought ev-
idence of both contemporaneity and aesthetic value. Witt considered
some music unworthy for the church even though it broke none of the
Cecilian rules for liturgical composition: he condemned structural inco-
herence since this resulted in works that were ‘spiritual cripples’ (geistige
Krüppel), while mediocre themes resulted in ‘senseless nattering’ (sinnlos
Zeug schwätzen).106 Witt classed as merely liturgical (blos liturgische) pieces
which, while suitable for church performance, had no value aside from
their functional use. These two central positions were however contra-
dicted by other Cecilians, both in theory and in practice: it is necessary,
therefore, to explore the factors that encouraged both the literal replica-
tion of Palestrina and a functional conception of church music.
In surveying the music produced by members of the ACV, the Cecilian
commentator Peter Griesbacher sought to distinguish Witt’s manner of
emulating Palestrina from the ‘Palestrinianism’ (Palestrinismus) rampant
among his contemporaries.107 He identifies Michael Haller (1840–1915)
and Ignaz Mitterer (1850–1924) as the epitome of this tendency, alongside
a host of lesser figures including Nekes, Peter Piel (1835–1904), and Witt’s
successor as president of the ACV, Friedrich Schmidt (1840–1923).108 Of
these, the most significant exponent of the more literal replication of
Palestrina – and arguably the most distinguished Cecilian composer –
was Haller, who served as Stiftskapellmeister at the Alten Kapelle in Regens-
burg from 1867 to 1899 and as composition tutor at the Kirchenmusikschule
(founded in 1874). Haller’s importance for the Palestrina revival de-
rives not only from his compositions, but from his work as an editor
and contrapuntal theorist: his composition tutor, Kompositionslehre für den
polyphonen Kirchengesang (1891), rivalled Bellermann’s Der Contrapunkt as the
most widely circulated codification of the Palestrina-Stil.109 In addition,
Haller contributed to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe, through the comple-
tion of works no longer extant in their original form.
For Haller, as for Proske and Witt, the liturgical primacy of Renais-
sance church music derives from its close relation to plainchant. Haller
argues that the works of Palestrina and contemporaries invariably reflect
the spirit of the chant in their melodic and rhythmic aspects: it is for
this reason that the rules of the Palestrina-Stil are inviolable in liturgical
music.110 In outlining the implications of these twin ideals for modern
church composition, Haller’s views are more rigid than Witt’s. He ele-
vates diatonicism as an immutable, natural ideal for the church composer,
invoking not only the practicalities of writing for voices but also the doc-
trine of the affections. The idea that chromatic intervals are unsuitable
in principle for church music, although dismissed by Witt, was advo-
cated vigorously by other contemporary reformers. Citing the views of
Ambrosius Kienle, Haller banished chromatic intervals on the grounds
of their detrimental effect on the listener and their unworthiness for reli-
gious worship; these intervals are forbidden because they serve ‘the rep-
resentation and arousal of passionate feelings [Affekte]’ and deviate from
the model of the chant: ‘Just as for the chalice only gold is befitting, so only
the noblest tonal material [Tonmaterial ], only the most beautiful diatonic
intervals are worthy for the praise of God.’111 In addition to the use of
solely diatonic intervals, Haller contends that the composer’s emulation
of Palestrina must be grounded in the ideal of the chant in its rhythmic
aspect. While Haller considers it inevitable that music for several voices
be notated metrically (except in falsobordone), polyphonic music should
attempt to re-create the rhythmic freedom and responsiveness to the
text that is found in plainchant melodies.112 The composer must strive to
mitigate the harshness of measured rhythm by entirely avoiding modern
rhythmic conventions: ‘melodies with regularly recurring note groups or
with divisions in the manner of the periodic structure of secular music
by no means correspond with the archetype of all sacred melodies, the
chant.’113
While Haller, like Bellermann, emphasizes that the rules outlined
in his counterpoint tutor are universally valid, his emphasis on the
primacy of the chant serves to limit their applicability. Nowhere does
Haller question the aesthetic implications of modern composition in the
Palestrina-Stil: rather, it is evident that contemporary aesthetic norms are
irrelevant – indeed alien – to the composition of liturgical music. Haller
directly contradicts Bellermann’s assertion that composers, if they are
inspired by other ideas, are entitled to go beyond the confines of the
sixteenth-century rules: Haller stresses that modern Catholics are in-
spired by precisely the same ideas as in Palestrina’s time, implying that
these rules constitute immutable norms for liturgical music.114 More-
over, it is clear that he considers it a virtue, not a failing, for liturgical
pieces to be entirely distant from other aspects of contemporary musical
practice.115 Haller’s textbook serves as a means for the budding church
composer, like Witt’s conjectured preacher in ‘Was haben die modernen
Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’, to become immersed in an older style
to the extent that its forms become a valid alternative language. Haller
encourages the young composer to study the works of Palestrina, Lassus
and Victoria: ‘Such models should be studied diligently, often sung or
played on an instrument attentively so that the type and manner of the
melodic shapes are lived in [hineinzuleben], greatly encouraging the suc-
cessful study of composition with independent voices.’116 Through ‘living
in’ the works of Palestrina and contemporaries, their language can be-
come second nature to the modern composer, who may then compose
in it successfully and unreflectively.
The relation between Haller’s own compositions and Renaissance mu-
sic is more complicated than this stance may suggest. While it is generally
agreed that – as Witt put it – no other Cecilian composer followed the old
masters more closely than Haller, the stylistic consequences of this have
been interpreted differently.117 Witt viewed some of Haller’s works as ex-
cessively dependent on Palestrina, dismissing his Missa octava ‘O salutaris
hostia’ op. 20 as ‘a good copy of the ancients’.118 In contrast, Haller’s obit-
uarist Max Sigl acclaimed his works as progressive, since they present an
updated, more comprehensible version of Palestrina’s style.119 And while
August Scharnagl views his output as an eclectic fusion of Renaissance
formulas and Haller’s individuality, other commentators have stressed
the absolute stylistic unity of his music.120
In evaluating these claims, it must first be noted that Haller him-
self viewed some of his works as literal replications of Palestrina’s lan-
guage. The preface to his three-voice Missa prima op. 4 (1875) presents
a justification for its adherence to the part-writing and diatonicism of
the ancient school: Haller viewed the purpose of the piece as being
to provide weaker choirs with an accessible introduction to Renaissance
polyphony.121 Other works, in particular Haller’s motets and late masses,
cannot be viewed merely as attempts to distil the idiom of Palestrina’s
masses into a simpler format. This can be seen from his Zwölf Motetten
op. 2 (1874) – the collection that established Haller’s reputation in the
ACV – and its continuation, the 18 Motetten op. 15 (1878).122
The most striking aspects of the Missa prima and these motets are
Haller’s approaches to rhythm and imitative polyphony. Haller’s treat-
ment of rhythm comes much closer to that of Palestrina than Witt’s. For
while Haller too occasionally employs rhythmic sequences and periodic
phrases, his works rarely exhibit the square rhythmic movement that
distances many nineteenth-century pieces from Palestrina’s language.
The idea that mensural music, through the mediation of Haller’s rules
of composition, could aspire to the rhythmic freedom of plainchant pro-
duces freely flowing lines with frequent syncopations: Haller himself
described syncopation as ‘the most excellent means by which to estab-
lish an unforced [ungezwungene] rhythmic movement’.123 At a larger level,
this concern for rhythmic freedom results in frequent changes of metre:
eleven out of the eighteen op. 15 pieces contain contrasting sections in
triple time. These serve a similar function to syncopation at a local level
in eliminating any sense of regular periodicity. Haller’s concern with
replicating Palestrina’s rhythmic practices is especially apparent in his
handling of thematic imitation, which is more common as well as more
successful than in Witt’s output. Even so, Haller’s imitative writing reflects
his adherence to Witt’s concern for economy and conciseness. Although
fugal points of imitation are common at the beginning of pieces, the sub-
sequent textual points are seldom treated as strictly: in the interests of
brevity, homophony or rhythmic polyphony displace thematic imitation.
Given Haller’s conviction of the liturgical primacy of plainchant, it is
not surprising that he sometimes follows Renaissance practice in deriving
the themes of his motets from appropriate chants. But only a handful
of the pieces in his opp. 2 and 18 are thematically related to specific
chants, and such thematic derivations are restricted to the opening notes
of the initial points. In ‘Factus est repente’ op. 2[a] no. 6, for example, the
opening six pitches of the chant are employed in the cantus part, while in
the offertory ‘Reges Tharsis’ op. 15 no. 3 only the opening three notes of
the chant are adopted as a head motif (see Ex. 4.5). In his Kompositionslehre,
Haller discussed some of Palestrina’s methods of treating plainchant,
especially praising the paraphrase techniques of the Missa Aeterna Christi
munera, where the plainchant hymn serves as a thematic reservoir from
which the points of the mass are drawn.124 In his own pieces, however, the
subsequent points are seldom related to the respective chants; even so,
Haller’s use of chant comes much closer to Palestrina’s practice than that
Example 4.5. (a) Michael Haller, ‘Factus est repente’ op. 2a no. 6, bars 1 –8
found in Witt’s compositions. A further thematic principle that Haller

derived from Renaissance church music is his resurrection of the parody
mass. In his Kompositionslehre, Haller devotes considerable attention to
the techniques deployed by Palestrina and Victoria in adapting material
from their own motets, and his own Missa octava ‘O salutaris hostia’ op. 20
and Missa nona ‘O quam suavis est’ op. 22 (based on motets from his Laudes
Eucharisticae op. 16) follow similar procedures, albeit on a smaller scale.
Example 4.5. (b) Haller, ‘Rages Tharsis’ op. 15 no. 3, bars 1 –4
Haller’s status as the leading contrapuntal theorist of the ACV leads

us to expect a strict control of dissonance in his music. Yet, as with Grell,
there is a tension between the impulse to replicate sixteenth-century id-
ioms and his adherence to the rules of the strenge Satz. This is evident in
Haller’s treatment of nota cambiata formulas, which are common in his
music. Haller identifies the cambiata as a historically circumscribed idiom,
linking it specifically with the old Italian school.125 Yet this idiom can oc-
cur in contexts which in other respects depart from Palestrina’s language:
this can be seen in the treatment of dissonance in bars 9 and 10 of ‘Gloria
in excelsis’ op. 15 no. 1 (Ex. 4.6). While Haller’s handling of dissonance
in bar 10 of this piece contravenes the rules of his own textbook – and
can thus be viewed as a conscious shift away from the literal replication
of Palestrina – his deviations from Palestrina’s dissonance treatment else-
where seem inadvertent. This is apparent in two quite different areas:
his treatment of dissonance in triple time and in polychoral pieces (the is-
sues raised by the latter are discussed subsequently in relation to Haller’s
contributions to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe). Haller’s handling of pass-
ing notes in triple-time sections often contravenes Palestrina’s practices,
while adhering to the rules set out in his textbook. According to Jeppesen,
each minim beat in 32 time (or semibreve in 31 ) must be consonant (except
in a suspension); passing dissonance can only occur on the second half
of each beat.126 In contrast, Haller – following Bellermann – argues that
the second and third minims of a 32 bar are legitimate locations for
dissonant passing notes in the Palestrina-Stil.127 This conviction has im-
portant consequences for Haller’s own compositions, since the use of
Example 4.6. Haller, ‘Gloria in excelsis’ op. 15 no. 1, bars 7–11
such dissonances sometimes gives the impression of a modernization of

Palestrina’s language (especially where they result in cadential dominant
sevenths, as in the ‘Osanna’ from the Missa prima). But given Haller’s the-
oretical misconception, the use of such dissonances cannot be regarded
as indicating an intent to depart from the literal replication of Palestrina.
Elsewhere, too, the harmonies that result from Haller’s part-writing
distance his pieces from Palestrina. Haller’s use of minim passing disso-
nances in duple time also creates tonally functional chords (most often
second-inversion dominant sevenths), and the resulting progressions sug-
gest that the part-writing is vertically determined. This impression is also
created by the use of harmonic sequences and by the infrequency of part-
crossing in Haller’s music. The presence of localized functional progres-
sions and sequences has important implications for Haller’s replication
of Palestrina’s modal practice. To varying degrees, modal restrictions
inform the structural parameters and harmonic resources of Haller’s
motets, and also determine the vocal ranges and treatment of imitative
points. As with regard to imitation, however, the Cecilian demand for
concision is largely responsible for the distance between Haller’s use of
the modes and that of Palestrina: the requirement to treat each portion
of text succinctly results in short phrases, sectional structures and very
frequent internal cadences, whose progressions create a tonal impression
overall. The updating of the Palestrina-Stil that Sigl and Scharnagl per-
ceive in Haller’s works is, therefore, a result in part of the primacy of
liturgical concerns in Haller’s thinking, and in part of his misconcep-
tion of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment. If Haller was able to justify the
literal replication of Palestrina in theory, his own compositions diverge
significantly from this paradigm.
COMPLETING PALESTRINA: HABERL, HALLER

AND THE GESAMTAUSGABE
The extent to which Haller was able to adopt the language of Palestrina is
revealed more strongly in his contributions to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe
than in his own compositions. The publication of the complete edition
of Palestrina’s works, issued from 1862 by Breitkopf and Härtel, had be-
gun under the joint editorship of Theodore de Witt, J. N. Rauch, Franz
Espagne and Franz Commer. The greatest contribution to the project
was made however by Franz Xaver Haberl (1840–1910), Domkapellmeister
in Regensburg from 1871, founder of the Kirchenmusikschule there and suc-
cessor to Schmidt as the third president of the ACV from 1899. Haberl
took over the editorship of the Gesamtausgabe in 1878, founding a Palestrina-
Gesellschaft to provide the subscriptions necessary for its continuation.128
Haller’s contributions to the edition took the form of composing addi-
tional vocal parts for works which were no longer extant in their entirety;
these are of interest not only because they show the extent to which he
was able to replicate Palestrina’s language, but also because of the light
that they shed on the historical and liturgical orientation of Haberl’s
edition. While some of Haller’s interventions amount to no more than
editorial hack work, others are far more significant: he supplied choir
II parts for an incomplete eight-part setting of the sequence ‘Victimae
Paschali laudes’ (PGA, vol. XXXII), while for volume XXVI, Haller
composed choir III parts for six substantial twelve-part works.129
Haller’s role in these volumes forces us to view the Gesamtausgabe as a
whole in a different light. The high editorial standards of the edition and
its continued use today as the only complete edition of Palestrina’s music
that preserves original clefs and note values, combined with its status
as one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century musicology,
can lead to it being viewed as the culmination of the tradition of objec-
tive historicism and positivistic musical scholarship that had its origins
in Winterfeld’s Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina (1832). But Haberl’s aims,
like those of his greatest predecessor in the editing of old Italian music,
Proske, were primarily practical rather than musicological. While, in a
modern critical edition an incomplete work or source would generally
be transmitted in its defective form, Haberl’s concerns were orientated
towards providing complete works that could be used liturgically rather
than historically interesting torsos.130 In an article from 1880 celebrating
the resumption of the Gesamtausgabe, Haberl makes clear that a primary
purpose of editing and propagating Palestrina’s works is to provide mod-
els for modern church composers. Haberl notes that his recent exposure
to products of the English Gothic revival has convinced him that the
renewal of religious art can be achieved only through reproduction: as
a consequence, he viewed the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe ‘not only as a
bounden duty to this eternal master but as an important resource for a
durable and fundamental reform of Catholic church music’.131
These priorities are apparent in Haberl’s discussion of Palestrina’s
incomplete twelve-part psalms ‘Ad te levavi’, ‘Beati omnes’, ‘Domine,
quis habitabit’ and ‘Jubilate Deo’, the alleluia verse ‘O quam bonus’ and
the antiphon ‘Salve regina’.132 Haberl explores the factors motivating
his decision to ask Haller to complete these works: his concern as to
whether these works should have been published in their defective form
reveals the tension in his project between the objective historicism of
erecting a scholarly ‘monument of music’ and the subjective historicism
of providing a source for liturgical renewal.133 The status of the edition as
a model for modern liturgical composition is clear in Haberl’s hope that
other composers will learn to compose in the same style as Palestrina
through the exercise of completing these works, and thus help to place
modern church music back on the right track.134 Haller’s suitability for
the task of completing these works is, according to Haberl, not only the
result of his expertise as a contrapuntist and theorist but of the piety
with which he approached this task; only through such piety can the
modern composer deny his origins and return to the spirit of Palestrina.
But Haberl is keen to stress that Haller’s versions are only an experiment
in completion; his encouragement to other composers to make similar
attempts stems perhaps from a fear that these versions might achieve the
monumental, definitive status that the edition accorded for the first time
to Palestrina’s complete works.
Haller’s own comments on his completions do not suggest that he
shared Haberl’s ethical and scholarly qualms, but rather focus on the
technical problems posed by this task. Haller is keen to stress that his
role as a composer of new material was minimal: since Palestrina’s com-
positional method excludes ‘unbridled fantasy’ (ungezügelter Phantasie), the
third-choir parts could in general be compiled or deduced from the
extant material.135 In exploring the nature of the clues present in this
material, Haller notes that he deduced where the collaboration of the
third choir was necessary not only from harmonic gaps and unconven-
tional dispositions in the existing parts, but also from abnormalities in
the part-writing.136 This points to a key distinction between Haller’s and
Palestrina’s conceptions of polychoral dissonance treatment, a distinc-
tion that is apparent in Haller’s own compositions as well as in these
completions. While each choir in Palestrina’s polychoral pieces is not
necessarily harmonically complete (for example, a major or minor third
present at a particular moment in one choir may as a consequence be
omitted from the harmonies of the others), his technique requires that
dissonances be calculated and correctly treated in relation to the lowest
part of the choir that they occur in, rather than just in relation to the low-
est voice in the full texture. But in Haller’s double-choir works, such as
‘Diffusa est gratia’ op. 15 no. 16, each choir is occasionally dependent on
the other for the justification of its dissonances (fourths against the bass in
one choir, for instance, are sometimes justified by being consonant with
the bass of the other choir). Palestrina’s handling of three-choir textures
also appears to require discrete dissonance treatment in each choir.137
Haller’s divergence from Palestrina’s procedures is most evident in his
completion of the psalm ‘Jubilate Deo omnis terra’. Here, the lack of
discrete dissonance treatment in Haller’s additional parts is apparent in
most tutti sections and where Haller’s choir is combined with one of the
other choirs. The resulting dissonances can be seen, for example, in bars
35–6 and 92–4, where intervals of a fourth against the bass in the tenor
parts which are arrived at and quitted by leap contravene Palestrina’s cri-
teria for dissonance, despite being justified by the lowest voice in the en-
tire texture. Haller’s divergence from Palestrina’s dissonance techniques
reflects not only an inadequate knowledge of Palestrina’s polychoral
works (a charge which, after all, could be levelled at most theorists of
the Palestrina style, including Jeppesen) but also his desire for truly inde-
pendent movement in all parts. In his article on the completion of these
works and in his Kompositionslehre, Haller asserts the necessity for strictly
independent part-writing even in polychoral pieces.138 Each choir must
be regarded as an autonomous entity in which each voice maintains its
independence and individuality; even in eight- and twelve-part textures,
two voices should never move in unison with one another. This desire
for truly independent part-writing leads Haller to avoid duplicating the
bass parts of the other choirs in his completion. But in striving to achieve
Example 4.7. Palestrina/Haller, ‘Salve regina’, bars 54–74
his Palestrinian ideal of the weaving of independent chant-like melodies,

Haller diverges from Palestrina’s actual practice.
The recent rediscovery of the lost third-choir parts for three of
these compositions – ‘Ad te levavi’, ‘Beati omnes’ and ‘Salve regina’ –
permits a more specific consideration of the differences between the
techniques of Palestrina and Haller.139 In addition to divergences in
terms of dissonance treatment, most noticeable in the concluding tutti
section, Haller’s ‘Salve regina’ presents a more substantial deviation from
Palestrina’s original. The structure of the ‘Salve regina’, in which the
verses of the antiphon are presented alternately by each of the three
choirs before a concluding tutti, produces a curious result. In the ex-
tant parts, the work was liturgically as well as musically incomplete,
since the verse ‘Eia ergo . . . ad nos converte’ was presented originally by
the third choir alone. As a result, in Haller’s completion an entire page
of the Gesamtausgabe is given over to the music of a modern composer.
Haller’s writing in this section (Ex. 4.7) is intended not merely to replicate
Palestrina’s language in a generalized way, but to respond to the charac-
teristic elements of the previous two sections of the piece. Haller replicates
the most unusual feature of the preceding sections: the combination of
lengthy individual points with mainly syllabic word-setting involving few
melismas. But Haller’s continuous texture and very sparing use of rests
diverges markedly from the previous sections and from his own liturgical
music: it suggests, rather self-consciously, that a modal impression can
be sustained only through the complete avoidance of internal cadences.
And while the preceding sections consist largely of imitative polyphony,
the newly composed section evinces rhythmic polyphony with only frag-
mentary melodic imitation; in contrast, Palestrina’s texture for this sec-
tion is predominantly imitative. Haller’s choice of rhythmic polyphony
probably stemmed from the need to mediate between the imitative tex-
tures of the preceding section and the dialogic homophony of the fol-
lowing one; in employing rhythmic polyphony, however, Haller’s sec-
tion serves to epitomize the more literal nineteenth-century responses to
Palestrina’s language. This chorus thus comes closest among all Cecilian
compositions to Witt’s idea of the musical copy, in which the com-
poser has sought to remove all trace of independent thinking from his
work.
LITURGICAL FUNCTION AND AESTHETIC VALUE
If the members of the ACV disagreed on the question of how composers

should respond to Palestrina’s language, the issue of functionality proved
just as divisive. For Witt, modern composers should strive to attain
not only Palestrina’s religiosity but also his combination of liturgical
suitability and aesthetic value. Yet the primacy of functional concerns
was to become an official policy of the ACV, enshrined in the statutes of
the Vereins-Catalog (this publication, which first appeared in 1870, assessed
old and new church compositions according to strict liturgical guidelines
and listed approved pieces). Each submission to the catalogue was
required to conform with a series of criteria, and was inspected by the
president and two elected referees, whose comments were appended to
the catalogue entry for each item.140 The liturgical legislation that these
statutes represent is couched in wholly negative terms, since composers
are merely told what to avoid in order to qualify their compositions for
the catalogue: the mutilation of liturgical texts, use of brass instruments
in the manner of a fanfare, extended vocal or instrumental solos, and
so on.141 The subordination of aesthetic considerations to functional
concerns is most apparent in paragraph five of these statutes: here, the
complex bureaucratic procedures for the referees ensured that, for the
Meistersinger of Regensburg, the rules of the liturgy took precedence over
those governing ‘Tön’ und Weisen’. A work of poor musical quality –
which could only be rejected on the grounds of demonstrably defective
compositional technique – required a two-thirds majority in order
to be turned down, whereas a complex system existed to prevent the
acceptance of works that were seen to contravene the rules or spirit of the
liturgy.
Witt justified the premisses of the Vereins-Catalog by arguing that the
acceptance of pieces within it did not constitute a direct commendation
of them, but merely signified that they were not unsuitable for litur-
gical performance.142 Indeed, in a comment appended to one of the
earliest entries in the catalogue, Witt takes comfort that the majority of
compositions recommended – mere padding in the catalogue (Ballast des
Cataloges) – would soon be forgotten.143 Providing that a piece qualified
on liturgical grounds, it was hard to reject it. Many reviews in the cata-
logue – such as Witt’s report on the Missa Dixit Maria by J. B. Kümin –
note explicitly that a piece has been accepted only because of its practi-
cality and liturgical correctness, while Witt described the masses of Franz
Schöpf as a necessary evil, suitable only for choirs incapable of singing
anything better.144 The privileging of functional concerns over artistic
quality led to frequent dissension among the referees of the catalogue:
this is most clear in the conflict over the Kurz und sehr leichte Messe (1885) by
O. Joos, which was considered to be suitable for the liturgy despite having
‘absolutely no artistic value’.145 One of the factors provoking this conflict
was the fear that the excessive production of these pieces – dismissed by
critics as ‘catalogue compositions’ (Catalogkompositionen) – would obscure
the primary task of the ACV: reviving the chant and Renaissance
polyphony.146 This anxiety was voiced vehemently by Haberl, himself
a long-serving referee for the catalogue, who argued that the flood
of pieces composed under the aegis of the ACV would lead to the
old masters being regarded as superfluous; Haberl commented pre-
sciently that posterity will dismiss this music as styleless and vacuous
ephemera.147
The primacy of functional considerations received its most sustained
justification from Witt in his tract Das königlich bayerische Cultus-Ministerium,
die bayerische Abgeordneten-Kammer und der Cäcilienverein (1886). Here he re-
sponds to the criticisms of the ACV and of Cecilian music voiced by
liberal newspapers, Bavarian parliamentary deputies and, chiefly, by
Schafhäutl, at that time adviser on church music to the ministry of ed-
ucation and culture. Schafhäutl’s principal objections to the ACV were
that it propagated an excessively narrow conception of church music
and that its reforms were antithetical to art. In responding to the first of
these criticisms, Witt argues that the ACV does not – as a result of the
subjective tastes of its officials – promote an exclusive style of compos-
ing, but merely adheres to the objective rules of the church. While Witt
emphasizes that the ACV is not and should not be regarded as an offi-
cial church organization, he sees its mandate as deriving solely from the
views of the hierarchy of the Catholic church as expressed at the Council
of Trent and affirmed at later provincial councils: ‘The ACV exists only
for true church music. Its highest principle is: not an iota other, not an
iota more or less than the church wishes and commands.’148 Witt argues
that anyone involved in Catholic church music – whether as a composer
or conductor – must entirely subjugate his muse to the will and rules
of the church, an idea asserted in rigid terms by his biographer Anton
Walter: ‘the church has taken music into the service of its liturgy: it has
not abandoned itself to the idea of the artist, to arbitrary subjectivism,
to the temper and taste of this or that time and its artistic trends, but has
subordinated music to its spirit and will, its laws and ordinances.’149
Witt rejects Schafhäutl’s contention that this principle has been el-
evated at the expense of artistic quality and has led the ACV to foster
mediocre and insignificant church music.150 For Witt, the observation of
the needs and limits of the liturgy, and the production of what is truly
suitable for it, does not have to result in the marginalization of aesthetic
concerns:
The sacred [kirchlich] liturgical rules do not exclude art. But art intended for
the church must serve the church and its liturgy, otherwise it does not fulfil its
purpose and inevitably becomes inartistic, just as music intended for the theatre
misses its purpose if it does not correspond with the text being set. One must
focus therefore on the standpoint of the church if one wishes to judge church
music correctly.151
But while the Cecilian guidelines do not exclude artistic worth, Witt
emphasizes that it is not a primary factor since quality alone does not
make a work suitable for the liturgy; he reverses the idea of what is
‘artistic’ by viewing the best art as that which most successfully fulfils its
function. Importantly, Witt justifies the propagation of merely liturgical
music by the ACV in terms of its mission to implement its reforms ‘down
to the last village church’. Schafhäutl’s criticisms of its publications ignore
the fact that great masterpieces cannot be performed in rural churches;
Witt sees it as a contradiction that Schafhäutl requires that the ACV
‘should look after rural choirs, but also demands that everything should
be “classical” and of high significance’.152 For Witt, music that may be
performed easily by the weakest choirs can also possess value: this value
is however not dependent on its artistic quality, but on the degree to
which it obeys the liturgical rules and follows the twin ideals of the chant
and the simplified version of Palestrina’s language that he advocated.153
The functional concerns of rural church music are explored further
in Witt’s defence of the Vereins-Catalog. Witt responds in particular to crit-
icisms of the inclusion within it of pieces with little artistic value, such
as those of J. B. Molitor: although his masses are of meagre worth they are
nevertheless suitable for performance in rural churches.154 The catalogue
provides music suitable for cathedral, town and village choirs, and must
serve their differing needs even if, in recommending extremely simple
unison pieces, artistic concerns are entirely disregarded.155 Witt points
out that in accepting works by Molitor into the catalogue, the referees
have been frank about their merits; this is apparent in Witt’s appraisal
of Molitor’s Missa Tota pulchra es Maria op. 11, Missa in honorem S. Fidelis a
Sigmaringa Martyris op. 12 and Missa in honorem S. Angelorum custodum op. 13:
‘The artistic value of these three masses is slight. . . . There prevails
in them such a poverty of melodic invention and of rhythmic life that
one must hope that our choirs will not want to trail behind with such
trifling exercises [Aufgaben] but use them only in cases of dire need.’156 For
Witt, these masses – despite being ‘exercises’ rather than artworks – are
liturgically valid as a result of their suppression of worldly, frivolous and
theatrical elements, and because they do not contravene any of the rules
of the church. Moreover, Witt claims that these pieces are more effective
in rural churches than poor performances of ‘art masses’ (Kunstmesse) by
Palestrina or Rheinberger; similarly another referee for the catalogue,
Friedrich Koenen (1828–87), argued that in this context Molitor’s masses
were more capable of achieving a beautiful and edifying effect than works
of higher artistic value.157
Before considering the aesthetic implications of Witt’s arguments, it
will be helpful to explore some examples of how members of the ACV re-
sponded to the Palestrina ideal in their functional compositions. Molitor’s
masses, like the majority of such pieces, correspond with this ideal primar-
ily through the suppression of aspects of contemporary musical syntax:
the harmonic resources deployed are in general extremely restricted,
and while root-position chords predominate, these are seldom arranged
so as to create quasi-modal progressions. Renaissance church music
is often suggested only by the treatment of cadential suspensions, the
use of chromatic-third progressions and falsobordone writing. Some com-
posers, however, cultivated modal writing even in their simplest three-
part pieces: this is especially apparent in the motets of Koenen, Nekes
and Piel. As in the music of Witt, such pieces often exhibit abrupt stylis-
tic shifts in which the replication of Palestrina’s language is juxtaposed
with modern stylistic elements. This can be seen in a falsobordone setting
by Koenen included in Witt’s Gradualiensammlung, ‘Timete Dominum’,
which is assigned explicitly to the mixolydian mode (Ex. 4.8). While the
first phrase of the extract seems intended to replicate Palestrina’s disso-
nance treatment and harmonic practice, the second phrase – through
the resolution of a suspension onto a seventh chord and the free treat-
ment of dissonance in bar 19 – suggests an impulse to update this idiom.
It is the constant, seemingly arbitrary shifting of stylistic parameters
in this and similar pieces that is perhaps the most puzzling aspect of
Cecilian composition; to attribute this to defective compositional tech-
nique is too simple a solution to the problems it raises. Other falsobordone
pieces from this collection present not merely the juxtaposition of differ-
ent styles but of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century material. In the set-
tings of P. Magnus Ortwein, falsobordone psalm-tone harmonizations
from Viadana’s 1596 collection are interspersed with newly composed
passages intended to replicate their idiom (in replicating sixteenth-
century modal practice, Ortwein even includes false relations).
Significantly, while Witt condoned these exercises in pastiche by pub-
lishing them, he was insistent that they be referred to as arrangements
rather than compositions.158 This suggests that while some aesthetic
norms could be suspended in relation to functional music, the funda-
mental issue of authorship remained inviolable.
Example 4.8. Friederich Koenen, ‘Timete Dominum’, bars 11 –20
Trivialmusik or kitsch?
Up to this point, the implications of compositional historicism for artis-
tic value have been discussed solely in historical terms. But in discussing
the music of the ACV, it is impossible not to become entangled with the
problems of critical value judgement, since the majority of discussions
of this repertory are overtly or more insidiously judgemental. German
discussions have examined Cecilian compositions in terms of Trivialmusik
and even kitsch; the relevance of such critical concepts needs to be as-
sessed in light of both the aesthetic stances assumed by the Cecilians and
their compositions.
The best-known discussion of the aesthetic value of Cecilian music
is that of Dahlhaus, who seeks to explain how music that is technically
faultless can nevertheless be aesthetically dubious or invalid.159 Dahlhaus
argues that even if unimpeachable in terms of technique, Cecilian com-
positions exemplify ‘bad music’ as a result of violating aesthetic norms: in
Dahlhaus’s view, no matter how successful an individual Cecilian piece
may be, its relation to older music – which he sees only in terms of im-
itation and reproduction – necessarily prevents it from having aesthetic
worth. While Dahlhaus considers Cecilian pieces to be exercises rather
than compositions – music that is ‘trivial without denying it’ – others have
viewed them as kitsch, considering them to be artificial, inauthentic and
fraudulent as well as banal.160 Thus, for Hermann-Josef Burbach, the
music of the ACV is kitsch because its artistic shallowness was accompa-
nied by a ‘pretension of seriousness’ (Anspruch des Ernsthaften); its clichéd
progressions and sterile diatonicism represent a kind of devotional fab-
rication, the mere copying of sixteenth-century church music divorced
from the mentality and convictions of that time.161
Absent from these diagnoses – and from most other discussions of
Cecilian music – is a consideration of its liturgical function and of the
implications of functionality for value judgement. While the intention of
a composer in creating a historicist piece may be explained for Dahlhaus
in terms of function, functionality cannot excuse such pieces from being
subject to the norms of aesthetic judgement. He rejects the idea that
nineteenth-century church music can be approached from a functional
perspective because it does not constitute ‘pure functionality’: aesthetic
criteria are still valid since a mass ‘is tied to nothing but the text and the
agreed norms of the church style’ and its character is not wholly deter-
mined by its function.162 But while church music in its entirety was not
and cannot be separated from aesthetic criteria, there is a difference be-
tween aesthetic/functional church compositions (and here, as Dahlhaus
points out, it is not possible to defend in functional terms that which was
conceived as art) and the purely functional or ‘merely liturgical’ music
written for use in rural churches; it can be argued that in cases where
the success of a composition was wholly dependent on its fulfilment
of an extra-artistic role, aesthetic criteria are no longer relevant.163 For
Dahlhaus, however, an attempt to liberate functional music from these
criteria can never be anything more than ‘an apologia for the musically
banal’.164 Similarly, Burbach’s conception of Cecilian music as kitsch
does not permit liturgical function to mitigate for a piece falling short
of aesthetic criteria. In examining Molitor’s Missa in honorem S. Fidelis
a Sigmaringa Martyris, Burbach acknowledges its intended performance
context, and even describes as praiseworthy Molitor’s aim (outlined in
his preface) that these pieces should provide village choirs with a sim-
ple introduction to choral music before they progress to greater things.
Burbach does not, however, judge that these liturgical and pedagogi-
cal considerations render it exempt from aesthetic norms: accordingly,
he censures its formulaic cadential figures and chromatic passing notes,
while a chromatic-third progression is condemned for wretchedly striving
for effect in its meagre surroundings.165 Unaware that chromatic-third
progressions were commonplace in the compositions of the Palestrina
revival, Burbach views their use as evidence of artistic pretensions: as
a result of this, and of what he views – puzzlingly – as the piece’s reli-
gious pretension, he argues that it is kitsch rather than Trivialmusik.166 On
the latter charge, the question of whether this mass successfully fulfilled
its liturgical role could only be answered by a contemporary Bavarian
Catholic who heard it being performed in a rural church; to judge this
matter in any other way would amount to cultural prejudice. In any
case, the category of kitsch is relevant only to aesthetic presumption, not
to functional efficacy: even if it is conceded that the piece is banal, it is
hard to see how it could be kitsch since it makes no claim to anything
other than its liturgical function. Molitor’s mass was, after all, the one
described by Witt above as of meagre worth; its publication and inclusion
in the ACV catalogue were not related to its artistic quality or originality.
In contrast to these critical approaches, Witt’s writings present a bi-
furcated response to the issue of aesthetic and functional value. In his
articles and speeches, he puts forward two distinct agenda for modern
church music: the first for compositions that aspired to the status of the
work of art as well as that of ideal liturgical music, and the second for
liturgical pieces with no artistic pretensions. In ‘Was haben die moder-
nen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’ Witt is concerned with the ways in
which modern composers for the church, seeking to create works of art,
were able to reconcile their compositions with the Palestrina ideal with-
out compromising aesthetic norms. But in discussing ‘merely liturgical’
pieces, Witt shows less concern for aesthetic criteria, provided that any
faults in them are pointed out (and where possible corrected) in order
to dissuade other composers from emulating them. This is evident in
Witt’s attitude towards Haller’s ‘copies’ and Ortwein’s ‘arrangements’:
their excessive dependency on earlier music makes them illegitimate as
art but does not detract from their liturgical legitimacy.
Significantly, Witt’s condoning of Ortwein’s arrangements stemmed
in part from their genre. He noted elsewhere that the falsobordone idiom is
purely liturgical and not a possible vehicle for art: ‘many people consider
falsobordoni to have no validity as works of art. They are a peculiarity of
our liturgy . . . [and] have no pretension to artistic value. They are taken
up because there are too many choirs that can perform nothing of greater
difficulty.’167 But if Witt considered judgements made according to aes-
thetic criteria to be inapplicable for falsobordone pieces, the extension of
such an exemption to other music by the Cecilians is less straightforward.
He gives no further guidelines other than that easily performable music
need not aspire to any conditions other than those of function, implying
the corollary that pieces that are harder to perform become subject to
aesthetic criteria (including the avoidance of ‘copying’) and must jus-
tify their performance difficulties by increased artistic quality. But his
conception contains grey areas: it is unclear whether simple pieces are
inevitably to be treated as merely liturgical, and whether the literal repli-
cation of Palestrina’s language is legitimate in a simple three-part motet,
but illegitimate in a more complicated five-part mass. In spite of this
ambiguity, Witt’s bifurcated conception of value cannot be ignored in
discussing Cecilian music: acknowledging this plurality of stances pro-
vides a surer means of understanding this repertory, not only in terms of
intention but of the broader aesthetic problem that it represents.
LISZT, BRUCKNER AND THE PALESTRINA REVIVAL
The relationships between the two most significant German composers

of Catholic church music in the second half of the nineteenth century –
Liszt and Bruckner – the language of Palestrina, and the activities of the
ACV have not been neglected by recent musicology. A number of papers
have been dedicated to addressing the questions that these individual
relationships raise, while the topic has also been discussed in broader
studies.168 The aim of the present discussion is to supplement rather
than to critique these earlier studies by approaching the works of Liszt
and Bruckner from a perspective informed by the music and theories of
Cecilian composers. As a consequence this discussion focuses primarily
on the liturgical music composed in the years surrounding the foundation
of the ACV.
The compositional engagement of Liszt and Bruckner with the music
of Palestrina began significantly earlier than this, however, and pieces by
both composers from the 1840s evince relationships to Palestrina’s lan-
guage or to the Palestrina style. Liszt’s attitude towards church music and
his own compositions contains paradoxes that emerge right at the start of
his career. On the one hand, Liszt’s early fragment ‘Über die zukünftige
Kirchenmusik’ (1834) presents a humanistic vision of church music ‘unit-
ing, in colossal proportions, theatre and church’; on the other hand,
he viewed the revival of earlier music as a means of reinvigorating the
Catholic liturgy, acclaiming the ‘great revelations’ (großen Offenbarungen)
of Palestrina, Handel, Marcello, Haydn and Mozart as sources for mod-
ern renewal.169 As has been seen earlier, this kind of eclectic list of ideal
composers for the church was commonplace by the 1830s (Liszt’s roll-call
resembles those of Herder, Rochlitz and Michaelis, while his inclusion
of Marcello can be related to the brief upsurge in popularity of his mu-
sic in the 1820s and 1830s, a result in part of the activities of Thibaut
and Kiesewetter). The all-inclusive nature of Liszt’s conception of ideal
church music is graphically apparent in his piano arrangement A La
Chapelle Sixtine (S 461/R 114), in which free transcriptions of Allegri’s
Miserere and Mozart’s ‘Ave verum’ are alternated.170 The dichotomy be-
tween Liszt’s historical enthusiasms and his vision of church music as a
humanistic union of theatre and church, present in these early writings,
remained a feature of Liszt’s attitudes to church music.
It is the first of these strands that is reflected in Liszt’s earliest prac-
tical contributions to liturgical music. Aspects of the ‘Pater noster’ [II]
(S 21/R 518) and ‘Ave Maria’ [I] (S 20.1/R 496a), both composed in
1846, resemble contemporary perceptions of Palestrina’s language, but
do not suggest an extensive first-hand knowledge of it (Liszt was later
to claim that he had made a deep study of sixteenth-century church
music in the late 1830s).171 This is evident in the ‘Pater noster’ in the
use of predominantly root-position chords (and adjacent roots in bars
11 –14), dissonance being restricted to simple 4-3 suspensions, unaccented
passing notes and auxiliary notes. In the longer and more elaborate
‘Ave Maria’, the approach to harmony is less restricted but the use
of chains of root-position chords remains important, especially in bars
27–31. The motet also contains short passages of imitative writing, yet
these serve not as the presentation of thematic material, but merely as
stylized gestures introducing the principal, more lyrical theme. The final
section of the work contains the clearest references to Palestrina’s lan-
guage (as perceived by the early nineteenth-century Catholic revival)
through falsobordone writing for the words ‘nunc et in hora mortis
nostrae’, suspensions, and chromatic-third progressions.
Bruckner too became acquainted with the music of Palestrina and con-
temporaries early in his career. A. C. Howie comments that Bruckner
would have been able to study manuscript copies of compositions by
Palestrina in the library at the monastery of St Florian during his ten
years there as assistant teacher and later organist (1845–55).172 In ad-
dition, both Franz Xaver Schäfler, Regens chori at St Florian from 1841
to 1852, and his successor Ignaz Traumihler (1815–84), choir director
from 1852 until his death, acquired editions of old Italian music pub-
lished in Munich and Regensburg. Schäfler purchased and performed
Ett’s arrangement of Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi munera, while under
Traumihler the monastery subscribed to Proske’s Musica divina series.173
Even though Bruckner was familiar with these products of the early
Catholic Palestrina revival, it should not be assumed that Palestrinian
elements in his compositions from this time are the result of a sympathy
with, or even knowledge of, the activities of the Munich and Regensburg
reformers. In short, while it is certain that Bruckner was familiar with the
musical contents of the first volume of Proske’s Musica divina series, there
is no evidence that he had read the historicist agenda for the reform of
church music set out in its preface. Karl Gustav Fellerer has argued that
the a cappella compositions of Bruckner and Liszt from the 1840s reflect
the impact of the views of Hoffmann and Thibaut.174 But while this is
plausible in the case of Liszt’s ‘Pater noster’ and ‘Ave Maria’, Bruckner’s
early liturgical compositions are more closely related to the traditional
south German stylus a capella than to the music idealized and emulated
in the historicist Palestrina revival.
Of Bruckner’s liturgical compositions from the 1840s, the only pieces
to exhibit relationships to either Palestrina’s language or the Palestrina
style are the masses written during Bruckner’s time as school assistant
in Kronstorf – the Vierstimmige Choral Messe ohne Kyrie und Gloria für den
Gründonnerstag (WAB 9), the Messe ohne Gloria or ‘Kronstorfer Messe’ (WAB
146) and the incomplete Missa pro Quadragesima (WAB 140) – and two set-
tings of the antiphon ‘Asperges me’ (WAB 3). As the subtitles of these
pieces indicate, they were intended for performance during Lent, and
thus reflect the continuing tradition of performing stylus a capella compo-
sitions in this season. Bruckner’s perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella
is most clearly apparent in the two settings of ‘Asperges me’. Both these
pieces, scored – like the masses WAB 9 and 146 – for four-part choir
and organ (with figured bass), suppress some elements of the musical
syntax present in contemporaneous pieces that were not intended for
performance during penitential seasons, such as the two settings of the
hymn ‘Tantum ergo’ (WAB 32 and 43). In place of the chromatic passing
notes, melodic dominance and four-bar phrases found in his settings of
‘Tantum ergo’, the two settings of ‘Asperges me’ are couched in a sober
contrapuntal idiom in which dissonance is restricted to suspensions and
unaccented diatonic passing notes. The opening section of the first of
these settings contains imitative counterpoint: here, Bruckner makes use
of the early contrapuntal training that he had received from Leopold
von Zenetti between 1843 and 1845 to create a short stile antico fugue.
The second setting of ‘Asperges me’ reflects the traditions of Austrian
church music through the alternation of chant and simple homophony
in the Fuxian stylus a capella; the stylistic orientation of this piece, if not
its precise idiom, is closely related to Fux’s own settings of this text from
over a century earlier.175 While these pieces are related to the tradi-
tional stylus a capella, their connection to Palestrina’s language and to the
Palestrina revival is wholly indirect. Unlike Liszt’s ‘Pater noster’ and ‘Ave
Maria’, Bruckner’s compositions from this period represent unreflective
responses to the music and practices that surrounded him in his youth,
rather than self-conscious manifestos for renewal through revival.
Liszt, Bruckner and the ACV

The presence of Palestrinian elements in the early liturgical compositions
of Liszt and Bruckner may suggest that the use of similar elements in their
later compositions (those written from the 1860s onwards) has nothing
to do with wider developments in Catholic church music, most impor-
tantly the activities of the ACV. It could be argued that the use of such
elements in Liszt’s later church music was solely or primarily due to his
own experience of the music of the Sistine Chapel and his increasing self-
identification with Palestrina. (Paul Merrick has emphasized the extent to
which Liszt identified his task as a putative reformer of Catholic church
music with that of Palestrina, even attributing Liszt’s decision to take
minor orders as a consequence of his admiration for and empathy with
him.)176 But while it is important to emphasize that Liszt’s compositional
engagement with Palestrina began well before the foundation of the ACV,
and was at least in part the result of his own studies of Renaissance music,
this need not preclude the possibility that Cecilian activities influenced
his later compositions. Many critical discussions seek however to distance
Liszt’s church music from that of Witt and other Cecilian composers, to
downplay the personal associations between Liszt and the hierarchy of
the ACV, and to ignore the congruities between the views of Liszt and
those of Witt and Haberl. As with the relation between Mendelssohn
and Grell, the polarizing of Liszt and the ACV – while rhetorically ef-
fective – can lead to an oversimplification of the issues involved; it is
dramatically at work in a description by Hermann Kretzschmar from
1888: ‘While the masses of Mich. Haller, Ignaz Mitterer and Fr. Witt keep
closely in whole and in part to the formal method, contrapuntal rules
and harmonic foundations of the Palestrina period, Liszt preserves for
himself all the freedoms and rights of the modern musician.’177 Similarly,
for Otto Ursprung, writing in 1924: ‘Extremes come together once more
in the efforts of Liszt and those of Cecilianism: a radical progressive
principle and tightly constrained historicism, the most delicately intri-
cate scores and primitive, almost columnar [säulenmäßige] successions of
chords, the most individual art of expression and colourless clichés.’178
The majority of modern discussions have also sought to distance Liszt’s
approach to Palestrina from that of the members of the ACV, while most
accounts minimize the extent of Liszt’s relations with Witt and Haberl
and the impact that they had on his compositions.179
Liszt’s contact with the ACV, and in particular with Witt and Haberl,
was nevertheless extensive from the society’s foundation until at least
1876, while the congruity between some of Liszt’s views on liturgical
music and those of the ACV lasted until his death. The contact between
Liszt and Witt included the performance of each other’s church music,
Liszt’s attendance at the ACV general assembly in Eichstätt in 1871, and
the publication and recommendation of several of Liszt’s shorter pieces in
Witt’s Fliegende Blätter. The Missa choralis and ‘Ave maris stella’ (S 34.1/R
499) received entries in the society’s catalogue, while Liszt dedicated
his ‘Tantum ergo’ (S 42.1/R 532a) to Witt and his ‘O salutaris hostia’
(S 40/R 516a) to Haberl.180 The association of Liszt and Witt began in
1869 following Witt’s dedication of his Litaniae Lauretanae to Liszt; in the
same year Witt performed Liszt’s ‘Ave maris stella’, while Liszt recip-
rocated by conducting Witt’s Missa in honorem Sancta Caeciliae in 1873.181
Liszt approved of the activities at the Eichstätt general assembly at which
his ‘Ave Maria’ [II] and ‘Tantum ergo’ were sung, writing to Witt that
‘under your leadership, religious music celebrated a truly great and edi-
fying festival to the glory of God and the furtherance of his worship’.182
Although Liszt attended no further meetings of the ACV, his continued
enthusiasm for the work of the organization in reviving Renaissance
polyphony and the chant is apparent in a letter from 1876 to Princess
Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, which provides a short summary of
the course of church music reform in Regensburg:
The reintegration of Gregorian chant and the revival of the a cappella liturgical
music of Palestrina, Lassus, Anerio and Victoria – that is the be-all and end-all
[le hic et le hoc]. Following the example of Proske, who died in 1861, Witt, Haberl
and others devote themselves with Christian ardour to attain the goal of Musica
divina, which must no longer remain buried like dead letters in libraries, but
must really be sung, published anew, and resound through our churches.183
Elsewhere it is clear that the revival of Renaissance music and the

chant were not the only activities of the ACV for which Liszt felt sym-
pathy. Like Witt, Liszt considered that the highest task of art was the
service of the church – considering art to be ‘the formal incarnation of
the true religion, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman’ – and shared Witt’s
belief in the role of music in the moral education of man.184 Liszt also
demonstrated some degree of interest and affinity with composers who
cultivated Palestrina’s language far more literally than he himself did; re-
sponding to a composer who had submitted a volume of liturgical pieces
for inspection, Liszt commended his use of the ‘old contrapuntal style,
which remains uniquely valid and appropriate for unaccompanied
liturgical music’.185 Similarly, in 1885 Liszt praised the Cecilian com-
poser J. B. Diebold, whose church compositions ‘keep faithfully to the
great tradition of Palestrina and Lassus, without wretched bondage
[leidige Knechtschaft ] to it’.186
It is clear that Liszt’s involvement with the ACV and sympathy with
its composers cannot be ruled out as a factor in the stylistic orientation
of his later church music. Similarly, although it could be argued that
the increasing use of elements of Palestrina’s language in the liturgical
works of Bruckner from 1861 onwards – and especially from 1868 – was
the product of his earlier study of Renaissance music and of his arduous
contrapuntal studies with Simon Sechter (1788–1861), Bruckner’s links
with Cecilians may have helped to shape the idioms of his later liturgical
pieces.187 As with Liszt, however, Bruckner’s relationships with the re-
formers of church music have been critically dismissed as a contributory
factor to his style. Fellerer argues that the musical and liturgical orienta-
tion of Witt and the ACV was wholly foreign to Bruckner, while Michaela
Auchmann has denied that the activities of the Cecilians had any impact
on Bruckner’s music: ‘The conflict between the Cecilians and their op-
ponents in Austria did not affect Bruckner. He stands in the Austrian
tradition of viewing church music. He wrote his works in the style of his
time and of his character.’188 A. C. Howie is similarly dismissive, arguing
that works such as the Pange lingua et Tantum ergo (1868) and ‘Os justi’ (1879)
reflect nothing other than Bruckner’s first-hand knowledge of chant and
Renaissance polyphony, and cannot be seen as signifying sympathy with
the aims of the ACV.189
In fact these two motets, out of all Bruckner’s liturgical music, have the
closest connections to the ACV. ‘Os justi’ was dedicated to the Regens chori
at St Florian, Traumihler, who served alongside Witt, Haberl, Koenen
and eight others as one of the original referees of the Vereins-Catalog, while
‘Tantum ergo’ was first published in Witt’s Musica sacra.190 Witt regularly
altered and sometimes recomposed the pieces published in his journals
in order to enhance their suitability for the liturgy: in editing a mass
by Ett, for example, he replaced the central section of the Credo with
his own music, arguing that the original was ‘a monstrosity, a liturgical
absurdity [Unding]’.191 Witt’s most notorious act of editorial emendation
was however his correction of Bruckner’s Pange lingua et Tantum ergo; to
the indignation of the composer, he tacitly removed a 9-8 suspension
from the final bars of the piece. This incident is usually interpreted ide-
ologically, as a conflict between Bruckner, the progressive composer and
Witt, the conservative/historicist censor; Otto Biba for example writes
that Witt made the alteration in order to make the work correspond with
his strict Cecilian demands.192 Witt’s own description of why he made
the alteration suggests however that Bruckner’s work was not censored
for transgressing the stylistic norms of the ACV – Bruckner’s suspension
was, after all, correctly prepared – but was altered for purely practical
reasons:
Correction. The composer of the ‘Tantum ergo’ appearing on p. 44 (1885),

Herr Prof. A. Bruckner from Vienna, wishes that the note A in the alto in
the third from last bar of the Amen be changed back to B, as it clearly stands
in the manuscript. The suspended dissonance [Vorhalt (Dissonanz)] is certainly
justified. This is because the alto previously sings the same B. I had altered
the note because our alto singers would have found it very difficult to sing the
dissonant B against the C entering above in the tenors. . . . Since now however
the composer insists on the B, it is hereby corrected.193
Before accepting Witt’s explanation at face value, it is necessary to

take account of the other alterations that he made to the ‘Tantum ergo’,
which have been ignored in previous discussions of this matter.194 In
addition to the conversion of a dissonant suspension into a consonance
in bar 36, Witt altered the note values in the soprano part in bar 34,
added a passing note to the tenor line in bar 32, and, most significantly,
doubled the note values in bars 9 and 10. None of these other alterations
could be explained in terms of making the piece easier to perform but,
conversely, none of them seems intended to make the work conform
more readily to the Palestrina ideal; the doubling of the note values does
however seem intended to improve the declamation of the text. What
the alterations reveal is not Witt’s desire to make the piece conform with
Cecilian requirements, but his treatment of the ‘Tantum ergo’ as a piece
of functional music, alterable at will, rather than an inviolable artwork.
It was of no concern to Witt whether the composer was a provincial
choir director or organist at the imperial Hofkapelle in Vienna: short
and simple contributions to his journals were all judged by the same
functional considerations.
The ‘Tantum ergo’ incident was Bruckner’s only direct contact with
Witt. But Bruckner’s relationships with the church music reformers were
just as extensive as Liszt’s, and more complicated. While Liszt only had
contact with the hierarchy of the ACV, Bruckner was also acquainted with
supporters and opponents of the Österreichischer Cäcilienverein (ÖCV ) and
of the later Oberösterreichischer Diözesan Cäcilien-Verein (OÖCV ).195 These
organizations had been founded by Witt’s opponent Habert, municipal
organist at Gmunden since 1861, in order to provide a counterpart to
the ACV whose reforms were better attuned to the traditions of Austrian
church music; he condemned Witt’s reforms as excessive, arguing for
the retention and propagation of concerted church music and for the
requirements of the church to be balanced with those of art.196 The ÖCV
was formed in order to provide an Austro-Hungarian equivalent of the
ACV, serving the interests of church musicians who had no wish to align
themselves with a German organization; Josef Moser has linked the
struggle between the two organizations to the competing political ideals
of klein- and großdeutschland.197 Bruckner’s friend Traumihler had been
drawn into the conflict surrounding Habert’s foundation of the ÖCV
in 1871. Traumihler had been one of the most significant contributors
to Habert’s Zeitschrift für katholische Kirchenmusik (founded in 1867), which
served from 1871 as the journal of the ÖCV. While initially Traumihler
had advised Josef Rudigier, the Bishop of Linz, against granting epis-
copal approbation to the ACV, he experienced a change of heart during
the ACV general assembly in Eichstätt in 1871 and as a consequence
campaigned against the ÖCV. As the most senior Upper Austrian mem-
ber of the ACV, Traumihler played a vital part in Witt’s repeated attempts
to strengthen his support there: in the increasingly vitriolic skirmishes
between the two organizations, Habert represented Traumihler as a
fifth columnist for ‘the foreigner Witt’, ridiculing his blinkered devotion
to Palestrina and to Cecilian ‘school exercises’ (Schülerarbeiten).198
Given Traumihler’s role in the conflicts between the ACV and the
ÖCV/OÖCV, Bruckner’s dedication of several of his later motets to him
has an additional significance. Even though it would be unwise to in-
terpret such gestures as signs of Bruckner taking the side of the ACV in
these disputes (although this would be in tune with his clericalism and
pan-German sympathies), Bruckner’s dedication of the gradual ‘Os justi’
reveals an awareness of, and perhaps some measure of sympathy with,
its aims:
If I am not mistaken, Herr Regens [chori ] wished for an ‘Os justi’ from me. I have
permitted myself to send you one, and was impertinent enough to dedicate it to
Your Reverence (that is if you accept it). Is it the complete text? It would make me
very glad if Your Reverence should gain pleasure from it. [ It is] without sharps
and flats, without seventh chords, without 64 chords and without chords of four
and five notes.199
Bruckner’s summary of the elements of his musical discourse that he

has deliberately suppressed undeniably shows a desire to correspond
with Traumihler’s conception of true liturgical music. Whether or not
Bruckner would have regarded this Cecilian composition as an isolated
experiment or a part of the mainstream of his liturgical oeuvre is a more
complex question, which will be addressed later.
While Bruckner’s contacts with Witt and Traumihler represent his
relationship with the ACV, his position at the Hofkapelle and continued
contact with the clergy and musicians at Linz cathedral after his move
to Vienna show his exposure to other strands of theory and practice in
Austrian church music. Most of Bruckner’s acquaintances in Linz seem
to have favoured Habert’s moderate reforms over those of Witt, allowing
for the revival of sixteenth-century music and the chant but also for the
continuation of the strong tradition of concerted music. The founda-
tion of the OÖCV, the result of the small membership, financial straits
and lack of official recognition of the ÖCV, was spearheaded by four of
Bruckner’s acquaintances from Linz: Dr Martin Fuchs, Domkapellmeister
Karl Zappe (1812–71), Domvikar Johann Baptist Burgstaller (1840–1925),
and Bruckner’s chosen successor as cathedral organist, Karl Waldeck
(1841 –1905).200 The relative success of this society was at least in part
a result of its patronage by Bishop Rudigier, with whom Bruckner also
continued to correspond while in Vienna and who was the dedicatee of
‘Tota pulchra es’ (1878).201 In contrast, the musicians at the Hofkapelle
in Vienna were more resistant to the ideas of the reformers. The lack
of enthusiasm for such ideas is reflected in the performance statistics for
the Hofkapelle for the second half of the nineteenth century, which show
that the music of Palestrina and contemporaries was performed seldom
and only in the traditional seasons of Lent and Advent rather than the
more universal cultivation advocated by the ACV.202 During the rest of
the year concerted music predominated in the Hofkapelle, and Cecilian
compositions did not enter its repertory.203
The later liturgical compositions of Liszt and Bruckner

In exploring the relation between the later liturgical music of Liszt and
Bruckner, Palestrina’s language, and the music of the Cecilian reformers,
this discussion focuses on the dozen or so motets produced by both com-
posers in the decades surrounding the foundation of the ACV.204 Most
of these motets evince elements of Palestrina’s language either in a lit-
eral form or in some kind of transformation. Significantly, however, two
motets in each group do not: Liszt’s ‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es
Petrus’ (Pro Papa I and II), and Bruckner’s ‘Locus iste’ and ‘Christus factus
est’ [II] (WAB 10); the ways in which these motets differ from the rest of
the pieces being discussed and the reasons behind such differences will be
explored later. While the rest of these motets contain some Palestrinian
elements, these are rarely used in such a way as to suggest close rela-
tionships with Palestrina’s language; of these motets only Liszt’s ‘Pater
noster’ [III] (S 41/R 521 a) and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’, and Bruckner’s
Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os
justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, can meaningfully be described as being
related, in their totalities, to the language of Palestrina.
Here, it is necessary to examine more generally the ways in which
Palestrinian elements manifest themselves in the liturgical music of Liszt
and Bruckner, since only a few of these works exhibit features that are
clearly related to his language. Such relationships are usually to the
language of Palestrina and his contemporaries in a generalized sense,
rather than to specific works by Palestrina. Two recent discussions have
however asserted the presence of relationships between motets by Liszt
and Bruckner and particular pieces by Palestrina. Peter Ackermann
has viewed Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ (S 7/R 481) as containing
echoes of Palestrina’s five-part motet of the same name, while Wolfgang
Witzenmann links Bruckner’s ‘Ave Maria’ [II] (WAB 6) to four motets by
Palestrina to which Bruckner would have had access: ‘Fratres, ego enim’,
‘Hodie Christus natus est’, ‘Salvator mundi’ and ‘Stabat mater’.205 For
Ackermann, Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ – a quasi-liturgical piece writ-
ten for the Palestrina festival of the Società musicale romana in 1880 – exhibits
motivic similarities to Palestrina’s setting: these take the form of the
prominence of leaps of fourths and fifths in the motifs of both pieces, con-
stituting a possibly conscious reminiscence of the older piece.206 While
the interval of a fourth is indeed prominent at the start of both pieces,
this alone does not however suggest a close relationship between them
and seems to be their only point of similarity (if Liszt’s motet echoes
an earlier work thematically, it is his own ‘Der Einzug in Jerusalem’
from Christus). Similarly, if the relationships that Witzenmann identi-
fies between Bruckner’s ‘Ave Maria’ and four motets by Palestrina are
not convincing, it is because the elements in question are not exclusive
enough to the pieces concerned to suggest that the posited relationships
are significant. While Witzenmann is probably justified in suggesting that
Bruckner’s handling of six- and seven-part textures in the ‘Ave Maria’
was derived to some extent from his study of Renaissance pieces, this
does not necessarily imply, as he argues, that the motet was modelled on
Palestrina’s ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ and ‘Stabat mater’.207 And the
connections asserted between the harmonic and melodic profiles of the
‘Ave Maria’ and Palestrina’s motets are again in no way unique to these
pieces.208 Especially unconvincing is the idea that the cadence in bars
9–10 of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ served as a model for that in bars 9–10
of Bruckner’s motet: not only are the cadences different (Palestrina’s is
an open fifth, Bruckner’s a bare octave), but neither cadence is in any
way exclusive to the pieces concerned (moreover, the open fifth cadence
is characteristic not only of Renaissance music but of the stylus a capella).
All the elements that Witzenmann identifies can be related in more
general terms to the impact that Renaissance music had on Bruckner’s
liturgical music; it does not seem helpful to link them to specific earlier
models. But in one striking case, a short phrase by Palestrina did exercise
a powerful and demonstrable effect on the liturgical music of Liszt and
Bruckner: the opening three chords of ‘Stabat mater’, which for Liszt
‘grip and uplift the human soul’.209 This work was seen earlier to epito-
mize the language of Palestrina for Witt, as well as being Palestrina’s most
ideal composition; Witt shared the sentiments but censured the expres-
sion of Alexander Dmitryevich Oulibischeff ’s evocation of the impact
of these chords: ‘How does this sound? Beautiful, sublime, godly! This
music comes not from earth, but is an act of God’ (That vom Himmel ).210
A description by Liszt’s friend the historian Ambros from 1878 empha-
sizes the role that the opening chords played in the work’s popularity:
Completely apart and individual among Palestrina’s works is his ‘Stabat mater’
for double choir; its opening, with three successive unrelated major triads, A, G
and F, contributed not least to its comparatively great popularity, and all who
listened to it being intoned in the Papal chapel were full of astonishment but
also admiration. . . . These three chords were and are considered to be not only
a symbol of the style of Palestrina, but also to be unique.211
The striking character of the opening chords of ‘Stabat mater’ ensures

that allusions to this passage in nineteenth-century works are generally
easily discernable, while the work’s popularity and the emblematic status
of these chords indicate that such references can generally be regarded as
intentional, and are thus more significant than the vague echoes discussed
above. One such reference was noted earlier in Witt’s Preces stationum crucis
op. 32 no. 9; although the chords occur here in a different key (E–D–C)
this reference can be viewed as a relatively literal quotation since the pro-
gression occurs, uninterrupted, within a similar temporal frame. Liszt’s
frequent references to the opening of the ‘Stabat mater’ are sometimes
similarly literal but more often transformatory, while the two allusions
by Bruckner discussed below are modified versions of Palestrina’s pro-
gression. The quotation and continuation of this progression that occurs
in the coda of ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ from Liszt’s Christus is well known
and has been discussed relatively often (see Ex. 5.3).212 The wider ramifi-
cations of this reference, in particular its problematic associative aspects,
are explored in the next chapter; here it must be noted that this reference
is, like Witt’s, relatively literal (the original tonality is preserved, but the
duration of each chord is extended), and serves as the basis of the remain-
der of the movement (a transposed version of the progression, D–C–B♭,
occurs in bars 918–25 leading to the final cadence). While critical at-
tention has focused on the ‘Stabat mater’ reference in Christus, similar
progressions can be found in other works. Of these, the most obvious is at
the opening of the Introı̈tus (S 268.1 /R 390a) for organ (there C–B♭–A♭),
receiving a fortissimo statement later in the piece. And while Ackermann
related Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ to Palestrina’s motet of the same
name, it presents a much clearer reference to the ‘Stabat mater’; here
the opening chordal progression occurs in a refrain at bars 46–57 in
a relatively literal presentation and in a modified form at bars 77–87.
Example 4.9. Franz Liszt, ‘Cantantibus organis’ (S 7/R 481), bars 47–57
In both versions the duration of the individual chords is greatly extended,

with changes of chord every four bars (see Ex. 4.9).
Elsewhere the references to this progression by Liszt and Bruckner are
less literal; such progressions are frequent in Liszt’s choral music and the
following are given only as examples of the forms that such less literal
references take. Two are clear in the Messe für Männerchor (1848, rev. 1859),
perhaps in part prompting Liszt’s remark that ‘while writing it, Rome
and Palestrina came back into my mind’.213 At the start of the Kyrie the
first two chords refer to the progression relatively literally (c–B♭) while in
place of the expected A♭ chord there is a shift away from literality with
a half-diminished chord; in bars 92–5 of the Gloria the progression is
again transformed (D–c–b♭ instead of the expected D–C–B♭).214 While
such references are rarer in Bruckner’s church music, three stand out in
the antiphon ‘Tota pulchra es’. The first is particularly striking, since it
occurs at the first entry of the organ and is marked fortissimo in contrast
to a quieter preceding section; here the first two chords of the ‘Stabat
mater’ progression represent a literal reference, while the third chord
is altered (C–B♭–A). The second reference to the progression occurs at
bars 55–7, coinciding with the second passage for full organ, and here
too the third chord is altered (D–C–F); the organ breaks off dramatically
after the first two chords making this swerve away from literal quotation
even more emphatic. Finally, a third reference occurs at bars 65–6, this
time more literal (d–C–B♭) providing a consummation, after two delays,
of the chord progression and of the union between this motet and the
‘Stabat mater’.
The significance of all these references is in itself limited; what is
more important is how the ‘Stabat mater’ chords function more gen-
erally as a source for the harmonic language of the church music of
Liszt and Bruckner. Chains of root-position chords, either with adjacent
roots or utilizing secondary chords, are the most important element of
Palestrina’s language deployed in the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner.
In the motets by Bruckner which come closer to the literal replication of
this language in other respects, such chains of root-position chords are
particularly prominent; they can be found in their simplest form in bars
43–9 of ‘Os justi’. The preponderance of root-position chords is partic-
ularly noticeable elsewhere in Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, ‘Tota pulchra
es’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’. In works that are in general more distant
from Palestrina’s language, these progressions are sometimes deployed
as a means of expressing a particular portion of text; this is particularly
striking in ‘Christus factus est’ [III] (WAB 11), where such a root pro-
gression (A♭–b♭–C, bars 12–13), occurring after a short unison passage
which places it in relief, accompanies the words ‘[obediens] usque ad
mortem’ (‘[obedient] even unto death’).215 Such progressions are also
common in the motets by Liszt under discussion, particularly ‘Pater nos-
ter’ [III] and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’; elsewhere they are perhaps most
striking in the revised version of ‘Ave Maria’ [I] (S 20.2/R 496b). At first
glance, such chords, especially in the opening and closing bars of the ‘Ave
Maria’, might be viewed as a wholly progressive use of non-functional
harmony. The links between such chord relationships and other com-
positional products of the Palestrina revival should not however be
disregarded.
In addition to chains of diatonic root-position chords, the use
of chromatic-third root progressions can also be connected to the
Example 4.10. Ingegneri, ‘Plange, quasi virgo’, Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, bars 1 –5
Palestrina revival and to the language of late sixteenth-century church

music. Such chord relationships in music from the second half of the nine-
teenth century are usually subsumed within the concept of Wagnerian
harmony, and indeed the best-known example of these progressions is
the ‘sleep’ motif from Die Walküre and Siegfried.216 Even in liturgical works,
such chords are generally considered to be wholly progressive: in com-
menting on the bold, chromatic-third related chords in bars 24–5 of
the Credo of Liszt’s Messe für Männerchor, Charles White writes that ‘the
chromaticism is in advance of the kind of musical expression favoured so
highly by Wagner’.217 But chromatic-third relationships are also present
in sixteenth-century music. In describing the chord relationships at the
opening of Ingegneri’s ‘Plange quasi virgo’ from the Responsoria hebdomadae
sanctae, Jeppesen noted the similarity between sixteenth-century uses
of chromatic-third progressions and the ‘over-ripe homophony’ of the
Romantic era.218 He does not suggest, however, that in this regard
some nineteenth-century compositions may have been informed di-
rectly by late sixteenth-century harmonic practice. While nineteenth-
century composers would have encountered similar progressions in other
old Italian pieces, the popularity of Ingegneri’s collection (attributed to
Palestrina until 1898) was such that these responsories, as has been seen
earlier, played a key role in defining perceptions of Palestrina’s style.
Although chromatic-third relationships are present in other pieces in this
collection, the opening bars of ‘Plange quasi virgo’ provide the clearest
example (Ex. 4.10). The first of the pairs of chords is the most common
type of chromatic-third relationship in sixteenth-century music, a com-
mon note being present in both chords (in this case, E). In the second,
more striking progression there is no common note.
Where chromatic-third progressions occur in the music of the com-
posers discussed earlier – most notably, Grell, Bellermann, Witt and
Haller – they are in general restricted to the first type (the more striking
examples of such chords are linked by a common note but not at the
same pitch). In the later liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, both
Example 4.11. Anton Bruckner, ‘Salvum fac populum’ (WAB 40), bars 35–57
types of progression can be found. Two clear examples are present in

the Credo of Liszt’s Missa choralis (bars 239–40: G–E; bars 251 –2: A–F♯).
Similar uses of such chords with a common note are present in bars
32–3 of Liszt’s ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ and bars 13–14 of Bruckner’s
Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, while in bars 42–3 of ‘Salvum fac populum’
a more arresting effect is produced by the chords being related by a
common note but not at the same pitch (G–E♭; see Ex. 4.11). The use of
the second kind of progression is less common in the liturgical music of

Liszt and Bruckner, but is particularly remarkable in Bruckner’s ‘Ecce
sacerdos magnus’. Such chords occur at the opening of the piece and
in the refrain ‘Ideo jurejurando’: here three pairs of chromatic-third
chords without common notes (E–c, G–e♭, B♭–f♯) succeed one another,
the sequence climaxing with two such chords with a common note (A–F).
The use of diatonic and chromatic root progressions reflects the im-
pact of the Palestrina revival on the harmonic practice found in the later
liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner at a local level. It is equally im-
portant to assess the extent to which their motets replicate Palestrina’s
modal language, and whether modality is assigned a structural role in
them. In most of these pieces, Renaissance modal practice is reflected
only in short passages of quasi-modal progressions. The predominance of
root-position chords often produces short quasi-modal passages in Liszt’s
motets; the first eleven bars of ‘Anima Christi’ create a modal impression
through the use of secondary chords alternated with the tonic. Similarly,
the opening of ‘Ave verum corpus’ creates an aeolian impression through
the use of flattened sixths and sevenths in the opening bars. Elsewhere,
however, sections of Liszt’s motets, though never whole pieces, seem gen-
uinely modal.219 The first half of ‘Pater noster’[III], bars 1 –23, initially
gives the impression of quasi-modality (the opening chord progression
is I–vi–IV–vi–I), but it is more helpful to understand the first part of the
piece as being in the mixolydian mode on F, because of the prominent
flattened sevenths and since all the chords are accommodated within the
framework of that mode.
In Bruckner’s later motets, the handling of the modes is more sophis-
ticated than in Liszt’s. Some exhibit only quasi-modality, such as ‘Ave
Maria’ [II] (WAB 6) and the opening bars of ‘Virga Jesse’. A significant
number of the motets have however been described as modal in the criti-
cal literature: both ‘Tantum ergo’ and ‘Vexilla regis’, are usually labelled
as phrygian, but Bruckner’s use of this mode is widely differentiated in
these motets. In only one of these motets, ‘Os justi’, are the harmonic
resources limited to triads formed on the degrees of the mode. As the
description by Bruckner quoted earlier indicates, ‘Os justi’ is ‘without
sharps and flats’, and as a consequence, the subdominant chord (which
in the lydian mode is diminished) is entirely avoided. All the cadences in
the piece are on the final and the second degree of the mode; Bruckner
compensates for this restriction by using far more continuous textures
than in his other motets. Despite such restrictions Bruckner’s use of the
lydian mode does not resemble Palestrina’s, since the frequent flattening
of the fourth degree in sixteenth-century lydian compositions makes it
identical, in tonal material if not in cadential behaviour, to the transposed
ionian mode.
Bruckner’s use of the phrygian mode in ‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Iam lucis
orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Vexilla regis’ resists generalizations.
In ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ the harmonies are largely restricted to triads
formed on the degrees of the mode, with the important exception that
the dominant chord of E minor replaces the phrygian chord on the
fifth degree of the mode (which is diminished). ‘Tantum ergo’ contains
two other deviations from sixteenth-century phrygian practice: in bar
20 a double suspension creates a half-diminished chord, which although
justified by the suspension resolves onto a 64 chord, while a diminished-
seventh chord whose bass note is approached by a tritone leap occurs
in bar 27. Both features suggest freer harmonic parameters than those
governing ‘Os justi’ and ‘Iam lucis’.
More problematic are the divergences from phrygian practice in ‘Tota
pulchra es’ and ‘Vexilla regis’. This is most apparent in the longer of
the two motets, ‘Tota pulchra es’, since while it begins and ends in the
phrygian mode on E, many of the harmonic events in the piece – in-
cluding a perfect cadence in D♭ major – cannot be assimilated into this
framework. While in most nineteenth-century modal pieces the har-
monic and melodic resources are drawn solely from the mode, or al-
ternate between a mode and the parallel minor or major scale, ‘Tota
pulchra es’ presents elements from three sources: E phrygian, E minor
and a further strand of notes and chords foreign to both the above. In
‘Tota pulchra es’, as in ‘Vexilla regis’, Bruckner confronts the central
problem of composition in the phrygian mode: the substitution of an
alternative structural dominant, necessary since a phrygian chord based
on the fifth of the scale is diminished. While in sixteenth-century phry-
gian pieces the fourth degree of the mode functions as the structural
dominant, Timothy L. Jackson has argued that in ‘Vexilla regis’ the flat-
tened subdominant (A♭ in E phrygian) fulfils this function.220 Bruckner
confronts this problem differently in ‘Tota pulchra es’. All excursions
outside the phrygian harmonic space are prompted by the intrusion of
a triad on B♭: the flattened supertonic present in the phrygian mode on
A. The result of these intrusions is that the piece alternates between two
tonal areas: E phrygian/E minor and A phrygian/F major. The substi-
tute structural dominant, A, thus serves not only as the main cadence
point but as the tonic of the secondary tonal area of the piece. Instead of
simple shifts between a mode and its nearest major or minor key, Bruck-
ner shifts from E phrygian to an alternative phrygian area a fourth apart
(a similar alternation between the phrygian on E and A is present in the
opening bars of the Finale from the Symphony no. 6). The two central
tonal areas and the tonal ambiguities of the rest of the work are presaged
in the intonation at the opening of the piece, which although based on
the third psalm tone (phrygian) revolves around its dominant, A.
The harmonic complexity of ‘Tota pulchra es’ differs greatly from
Bruckner’s treatment of the lydian mode in ‘Os justi’. But in neither of
these works does Bruckner adopt Palestrina’s modal language literally.
In these compositions – as in the motets by Liszt and Bruckner in which
the modes play a far smaller melodic, harmonic and structural role – the
use of the modes, while prompted by Palestrina’s language, rarely seems
similar to it.
In exploring the treatment of dissonance by Liszt and Bruckner, it is
useful to return to the music of the ACV. Cecilian compositions present
two distinct approaches to dissonance: those (for example, by Koenen
and Schmidt) which evoke Palestrina’s sound world without adopting his
restrictive dissonance treatment, and those (especially the music of Haller
and Mitterer) in which elements of Palestrina’s language are used within
the technical basis of the rules of the strenge Satz. This distinction is also
important in examining the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner. Liszt’s
early setting of ‘Pater noster’ was seen to evince a concern for strict
dissonance treatment; here dissonances are limited to lower auxiliary
notes, unaccented passing notes and 4-3 suspensions. His later motets
rarely exhibit a similar concern for the strict dissonance treatment, and it
is clear that the dissonances were conceived in chordal terms. Although
in those compositions evincing prominent chains of roots and quasi-
modal passages – ‘Pater noster’ [III] and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ –
dissonances are to some extent restricted to unaccented passing notes,
neither contains Palestrinian suspension formulas. ‘Ave verum corpus’
and ‘Tantum ergo’ contain prominent 4-3 suspensions in their final bars,
but in both cases these appear as isolated gestures, brief evocations of
an idiom unrelated to the prevailing harmonic language and dissonance
procedures of these works.
For Bruckner, the dissonance procedures of the strenge Satz were not
ineluctably linked to the replication of earlier styles, but rather were
conceived as universal norms; this is clear in the text of his inaugural
lecture as tutor at the University of Vienna, in which the rules of counter-
point are seen as laws of nature.221 But while all Bruckner’s later motets
share certain dissonance procedures, their use is by no means always
the same. These pieces can be divided into three groups: works evincing
freer dissonance treatment (‘Ave Maria’ [II], ‘Afferentur regi’, ‘Inveni
David’, ‘Locus iste’, ‘Virga Jesse’ and the two settings of ‘Christus factus
est’); those in which, despite their harmonic freedom, the treatment of
suspended dissonances is more closely related to Palestrina’s language
(‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’ and ‘Vexilla regis’), and those in which strict
dissonance procedures and a transformatory re-creation of Palestrina’s
language are united (‘Pange lingua’, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pul-
chra es’, ‘Os justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’). In the first group, the
uses of elements of Palestrinian dissonance treatment appear as ges-
tures divorced from the technical basis of the rest of the piece. This is
suggested in bar 46 of ‘Ave Maria’ [II] by the use of a cadential 4-3
suspension with an ornamental resolution (the same suspension has a
similar effect in bar 42 of ‘Inveni David’). In the motets in the second
and third groups dissonance procedures are more closely linked to the
re-creation of Palestrina’s language. This is clearest in ‘Salvum fac pop-
ulum’ (Ex. 4.11) where the forms of cadential dissonance, in addition to
the work’s responsorial structure and use of falsobordone, seem to emulate
Allegri’s Miserere and Palestrina’s Improperia (the latter was the sole work by
Palestrina in Bruckner’s possession at the time of his death).222 Elsewhere
Bruckner frequently uses chains of alternating 9-8 and 4-3 suspensions
over sequential progressions of root-position chords; this is particularly
clear in bars 11 –16 and 53–60 of ‘Os justi’. While the idea of chains
of suspensions may recall species counterpoint, they have their basis in
Palestrina’s language, where such chains rarely extend to more than two
or three components. Bruckner’s use of continuous chains of suspensions
in ‘Tota pulchra es’ (bars 57–62) seems to serve a special function: that
of placing into relief the two consonant references to ‘Stabat mater’ that
surround this passage.
As with the compositions of the ACV examined earlier, homophony
and simple rhythmic polyphony are the predominant textures in these
motets. In ‘Salvum fac populum’ passages of homophony, simple
polyphony and falsobordone are alternated in a manner similar to Witt’s
falsobordone compositions, but with a swerve away from literality in bars
53–7 (see Ex. 4.11) produced – as in ‘Tota pulchra es’ – by the chromatic
modification of a sequential chain of root-position chords. Bruckner’s
use of falsobordone has been viewed by Leopold Nowak as a continuation
of the idiom of his liturgical settings from the 1840s.223 This is mislead-
ing, however, since none of Bruckner’s early liturgical works contains
falsobordone passages, and the idiom was not part of the traditional stylis-
tic palette of south German or Austrian church music.224 Occasionally
Liszt too evokes Renaissance falsobordone, most clearly in the opening bars
of ‘O salutaris hostia’ [II] and of ‘Ave maris stella’ (elsewhere it is used
extensively, and more literally, in Crux! (S 35/R 501)). The dominance of
homophonic textures in Liszt’s later motets generally precludes the use
of imitation or even simple rhythmic polyphony, and where imitation
does occur, it generally takes the form of one voice being separated from
the rest of the texture to initiate an idea that is subsequently developed
chordally, a procedure that does not suggest Palestrina’s language (for ex-
ample ‘Ave verum corpus’ bars 11 –24 and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ bars
22–29). Although several of Bruckner’s later motets present sections of
imitative writing, only that in ‘Os justi’ is extended; the predominant
texture is rhythmic polyphony.
Earlier it has been seen that it is often the treatment of rhythm that
most distances Cecilian compositions from Palestrina. In the later motets
of Liszt and Bruckner, the use of repetitive rhythmic patterns, sequences
and regular phrases has a similar effect. This is especially apparent in
Liszt’s ‘Ave verum corpus’ and the opening of ‘Pater noster’ [III], where
the regular two-bar phrases are separated and emphasized by rests. Such
regular periods are also present in ‘Ave maris stella’, where their ef-
fect is heightened by rhythmic sequences. A greater degree of rhythmic
freedom, both at a local level and in terms of structure is evident in ‘O
salutaris hostia’ [I] and ‘Tantum ergo’; in neither case, however, does this
greater rhythmic freedom seem intended to emulate Palestrina. The ma-
jority of Bruckner’s later motets also move in regular phrases. While the
exclusive use of four-bar phrases and rhythmic sequences contributes to
the similarity between ‘Locus iste’ and Viennese Classical church music,
the four-bar phrases of ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ make it resemble, in con-
trast, the ‘Protestantizing’ modern Kirchenlieder condemned by the ACV.
‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Os justi’ exhibit more irregular
phrasing and fewer rhythmic sequences, however; in ‘Tantum ergo’ it
is the irregular phrases that most distance it from the numerous similar
settings of this text published in Witt’s journals. It is in the imitative sec-
tion of ‘Os justi’, however, that Bruckner is most successful in cultivating
the rhythmic freedom of Renaissance polyphony; this alone serves to
differentiate his fugal imitative writing from that of Witt.
These motets, considered as totalities, present an extraordinary variety
of responses to the Palestrina ideal. While several of the later motets of
Liszt and Bruckner evince only a limited or localized engagement with
Palestrina’s language, the stylistic orientation of other works resembles
the compromise (though not the precise idiom) of the ‘Wittian style’. Only
Bruckner’s ‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os
justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, however, are in their entireties informed
by relationships to Palestrina’s language, while not replicating it literally.
It is important to establish why the later motets of both composers present
such a mixture of stylistic stances, why some are more closely related to
Palestrina’s language than others, and whether it is those associated with
the Cecilians that come closer to this language.
In considering these questions with regard to Bruckner, it is impor-
tant to establish whether the use of Palestrinian elements represents a
continuation of the stylus a capella, or whether it reflects the reforms of
the German and Austrian Cecilians. It was seen that the relationships to
Palestrina present in Bruckner’s early liturgical music were derived not di-
rectly from the music unearthed and emulated by the Palestrina revival,
but rather indirectly from the traditional cultivation of the Palestrina
style. In general, such relationships in Bruckner’s later motets have been
explained in similar terms: as a continuation and culmination of the
Fuxian stylus a capella, unrelated to the historicist revival.225 But the
relationships discussed above are to the language of Palestrina, not to
the stylus a capella. While the dissonance treatment found in Bruckner’s
later motets is related in part to the traditions of Austrian church
music, Bruckner’s use of chromatic-third relationships, adjacent and
quasi-modal root progressions, modality and falsobordone reflects the
historicist revival of Palestrina’s music and language.
In addition, it was seen earlier that even in cases where relationships
to Palestrina’s language were derived from the music popularized by the
historicist revival, this language was still associated for early nineteenth-
century Catholic composers primarily with Advent and Lent; conversely,
the works of members of the ACV that were intended for these seasons
do not diverge stylistically from the rest of their liturgical output. This
pattern of propagating Palestrina’s language universally rather than re-
stricting it to penitential seasons is shared by Bruckner’s later motets. In
fact, the pattern here represents a complete reversal of that seen in his
early liturgical pieces, since of all the later motets, the only ones asso-
ciated with these seasons – the two settings of the Maundy Thursday
gradual ‘Christus factus est’ – exhibit the weakest connections to Palest-
rina’s language. Strikingly, however, while ‘Christus factus est’ [II] is
not related to the language of Palestrina, it evinces strong affinities with
the stylus a capella tradition. This is especially apparent in the contra-
puntal sections of the work. The first such section, bars 13–21, is a stile
antico fugue that, like the fugal opening of ‘Asperges me’, resembles the
contrapuntal idiom of Austrian Baroque church music. In addition, the
use of successive imitative entries that occurs in bars 32–45 has been
linked to Lotti’s ten-part ‘Crucifixus’ (a work that Bruckner performed
repeatedly in the 1860s with the Liedertafel ‘Frohsinn’), again reflecting the
stile antico tradition rather than Palestrina’s language.226 While this piece,
uniquely among Bruckner’s later motets, represents a continuation of
the traditional stile antico, the remainder of these works – where related
to Palestrina’s language – represent a break with tradition.
This picture can be confirmed through a consideration of the dedi-
catees and intended performers of Bruckner’s later motets. As has been
noted earlier, Bruckner’s ‘Pange lingua’ and ‘Os justi’ can be linked
firmly with the ACV (though in the case of the former, this connection
is not related to the origin of the piece) while ‘Tota pulchra es’ can be
linked with the OÖCV. The other motets that come closest to Palestrina’s
language, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, cannot be
associated with either organization (while it has been speculated that the
latter was intended as a contribution to one of Witt’s journals, there is no
evidence for this).227 It is significant, however, that of the works composed
from the 1870s onwards, those associated with Cecilian institutions, Linz
cathedral (OÖCV) and St Florian (ACV ) – ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os justi’,
‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’, ‘Virga jesse’ and ‘Vexilla regis’ – exhibit more
substantial relationships to Palestrina’s language than those intended
primarily for performance at the traditionalist Hofkapelle (the two settings
of ‘Christus factus est’). In the light of this it no longer seems tenable to
suggest that the stylistic orientation of Bruckner’s later motets was not
affected by his acquaintance with members of the ACV and OÖCV, or
to assert that Palestrinian elements in these works simply reflect the
continuation of the stylus a capella tradition.
Although among Liszt’s Zwölf Kirchengesänge, ‘Pater noster’ [III] and
‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ contain the most substantial connections to
Palestrina’s language, only the former is associated with the ACV (through
its official publication by Pustet in 1870), while the latter may have been
composed before Liszt’s friendship with Witt and Haberl developed.
Neither ‘O salutaris hostia’ [I] (dedicated to Haberl), ‘Tantum ergo’
(dedicated to Witt), ‘Ave maris stella’ (which received an entry in the
Vereins-Catalog), or ‘Ave Maria’ [II] (published alongside ‘Pater noster’
[III]) exhibit a significant number of Palestrinian elements, though this
does not by itself divorce them from Cecilian composition. ‘Tantum
ergo’, for example, while not resembling Palestrina’s language in any
sense, would have been regarded as a wholly acceptable piece of re-
formed liturgical music due to its simplicity, sparing use of chromaticism,
slow-moving homophonic textures, chant-like melodies and the avoid-
ance of secular idioms. In ‘Tantum ergo’ the emulation of Palestrina led
not to the inclusion of a significant number of Palestrinian elements, but
to the suppression of elements of modern syntax. All six of the above
pieces share this characteristic, as do most of the other pieces in the
collection. Two pieces, however, depart substantially from this norm.
‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es Petrus’ (Pro Papa I and II), composed
around 1880, evince the unison textures and sparse accompaniment that
characterizes Liszt’s problematic late works for the church, most no-
tably the collections Rosario and Septem sacramenta. These works, and the
church music from the final decade of Liszt’s life as a whole, present
little relation to Palestrina, and this stylistic shift may be linked to his in-
creasing misgivings concerning the tendency of the ACV; in 1885, Liszt
wrote:
My Via crucis, Septem sacramenta and Rosario will not be published by Pustet in
Regensburg, the Catholic publisher whom I had wished for. He excused himself
diplomatically, much to my displeasure, considering that the scope of these works
goes beyond that of his numerous normal publications. Another, worse reason
is to blame: my compositions of this sort do not sell, which will not prevent me
from doing justice to those of Witt, Haberl, etc., and contributing as much as
possible to the propagation of the ACV [Sociéte allemande de S t e Cécile]. But in some
things my rule is fixed: ‘I will not do as you do.’228
The latter comment indicates Liszt’s recognition of the increasing gulf

between his compositions and the generality of those of the ACV. But
while ‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es Petrus’ also represent a
move further away from the music of the ACV by virtue of their lack
of Palestrinian elements, they move even closer to the artistic views of
the society in one important respect: their problematic functionality.
The extent to which artistic and functional concerns vie for dominance
in Liszt’s later liturgical music more generally, and to a lesser extent in
the music of Bruckner, is seldom treated as an important or even per-
tinent question.229 But it is vital for the present discussion to consider
the extent to which functional considerations shape the liturgical music
of Liszt and Bruckner, and whether the Cecilian view of a primacy of
function had an impact on their compositional practice.
It has been seen that Witt posited two separate strands of judgement for
church music: one set of criteria for music that aspired to both aesthetic
and functional worth, and another for music that was merely liturgical.
The ways in which these strands interact, and the interpretive problems
that they create are also relevant to Liszt’s late church music. While the
functional considerations that inform Bruckner’s ‘Salvum fac populum’
and the harmonizations of ‘Veni creator spiritus’ and ‘Ave Regina coelo-
rum’ do not achieve primacy in the rest of his later liturgical music,
Liszt’s later church output does not contain such a clear divide between
artworks and functional music. Some earlier critics, most notably Peter
Raabe, consider all the church music produced in Liszt’s final decade
to be of merely functional worth.230 But Ernst Günter Heinemann con-
siders the issue to be more complex, arguing that the problematizing of
the divide between art and functional music is fundamental to Liszt’s
religious compositions; the conflict between aesthetic and functional cri-
teria is enacted and embodied in individual pieces.231 While this conflict
characterizes Liszt’s output as a whole, it is most apparent in his later
church music, the product of ‘aesthetic weariness and distrust of the
very principles of art. . . . The resignation of the later Liszt, which he
vouched for only in occasional remarks, becomes effective in the com-
positions as the destruction of aesthetic norms.’232
Heinemann’s contention that the conflict between art and function
is thematic in Liszt’s liturgical music has not been treated with the
seriousness that it deserves by American and British scholars.233 It has
become clear, after all, that the notion of a conflict between functional
and aesthetic concerns is no speculative conceit, but rather a fundamen-
tal aspect of church music of the second half of the nineteenth century.
While Witt sought to divide church music into two discrete strands,
the aesthetic and the purely functional, these strands meet and collide
in Liszt’s later church music. In the Zwölf Kirchengesänge the eclecticism
is not merely one of different styles, but of different aesthetic criteria.
While it would be impossible to explain the functional aspects of Liszt’s
church music solely in terms of the influence of the ACV, there can be
little doubt that the functionality of church music resulting in part from
the wider Palestrina revival affected not merely Liszt’s liturgical style,
but also his aesthetic orientation.
Liszt’s Missa choralis and Bruckner’s Mass in E minor

Although the music that has been examined so far in this study has in
general been restricted to single-movement motets and similar liturgical
pieces, an exception has to be made for Liszt’s Missa choralis (1865,
revised 1869) and Bruckner’s Mass in E minor (1866, revised 1876, 1882,
1885 and 1896), not least because these have been the works most often
linked to the language of Palestrina and the Palestrina style in critical
discussions. In addition, both masses have been viewed as strongly
linked to the reforms of the Cecilians, even though both works predate
the foundation of the ACV.
Both masses were favourably reviewed by Cecilians: in the case of
Liszt by Haberl, on behalf of the ACV, and in the case of Bruckner by
Habert, later founder of the ÖCV. Liszt played over the Missa choralis to
Haberl in Rome in June 1869, an event recalled by Haberl in the entry
for the mass in the Vereins-Catalog:
The referee was fortunate enough to have heard the conception of the mass
explained and performed by the author himself in Rome, and will never forget
the deep religious impression that shone through this musical prayer: thus Liszt
hears the Holy Mass. If therefore I am in favour of the acceptance of the work
into the Vereins-Catalog, it is . . . because the chromatic element – that comes to
the fore by the way only in the ‘Qui tollis’ and ‘Miserere’ of the Gloria and Agnus
Dei and in the ‘Crucifixus’ – arouses here not ‘restlessness, painful agitation or
world-weariness [Unruhe, leidenschaftliche Aufregung, oder Weltschmerz]’, but on the
contrary brings thoughts to our souls of woe from deepest pity for the crucified
saviour, and because this subjective conception appears not to go beyond the
limits of the church.234
The second basis for Haberl’s acceptance is that, by and large, the mass
treats the liturgical text correctly (Liszt’s inclusion of the intonations of
the priest at the beginning of the Gloria and Credo within his choral
setting ought, according to the procedural rules of the catalogue, to have
resulted in its exclusion). Haberl summarized his view of the work by
stating that it does not ‘go beyond the limits of sacred-dramatic expression
[kirchlich dramatischen Ausdruckes] or the liturgy, even if it touches them’.235
In 1890, however, he was to reconsider his opinion of the mass, and
it was stricken from the catalogue for going beyond the limits of the
liturgy. Haberl argues that he mistakenly accepted the mass for the Vereins-
Catalog before having heard a liturgical performance of it; after listening
to portions of the work at the seventh general meeting of the ACV in
1877, he realized that his earlier judgement had been clouded by Liszt’s
entrancing personality and playing.236 Haberl’s volte-face reflects the
increased rigidity of the ACV in the years after Witt’s death: he cites
another critic of the mass who considered it to be liturgically acceptable
now only for the ‘most extreme left-wingers’ (äusserste Linke) of the ACV.237
Bruckner’s Mass in E minor also provoked an ambivalent response
from the reformers. The first performance of the mass, in 1869, re-
ceived an unusually lengthy review by Habert, who over the next thirty
years was to be one of the staunchest advocates of Bruckner and his
music. Habert especially acclaimed the ‘Christe’ section of the Kyrie
and the Sanctus for their contrapuntal mastery, and praised the ‘Et
incarnatus’ and ‘Crucifixus’ for the powerful effect created by succes-
sions of simple triads.238 Even so, Habert condemned the Benedictus in
terms resembling Haberl’s critique of the Missa choralis: he argues that its
chromaticism arouses passions in contradiction with the text, consider-
ing it to create a ‘depressing, often painful [niederdrückenden, oft peinlichen]
impression’.239
The enthusiasm of Haberl and Habert for the masses is strongly de-
pendent on their liturgical orientation: both works contrast strongly with
the concerted masses of their composers, a contrast reflected in Liszt’s
description of the Missa choralis as ‘a capella – sans accompagnement’
(despite the organ part) and Bruckner’s description of the E minor Mass
as his ‘Vocal Messe’ (despite its wind-band accompaniment).240 While
both Haberl and Habert praise the liturgical orientation of the masses,
they view the chromatic elements as problematic. Liszt, however, ap-
pears to have regarded these elements as the most characteristic aspect
of the Missa choralis, as the key to the work’s authenticity and contem-
poraneity: ‘As for the Sistine, I doubt whether they would be willing
to go to the trouble of rehearsing sufficiently in order not to mess up
some of the modulations, which I could not abstain from without the
risk of falling into an archaism devoid of the feeling to which I aspire!’241
Conversely, both Haberl and Habert represent the chromatic passages in
the works concerned as subjective departures from a prevailing objective,
diatonic language. In this way, the Palestrinian elements in both masses
are subsumed within the ascendant language, while the more chromatic
passages – those parts of the works which most reveal their context and
the personal style of these composers – are seen as deviations from this
dominant language.
This interpretation of the stylistic orientation of these masses is still
prevalent, albeit in a weakened form. Recent critics have asserted that
the masses embody a combination of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century
styles, implying that ancient and modern elements are of equal signif-
icance: Manfred Wagner, for example, views them as attempts to syn-
thesize the strictness of the old Roman style and modern harmonic
resources.242 The result of this misconception is that scholars have been
anxious to assert that this stylistic pluralism does not disturb the unity of
these works: thus, in discussing Bruckner’s mass, Michaela Auchmann
speaks of a ‘blending of styles in which “the diversities are joined together
to form an organic unity”’, while Paul Merrick defends the Missa choralis
from possible charges of disunity and eclecticism by viewing it as an act
of homage.243
In examining the motets of Liszt and Bruckner, it has become clear
that only a small number of them could be viewed as evincing a combi-
nation of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century styles. Similarly, in much
of the Missa choralis and Mass in E minor, the use or evocation of
Renaissance stylistic elements plays a restricted role. Both masses contain
passages which evoke Renaissance falsobordone: bars 79–85 of the Gloria
in the E minor Mass, and bars 46–54 of the Sanctus from the Missa
choralis. Progressions of adjacent root-position chords are fairly common
in Liszt’s mass, occurring for example in the Credo at bars 223–5 and the
Sanctus at bars 9–10; elsewhere, as seen earlier, Liszt’s use of chromatic-
third relationships in the Gloria evokes late sixteenth-century practice.
Both masses also present quasi-modal passages and cadences: this is
especially apparent in the final cadence of Liszt’s Credo and in Bruckner’s
‘Crucifixus’, where quasi-modal roots suggest the dorian mode on F.
The presence of these elements of Palestrina’s language does not sig-
nificantly effect the stylistic orientation of the movements concerned. But
in the Kyrie and Sanctus of Bruckner’s mass, and in the Kyrie of the Missa
choralis, these relationships are more significant. Even here, though, the
extent of the importance of Palestrina’s language should not be exagger-
ated. In Liszt’s mass the language of Palestrina is most important in the
opening twenty-four bars of the Kyrie, but even in relation to this passage
it would be mistaken to claim that the imitative texture ‘precisely follows
the manner of the old Italians’.244 Although Liszt employs fugal imita-
tion in the dorian mode using a chant-based point, the regular entries
of the voices create four-bar phrases, while the sequences in bars 9–13
and 15–21 also distance this passage from Palestrina’s language. Liszt’s
handling of the dorian mode parallels Bruckner’s use of the lydian in ‘Os
justi’, in that while the passage is undoubtedly modal, the total avoid-
ance of accidentals does not produce a resemblance to Palestrina’s use
of the modes (this is especially clear in the diminished fifth produced
in bar 18). Furthermore, the style of the opening twenty-four bars is not
representative of the movement as a whole. In bar 25 a diminished chord
initiates a shift away from the literal replication of Palestrina’s language,
of the type seen earlier in the motets of Witt, Haller and Koenen and
in Bruckner’s ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’ (a diminished
chord serves the same function in the introduction to Via crucis, bar 57).
While the imitative texture and harmonic restraint of the opening re-
turns at bar 33, these diminished harmonies are sufficient to undermine
the dominance of Palestrina’s language. If, in the first ‘Kyrie’, bars 1 –54,
it is therefore possible to talk of an equal combining of languages, Liszt’s
voice is certainly dominant in the remainder of this movement and in
the rest of the mass.
In the Kyrie of Bruckner’s mass a similar combination of languages
is effected, drawn together by the contrapuntal rules of the Palestrina
style. The stylistic interaction is more complex than that in the first
section of Liszt’s Kyrie, and only in the opening bars of the move-
ment (with the quasi-modal I–VI–i progression), and bars 39–57 of the
‘Christe’, is Palestrinian diatonicism predominant. Bruckner’s harmonic
language is asserted not merely in the passages where vertical harmonic
considerations are paramount (such as the alternation of major triads
and augmented-sixth chords in bars 68–70, and the diminished chords
formed on chromatically descending basses in bars 96–7) but is also
apparent through the use of dissonant entries in the polyphonic sections
and a characteristic pattern for delaying the resolution of suspensions
(dissonance – downward leap of a perfect fourth or tritone – resolution)
producing dissonant intensifications of Palestrina’s polyphonic and har-
monic idioms. In terms of rhythm, much of the movement comes closer
to Palestrina’s language than many of the motets examined: repetitive
rhythmic patterns are only predominant in the climax of the second
‘Kyrie’, while frequent syncopations and irregular phrases help to lessen
the impression of rhythmic regularity. Furthermore, in the Kyrie the
shape of the individual melodic lines more closely resembles the chant-
based points of Renaissance polyphony than in much of the rest of the
mass.
It is the use of eight-part vocal polyphony in the first twenty-seven bars
of the Sanctus that provides the closest relationships to the language
of Palestrina in the work. The opening point of imitation, presented
initially in the alto I part, resembles the first point in the Sanctus from
Palestrina’s Missa brevis, a work with which Bruckner would have been
familiar through Proske’s Musica divina. Bruckner’s initial point is related
to Palestrina’s not only in its opening motivic gesture, but through the
shape of the rest of the point, with its upward leaps and scalic descents.
The polyphonic treatment of this point combines canon, free imitation
and rhythmic polyphony; the voice parts are paired for their canonic
entries, which are initiated on adjacent minim beats at seven-bar intervals
(at the same time the voices that are not canonically active present freer
imitations). The exact nature of the relation between this passage and
Palestrina’s language requires clarification, since the diatonic lines may
suggest not only the suppression of elements of Bruckner’s discourse
but an intention to replicate the earlier language. In relation to this
passage, Auchmann speaks of a ‘dependence’ (Anlehnung) on the style of
Palestrina, but the nature of Bruckner’s achievement does not suggest a
passive reliance on an earlier musical language.245 Rather, the relation
between the Sanctus and Palestrina’s music is one of continuation and
supplementation: here, Bruckner cultivates a musical texture – canonic
eight-part counterpoint – that Palestrina did not himself utilize.246 While
the linguistic interaction in the Kyrie suggests the constant combination
of the languages of Palestrina and Bruckner, each varying in dominance,
in the first part of the Sanctus the voice of Bruckner achieves parity by
transforming a point by Palestrina and treating it to a more complex
contrapuntal elaboration than he himself did. Here, Bruckner re-creates
and supplements Palestrina, rather than replicating him.
*
Although the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner may not seem initially
to exhibit a close relation to either Palestrina’s language or to the music of
the Cecilians, it has become clear that their compositions engage, to vary-
ing degrees, with both the music unearthed by the Catholic Palestrina
revival and the ideals of the reformers. Bruckner’s transition from the
cultivation of the stylus a capella in the 1840s, through the transformative
re-creation of Palestrinian elements in the E minor Mass, to the em-
ployment of modality and falsobordone in his later motets – and Liszt’s
progression from the limited evocation of Renaissance homophony in
his earliest liturgical pieces, via the modality of the Kyrie from the Missa
choralis, to the problematic functionality of his later church music – reflect
wider developments in the Catholic Palestrina revival and the activities
of the ACV. It is clear that the interaction of the declining stylus a capella
tradition with the historicist revival is what most serves to differentiate the
south German and Austrian Palestrina revival from activities in north
Germany. In comparing the compositional products of the Protestant
and Catholic revivals, this is the most important factor: while the culti-
vation of the strenge Satz in the liturgical music of Grell and Bellermann
is the product of historicism, the use of elements of it in the music of Ett
and the early motets of Bruckner – and to some extent in the music of
the ACV – is the product of tradition. Similarly, while the linking of the
Palestrina-Stil with Lent and Holy Week may seem a point of similarity be-
tween Catholic and Protestant activities, this connection points to a more
fundamental difference. The use of Palestrinian elements in Protestant
compositions for Holy Week and times of penitence reflects the north
German Schwärmerei for the music of the Sistine Chapel; in contrast,
the early nineteenth-century Catholic linking of this music with peni-
tential seasons was a result of the traditional associations of the stylus a
capella. Despite these important differences, the compositional trajecto-
ries of both revivals exhibit strong similarities. While in the first half of
the century, the early Romantic idealization of Renaissance homophony
encouraged both Protestant and Catholic composers to emulate it, the in-
creasing knowledge of a wider range of Palestrina’s works led composers
from both confessions to cultivate the texture of rhythmic polyphony
(it is clear that the use of this texture was not primarily due to a mis-
understanding of the linear nature of Palestrina’s music, but rather to
an intentionally selective reading of it). In both Catholic and Protestant
music, there is a similar distance between the limited use or evocation
of Palestrinian elements and the replication of his language: for both
Catholics and Protestants, the employment of historically circumscribed
elements, such as nota cambiata and the modes, was restricted rather than
the dominant practice. The majority of the composers examined sought
to conform with contemporary aesthetic requirements, and although
the literal replication of Palestrina’s language formed a limited compo-
nent of both revivals, this could be justified only through the conscious
distancing of church music from norms operative in other fields. While
such replication was justified by Grell, Bellermann and Haller through
polemical engagement with contemporary aesthetic criteria, Witt ac-
corded musical copies legitimacy solely in functional terms and removed
such pieces from the sphere of art.
Finally, the institutional and political differences between the two re-
vivals must briefly be addressed. It has become evident that the two
revivals are aligned differently to the wider cultural and political trends
of the age. Although both the Protestant and Catholic revivals in the
first half of the century were encouraged by the Romantic vogue for
Catholic Italian art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, developments
in the decades surrounding the foundation of the second Reich fostered the
Catholic revival while encouraging Protestant musicians to redirect their
activities. While Prussian nationalism served ultimately to discourage the
idealization of Italian music in north Germany, south German particu-
larism encouraged such revival as an assertion of political and cultural
difference. The institutional underpinnings of both revivals contributed
just as significantly to their differing natures. Witt’s ACV provided the
Catholic revival with an organized framework, a large membership and
the official sanction with which to sustain the performance, publica-
tion and emulation of Renaissance music; no comparable organization
or leader fostered activities in north Germany (although Karl Gustav
Fellerer has asserted that Naumann provided a similar focus for the Berlin
Palestrina revival, it is evident that his significance is by no means com-
parable to that of Witt).247 While activities in Berlin provided a model for
churches and Singvereine elsewhere, it would be an exaggeration to speak
of a cohesive movement for the revival of old Italian music in north
Germany. It is these political and institutional differences, rather than
the nature of the composers’ responses to the music of Palestrina, that
most serve to distinguish the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals.
5
Palestrina in the concert hall
PALESTRINA IN SECULAR AND NON-LITURGICAL MUSIC
So far, the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century

composition has been discussed in terms of liturgical music, and to a
lesser extent quasi-liturgical works intended for secular choral societies.
The idealization of Palestrina had a much broader impact, being re-
flected in a wide range of vocal and instrumental genres. The forms that
such relationships take, and the significances that they have for the works
concerned, are extraordinarily diverse. In exploring these relationships
and the interpretive problems that they create, this discussion focuses on
works by four composers – Mendelssohn, Loewe, Liszt and Wagner –
providing examples of how nineteenth-century compositions exploit the
associations of Palestrina’s music and language.
In secular and non-liturgical religious compositions, relationships
to the language of Palestrina and to specific works by him are seldom
problematic in terms of originality or historicism: in general, such rela-
tionships consist of small-scale references and rarely effect the stylistic
orientation of the works concerned as totalities. As a consequence, the
concern here is not – as before – with how composers were able to justify
the cultivation of historical styles in the light of contemporary aesthetic
norms, but with exploring the associative significance of such references.
Although delineating the individual configurations of such relationships
remains important, the central task must be to reconstruct what the
content or essence of Palestrina’s music was perceived to be in the
nineteenth century, and thus to define the associations brought into play
by the use or evocation of elements of his language. This is a reciprocal
process, since while reconstructing the meanings assigned to Palestrina
can help establish what such references are intended to signify, the
reverse is also true: examining how the evocation of Palestrina functions
in specific works can help to clarify what these meanings were more
214
Palestrina in the concert hall 215
widely perceived to be. As a consequence, the compositions examined
here are restricted to vocal works and instrumental pieces with subtitles
or similar verbal ‘clues’. And, as will become clear, even in cases where
the function of references to Palestrina’s works or language is apparently
signposted by verbal tags, the complex meanings generated by the
recontextualization of earlier material can seldom be interpreted with
any degree of certainty. In exploring the general and specific functions
of such references, it is vital to bear in mind Andrew Bowie’s warning
that ‘there cannot be a definitive account of what the mixture of existing,
historically significant material and a new context “really means’”.1
An awareness of the difficulty of interpreting the significance of ref-
erences to older works and styles should not encourage their associative
aspects to be disregarded. It is not enough merely to chart the stylistic
and technical dimensions of the appropriation of earlier material; nor
does it suffice to view all such references as instances of the so-called
trope of the sacred, signifying merely the evocation of a generalized
form of religiosity. Rather, a distinction must be made between two
types of references to earlier music: the use of elements of earlier church
music as components in the construction of a generalized religious style,
and the attempt to access – via allusion – the specific associations of
the material concerned. In the first type, elements drawn from earlier
sacred music, stripped of their original liturgical character but retaining
a vestigial symbolism, are combined to create a vaguer form of religious
expression. In seeking to create what Ulrich Konrad describes as a
couleur religieuse, composers relied heavily on the use of elements taken
from Renaissance church music, the Lutheran chorale, plainchant, and
other, more recent musical symbols.2 The extent to which the religioso
palette of nineteenth-century composers was dependent on old and
more recent stock devices was recognized by contemporaries. Hanslick,
for example, condemned the dependence of Liszt’s Missa solemnis on
clichés – derived in this case from contemporary operatic depictions of
the miraculous, the sublime and the mystical – as a means of manufac-
turing a religious style: as a result, it is ‘brooding reflection’ (grübelnde
Reflexion) rather than religious enthusiasm that characterizes every bar of
the work.3
While elements of earlier church music can function as components
within a religioso idiom, it would be unwise to approach all such
references from this viewpoint. Such an approach may deprive these
works of the complex layers of meaning that the use of earlier materials
can help to create. Crucially, to consider all such references as signifying
a generalized religious expression has the result that, where several
different kinds of church music are referred to, their potential for creat-
ing musico-dramatic oppositions is overlooked: this can only impoverish
attempts to interpret the significance of such multiple references. Rather
than being stripped of their historical and liturgical associations, these
specific connotations can provide a vital key to understanding how
such references function in their new context. The use of elements
of Palestrina’s language as building blocks in the construction of a
religioso idiom must therefore be distinguished from their use for allusive
purposes; that is, their use as a means of accessing the associations that
surrounded this language as the paradigm of naiv church music.
Given the pervasive habit of polarizing reflective religious music and
naiv church music, it is difficult to see how allusions to works by Palestrina
and references to his style could, for nineteenth-century musicians, have
expressed only a generalized religiosity. From Tieck and Hoffmann
onwards, this polarization was fundamental to how Palestrina was
perceived: even those with little or no enthusiasm for this music, such
as Hanslick, sought to distinguish its lofty, serious character from the
‘reflective wit’ (reflectirendem Witz) of modern religious music.4 In addition
to providing a symbol of naiv church music, allusions to Palestrina
were able to access a complex web of further associations. While
most of these have been encountered already, a useful condensation
of them is presented in the peroration of the chapter on Palestrina in
Ambros’s Geschichte der Musik (1878), a passage quoted with extraordinary
frequency in the late nineteenth century:
In the end, however, the original purpose of Palestrina’s music cannot be
disregarded. By birth it is not music for the concert hall, for the Singakademie,
for the soirées of refined art lovers; it is not a happy hunting ground for the
brilliant artistic judgements and fancy remarks of those who comment on art
and literature at garden parties; for Tieck-like fantasy societies luxuriating in
Rhenish wine, Dante and Raphael; it is no vehicle for musical Sternbaldising
[Sternbaldisieren]: it is music for the church, for the liturgy, for the religious year
with its rich cycle of feasts, with its holy days, its days of mourning, consolation,
rejoicing, consecration, thanksgiving, adoration. It is not an externally induced
decoration for all these rich, varied liturgical ceremonies, but fits into these
as an essential part. Yes, it even has local significance . . . it originated in
Rome and for Rome. In the Sistine Chapel, where the sibyls and prophets of
Michelangelo gaze down, where the beginning and end of things – the creation
and the end of the world – stand before the eyes in tremendous images: this is
its truest home. The notes span over the thunder of judgement like a rainbow
of light: the titanic anger of the painter speaks of the righteousness of the living
God, ‘into whose hands it is terrible to fall’, but the musician speaks of God’s
love and mercy, and of the pure harmony of eternal bliss.5
In spite of Ambros’s Catholic slant, this passage mentions or alludes

to most of the associations that Palestrina accrued over the course of the
nineteenth century. The essence of this music is approached in norma-
tive and historical terms: it is a language of Christian spirituality that
transcends its historical origins to constitute a timeless ideal, but also
embodies the world-view and religious spirit of its age and the fervent
spirituality of its composer. In further delineating these two positions,
Ambros refers to a wider range of associations. The value and signifi-
cance of Palestrina’s music derives in part from its ritual character: it is in-
eluctably linked with the liturgy rather than being merely a supplemental
aid to devotion. Palestrina’s works, through the ‘Sternbaldising’ (a refer-
ence to Tieck’s novel Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen) of the Romantic circle,
continued to be viewed as an expression of medieval Catholicism, as well
as being the musical focus of Romantic ‘longing for the South’ alongside
Dante and Raphael; in addition, Ambros’s reference to ‘Rhenish wine’
obliquely links Palestrina to the early Romantic enthusiasm for Cologne
Cathedral and Gothic architecture in general. He also asserts the impor-
tance of the local significance of Palestrina’s works, providing a reminder
of the continuing association of this music throughout the century with
the Sistine Chapel and its services in Holy Week. Further, his comments
on the performance of Palestrina in the Berlin Singakademie and similar so-
cieties recall another association of Palestrina’s music, its role in concert
halls as a vehicle for moral improvement: it is the paradigm of musi-
cal asceticism. Ambros’s peroration reflects the association of Palestrina
with the Romantic ideology of the sublime; Palestrina’s music is not only
religious and liturgical, but provides a glimpse of the Christian infinite.
Unlike Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, which symbolizes the terrifying
dimension of the sublime, Palestrina’s works provide an intimation of
‘the pure harmony of eternal bliss’. Finally, the description of the role of
this music in the cycle of Catholic feasts reminds us of further associations
that must be considered when dealing with allusions to particular works
by Palestrina: in such cases, the text of the original work and its specific
liturgical associations may also be relevant.
While all of these varied associations must be taken into account in dis-
cussing the significance of individual references to Palestrina’s language,
it will become evident that – as in the liturgical music that has been ex-
amined – it is the conviction that Palestrina represents naiv Christianity
and provides a vision of the Christian infinite that is most important in
allusions to his music and language. This is not, however, the sole associ-
ation that is invoked in the music discussed below. The task of deciding
which of the further associations of Palestrina’s music provides the focus
for a particular allusion is complicated and often impossible. But these
different associative layers cannot be ignored, and it should not be pre-
supposed that a particular reference merely functions as a component
in the expression of a generalized religious aura.
These interpretative problems are immediately apparent in consid-
ering the role of small-scale allusions to earlier works and styles in
Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony op. 107. The earlier musical
elements used in Mendelssohn’s symphony consist of the Lutheran
chorale ‘Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott’ in the Finale; the so-called Dresden
Amen, composed by Johann Gottlieb Naumann (1741–1801) for use at
the Catholic court at Dresden, used in the first movement; and lastly,
the slow introduction to the first movement bears some relation to early
Romantic conceptions of old Italian church music. The title of the work
at the time of its 1832 première, ‘Symphony for the Celebration of the
Reformation Festival’, may seem initially to simplify the task of under-
standing the function of these fragments of older music. Indeed, the
assumption that Mendelssohn intended to transmit, via their historical
associations, significant narrative or allusive messages to the listener has
led to a variety of critical interpretations of the symphony. But more
detailed scrutiny of these fragments renders problematic any attempt
to define their function, and the work as a whole emerges as curiously
ambiguous in character.
Most scholars approach the symphony in one of two ways. Some view
it as an occasional work for the Augsburg tercentenary that contains
earlier musical material with religious associations simply to create a
generalized religious aura.6 Others see it as a work with a definite pro-
gramme, an attempt specifically to depict the Lutheran Reformation and
to sustain such a narrative solely by musical means. In the second view,
the allusions to older music do not fuse together to create a united evoca-
tion of religiosity, but stand diametrically opposed, providing a musical
‘battle’ between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Judith Silber Ballan has
recently been the most energetic proponent of this second view of the
work, arguing that it depicts ‘in order, the Catholic church, a struggle,
and then the victorious emergence of the Protestants. . . . [It presents] an
unmistakable historical event – in this case, the Protestant Reformation –
without the use of words’.7
A closer examination of the materials used by Mendelssohn suggests
other lines of inquiry. There can be little doubt that the two references to
the Dresden Amen present in the last nine bars of the introduction are
associated with Catholicism; a similar quotation in Spohr’s Nachklänge
einer Reise nach Dresden und in die sächsische Schweiz op. 96 (1836), for violin
and piano, illustrates the linking of this fragment and Catholicism, since
the movement in which it occurs is subtitled ‘Katholische Kirche’.8 On
the other hand, the Dresden Amen would seem to have no obvious con-
nection with pre-Reformation Catholicism. And it is by no means certain
that Mendelssohn intended the opening bars of the introduction to evoke
old Italian music, or that they constitute a ‘brilliantly orchestrated evo-
cation of Renaissance polyphony’.9 For a start, these bars seem closer
stylistically to the eighteenth-century stile antico (and, indeed, to Bach)
than to Palestrina’s language (or to what Mendelssohn perceived that
language to be), and in any case the musical material here could be con-
sidered to constitute merely a dissonant intensification and expansion of
the I–vi–V progression of the Dresden Amen. Even if it is accepted that
the opening bars of the symphony constitute an allusion to Renaissance
polyphony, it is open to question whether Mendelssohn intended this
evocation as specifically Catholic. The complex layers of associations
that had accrued around Palestrina’s language by the late 1820s indicate
that Palestrina’s music was viewed not primarily as the expression of
sixteenth-century Catholicism, but as a pan-confessional, timeless ideal
of church music; it has already been seen that Mendelssohn regarded it
as the most appropriate form of liturgical choral music. The identifica-
tion of Palestrina not with Catholicism but with ideal church music is
demonstrated clearly by the music that was used to celebrate the Berlin
commemorations on 25 June 1830 of the presentation of the Augsburg
Confession (the first official codification of Lutheran belief ) to the Holy
Roman Emperor: Latin a cappella motets by Grell.10 Such music would
not have been used on this occasion – a Reformation celebration – if it
had been regarded as fundamentally Catholic. In using polyphony at the
start of this movement, Mendelssohn was surely alluding to nineteenth-
century music and ideals and not to Renaissance Catholicism.11
In addition, Mendelssohn’s use of the chorale ‘Ein’ feste Burg’ in the
Finale raises questions about its historical associations. Mendelssohn’s
version of the chorale is not derived from any of the historical versions
available to him, such as Luther’s original or J. S. Bach’s arrangements,
but is nineteenth century in origin and idiom. The initial manner of its
presentation at the start of the movement, and the melodic version of
the chorale used, are perhaps derived from a setting by Mendelssohn’s
organ teacher August Wilhelm Bach, published in his Choralbuch of 1830
and almost certainly used as part of the Berlin Reformation festivities
of that year.12 Bach’s Choralbuch is symptomatic of the broader desire for
chorale reform; whether or not it was the source for the version of the
chorale melody used in the symphony, Mendelssohn’s chorale uses the
simplified musical language that the reformers advocated. The evocation
of stile antico church music and use of the reformed chorale suggest that
Mendelssohn intended his symphony not as a depiction of the events
of the historical Reformation, but as a distillation of the German cele-
brations of 1830. It is evident, however, that any interpretation of the
significance of the fragments of earlier music in this work must necessarily
be equivocal: not only are these fragments by themselves insufficient to
transmit a programme, but it is impossible to be certain precisely which
of their associations Mendelssohn intended to evoke.
In the case of the ‘Reformation’ Symphony, interpreting the role of
references to earlier church music is problematic on two levels: not only
is the function of these fragments ambiguous, but the relation between
the opening bars of the introduction and old Italian music is doubtful
or – at most – oblique. The latter problem is also an issue in interpreting
two works from the following decade – Mendelssohn’s St Paul (1836) and
Loewe’s Die Apostel von Philippi (1835) – although here, the function of
references to early church music seems more clear cut. It would be an
exaggeration to claim that Palestrina’s language is directly alluded to
in either of these oratorios. Nevertheless, in both works elements that
reflect early Romantic perceptions of Palestrina’s music play a localized
but important dramatic role. The evocation of old Italian homophony,
alongside a range of other historical styles and idioms, serves as a means
not merely of creating a religious aura but of differentiating between the
dramatis personae and between different levels of religious expression.
In both works, the limited evocation of Palestrina reflects the broader
tension between the church style and the oratorio style. Elements of
Palestrina’s language, paradigm of the church style, are drawn on in
order to distinguish the representation of the divine from the religious
tone pervading the remainder of the works. While Mendelssohn’s re-
creation of the styles of Bach and Handel provided an appropriate idiom
for the generalized expression of religious sentiment – or, in Heine’s view,
for the ironic construction of the spirit of Christianity – the evocation
of Palestrina has a wholly different function: that of accompanying the
words of God. Mendelssohn’s solution to the problem of representing
divine speech was, alongside his incorporation of chorales, the aspect of
St Paul most frequently discussed by contemporaries.13 While Rochlitz
had earlier advised that, in an oratorio, the words of God should be
set for chorus in the ancient church style (a conception dismissed by
Moritz Hauptmann as laboured and artificial), Mendelssohn avoids the
direct replication of Palestrina’s language.14 Instead, in the recitatives
describing Paul’s conversion (no. 13) and in which Ananias is instructed
to restore Paul’s sight (no. 18), the purity of Palestrina’s homophony
is merely suggested through instrumental timbre (high woodwinds, in
sharp contrast to the preceding passages) and chord repetitions in the
manner of falsobordone. The second recitative is more closely related to
early Romantic perceptions of Palestrina through the use, in addition, of
simple root progressions and 4–3 suspensions. Mendelssohn’s evocation
of this language serves not as a means of fashioning a religioso idiom, but
of representing the unrepresentable. Here, his evocation is dependent on
the continuing association of Palestrina with the sublime: only through
reference to this sublime language could Mendelssohn represent, in the
words of his librettist Julius Schubring, the voice of ‘the transfigured Lord
of Heaven and Earth’.15
In Loewe’s oratorios, the evocation of old Italian music plays a greater
variety of roles. In the unpublished oratorio Palestrina, a retelling of the
legends surrounding the Council of Trent, Loewe quotes fragments from
the Missa Papae Marcelli; in Die sieben Schlaefer op. 46, Renaissance falsobor-
done is evoked as a symbol of the miraculous, while in another period
piece, Johann Huss op. 82, Loewe includes a 94-bar stile antico Kyrie as a
means of providing historical colour.16 In Die Apostel von Philippi, the evoca-
tion of old Italian music serves a similar function to that in Mendelssohn’s
St Paul, whose subject matter it shares. The text of Die Apostel is narrower in
scope than that of St Paul, focusing on the events of Acts 16. Even so, the
libretto offers greater opportunities for musical characterization, involv-
ing choruses of Greeks, Christians and Roman colonists in addition
to soloists (the apostles Paul, Silas and Timothy, and assorted Roman
officials). In differentiating between these groups, Loewe assigns them
distinct musical characteristics, some of which make reference to his-
torical styles and materials. This type of stylistic juxtaposition can be
seen in the first movement (bars 131 –50), where the music depicting the
condemnation of the apostles by the Romans contrasts sharply with a
hymn sung by the Christians from their prison cells. Here, the astringent
two-part counterpoint of the Romans, accentuated by tritone leaps, is
contrasted with the euphonious homophony of the Christians, whose
slow-moving chords – recalling falsobordone – freely evoke Palestrina’s
language. Similar musico-dramatic oppositions are employed in the sec-
ond movement, which depicts the terrifying effect of an earthquake –
miraculously initiated by the singing of the Christians, whose chains it
breaks – on the Roman officials.
Loewe’s palette of Christian musical characterization draws not only
on Palestrinian homophony, but also on the Protestant chorale (no. 3)
and the eighteenth-century stile antico (no. 2). Importantly, the functions
of these three idioms are differentiated. The chorale and stile antico
are both associated with the faith of the apostles rather than with the
supernatural dimension of Christianity; the chorale in no. 3 is a hymn of
thanksgiving for the freeing of the apostles, while the stile antico fugue in
no. 2 (whose subject resembles that of the second ‘Kyrie’ of Bach’s Mass
in B Minor) is associated with matters of doctrine and dogma. In con-
trast, Palestrina’s homophony is evoked in order to provide an intimation
of the sublime, depicting God’s intervention on behalf of the apostles.
In Die Apostel, as in St Paul, it is therefore the linking of Palestrina’s
language with the Christian infinite that is the primary association being
invoked.
WAGNER’S ‘STABAT MATER’ AND THE POETICS

OF ARRANGEMENT
Before exploring the role of allusions to Palestrina in the works of

Liszt and Wagner, it is necessary to make a digression. The nature of
Wagner’s engagement with old Italian music, and the extent to which
he sympathized with the activities of the church music reformers, need
to be explored in order to provide a foundation for interpreting the
significance of such references in his music. Wagner’s interest in old
Catholic church music was stimulated during his time as Kapellmeister
at Dresden (1843–9), and he was later a subscriber to Proske’s two
series Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum.17 While Wagner’s Paris
essays already exhibit an interest in early church music, his ideas on
reform and revival received their most substantial formulation in the
‘Entwurf zur Organisation eines deutschen Nationaltheaters für das
Königreich Sachsen’ (1848). Even though later in the century, this essay
was approached by some commentators as one of the most significant
contributions towards the reform of church music, it offered nothing new
to this debate and is of interest only in that it reveals how close Wagner’s
views are to those of Hoffmann, Thibaut and other earlier reformers.18
Like Hoffmann, Wagner constructs an organicist golden age of church
music, representing Palestrina as having saved church music following the
mathematical abstractions of his predecessors; Wagner follows Thibaut,
however, in ascribing the subsequent decline of church music to the
introduction of orchestral instruments and thus of secular expression.19
Church music can only return to its original state of purity if instruments
are banished from churches: only the human voice, the ‘unmediated
bearer of the sacred word’, is a suitable vehicle for liturgical music.20
Crucially, Wagner represents the masses of Beethoven and Cherubini
as unworthy of performance in church; although as absolute music they
have a religious content, he, like Hoffmann, considers them to be too wide
in scope – in terms of both form and content – for liturgical performance:
‘These masterpieces do not belong to the pure church style, which for so
many reasons it is high time to revive: they are absolute musical artworks,
built admittedly according to a religious basis, but much more suitable for
performance in spiritual concerts than during the church service itself.’21
While modern concerted works are represented here as religious, but
little more so than absolute instrumental music, Palestrina’s music is given
an entirely different set of associations: it is the ideal liturgical music, free
from sensuous secular expression, and the high point of Catholic music.
Before accepting Catholicism as a primary association for the allusions
to Palestrina in Wagner’s own works, it should be borne in mind that
he revised this opinion later; in ‘Beethoven’ (1870), Palestrina’s ‘Stabat
mater’ is elevated not as an ideal for the Catholic liturgy, but as a spiritual
revelation that ‘brings to our consciousness the innermost essence of
religion free from all dogmatic fictions’ (dogmatischen Begriffsfiktion).22 And
it should also be borne in mind that Wagner’s perception of Palestrina
continued to be defined by the homophonic works idealized by the early
Romantics: in 1879, on hearing the Berlin Domchor give an impromptu
performance of a motet in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Wagner acclaimed
Palestrina’s slow-moving chords as ‘monoliths that defy the ages’ (Quadern
die der Ewigkeit trotzen).23
Wagner’s sole practical contribution to church music reform was his
arrangement of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’, first performed in Dresden
in 1848, and published at Liszt’s behest in 1878.24 The published arran-
gement was intended for Protestant churches and Singvereine as well as
Catholic churches, as can be seen in the provision in many places of
two alternative German translations of the text, the second of which
replaces references to Mary with phrases more acceptable to Protestants
(in bar 32, for example, ‘virgo virginum praeclara’ becomes ‘Heiland
hoch verklärt vor Allen’, while in bar 74 ‘Eja mater fons amoris’ be-
comes ‘Heiland, Quell der reinsten Minne’). But while the translation of
the text (the work not of Wagner but of the classicist Wilhelm Reischl)
may constitute a means of adapting the work to make it more compat-
ible with the modern world-view – of, in Wagner’s words, liberating its
essence from ‘all dogmatic fictions’ – the arrangement of the music can-
not be understood simply to reflect a similar process. Rather, Wagner
may initially have regarded it not as an adaptation of Palestrina’s motet
to modern means of expression, but as an attempt to re-create the lost
performance traditions of the work.
For some of the authors and composers of the Palestrina revival, the
(conscious) adaptation of earlier works to modern means of expression
was to be deplored. In Über Reinheit der Tonkunst, Thibaut condemned
Mozart’s arrangement of Messiah, claiming that his instrumental addi-
tions went against Handel’s intentions: ‘In all of it there is overloading and
recasting that the sublime creator of this eternal masterpiece would cer-
tainly have condemned as meddling.’25 For Thibaut, the eternal master-
pieces of music, just like their counterparts in the other arts, retain their
validity for all time and do not require adaptation to modern means
of expression, for ‘who would permit himself to prune and dress up
[aufputzen] Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare?’26 Rather, Thibaut sought to
perform early church compositions ‘as purely as the master intended’,
grounding his interpretations in a determined fidelity to the letter of the
text and in an empathetic process akin to the notion of Einfühlung in
Romantic hermeneutics: a mystical process of self-identification with
the composer.27 But for other nineteenth-century musicians, the perfor-
mance of early music required a process of modification, corresponding
with what Hegel described as ‘necessary anachronism’.28 Hegel does
not advocate the wholesale modernization of historical artworks;
nonetheless, he considers that historically transient material may
legitimately be adapted to ensure the clarity of its essence, arguing that
when the plays of Shakespeare or the Greek tragedians are performed,
modern audiences have the right to demand the adaptation of those
aspects of their appearance alien to modern culture:
Even the most excellent things require adaptation in view of this. Admittedly,
people could say that the truly excellent must remain excellent for all time;
but the work of art also has a transient, mortal side, and it is this that requires
alteration. For the beautiful appears for different people, and those for whom
it is brought to appearance must be able to be at home in this external side of
its appearance . . . The inner substance of that which is represented remains the
same, but cultural change makes necessary a conversion of its expression and
form.29
The performance of early music was approached from a similar perspec-

tive by Hand, who argues that while the best works retain their value for
all time, aspects of their formal execution can become antiquated and
unpalatable.30 Citing the opera arias of Handel and Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat
mater’ as examples, Hand contends that such works can be preserved for
modern audiences only through ‘a renovation in accordance with con-
temporary taste’ (eine dem Zeitgeschmack gemäße Ausschmückung).31 Similar
arguments were put forward in relation to the performance of old Italian
music. The composer and critic Heinrich Oberhoffer, seeking to justify
his addition of string quartet accompaniments to stile antico composi-
tions, argued that the colourless severity of the a cappella idiom alienated
modern listeners:
While the artistry and eminently sacred nature of the works of the old church
composers from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be de-
nied, these works – especially longer movements – are more or less monotonous
in style and aural effect. Many believe that their revival is impeded because our
ears and our feelings are accustomed to sharper contrasts and greater variation.32
Wagner’s stance may initially seem more similar to that of Thibaut

than to the views of Hegel, Hand and Oberhoffer. In 1848, he described
the act of ‘renovation’ (Wiederauffrischung) that conductors should under-
take in performing the works of Palestrina and his followers: ‘Kapellmeister
undertaking this task have therefore to restore the lost traditions of per-
formance of such works according to their artistic judgement, to bring
back to life these works in their full freshness and warmth of religious
expression – as has already been proved to be entirely possible – and to
ensure that they are rehearsed according to this spirit.’33 While Wagner’s
comments on the restoration of lost performance traditions suggest
an approach closer to Thibaut’s Einfühlung than to Hegel’s ‘necessary
anachronism’, this is not borne out in an essay from eight years earlier,
a review of a contemporary arrangement of Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat mater’
(1840). Here, Wagner seems in places to favour literalism in performance,
demanding that ‘the artist must completely deny himself and step into the
background in order to let the monumental genius whom he reverently
preserves shine in all his radiance’.34 For the main, however, Wagner
takes a view closer to that of Hegel, considering that Mozart’s revision of
Messiah ‘adorns Handel’s work in accordance with its universal artistic
significance’, brilliantly proving ‘how much the old masterpieces can be
embellished with a vivacity and freshness of colour without losing their
inner value’.35 This position is expressed most clearly when Wagner dif-
ferentiates between the imperfect execution of the older masters and
their profundity of content; while the works of the ancient school convey
great and noble thoughts, ‘in the details of their execution can be dis-
cerned inexperience and the early strivings of an art’, and consequently
the antiquated forms of such music must be adapted to ‘the demands of
modern taste’.36
For Liszt, Wagner’s edition of ‘Stabat mater’ constitutes not an arr-
angement but merely a written exemplar of the expressive additions that
an experienced conductor would introduce in performing it. In a letter
to the publisher of Wagner’s edition, Christian Friedrich Kahnt, Liszt
comments that ‘most conductors do not know where to begin with the
well-known editions of Palestrina, Lassus, etc., because all indications of
tempo and expression are missing’; Wagner’s version of ‘Stabat mater’
constitutes a model of the form that modern performing editions of
Renaissance music should take:
The contributions of the Reverend Father Canon Proske are certainly praise-
worthy, and Pustet’s editions of Musica divina (in Regensburg) are most excellent,
but nevertheless I consider that new, helpful, practical editions of the old masters
of church music remain desirable and salutary. Over thirty years ago Richard
Wagner gave an eminent example of this, by arranging Palestrina’s ‘Stabat
mater’ for the Dresden Hofkirche with meticulous distribution between choir,
semi-chorus, and soloists, and apposite details of nuances (crescendo, diminu-
endo, etc). Henceforth, may this example of the editing of the church father
[kirchenväterlichen] composers be taken to heart and followed.37
It is significant that Liszt does not differentiate between Wagner’s addi-
tion of dynamic markings to the work and his alteration of the scor-
ing; he represents both these processes as analogous to the activities
of the informed conductor. But a differentiation between these modes
of interpretation must be made. Matthias Buschkühl comments that the
abrupt dynamic contrasts in Wagner’s arrangement reflect an unabashed
impulse to adapt the work to modern conceptions of expression.38 The
dynamic indications do not, however, suffice on their own to justify
this interpretation, since the introduction of bold contrasts and vivid
text painting could have been motivated by reports of the Holy Week
performances of the papal choir rather than by a modernizing impulse.
But while Wagner’s addition of expressive markings can be seen as
akin to the editorial procedures that Witt applied to this repertory, the
nature of his changes in scoring must be interpreted differently. Wagner
transforms the simple antiphonal structure of the original into complex
alternations between two groups of soloists, two semi-choruses, and the
two full choirs; he employs over a dozen different combinatory permu-
tations, some of which vitiate the antiphonal scheme of the original. As
with his dynamic indications, some of the alterations to the scoring reflect
textual considerations: bars 132 to 141 are re-scored for women’s voices,
a colouristic change seemingly motivated by the text ‘virgo virginum
praeclara’. These modifications, when considered in tandem with the
dynamic markings, must therefore be viewed as an attempt to attune the
work to modern expressive expectations. As a consequence, Wagner’s
arrangement can be seen as an adaptation in Hegel’s sense, a reclama-
tion of the essence of the work through the modification of its form, in
order to satisfy ‘the demands of modern taste’.
Wagner’s arrangement of ‘Stabat mater’ was feted by the ACV, and
received an entry in the society’s catalogue of approved works. Witt, like
Liszt, played down the extent of Wagner’s intervention, describing it as
an edition, rather than an arrangement: eager, nonetheless, to exploit
the propagandist value of recruiting him to the cause of church music
reform, Witt asserts that Wagner’s expressive markings ‘bear the stamp of
his genius’, arguing that these are wholly in accordance with Palestrina’s
intentions.39 By demonstrating that Wagner’s conception of ideal church
music was similar to that of the ACV, Witt sought to gain a further stick
with which to beat composers who sought to bring Zukunftsmusik into the
Catholic liturgy. In reality, however, this arrangement – made twenty
years before the foundation of the ACV – cannot be seen as evidence that
Wagner sympathized with its aims, nor as a sign that his conception of
Palestrina was primarily linked to the revival of Catholic church music.
LISZT, WAGNER AND ALLUSION
Having discussed Wagner’s contact with the music of Palestrina and his
relation to the broader movement for church music reform, allusions to
the language of Palestrina in the music of Liszt and Wagner can now be
examined and compared. It is not possible to discuss all such references in
detail, especially in the case of Liszt in whose music they are particularly
common, and the following discussion centres on three pairs of works:
Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and Wagner’s Rienzi, Die Legende von
der Heiligen Elisabeth and Tannhäuser, Christus and Parsifal. The rationale
behind this grouping is to some extent chronological but will be seen to
owe more to the nature of the references and the associations that they
evoke.
Of the ten pieces in Liszt’s piano cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses
(S 173/R 14), four works – no. 2 Ave Maria, no. 4 Pensée des morts, no. 5.
Pater noster and no. 8. Miserere, d’après Palestrina – can be linked to Liszt’s
early preoccupation with the music of Palestrina and contemporaries.40
While two of these pieces are straightforward transcriptions of his motets,
nos. 4 and 8 are of greater relevance to this discussion. The Miserere,
d’après Palestrina is based on a twelve-bar fragment of falsobordone, which
is overlaid with the opening words of Psalm 50, ‘Miserere mei, Deus’
(‘Have mercy on me, God, according to your great kindness: according
to [the multitude] of your mercies, obliterate my sins’). The composer
and source of this falsobordone passage have hitherto been a mystery, since
it bears no relation to Palestrina or to the other Miserere settings of the
Sistine Chapel.41 Liszt’s source for this fragment, if not its composer,
can be established with some certainty: it is a transposed version of the
spurious ‘Miserere von Palästrina’ published in the AmZ in 1810 and
1824 (Ex. 2.2), where it bears a similar subtitle to that in Liszt’s 1845
sketchbook.
In interpreting the associative function of this fragment, it is necessary
to examine its role within both this piece and Liszt’s cycle in its entirety.
Considered in isolation, it may seem that Liszt’s Miserere is simply a theme
with variations, and that this fragment generates only indefinite religious
associations. Yet the contrast between its initial presentation in the lower
register and its restatements – bars 13–24, where the theme is presented
two octaves higher in a halo of tremolandi, and bars 25–36, where it
is transfigured by upward moving arpeggios – suggests the evocation of
two distinct associations of old Italian music: the earthly misery evoked
by the connection of the Miserere with the Holy Week services in the
Sistine Chapel (an association confirmed by the quotation of the text),
and the linking of this music with the sublime. This vague internal pro-
gramme, contrasting worldly misery and eternal bliss (or a similar pair of
oppositions), is confirmed by the role of the fragment within the broader
programme of the cycle, a programme suggested by the quotation from
Alphonse de Lamartine’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses that prefaces it.
The contrast between the initial presentation of the falsobordone theme and
its seraphic restatements parallels Lamartine’s evocation of meditative
souls, tormented by the griefs of earthly existence, who retreat into a con-
templative world and whose thoughts turn irresistibly ‘towards thoughts
of the infinite, that is towards religion’ (vers les idées infinies, c’est-à-dire
vers la religion).42 This programme is articulated more clearly in no. 4 of
the cycle, Pensée des morts, which also draws on the associative potential
of falsobordone. While the passage of falsobordone presented here is neither
by nor attributed to Palestrina, it closely resembles that presented in
no. 8; moreover, the theme also receives a simple statement in the lower
register before a varied restatement two octaves higher. In this case, the
associations evoked by the falsobordone passage are more strongly coloured
by its precise context and by the accompanying text: it succeeds a
swirling brew of tritone chords formed on consecutive chromatic basses,
a hellish vision concretized by the title and by the words from Psalm
129 (‘De profundis’) that accompany the falsobordone fragment (‘Out of
the depths have I cried to you Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears
be attentive to the voice of supplications’). These musical and textual
factors again suggest the double association evoked by Liszt’s Miserere:
earthly misery and penitence but also an intimation of the infinite.
In Pensée des morts, Liszt’s evocation of the music of the Sistine Chapel
suggests a third association not previously encountered in this connec-
tion: the sublime not merely as a beatific vision of eternal bliss but as a
presentiment of terror. The linking of old Italian church music with the
terrifying aspect of the sublime has its roots in the early Romantic world
of the Gothic novel, with its malevolent monks and sinister rituals. Liszt’s
use of this fragment of falsobordone is comparable to the horror that such
music creates in Heinrich von Kleist’s legend Die Heilige Cäcilie oder die
Gewalt der Musik (1810). Here, the inexplicable power of an old Italian mass
saves a Catholic convent from a group of Protestant brothers who are
intent on razing it to the ground. The four brothers are overcome with an
extreme religious fervour and committed to an asylum because of their
terrifying nightly recollections of the mass: their singing ‘came as if from
the lips of damned singers rising from the deepest pits of the flames of
hell, full of pity in order that God should hear them’.43 Finally, when
glancing through the score, the mother of the brothers realizes that it was
the sublime power of old Italian church music that drove her sons insane:
She looked at the unfamiliar, magic signs, which appeared to have been used
by a terrible frightful spirit to mark a circle for himself, and thought she herself
would sink to the ground when suddenly upon the opened page she saw the
passage Gloria in excelsis. It seemed to her at that moment as if the whole horror
of sound that had ruined her sons moved thunderously over her head and she
believed that the mere sight of the words had made her lose her senses.44
The status of old Italian church music as a vehicle for terror, while
providing a plausible perspective for interpreting the falsobordone
Example 5.1. Richard Wagner, Rienzi, Act IV, finale, bars 161 –71
fragment in Pensée des morts, is more clearly invoked in the use of similar
passages of falsobordone writing in Wagner’s Rienzi (1840). Here, the terrify-
ing effect of the solemn music, sung by a choir of priests and monks, that
announces the papal anathema on Rienzi is signalled unambiguously in
the libretto (see Ex. 5.1). Towards the end of the first part of the chant
‘Woe! A curse on you!’, Rienzi exclaims ‘how horrifying! What a Te

Deum!’, providing an explicit link between the evocation of old Italian
falsobordone and the horror of the sublime.
The allusions to the language of Palestrina in these works exploit its
association with the penitential, minor-mode, falsobordone pieces per-
formed in the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week. In Tannhäuser and Die Legende
von der Heiligen Elisabeth, the references to Palestrina’s language have a
different form and take on different associations. The religious charac-
ter of the music associated with Elisabeth and the pilgrims in Tannhäuser,
and with Lohengrin, the Grail and the swan in Lohengrin was recognized
by contemporaries; Witt, for example, considered the prelude to Lohengrin
to be ‘better and more serious church music [Kirchenmusik] than many of
Mozart’s masses’.45 Assessing the extent to which Wagner’s exposure to
Palestrina’s works shaped the religioso idiom of these operas is difficult,
however, since few passages seem overtly linked to nineteenth-century
perceptions of Palestrina’s language. This difficulty is apparent in the
views of the Cecilian Johannes Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, who – while repre-
senting the composition of Lohengrin as a mere distraction from Wagner’s
main task of reviving Palestrina – fails to identify any specific passages
in the opera that use or evoke his language: ‘Lohengrin shows such a
completely different character to the directly preceding Tannhäuser and
Fliegende Höllander, a character that in its perfection and individuality,
in places in its rapturous glowing purity and modesty – despite all
chromaticism – would not have been possible had Wagner not just be-
forehand walked in the garden of Palestrina.’46
While it may be tempting to dismiss these comments as hyperbole, ele-
ments of Palestrina’s language (especially chains of quasi-modal roots)
do play a limited part in Wagner’s construction of a mystical idiom with
which to symbolize Lohengrin and the kingdom of the Grail. Although
Wagner’s use of these elements never stands out in the way seen in Rienzi,
and does not seem to be intended to recall old Italian church music and its
associations, it nevertheless provides a means of delineating the sublime
Christianity of Lohengrin from the mundane religious beliefs of the Volk
(expressed in the chorale-like textures of many of the choruses with reli-
gious topoi) and the piety of Elsa (most apparent in the sentimental devo-
tional music at the beginning of Act II Scene iv). In Tannhäuser, the use of
such elements serves a similar but more overt function. Contemporaries
recognized the relation between Wagner’s use of adjacent root progres-
sions and Renaissance music; Habert, for instance, connected the final
bars of Act III Scene i (where Wolfram begins to play the harp) with the
opening chords of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’.47 The first use of chains of
root-position chords occurs slightly earlier in this scene, at the conclusion
of Elisabeth’s prayer, following her final plea that the Virgin intercede for
the forgiveness of Tannhäuser’s sin (bars 231 –47); these chords accom-
pany the stage direction ‘she remains for a long time in a devout reverie’
(sie verbleibt eine Zeitlang wie in andächtiger Entrücktheit). Similar progressions
recur after Elisabeth’s Assumption (bars 287–95) and it is only here that
the chains of roots with consecutive basses that Habert describes can
be found. None of these references constitutes an exact quotation of
the ‘Stabat mater’ chords, nor are they similar enough to have been
intended to function allusively; the nearest approximations occur in the
opening bars of Scene ii, bars 17–19 (d–C–B♭) and 36–8 (D–c♯–b). The
localized role that these progressions play in Tannhäuser delineates their
musico-dramatic function more precisely than in Lohengrin. Here, they
serve solely to accompany Elisabeth’s death, to chart her development
from pious maiden to saint. Again, it is the association of Palestrina’s
language with the Christian sublime that is evoked.
In Liszt’s Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth, the use of material de-
rived from early church music is much more prevalent, as is evident
from the motivic register that Liszt included in the original publica-
tion of the work.48 Of the four themes derived from church music,
two have clearly defined associations as a result of their localized roles:
no. 4, a seventeenth-century German Kirchenlied, functions as an emblem
of communal religious faith, whereas no. 2, a Hungarian hymn to
St Elisabeth, symbolizes the response of Hungarian peasants to her acts of
charity. Liszt’s use of elements of Palestrina’s language is also localized: as
in Tannhäuser, it is only in the movements surrounding Elisabeth’s death
that they become significant. In no. 5(c), the Chorus of the Poor that
precedes Elisabeth’s death, Liszt employs suspension formulas, quasi-
modal progressions, falsobordone, chromatic third-related roots and even
false relations; here, these elements contribute towards the construction
of a quasi-liturgical idiom. Only in the final bars of no. 5, following the
Chorus of Angels that marks Elisabeth’s death, does the use of elements
of Palestrina’s language function allusively. This is particularly apparent
in a striking truncated reference to the ‘Stabat mater’ chords (the first two
chords are quoted in their original key at bars 614–16, and the final bars
of the movement repeat a similar progression, b–a–G). This allusion,
like the weaker echoes of ‘Stabat mater’ in Tannhäuser, seems intended
to mark Elisabeth’s elevation to sainthood. While it is likely in both cases
that these chords are intended to evoke the more general association
of Palestrina with the Christian infinite, Liszt’s allusion serves to elevate
Elisabeth to a Marian dignity (an illusion shattered by the bathos of the
final movement).
In Christus (completed in 1868) and Parsifal (completed in 1882), ele-
ments of Palestrina’s language play a more important part in the cons-
truction of religioso and quasi-liturgical idioms; in addition, the use of
the ‘Stabat mater’ chords as associative devices is more significant than
in Tannhäuser and Elisabeth. The task of identifying and interpreting the
relation between Palestrina’s language and Parsifal is nevertheless diffi-
cult, not least because the importance of this relation has often been
exaggerated. In reality, it may seem that the affinity between Parsifal and
Palestrina amounts to little more than the use of chains of diatonic roots
as constituents of a generalized mode of religious expression, since few
passages in the drama bear a clearer resemblance to Romantic percep-
tions of Palestrina’s language. There are two exceptions to this, however,
both of which suggest that the use of Palestrinian elements also functions
associatively.
The clearest example of the use of Palestrinian elements in Parsifal oc-
curs in the communion scene in Act I Scene ii, in particular the unaccom-
panied passage for boys’ choir (‘Der Glaube lebt, die Taube schwebt’),
sung from the dome of the Hall of the Grail. This passage has frequently
been linked to old Italian church music; in 1900, Hohenemser noted
that it ‘definitely has something of the style of Palestrina in its triadic
progressions and generally in its manner of harmonization’.49 In inter-
preting this passage, it is important not to exaggerate the extent of what
he describes as Wagner’s ‘dependence’ (Anlehnung) on Palestrina: never-
theless, its a cappella idiom, diatonicism, root progressions and imitative
writing reflect nineteenth-century perceptions of Palestrina’s language.
It is however the melismatic writing present in this passage that signals
its allusive function. Extended vocal melismas are rare in Wagner’s later
works, and this rarity makes their occurrence both musically and dra-
matically significant (the clearest example of this is Beckmesser’s trial
song in Die Meistersinger). Here the use of such word-setting – the only ex-
tended melismatic writing in the entire opera – highlights the referential
character of this passage: it serves, albeit fleetingly, to imbue the ritual
with the authenticity and conviction associated with Palestrina, accen-
tuating the absence of these qualities from Amfortas’s own performance
of his sacramental duties.
Before exploring the further implications of treating this passage –
or even the leitmotif from which it is derived – as allusive, the role of
allusions to Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ must be discussed. The linking
of different passages of Parsifal to the opening chords of ‘Stabat mater’
is, again, not unprecedented, and some of the posited connections have
been far from convincing. Hans Redlich argues that a direct connection
exists between the ‘Stabat mater’ chords and the so-called Toren-Motiv
(‘Pure Fool’ motif ), while Karl Gustav Fellerer links these chords with
the Karfreitagszauber (Good Friday magic) of Act III Scene i.50 Of the three
more plausible echoes of this progression identified by Elmar Seidel, the
second two were noted by Karl Weinmann in 1909 (it is likely that he was
not the first to do so); these echoes occur in Act III at bars 151 –2, 214–15
and 222–3 (see Ex. 5.2).51 Interpreting the significance of these allu-
sions (they are not quotations since the initial triad is minor) may seem
straightforward: Weinmann considers them to constitute an orchestral
answer to Gurnemanz’s questions, while Seidel similarly considers that
they provide a musical symbol for Good Friday. This interpretation is
seemingly confirmed by the texts of the passages: bars 151 –2, ‘[How dif-
ferent her (Kundry’s) step is from before!] Did the holy day bring about
the change?’; bars 214–15, ‘Don’t you know what holy day it is?’; bars
222–3, ‘[Among what heathens have you dwelt, not to know] that today
is the holy of holies, Good Friday?’ But while these allusions coincide with
textual references to Good Friday, they do not seem to be intended to
represent it; this day is after all signposted by the Karfreitagsmotiv that en-
sues after these chords in each case. Rather, the status of these references
as variants of the Grail motif (they retain the rhythmic profile of the
Grail motif while replacing its root progressions in descending thirds
Example 5.2. Wagner, Parsifal, Act III, Scene i, bars 214–24
with adjacent roots) suggests other associations. This is confirmed in a

fourth reference to the ‘Stabat mater’ chords in this scene that neither
Weinmann nor Seidel mentions. At bars 474–6 the ‘Stabat mater’ chords
(this time f♯–E–D), this time in augmentation, succeed a presentation of
the Grail motif itself (bars 471 –3), with the text ‘[I sense he still has a
great work to perform today,] to preside over a sacred service’. While the
Grail motif is here connected with Good Friday, the related ‘Palestrina
motif ’ is linked to the sacred service over which Parsifal has to preside.
In this way, the Palestrina motif is twice associated not only with Good
Friday, but specifically with Catholic ritual: a ‘sacred service’ (Amt) is also
a mass, and the ‘holy of holies’ (allerheiligste) mentioned in the text at the
third occurrence of the chords is ineluctably associated with the Blessed
Sacrament (Allerheiligste).
In assigning these chords an ambiguous double association – and
in arguing that the Faith motif, at its kairos in the communion scene,
represents an allusion to Palestrina’s language – it is not my intention
to contribute towards a Catholic or even Christian interpretation of
Parsifal. Recognizing that these references have Catholic associations
does nothing to lessen the complexities of the work as a whole. The
musical references to Palestrina and textual references to Catholic ritual
are only one ingredient in the synthesis of a multiplicity of mythologies
(in Schlegel’s sense), and cannot be represented as an indication of the
mythical basis of the work in its totality.
Although the ideational basis of Christus is less complex than that of
Parsifal, elements of Palestrina’s language serve a more diverse range of
functions. On one level, as in Parsifal, they contribute to the construction
of a religioso idiom: Cornelia Knotik argues – in terms that echo Hanslick –
that the use of chant and Palestrinian homophony provided a means to
guarantee a religious tone.52 This aspect is most apparent in the portions
of the work that Liszt considered capable of being performed indepen-
dently as part of the liturgy: no. 3 ‘Stabat mater speciosa’, no. 6 ‘Die
Seligkeiten’, no. 7 ‘Pater noster’ and no. 13 ‘O Filii et Filiae’. In these
movements, the limited use of Renaissance materials and techniques
(including the evocation of falsobordone in no. 3) serves merely to help to
create a quasi-liturgical aura. In the movements for choir and orches-
tra, however, elements of Palestrina’s language acquire a more complex,
associative role. The mixolydian harmonies and root-position chords in
the first part of no. 2 (bars 10–18), for example, do not merely reflect the
status of Palestrina’s language as the paradigm of church music. Rather,
they depict a chorus of angelic voices announcing the birth of Christ:
here the association of Palestrina’s language with the language of the
saints is unambiguously evoked, an association also elicited by the root
progressions at the end of the movement. Similarly, the echoes of the
‘Stabat mater’ chords that occur throughout the work (see, for example,
no. 1 bars 93–102 and no. 10 bars 204–7, 228–31) appear to function
allusively.
The most significant reference to these chords is the quotation and
continuation of this progression at the conclusion of no. 12 ‘Stabat mater
dolorosa’. Before discussing the associative function of this reference, it is
useful to explore the allusions to these chords elsewhere in Liszt’s output.
In the Messe für Männerchor, as in the tenth movement of Christus, these
chords accompany textual references to Christ as king of heaven, and
appear to function as a musical symbol of the divine. In ‘Cantantibus
organis’, however, the allusion to these chords – in an antiphon for
St Cecilia – elevates the ‘Stabat mater’ as an emblem of the moral and
spiritual power of music itself (a similar association is evoked by the
progression of third-related and adjacent roots at the conclusion of the
symphonic poem Orpheus). The reference most similar to that in Liszt’s
‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ is the allusion to and continuation of this pro-
gression at the conclusion of the ‘Dante’ Symphony (completed in 1856).
Although Liszt heeded Wagner’s advice to abandon plans to represent
paradise in a third instrumental movement, the Magnificat appended to
the second movement, ‘Purgatorio’, seems to fulfil the function of rep-
resenting Dante’s ‘Paradiso’. Liszt’s employment of the ‘Stabat mater’
progression as part of this evocation of paradise was described by him
in a letter to Julius Schäffer: ‘At the close of my Dante Symphony I was
tempted to bring in the liturgical intonations of the Magnificat. Perhaps
the whole-tone scale of triads [Dreiklangs-Scala in großen Tönen] there will
also interest you, which (to my knowledge, at least) has not been used in
its entire range hitherto.’53 Here Liszt represents his use of these non-
functional chords as wholly innovative, without mentioning Palestrina.
Their link to the ‘Stabat mater’ is clear however, especially since the
disposition of the voices in the initial three chords of the harmonium
part is identical to that in Palestrina’s work. Liszt’s continuation of the
‘Stabat mater’ progression can be viewed as an act of remodelling akin
to that presented in Wagner’s arrangement of this work: an attempt to
update this progression in the light of modern expressive parameters, in
order to produce the same effect on modern listeners that Palestrina’s
bold progression must have had on his contemporaries.
Before accepting this explanation, the analogous use of the chords
at the conclusion of Liszt’s ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ must be considered
(Ex. 5.3). Here the chords occur at the last line of the hymn: ‘[Quando
corpus morietur, fac ut animae donetur,] paradisi gloria’ (‘[ When
my body dies, let my soul be granted] the glory of paradise’). The
‘Stabat mater’ chords occur first at their original pitch (A–G–F), and
then in a transposed version (D–C–B♭). While the references here are
Example 5.3. Liszt, ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’, Christus, no. 12, bars 911 –25
undoubtedly allusive, their manner of presentation and the transforma-

tion that it involves suggest an ambivalence; Seidel comments that while
the use of this progression is undoubtedly an act of homage, Liszt seems to
wish both to emphasize and to conceal the quotation.54 Seidel does not
speculate on the cause of this ambivalence, but the nature of this refer-
ence, if considered in combination with that in the ‘Dante’ Symphony,
becomes clear. In the symphony Liszt is able to evoke the music of par-
adise through the ‘Stabat mater’ with few qualms. But at the end of
‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ – his greatest movement for choir and orchestra,
in what he regarded as his most significant work – to depend on the
work of an earlier composer at the peroration of the movement seems
like an admission of defeat. But Liszt has no choice: as has become clear,
the use of Palestrina’s language is not merely one way of evoking a naiv
vision of the infinite, but the sole means for the modern composer to
attempt to convey such a conception. Here, as in much of the liturgical
music discussed earlier, the composer is torn between using a historical
language to represent the Christian infinite, and using his own language
which is inadequate to this task. His solution is to speak with Palestrina;
only in this way can a language of Christian spirituality be combined
with modern expression.
6
Interpreting the secondary discourse

of nineteenth-century music
Up to this point, I have taken a largely pragmatic approach in discussing

the relationships between individual works and Palestrina’s language.
This approach does not reflect a belief in the possibility of neutral,
objective interpretation, but rather the need to explore the individual
configurations of such relationships without the drawback of an a priori
theoretical framework: I have sought to describe these relationships
without either exaggerating their significance for the pieces in question,
or misrepresenting their nature in order to satisfy preconceived views.
A variety of different critical concepts can now be applied as a means of
enhancing our understanding of them. It is necessary, however, for two
provisos to be taken into account. First, it is clear that the nature of the
engagement of nineteenth-century German composers with Palestrina
is unique to this period: the aesthetic matrices that sustained this
engagement are very different from those operative in other periods and
contexts. To explore these relationships through the norms of analytical
aesthetics, or from the viewpoint of critical conceptions formulated
around entirely different repertories, may lead to a distortion of what
has already been established: any attempt to understand the relation
between nineteenth-century composition and the music of the distant
past must therefore be historically grounded. Second, and by extension,
the complex nature of the nineteenth-century Palestrina – a construct
consisting of the essence and appearance of his works, mediated through
the multifarious conceptions of the Palestrina-Stil – must therefore be
taken into account in interpreting these relationships. With these
provisos in mind, the following discussion approaches the compositional
products of the Palestrina revival in terms of imitation and historicism,
irony and critique, and translation.
The term imitation is often encountered in nineteenth-century dis-
cussions of these compositions and can also be found in modern musico-
logical appraisals of them. It does not, however, provide a helpful means
241
of approaching this music, either as a description of the relationships
seen in the majority of the pieces examined or as an explanation of the
intentions of their composers. In particular, the common musicological
use of this term in relation to the activities of the ACV has been seen to
oversimplify the issues involved. Moreover, the status of imitation as a
normative category limits its pertinence, even in cases where it seems ap-
propriate as a description of the relation between a particular piece and
Palestrina’s language. As a universally applicable concept – which, for the
Romantics, served as a description of modern responses both to works
from the immediate past and to the masterpieces of classical antiquity –
it is too amorphous to be of use: it does not distinguish the most signifi-
cant aspect of the relationships under discussion, the ‘warping’ of history
that they represent. Finally, imitation, as a historical category associated
with Winckelmann’s monumental classicism, must be rejected as an ex-
planation of intention. It has been seen that for most nineteenth-century
musicians (the most notable exception being Proske), the continuation
of Winckelmannian concepts of technical imitation was not compatible
with the production of artworks: art and the imitation of earlier styles and
techniques were mutually exclusive. For the majority of composers, the
cultivation of Palestrina’s language was not legitimized by this outmoded
aesthetic criterion, and imitation is not appropriate as a description of
intention.
In contrast to imitation, the concept of historicism provides a means
of exploring the warping of history embodied by these pieces. Earlier,
I have used the phrase ‘compositional historicism’ to encompass the to-
tality of ways in which nineteenth-century pieces engage with the music
of the distant past (excluding localized allusion). But the pejorative sense
in which the term is still often used serves to limit its applicability, and –
more importantly – it proves inadequate as a means of delineating the
types of relationship involved. It would be overly restrictive to consider
historicism to be synonymous with the literal replication of earlier styles;
even so, the term and the constellation of issues and tensions that it
signifies may seem to imply the preponderance of a historical idiom.
While nineteenth-century compositions that are modelled on works by
Palestrina or use an idiom abstracted from them may be characterized
as historicist, such a characterization must take account of the degree to
which the newer work utilizes elements of the older work or language.
Only a small minority of these compositions fit in with Dahlhaus’s no-
tion that ‘such musical experience moves in a twilight zone between the
dead past and the denied present’, or with Wiora’s view that historicism
Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music 243
involves the imitation of the old outweighing the invention of the new.1
Rather, the compositional engagement with Palestrina represents a con-
tinuum, ranging from works in which the older element plays a restricted
role, to ‘pure’ historicism, ‘copies and musical cul-de-sacs’.2 Few of the
compositions that have been discussed exhibit such ‘pure’ historicism,
either because the composer did not intend to replicate Palestrina’s lan-
guage or, less often, because his intention to produce a literal copy
was frustrated by an inadequate knowledge of it. Most of the works
discussed present a mixture of musical styles, in which Renaissance ele-
ments are juxtaposed with nineteenth-century idioms. This dual nature
is emphasized in some German discussions of historicism, in the idea
of eclecticism.3 But the very duality of these works may seem to render
the term historicism inadequate, since by its nature it downplays the
modern aspects of a piece. What is important in this eclectic repertory
is its difference from its models, not just its points of similarity: a critical
concept is needed that emphasizes the dialogue between old and new
present in such pieces.
Such a concept may seem to be provided by Romantic irony and
modern critical ideas that are related to and indirectly derived from it.
The freedom of the Romantic ironist to range over artistic materials
from different periods and places, and to incorporate a variety of his-
torical materials and stances within his discourse, may seem to provide
a key to interpreting those products of the Palestrina revival in which
historical and modern musical languages are juxtaposed or combined.
In assessing the relevance of irony as a critical perspective, it must be
established whether the dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival
evince the combination of spontaneity and reflection, critique and self-
critique, that characterizes ironic literature. It should not be ignored,
however, that the reflection and caprice of the Romantic ironist are very
distant from the strategies of legitimization deployed by the composers of
the Palestrina revival. In the writings of Mendelssohn and Witt, irony –
while not mentioned by name – represents an abhorrent deviation from
(Hegelian) aesthetic norms. Mendelssohn’s insistence that his church
compositions were the products of sincerity and conviction, and his
assertion that they were spontaneous rather than reflective creations,
have been seen to represent not only a denial of the intent to imitate
but an attempt to distance his activities from the irony of the early
Romantics. Similarly, Witt’s demand that a composer’s style be the prod-
uct of his conviction and world-view, being prompted solely by his feelings
rather than through the conscious replication of Palestrina, cannot be
concomitant with Friedrich Schlegel’s assertion that the artwork be the
product of both inspiration and reflection.
But while Mendelssohn, Witt, and other composers whose works and
views have been examined represented their intentions as diametrically
opposed to the reflection of the Romantic ironists, this does not nullify
the value of irony as a critical tool; rather – since these works undeniably
embody reflection as well as spontaneity – irony may provide a means
of coming closer to their covert aesthetic basis. Schlegel’s idea that the
literal imitation of ancient art is impossible – since authors inevitably
include modern elements and as a consequence produce parodies – and
his conception of the ironic artwork as an act of criticism of an earlier
work, may provide a means of understanding the dialogic nature of the
products of the Palestrina revival. In particular, Schlegel’s notion that
portions of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister constitute a critical interpretation of
Hamlet, serving to supplement and rejuvenate the earlier work, seems to
provide a useful means of approaching the analogous processes at work
in re-creations of Palestrina’s language. In addition, the abrupt stylistic
shifts that have been noted in the music of Witt, Koenen, Bruckner and
Liszt, can be linked – provisionally at least – to the more disjointed ironic
juxtapositions produced by Heine’s use of the Stimmungsbrechung, the sharp
parodic twist that undermines the prevailing mood and style of a neo-
medieval Volkslied, and in doing so asserts the presence of the spirit of
modernity within a poem.
Analogous ideas from modern literary theory may also provide a fruit-
ful means of interpreting the dialogism present in the compositions of
the Palestrina revival. The notion of the artwork functioning as a critique
of an earlier text is, for instance, an important part of Linda Hutcheon’s
consideration of linguistic multiplicity in postmodern art. For Hutcheon,
the postmodern artist’s engagement with earlier art represents a stylistic
confrontation, in which this material is submitted to critical reassess-
ment, ‘a modern recoding which establishes difference at the heart of
similarity’.4 As with Romantic irony, the emphasis that Hutcheon places
on difference provides a useful corrective to the emphasis on similarity
present in both imitation and historicism. But to transfer these or similar
ideas to nineteenth-century works that are related to historical musi-
cal languages is not unproblematic. The dangers of this approach are
apparent in a recent discussion of St Paul by Peter Mercer-Taylor, who
argues that Mendelssohn’s intent was not merely to appropriate earlier
materials, but to make the act of appropriation the ‘subject matter’ of
the work.5 Quoting the literary theorist Patricia Waugh, he asserts that
Mendelssohn’s purpose was ‘simultaneously to create a fiction and to
make a statement about the creation of that fiction. The two processes
are held together in a formal tension which breaks down the distinction
between “creation” and “criticism” and merges them into the concepts
of “interpretation” and “deconstruction”’.6
The notion that St Paul combines both critical reflection on earlier mu-
sical material and self-critique closely resembles Romantic conceptions
of irony. As with irony, the idea that either Mendelssohn or the composers
of the Palestrina revival sought to create religious works that critique their
own premisses is questionable. The problem with these concepts is not
their dissonant relation to the avowed intentions of the composers, but
that they exaggerate the stylistic tensions within the works themselves.
The question whether critique, either as a Romantic or (post)modern
conception, can be accepted as a valid critical tool for interpreting the
relationships between nineteenth-century works and earlier church mu-
sic must be resolved by considering the nature of this dialogism. Heine’s
use of the Stimmungsbrechung, while an extreme form of Romantic irony,
highlights the problems involved in transferring it as a broader concept to
the Palestrina revival, problems that increase in appropriating analogous
modern critical ideas. While Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung and the stylistic
shifts present in the dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival are
comparable in effect, they do not seem similar in function. These shifts
of register are in both cases revelations of the presence of modernity, and
serve to highlight the reflective character of the works concerned: in both
cases the possibility of naiv composition in a reflective age is tested empiri-
cally. But the dialogism of the works of the Palestrina revival provides a
different response to this problem than that given by Heine’s abrupt par-
odic twists or the linguistic confrontations of postmodern art. Although
Heine’s poetry and the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival evince
the combination of spontaneity and reflection characteristic of irony, and
both deny the possibility of resurrecting the naiv art of earlier periods
solely through repetition, the assertion of modernity within the composi-
tions of the Palestrina revival does not constitute critique or self-critique.
Heine’s irony not only undermines the external form of the medieval
Volkslied, by violently juxtaposing it with modern stylistic elements, but
also subverts the spiritual content of it, emphasizing that for the reflective
modern artist, such naiv world-views are no longer capable of recovery.
In contrast, the music of the Palestrina revival constitutes the resistance
of self-critique and an attempt at such a recovery. The dialogic compo-
sitions of the Palestrina revival seek to assert the continued possibility of
naiv composition, through re-expressing Palestrina’s spiritual content via
elements of his language and interweaving these elements with compo-
nents of modern musical syntax. While such pieces constitute reflective
essays on the problem of church music, they seek to deny their own reflec-
tivity. Such denial cannot be accommodated within the self-awareness
of irony, and a concept must be found that emphasizes the coexistence
of languages without the presence of critique or self-critique.
The dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival are clearly ‘music
about music’ in some sense, if not in the sense of critique. They do not
represent a commentary on Palestrina’s form, but reinterpret this form
as a means of retrieving and re-expressing its spiritual content. A compa-
rable process, clearly differentiated from critique, is described in a frag-
ment that appeared in both Friedrich Schlegel’s ‘Athenäum Fragmente’
and Novalis’s ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’: ‘I can only show that I have
understood an author if I can act in his spirit, if I can translate and
change him in a variety of ways without diminishing his individuality.’7
For Schlegel, all such translation involves ‘transplantation or metamorphosis
or both. . . . Every real translation must be rejuvenation’.8 Exploring the
music of the Palestrina revival in terms of translation – of how nineteenth-
century composers transplanted and rejuvenated Palestrina’s language –
emphasizes the dialogic nature of these works and allows us to approach
them in a more sophisticated and sympathetic way than the mono-
logic conceptions of imitation and historicism. In addition to providing
a means of interpreting the interaction of languages present in these
works, translation theories offer a means of exploring the attempted
reclamation of Palestrina’s spiritual content that they enact. The follo-
wing discussion – while centred around the ideas of Schleiermacher and
the Romantic circle – is not restricted to theories from the Romantic tra-
dition, but instead represents a pragmatic translation of a variety of useful
approaches from literary and linguistic theory, and from the burgeoning
discipline of translation studies.
The meaning of translation in a musical context can be clarified
through a recent description of the translating process by Eve Tavor
Bannet; she describes translation as ‘that mixture of chance and neces-
sity by which the translator finds a means of transmitting the signs s/he
has received from an other in such a way that the other can be heard
afresh at her/his date’.9 Central to translation is therefore the idea of
recovery: the recovery of meanings or truths from a text or body of
texts and the subsequent re-expression of this essential content in a new
text. The relevance of such an idea to music is immediately obvious.
A performance of a piece of notated music can be seen as an act of
translation, an interpretation and transmission of signs so that they can
be ‘heard afresh’. As has been seen, the validity of nineteenth-century
performances of Palestrina’s music was dependent for Witt on such an act
of translation; while Palestrina’s essential content remained unchanged
in performance, the external form of the work is modified since ‘our
spirit penetrates it and lets our singers perform it with our accents and
our manner of expression’.10 Not only nineteenth-century performances
of Palestrina, but also works that in some way use his language resemble
translations; attempts to recover and adapt the meanings, the spiritual
content, of his works for the modern age. In addition, translation of-
fers a means of exploring how composers came to terms with the new
awareness of the multiplicity of earlier musical styles and of the foreign
and contingent nature ascribed to them by historicism. Translation rep-
resents an attempt to create unity from plurality, to ‘abolish multiplicity
and to bring different world-pictures back into perfect congruence’: this
perspective is relevant not only to early Romantic visions of a univer-
sal literature (Universalpoesie) but to the attempts of contemporary com-
posers to reconcile the past with the present.11 In addition, the desire to
appropriate Palestrina’s language resembles the cultural imperialism of
contemporary German translation theorists (for example, A. W. Schlegel
and Wilhelm von Humboldt) for whom the verbs übersetzen (to translate)
and verdeutschen (to ‘Germanize’) were interchangeable.12 The attitudes of
the composers of the Palestrina revival towards Renaissance works could
be regarded as mirroring the nineteenth-century view of translation as a
master/servant relationship, in which the translator attempts to improve
and civilize his source texts.13
Before developing these broader interpretive perspectives, the pri-
mary relevance of translation to the Palestrina revival must be discussed:
its use as a method of approaching the dialogism, the combinations of
languages present in these works. A translation is not simply the prod-
uct, the end result, of the complex interaction of languages but is rather
the embodiment of it, a conglomerate of semantic content and forms
derived from two different linguistic systems.14 Two different models
have recently been applied in translation theory for dealing with the
combination of voices, the authorial and the translating, that a transla-
tion embodies. In the first, the interaction of texts and languages results
in interpretive ‘undecidability’; when reading (or hearing) a translating
text, ‘one cannot always be sure just whose voice, translator or source
writer, one is hearing at any given moment’.15 Such an approach views a
translation as a series of fluctuations between translator dominance and
original author dominance, the importance of each voice continuously
changing. The second model considers a translation to be a polyphonic
text combining two acts of communication, author–text–receiver and
translator–text–receiver.16 Here the contributions of author and trans-
lator are not confused but form two separate strands or envelopes of
communication, both presented simultaneously.17
The parallels between the linguistic interaction described in these
models and the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival can be seen by
returning to Bruckner’s ‘Tota pulchra es’. This motet can be compared
with a translating text, in which the authorial and translating voices –
those of Palestrina and Bruckner – alternate in dominance. The inter-
play of these voices can be seen at a localized level. While the opening
sixteen bars can be regarded as exemplifying original author dominance,
Bruckner’s voice is asserted in the truncation of the ‘Stabat mater’ ref-
erence, and in the static harmonies and ensuing sequential patterns in
bars 20–7. A similar shift from original author dominance to translator
dominance is exemplified in bars 41 –52, in the movement away from
phrygian harmonies culminating in a perfect cadence in D♭. Alterna-
tively (or additionally), following the second model outlined above, the
motet could be viewed in terms of the continuous presentation of both
languages, since syntactic elements of both are present throughout. The
combination of restrictive dissonance treatment and predominantly root-
position harmonies in ‘Tota pulchra es’ could be viewed as a continuous
signalling of the presence of the original author ‘envelope’, while again
the translator’s continual presence is asserted in the periodic and tonal
structures of the work.
The limitations of this provisional comparison, and the broader prob-
lems involved in viewing the interaction of musical styles in terms of
translation, are already becoming evident. Before exploring these prob-
lems (which in themselves shed light on the nature of the stylistic pluralism
in the music of the Palestrina revival), it is necessary to refine these mod-
els of linguistic interaction: in particular, translation provides a means of
enhancing our understanding of the difference in degrees of similarity of
nineteenth-century representations of Palestrina’s language. Translation
theorists have tackled such problems of similarity, and since the 1600s
have tended to divide translations into three broad types: literal (word-
for-word) translation, free translation (in Dryden’s words, ‘translation
with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as
never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense’),
and a rogue third category, re-creation (often confusingly labelled, as
with Dryden, ‘imitation’, ‘where the translator . . . assumes the liberty,
not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as
he sees occasion; and taking only some general hints from the original, to
run division on the groundwork, as he pleases’).18 A similar conceptual
scheme is outlined in Schleiermacher’s speech ‘Ueber die verschiedenen
Methoden des Uebersezens’ (1813), which, more than any other German
Romantic discussion of translation, addresses the problems provoked by
the ways in which ‘a language can absorb products of another language
that has been dead for many centuries’.19 Like Dryden, Schleiermacher
proposes a scheme that encompasses literal and freer translation, and
also asserts the existence of looser re-creations that belong outside the
concept. For the genuine translator, two methods are possible:
Either the translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves
the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible
and moves the author towards him. Both methods are so completely different
from one another that it is necessary that one or the other be followed as strictly
as possible, since an extremely unreliable result would necessarily be produced
by any mixing.20
Importantly, in Schleiermacher’s scheme translation occupies a con-

ceptual space midway between, on the one hand, paraphrase, copying
(Nachbildung), or free imitation in the target language and, on the other
hand, creative expression and communication in the source language.21
The paraphrast or free imitator attempts to provide a reflection of a for-
eign work without its language being implicated within his production;
his aim is not to bring together the author and reader, but ‘merely to give
the latter a similar impression to that received from the original in its own
language by its contemporaries’.22 Such a goal is illusory: paraphrases
‘completely relinquish the impression made by the original, since the liv-
ing speech has been killed and is irretrievable’.23 At the opposite end of
Schleiermacher’s continuum of linguistic interaction from monolingual
communication in the target language is another form of monolingual-
ism: comprehension and communication in the source language. He
notes that some authors become immersed in a foreign language to the
extent that their native tongue becomes alien to them, with the result
that in comprehending works in this language ‘there is no longer a trace
of the influence of their mother tongue’.24 But those who are able to
comprehend a source language in such a manner do not offer a model
for the process of translation, and original works written in a language
which is not that to which the author was born rarely rise above pas-
tiche: ‘only seldom does something originate in this way that has genuine
value aside from its mimic accuracy . . . [if ] contrary to nature and cus-
tom, someone formally becomes a deserter [Überläufer] from his mother
tongue and offers himself to another’.25
True translation lies between these two extremes; as a mode of com-
munication and linguistic interaction it represents neither monolingual
paraphrase in the target language, nor monolingual expression in a for-
eign language, but rather – if not bilingualism – at least a mode in which
formal elements from the source language are sedimented in the translat-
ing text.26 Just as paraphrase in the target language and expression in the
source language represent two extremes, translation can incline towards
either the one or the other. Freer translation – closest to paraphrase
on Schleiermacher’s continuum – brings the work effortlessly towards
the reader, striving entirely to prevent the form of the source language
insinuating itself into the target language.27 Schleiermacher rejects this
approach. Translation requires not merely the transference of the textual
content, but also of the higher meaning of a work, ‘the musical element
of language’; if this is not present in translations then the highest magic
in the originals is lost.28 Freer translation proves inadequate as a means
of re-expressing this higher meaning since this cannot be detached from
its form of expression and represented afresh in a new language:
Could anyone who is convinced that thought and expression are essentially
and inwardly completely the same, and the entire art of all understanding of
speech and therefore also of translation is based on this conviction . . . presume
to break speech down to its innermost element in order to eliminate from it
the constituent of language, and make, through a new chemical process as it
were, that innermost element combine with the essence and power of another
language?29
Schleiermacher’s answer is a resounding no: the freer translation in-

evitably distorts the original at the most fundamental levels of its being,
and for a translator to claim that he had rendered a book ‘just as the au-
thor would have written it if he had written it in German’ would amount
to the same as providing the reader with ‘a portrait of a man just as
he would have looked if his mother had conceived him with a different
father’.30 Rather, in translating a work from the target language to the
source language, the translator must transfer elements of the form of the
original as well as the textual content. In addition to re-expressing this
content and the musical element of the source language, translators must
also transfer the ‘sense of the strange’ (Gefühl des fremden) that they feel
upon reading the work in its original language, a feeling of estrangement
that is present regardless of how fluently they read this language.31 The
task of bending the target language towards ‘a resemblance of the foreign’
(einer fremden Aehnlichkeit) is probably the hardest task for the translator:
Who would not prefer to allow his mother tongue to appear everywhere in the
most popular and appropriate beauty of which each genre is capable? Who
would not prefer to conceive children in whom the father’s line is reflected
purely, rather than half-breeds [Blendlinge]? Who would readily be published
when appearing in less fluent and graceful movements than he is capable of,
from time to time seeming at the very least abrupt and stiff, in order to be as
objectionable to the reader as is necessary so that he does not become unaware
of the nature of the thing? Who would readily abandon himself to attempting
to keep as close to the foreign language as his own permits, so that people
reproach him – like parents who hand their children over to circus performers
[Kunstspringern] – for introducing his mother tongue to foreign and unnatural
contortions instead of skilfully exercising it in its native gymnastics [heimischen
Turnkunst]! . . . These are the renunciations [Entsagungen] which every translator
must necessarily undertake, these are the perils to which he exposes himself, if
he does not observe the finest line in striving to keep the tone of the language
foreign.32
Schleiermacher places the translator in a double bind; he must convey

foreignness in his translation, making his work in the target language
reflect the form and musical element of the source language, but must
draw a line between this and the production of linguistic Blendlinge (half-
breeds, bastards, hybrids, hermaphrodites).33 The result of this dilemma
is that translation requires a separate sub-language – a linguistic field
[Sprachgebiet]–in which transplantations and innovations are legitimate
which could not be condoned in an original work.34
It is clear that Schleiermacher’s conception of linguistic orientation
and interaction (however problematic as a theory of literary translation)
offers much that is of relevance to stylistic pluralism in music. In addition,
Schleiermacher’s speech provides a means of situating texts which fall
outside the concept of translation proper, resulting in a continuum: para-
phrase/free imitation in the target language (monolingual), freer trans-
lation (monolingual), ‘translationese’ (bilingual), and foreign creation in
the source language (monolingual). Such a continuum parallels the re-
lation between the dialogic and monologic products of the Palestrina
revival (pieces that emulate the Palestrina ideal solely through the use of
modern musical syntax, or which replicate Palestrina’s language to such
an extent as to be monologic in the source language). This progression
can be refined by mapping onto it the two modern models of linguis-
tic interaction discussed earlier; in this way the different categories of
translation can also represent the alternations in linguistic dominance
within a single text (and within its individual parameters). The following
scheme accounts for all attempts to meet the Palestrina ideal, whether
dialogic or monologic:
(i) modern language works or moments (monolingual)
(ii) suppression, where elements of contemporary syntax are suppressed
in order to meet with the ideal that the earlier language represents,
but which includes no formal elements of the earlier language (mono-
lingual)
(iii) suppressive translation, where in addition to the suppression of some
modern elements, constituents of the earlier language are included,
but insufficient to suggest re-creative translation (bilingual)
(iv) re-creative translation, where both languages are bound together
forming two separate and simultaneous strands of communication
of varying dominance (bilingual)
(v) more literal translation, where the earlier linguistic strand predom-
inates (bilingual)
(vi) the literal replication of Palestrina’s language (monolingual).
Approaching these compositions from the perspective of translation
does not merely offer a descriptive vocabulary, but a way of exploring
the complex linguistic interactions present within them. Crucially, it pro-
vides a key to interpreting the fluctuations in stylistic orientation present
in most of the pieces discussed, and also a means of understanding the
shifts of register that earlier proved similar, though less drastic stylistically,
to Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung. In the majority of the dialogic products of
the Palestrina revival, fluctuations of style generally resemble moves to
another consecutive stage on the continuum presented above: a move
from re-creative translation to suppressive translation in, say, Bruckner’s
‘Tota pulchra es’, or a move from more literal translation to the monolin-
gual replication of Palestrina’s language in the case of a piece by Grell or
Haller (this last category is of course no theoretical conceit, but is exempli-
fied by Haller’s completion of Palestrina’s ‘Salve Regina’). The puzzling,
abrupt stylistic shifts in other works by Bruckner and in the church music
of Witt, Koenen and Liszt are different in nature. While a fluctuation in
linguistic orientation constitutes a consecutive move along the contin-
uum, and while Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung signifies a leap from replication
to a modern stylistic moment, these shifts of register in general suggest
a change of orientation midway between the two: a ‘leap-frogging’ shift
that misses out a link in the chain. This is evident from Witt’s ‘Salvos fac
nos, Domine’ (Ex. 4.3), which exemplifies the nature of the ‘Wittian style’
as a mode of translation. Here the linguistic shift is from the re-creative
translation of the bilingual ‘Wittian style’ to monolingual translation in
the target language. While in bars 17–23, quasi-modal progressions and
freer rhythms suggest linguistic parity, the abrupt shift in bar 24 to tonal
harmony, repetitive rhythms and harmonic sequences asserts the dom-
inance of the translator’s language (while remaining in dialogue with
the Palestrina ideal through the suppression of undesirable elements of
modern syntax). These shifts are symptomatic of Witt’s ambition to re-
cast Palestrina’s style in a form more accessible to modern listeners; they
parallel what Schleiermacher considered to be the result of trying to
move the author towards the reader: ‘It is evident therefore that if this
formula is followed completely in this field it will lead to either pure [free]
imitation or to a still more strikingly repugnant and bewildering mixture
of translation and free imitation, in which the reader is bounced back
and forth like a ball between his own and a foreign world, between the
invention and wit of the author and that of the translator.’35 These shifts
of register do not therefore constitute an intentional dualistic confronta-
tion of the old and new, as is the case with Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung;
rather they represent merely the most visible signs of a more pervasive
bilingualism.
Before pursuing this comparison further, it is necessary to confront the
major stumbling block to viewing these works as musical translations.
The fact that the compositions of the Palestrina revival are in general
responses not to individual Renaissance works but to groups of works
(or to a picture abstracted from this repertory as a totality) distances
them from literary translation, where the concept usually refers to a
relation between two texts. Certainly, only a small minority of these
pieces can be regarded as musical translations: those that engage with
a specific old Italian work, seeking to recover and adapt its content and
form in order that it may function more successfully within the target
culture. In the case of such pieces, a work by Palestrina (or by one of
his contemporaries) provides not merely a limited point of reference,
but is rather the premiss for its composition and a constant background
within the finished work. The clearest examples of this are Grell’s opp. 32
and 33, composed in order to supplement and replace movements from
the Missa Papae Marcelli in a liturgical performance, and Naumann’s
Psalm 130 (a re-creative translation of Allegri’s Miserere). This perspective
is also relevant to nineteenth-century adaptations and arrangements of
Renaissance works. Bunsen’s adaptation of the Improperia, for instance,
represents an attempt to make it function in the target culture in a
manner similar to how it functioned in its original context. The resulting
conglomerate of Catholic Italian and Protestant German material, if
considered from the perspective of Schleiermacher, inclines more closely
towards free transposition than to translation (in replacing the Greek
responses at the centre of the original with a Lutheran chorale, Bunsen
mitigates the alienation effect that would have been felt by its original
receivers).
If the majority of the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival can-
not be described as musical translations, it is because composers sought
to recover the generic meanings of Palestrina rather than the content
of particular works. Even so, translation theories offer a useful means
of exploring this process. For nineteenth-century composers, the chief
motivation for engaging with Palestrina was the desire to reclaim not
his forms but his spiritual content. The wide variety of theories as to
how this might be achieved is paralleled in Romantic translation theory,
by a divergence in opinions as to whether the content of a work in
one language can fully be expressed through the form of another. For
Wilhelm von Humboldt, all contents are expressible in every language:
‘everything – the most lofty and the most earthbound, the strongest and
most delicate – can be expressed in every language, even in the dialects
of very primitive peoples. It is merely that these notes slumber, just as
in an unplayed instrument, until the nation understands how to coax
them out.’36 For Humboldt, a content and the expression adequate to
that content exist, dormant, as pure possibility in a language until the
need to employ them acts as a catalyst for their awakening. Such a posi-
tion is strikingly similar to those advocated by Hoffmann and Witt. For
Hoffmann, as has been seen, the exposure of a young composer to the
products of the golden age of church music will aid the revelation of
the spiritual style latent within himself; he will not adopt the language
of Palestrina, but find that through a miraculous process of sublimation
the language of church music within himself will be revealed to him.
Similarly, the ideal of modern church composition outlined in Witt’s
essay ‘Der Palestrinastyl’ is for the composer to produce works in a con-
temporary musical language in which, by an analogous process, ‘prevails
and wafts the spirit of Palestrina’.37
For other translation theorists, Humboldt’s contention that the con-
tent of one language can be expressed through the form of another is
unfeasible. It has been seen that for Schleiermacher, it is not possible ‘to
break speech down to its innermost element in order to eliminate from it
the constituent of language’, in order to re-express this element, through
a ‘chemical process’, in another language. The translator must deal with
the problem of expressing concepts in the source language that lack iden-
tical or even proximate equivalents in the target language by retaining the
original form of the concept within his translation. Similarly, Schopen-
hauer notes that certain foreign words precisely capture nuances that are
unavailable in other languages; as a result, anyone wishing to access these
nuances in expressing their thoughts ‘will use the foreign word and ignore
the barking of pedantic purists’.38 For the nineteenth-century composer,
however, Palestrina’s language provides more than just a precise form of
a concept that would otherwise have to be expressed periphrastically in
the target language. Rather, it represents that which can no longer be
expressed. Palestrina’s language represents a primary, naiv vision of the
infinite translated into material form; the modern composer can rep-
resent the infinite only through secondary discourse, a further process
of translation. No substitutes can be found for this language in modern
speech; it is a concept that can no longer be represented in a purely con-
temporary musical language. Hoffmann’s ideal of a spiritual language
being latent within the modern composer is clearly rejected by those
composers whose music represents secondary discourse, since for them
the suppression that he advocates, while being capable of producing mu-
sic that is suitable for the church, cannot reestablish the tenuous link to
the Christian infinite that translating Palestrina provides.
Furthermore, to engage with Palestrina’s language – just as to translate
a foreign work of literature – constitutes a gesture towards the negation
of the multiplicity and disunity of languages. For nineteenth-century
composers, Palestrina’s effortless and assured command of his mate-
rial epitomized not merely the inspiration of genius, but represented a
unique musical lingua franca: unlike modern religious composers, artists
and architects, Palestrina did not have to choose an orientation from a
range of earlier styles, nor was he aware of their historicity and contin-
gency. And in idealizing the Palestrina-Stil, musicians and critics created
a musical equivalent to a pre-Babelian language that transcended geo-
graphical and temporal boundaries. The idea of Babel in literature is as
old as civilization itself, reinforced by the daily difficulties of interlingual
communication. But Babel’s equivalent in music is a nineteenth-century
development: for the first time, a wide array of historical musical lan-
guages seemed equally accessible – and equally valid. It is the heightened
awareness of these musical languages, a product of the rise of historicism,
that produced anxiety about the validity of the native tongue (a con-
cept that in itself was increasingly unstable in the nineteenth century).
A composer who responds to such languages monolingually, through
literal replication, does nothing to reduce the apprehension that their
existence causes. The composer who attempts to restore literally a pure,
pre-Babelian musical language, by replicating the form and taking on
its spiritual content, neglects to re-create in his work the double content
that he perceives in that language: its universal spiritual content and its
specific historicity. Only by asserting contemporaneity within his form
can he give historicity to his own product; only then can a re-creation
of that language speak validly to the present. By establishing, through
translation, a kinship between his language and the earlier language,
the composer can assert that his own language, while not capable of
expressing that which the earlier language expresses, is at least capable
of coexisting with it, of being akin to it.
For this reason alone, translation is an issue in music as well as litera-
ture. It may seem as if the idea of translation can have no relevance for
music, simply because nineteenth-century audiences and congregations
had access to the music of Palestrina in its original guise. As has become
evident, the refrain ‘what are copies for when we can have the origi-
nals?’ was voiced throughout the century by critics and composers alike.
But the premiss behind this complaint – the notion that Renaissance
compositions were readily accessible – was unrealistic, even in the late
nineteenth century. Only a small number of Palestrina’s works were avail-
able in print in the first half of the century, while the numerous editions
published from the 1850s onwards were in general comprehensible only
to cognoscenti. Haberl, it will be recalled, lamented that the flood of
Cecilian compositions would lead to Renaissance compositions being
dismissed as superfluous.39 But he, alongside other editors from Proske
onwards, was in part responsible for this development: as Griesbacher
noted, the desire to distance these works from modern music by retaining
old clefs and other baffling hieroglyphics rendered their notation as im-
penetrable as Sanskrit.40 Modern compositions that translated this lan-
guage were not, however, intended simply as substitutes for the originals.
A striking parallel to this can be seen in the field of literary translation
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the flood of translations
of Latin works into European vernaculars, despite the fact that most of
the receivers of these translations were capable of reading them in the
source language. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, translation from
German into Czech provided a means of asserting the possibilities of
the Czech language, even though ‘very often the Czech language (hoch
Böhmisch) was less understandable to the average Czech reader than
German’.41 For Vladimı́r Macura, the function of literary and scientific
translations from German into Czech was ‘not to mediate a foreign text,
which was usually easily accessible in German’; rather the cultivation
of the Czech language itself ‘was regarded as the aim, the acme of the
national endeavour’.42 Similarly, the presence and continued validity of
Palestrina’s music did not, in the eyes of composers at least, render the
attempt to translate that language superfluous. Although the literal repli-
cation of his language was artistically redundant, to translate it provided
a means of proving the capabilities of a composer’s own discourse by
asserting the continued possibility of religious composition.
In addition, re-creating Palestrina through modern composition gen-
erated versions of his forms that were better attuned to modern German
culture, omitting and reworking those aspects of the originals that were
surplus to requirements. Similarly, for early Romantic theorists trans-
lation was not primarily a means to carry over passively the cultural
products of foreign lands and distant periods, but rather provided an op-
portunity to ‘Germanize’ them. A. W. Schlegel noted that the Romantic
desire to encounter the literature of other lands, while initially charac-
terized by an indiscriminate lust for the strange, was becoming more
discriminating: it often degenerates into a ‘mania for imitation and a
foolish predilection for the foreign, but it also always moves steadily to-
wards a free appropriation of the best’.43 Similarly, the composers of
the Palestrina revival did not passively receive and transmit the works of
Palestrina, but ‘broke up the foreign form’, retaining only what they con-
sidered to be ‘the best and most profound of it’.44 In striving to recover
Palestrina’s spiritual content, composers discarded those elements of his
language that they considered inessential or undesirable. As has been
seen, the homophonic ideal that dominated early Romantic representa-
tions of Palestrina’s language constituted a highly selective reading of his
works (a reading that continued to be perpetuated despite the increasing
knowledge of his music). By a similar process of selective interpreta-
tion, Witt contended that modern composers could surpass Palestrina
by discarding the defective aspects of his form. Given the double con-
tent perceived in Palestrina’s music – universal spiritual content and
historically determined content – those formal elements considered un-
desirable could be linked to the latter, be viewed as merely historical
(the transient aspect of Palestrina’s forms), and consequently could be
considered unnecessary to a restitution of his spiritual content. Again, the
best example of this is the way Witt describes the aspects of Palestrina’s
language that he considered inessential to represent a merely historical
aspect of his works, a continuation of tendencies outlawed by the Council
of Trent.
For the majority of translation theorists, both Romantic and modern,
the omission of formal elements considered inessential has been repre-
sented as true fidelity to the original text. In discussing the benefits and
drawbacks of metrical translations of poetry, A. W. Schlegel argued that
‘literalness is a long way from fidelity: fidelity means that the same or
similar impressions are produced, because these are the essence of the
matter’, while for Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘fidelity must be directed to-
wards the true character of the original and not rely on its accidentals
[Zufälligkeiten]’.45 In a similar way, Witt dismissed as incidentals those fea-
tures of Palestrina’s language that he sought to omit in his re-creations of
it; in this way his filtered representation of Palestrina can be portrayed
as true fidelity. In the products of the Palestrina revival that resemble
dialogic translating texts, the Palestrinian linguistic ‘envelope’ generally
constitutes such a partial representation of the earlier language. But
fidelity to this language cannot, as has been seen, be produced by such
distilled replication alone; a modern linguistic envelope is also required
to make the translating text function in the target culture in the way
that the source text functioned in its original context. Only through the
combination of historical and modern forms (and consequently of uni-
versal spiritual content and the spirit of modernity) can true fidelity to
Palestrina’s works be achieved.
Even in such cases, however, the compositions of the Palestrina revival
have a tentative, provisional character; like translations, they represent
interim solutions to the problems that they were intended to redress.
Here it is useful to compare the utopian dimension fundamental to
nineteenth-century visions of new golden ages of church music and liter-
ature. In Romantic literary theory, translation represents a crucial factor
in the creation of a German world literature: this goal is fundamen-
tal to Schleiermacher’s translation theory, which is predicated on the
belief that the German nation and language are destined to unite all
the treasures of art and scholarship into one ‘great historical whole’.46
Similarly, for Friedrich Schlegel, the translation and appropriation of
older forms is crucial to the emergence of a universal and progressive
literature, whose possibility represents the realization of the ‘absolute
identity of ancient and modern in the past, present and future’.47 In
Schlegel’s writings, translation is a category of thought encompassing
not only the revival of old forms and entire genres, but even the recon-
struction of lost classical works: incredibly, Schlegel envisaged a future in
which the appropriation of ancient Greek culture would have progressed
to the extent that it would be possible for lost texts to be reinvented, as
original works that were simultaneously German and Greek.48 Crucially,
however, both Schlegel and Schleiermacher distance their utopian vi-
sions from the present state of translation. While translation provides an
intimation of a future golden age and a path towards it, the works of
contemporary translators are merely initial attempts.
The chasm between translation as an ideal and as a reality is partic-
ularly evident in a fragment by Novalis, in which the traditional three
subdivisions of translation theory receive a visionary reworking:
A translation is either grammatical, or transformatory, or mythical. Mythical

translations are translations in the loftiest style. They represent the pure, perfect
character of the individual artwork. They do not give us the actual artwork,
but the ideal of it. I believe that no complete model of them exists yet, but one
encounters clear traces of them in the spirit of many critiques and descriptions
of works of art. . . . Greek mythology, in part, is such a translation of a national
religion. The modern Madonna is a similar sort of myth.
Grammatical translations are translations in the ordinary sense. They require
very much learning, but only abilities in discourse.
Genuine transformatory translations require the highest poetic spirit in order
to be authentic. . . . The true translator of this type must be an artist himself and
be capable of conveying the idea of the whole, in this way or that as he wills; he
must be the poet’s poet and be able to speak according to both his idea and that
of the poet at the same time. Not only books, but everything can be translated in
these three ways.49
This passage has a peculiar resonance with the ideals and music of the
Palestrina revival. Novalis’s conception of mythical translation provides
a picture of the nineteenth-century Palestrina in his totality: an ideal
transplanted from the distant past and translated to serve modern needs.
And his description of transformatory translation may seem applicable
to those compositions that are the product of the ‘highest poetic spirit’
(i.e., poiesis, not mimesis), works in which the languages and ideals of
Palestrina and the modern composer are united. But in pursuing this
comparison, it is vital to appreciate the disjunction between present and,
so to speak, future perfect translation that underpins Novalis’s scheme. As
with Schlegel, Novalis’s mythical translation points to a Utopian vision
of literary re-creation and inter-cultural transference, contrasting this
ideal with the restricted, compromised and makeshift nature of modern
‘grammatical translations’. The disparity between the ideal forms of
a future golden age and modern attempts to move closer to it has a
clear parallel in the Palestrina revival: here the early Romantic visions
of a revivified church music – of poetic transformatory translations of
Palestrina – were distant from most practical attempts to realize this goal.
And what Andreas Huyssen describes as the ‘chiliastic-eschatological’
dimension of Novalis’s mythical translation is paralleled in the Messianic
resonances of visions of a future musical golden age.50 For figures as
disparate as Mendelssohn and Witt, the salvation of church music was
dependent on the emergence of a new Palestrina who would unite ancient
ideals and modern resources: ‘If it is in our power and if God were to
grant us a new, a modern Palestrina, let us bring about a new epoch
of modern Catholic church music still more brilliant than that of the
sixteenth century.’51 In the interim, translating the original Palestrina
provided a provisional solution to the problem of church music: no mere
return to origins but a constructive response to the past, preparing the
way for a Messiah who did not and could not come.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1 See PK1, PK3; Peter Lüttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie
zwischen 1750 und 1900 (Tutzing, 1994).
2 A fuller survey of recent literature is given in Winfried Kirsch, ‘Aspekte der
Palestrina-Rezeption’, PK1, pp. 32–4, and in the excellent bibliography given
at the end of that volume.
3 The wide use of this phrase is readily apparent in some of my translations
from nineteenth-century critical writings. Where it has been necessary to
translate der Palestrina-Stil as ‘Palestrina’s language’ or ‘Renaissance music’,
this is necessitated by the flexibility of the term and is not an attempt to
manipulate sources to fit preconceived ideas.
4 The Palestrina revivals in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe
were sustained by significantly different intellectual, confessional and political
foundations; hitherto, comparative discussions have tended to approach this
problem uncritically (see, for example, Thomas Day, ‘Palestrina in History:
A Preliminary Study of Palestrina’s Reception and Influence since his
Death’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Columbia (1970); and Richard Boursy,
‘Historicism and Composition: Giuseppe Baini, the Sistine Chapel Choir,
and stile antico Music in the First Half of the 19th Century’, Ph.D. thesis,
University of Yale (1994)).
5 Kevin Korsyn, ‘Brahms Research and Aesthetic Ideology’, Music Analysis 12
(1993), 90 (internal quotation Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four
Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin, 1981), p. 295).
6 Ibid.
7 HÄ, vol. I, p. 259.
1 HISTORICISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART, AESTHETICS

AND CULTURE
1 Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (London, 1759; repr. Leeds,

1966), p. 24.
2 Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia,
1989), p. 177.
261
262 Notes to pages 10–17
3 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt ald Wille und Vorstellung (1819), translated by
E. F. J. Payne as The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols. (New York, 1969),
vol. I, p. 186.
4 Ibid., pp. 185–6.
5 Ibid., p. 235.
6 Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens,
Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich, 1949),
vol. XXIV, p. 767.
7 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’, no. 813, Goethes
Werke, ed. Erich Trunz and Hans Joachim Schrimpf (Munich, 1978),
vol. XII, p. 480.
8 Eckermann, Gespräche, p. 370.
9 Ibid., pp. 300–1.
10 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
(London, 1970), p. 369.
11 See Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York, 1995), p. 10.
12 Walter Wiora, ‘Grenzen und Stadien des Historismus in der Musik’, HW,
p. 58.
13 Bann, Romanticism, p. 10.
14 Philipp Spitta, ‘Kunstwissenschaft und Kunst’, Zur Musik: Sechzehn Aufsätze
(Berlin, 1892; repr. Berlin and New York, 1976), pp. 13, 5, 6.
15 Ibid., p. 9.
16 Friedrich Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben,
Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 2, Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed.
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1972), ser. III, vol. I, p. 241
(all translations are based on On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for
Life, trans. Peter Preuss, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1980).
17 Ibid., pp. 267–8.
18 Ibid., p. 281.
19 Ibid., p. 309.
20 Ibid., p. 254.
21 Ibid., p. 256.
22 Ibid., pp. 258, 264.
23 Ibid., p. 266.
24 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Vienna,
1934), p. 9.
25 Ibid., p. 393.
26 Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. 260.
27 Johann Gottfried Herder, Denkmahl Johann Winkelmanns (1777), HSW,
vol. VII, pp. 482–3.
29 Ibid., p. 257.
30 Winckelmann, Geschichte, pp. 207–37.
31 Ibid., p. 236.
32 Ibid., p. 18.
Notes to pages 17–22 263
33 Ibid., p. 128.
34 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘Gedanken über die Nachahmung der
griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst’, J. J. Winckelmanns
kleine Schriften und Briefe, ed. Hermann Uhde-Bernays (Leipzig, 1925), vol. I,
pp. 60, 84.
35 Ibid., p. 60.
36 Ibid., p. 71.
37 Ibid., pp. 87, 73.
38 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson
(Berkeley, 1989), pp. 323–4.
39 Ibid., p. 324.
40 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italienische Reise, Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz
and Herbert von Einem (Munich, 1978), vol. XI, p. 167.
41 Johann Gottfried Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der
Menschheit (1774), HSW, vol. V, pp. 491, 507.
42 Herder, Ueber die neuere deutsche Litteratur: Fragmente, zweite Sammlung (1767–8),
HSW, vol. II, pp. 119–20, 116, 118.
43 Herder, ‘Shakespear’, Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1773), HSW, vol. V,
pp. 209–10.
44 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’, Goethes Werke,
vol. XII, p. 10.
45 Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. 262 (internal quotation Goethe, ‘Von
deutscher Baukunst’, p. 14).
46 Ibid., p. 263.
47 Ibid.
48 Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions (Princeton, 1990),
p. 375.
50 Herder, Denkmahl Johann Winkelmanns, p. 481.
51 Herder, Auch eine Philosophie, pp. 527, 554.
52 Ibid., pp. 554, 565.
53 Goethe, ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’, no. 795, p. 478.
54 Goethe, unsent draft of a letter to the architect Ludwig Friedrich Catel,
April 1815, Goethes Briefe, ed. Karl Robert Mandelkow, 4 vols. (Hamburg,
1967), vol. III, pp. 627–8.
55 August Wilhelm Schlegel, as quoted in ‘Pellisov’ (Karl Emil Schafhäutl),
‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik des katholischen Cultus’, AmZ 36 (1834), 744.
57 W. Jackson Bate, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge, MA,
1970), p. 22.
58 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Heinrich Heine, Die romantische Schule (1836), HSA, vol. VIII, pp. 7–123.
62 Ibid., pp. 24, 23.
63 Ibid., p. 21.
64 Friedrich Schlegel, Gespräch über die Poesie, KFSA, vol. II, p. 312; all translations
are based on Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, ed.
Ernst Behler and Roman Struc (London, 1968).
65 F. Schlegel, Gespräch, p. 318.
66 F. Schlegel, ‘Ideen’, no. 3, KFSA, vol. II, p. 256.
67 F. Schlegel, Gespräch, p. 319.
68 August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, erster
Teil, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed Edgar Lohner (Stuttgart, 1966), vol. V,
p. 20.
69 F. Schlegel, ‘Vom Raffael’ (1803), KFSA, vol. IV, p. 57.
70 F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht von den Gemälden in Paris’ (1803), KFSA, vol. IV,
p. 14; ‘Vom Raffael’, pp. 55–6.
71 F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, pp. 18–19, ‘Raffael’, p. 56.
72 F. Schlegel, ‘Über die deutsche Kunstausstellung zu Rom, im Frühjahr 1819,
und über den gegenwärtigen Stand der deutschen Kunst im Rom’ (1819),
KFSA, vol. IV, p. 239.
73 Heine, Die romantische Schule, pp. 45, 46. This epigram apparently originated
with Schlegel himself: ‘Der Historiker ist ein rückwärts gekehrter Prophet’
(‘Athenäum Fragmente’, no. 80, KFSA, vol. II, p. 176).
74 Heine, Die romantische Schule, p. 9.
75 Ibid., p. 21.
76 F. Schlegel, ‘Athenäum Fragmente’, no. 390, p. 239.
77 A. W. Schlegel, Vorlesungen, p. 20.
78 Jean Paul, Kleine Nachschule zur ästhetischen Vorschule, Werke, ed. Norbert Miller
(Munich, 1963), vol. V, p. 465.
79 Ibid.
80 Jean Paul, Vorschule der Ästhetik, Werke, p. 63.
81 F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. 39, KFSA, vol. II, p. 151.
82 Jean Paul, Vorschule, pp. 51 –2.
83 F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. 23, p. 149.
84 Ibid., no. 42, p. 152.
85 Ibid., no. 37, p. 151.
86 F. Schlegel, ‘Athenäum Fragmente’, no. 305, p. 217.
87 Ibid., no. 116, p. 182.
88 F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. 55, p. 154.
89 Ibid., no. 117, p. 162.
90 F. Schlegel, ‘Über Goethes Meister’ (1798), KFSA, vol. II, p. 140.
91 Heine, Die romantische Schule, pp. 79, 82.
92 Ibid., p. 113.
93 See Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Toward a Reappraisal of Heine’, Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), vol. XX/ii,
pp. 447–8.
94 Joseph von Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte der neuern romantischen Poesie in Deutsch-
land (1846), Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Mauser (Regensburg, 1962), ser.
VIII, vol. I, p. 45.
95 Heinrich Heine, Selected Verse, ed. Peter Branscombe (London, 1986),
pp. 13–14.
96 Adorno, ‘Toward a Reappraisal’, p. 448.
97 Ludwig Schorn, ‘Originalität’ (excerpt from Ueber die Studien der griechischen
Künstler (Heidelberg, 1818)), AmZ 20 (1818), 861 –6.
98 Ibid., 865.
99 Ibid., 863.
100 Ibid.
101 All translations from HÄ are based on G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures
on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1975); and Hegel, Intro-
ductory Lectures on Aesthetics, ed. Michael Inwood, trans. Bernard Bosanquet
(London, 1993).
102 HÄ, vol. I, pp. 568, 31.
103 Ibid., p. 498.
104 The way in which these dialectics interact is explored more deeply in
Stephen Bungay, Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Oxford, 1984),
pp. 62–7.
105 HÄ, vol. I, p. 109.
106 Ibid., p. 423.
107 Ibid., p. 425.
108 Ibid., p. 110.
109 Ibid., p. 507.
110 Ibid., pp. 511, 516.
111 Ibid., pp. 550–1.
112 Ibid., p. 579.
113 Ibid., p. 260.
114 Ibid., p. 264.
115 Ibid., p. 286.
116 Ibid., p. 173.
117 Ibid., p. 265.
118 Ibid., p. 262.
119 Ibid., p. 261.
120 Ibid., pp. 568, 575.
121 Ibid., pp. 577–8.
122 Ibid., p. 284.
123 Ibid., pp. 71 –6.
124 Ibid., p. 73.
125 Ibid., pp. 73–4.
126 Ibid., pp. 579–80.
127 Ibid., p. 578.
128 Ibid., p. 577.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid., p. 581.
131 Ibid., p. 272.
132 Ibid., p. 270.
133 Ibid., pp. 581 –2.
134 See Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1897),
vol. IV/i, pt. ii, pp. 2292–9; Felix Flügel, Allgemeines Englisch-Deutsches
und Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch (4th edn, Braunschweig, 1891), vol. II,
p. 358.
135 HÄ, vol. I, p. 578.
136 Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, pp. 271, 273, 276–7.
137 Ibid., p. 273 (internal quotation Franz Grillparzer, Werke [Berlin and
Darmstadt, 1965], vol. II, pp. 285–6).
2 ROMANTICISM AND THE PROBLEM OF CHURCH MUSIC
1 E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, AmZ 16 (1814), 577–84,

593–603, 611 –19; all references are to E. T. A. Hoffmanns Werke, ed. Georg
Ellinger (Berlin, n.d. [1894]), vol. XIV, pp. 35–57; all translations are based
on ‘Old and New Church Music’, in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings:
‘Kreisleriana’, ‘The Poet and the Composer’, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton,
trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 353–76; all other translations
from Hoffmann are my own. Hoffmann included portions of this essay, and
of his earlier review (1813) of Beethoven’s Mass in C Major in the second
volume of Die Serapionsbrüder (1819), E. T. A. Hoffmann: Poetische Werke, ed.
Walter Wellenstein (Berlin, 1957), vol. VI, pp. 173–84.
2 Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 35.
3 Stephen Rumph, ‘A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism’, 19th-Century Music 19 (1995), 59.
4 Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, vierter
Theil (1786), HSW, vol. XI, p. 70; Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Musikalisches
Kunstmagazin, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1782, 1791; repr. in 1 vol., Hildesheim, 1969),
vol. I, p. 35; vol. II, p. 57.
5 Ludwig Tieck, Phantasus, erster Theil (1812), Ludwig Tieck’s Schriften (Berlin,
1828; repr. Berlin, 1866), vol. IV, p. 425.
6 Ferdinand Hand, Aesthetik der Tonkunst, 2 vols. (2nd edn, Leipzig, 1847),
vol. II, p. 447.
8 Herder, ‘Vorrede’, Zerstreute Blätter, fünfte Sammlung (1793), HSW, vol. XVI,
p. 133.
9 Glenn Stanley, ‘The Oratorio in Prussia and Protestant Germany:
1812–1848’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Columbia (1988), p. 32.
10 Carl Gottlob Horstig, ‘Ueber alte Musik’, AmZ 10 (1808), 227; Friedrich
Rochlitz, ‘Raphael und Mozart’, AmZ 6 (1803), 651.
11 Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, pp. 118–19; vol. II, pp. 19–23,
53–4, 98, 106–21.
12 Herder, ‘Cäcilia’, Zerstreute Blätter, p. 260 (cf. Briefe zu Beförderung der
Humanität, siebente Sammlung, HSW, vol. XVIII, p. 21).
13 Rochlitz, ‘Feyer des Andenkens der heiligen Cäcilia’, AmZ 6 (1803), 123.
Rochlitz’s 1803 list is the first to include J. S. Bach; presumably this inclusion
is a response to the publication of Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s biography of
Bach in the preceding year (Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und
Kunstwerke. Für patriotische Verehrer echter musikalische Kunst (Leipzig, 1802)).
14 Anon., ‘Messe à 4 voix . . . comp. par Joseph Haydn. No. V.’, AmZ 10 (1808),
466; Christian Friedrich Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte und das Veraltete in der
Musik’, AmZ 16 (1814), 326–7.
16 Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (1824), ed.
Raimund Heuler (Paderborn, 1907), pp. 25–7.
18 Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 38.
19 Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, p. 135.
20 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 55, 17, 122.
21 Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, ed.
Ludwig Schubart (Vienna, 1806; repr. Hildesheim, 1990), p. 41 (the relevant
portion of Schubart’s book appeared earlier as ‘Aus der Geschichte der
italienischen Musik bis auf Jomelli’, AmZ 6 (1804), 231 –6).
22 Philipp Spitta, ‘Palestrina im sechzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert’,
Deutsche Rundschau 79 (1894), 88.
23 Tieck, Phantasus, p. 429.
24 Ibid.
25 Friedrich Rochlitz (ed.), Sammlung vorzüglicher Gesangstücke (Mainz, n.d.
[1835]), vol. I/ii, p. 8.
26 Anon., ‘Briefe über die Musik in Kassel’, AmZ 14 (1812), 603. The inclusion
of the Miserere in two important collections published outside of Germany
helped to encourage its popularity there: Alexandre Choron (ed.), Collection
générale des ouvrages classiques de musique (Paris, n.d. [1810]); Charles Burney (ed.),
La musica che si canta annualmente nelle funzioni della settimana Santa, nella cappella
pontificia (London, 1771). A reprint of Burney’s collection was published in
Leipzig in 1809: Musica sacra quae cantatur quotannis per hebdomadam sanctam
Romae in sacello pontificio.
27 Schubart, Ideen, p. 41.
28 Herder, ‘Cäcilia’, p. 258; Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Herzensergiessungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (1797), trans. Mary Hurst Schubert, Wilhelm
Heinrich Wackenroder’s ‘Confessions’ and ‘Fantasies’ (University Park and London,
1971), p. 185.
30 Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. II, p. 55.
32 Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte’, 327.
33 The collection of twenty-seven responsories for Holy Week from which
this movement was taken was attributed to Palestrina until 1898, when
Franz Xaver Haberl rediscovered an original print of the collection (Venice,
1588). The responsories were previously published by Haberl, alongside
other doubtful works, in PGA, vol. XXXII.
34 Ibid., p. v. Lists of the works by Palestrina available in print in the sec-
ond decade of the nineteenth century are given by Gerber and by Choron
and Fayolle: these are restricted to Burney’s Musica sacra collection and
to isolated motets and excerpts published in the writings of Reichardt,
Hawkins, Burney, and earlier historians (Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Neues
historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1813), vol. III, p. 646;
Alexandre Choron and François Fayolle, Dictionnaire historique des musiciens
(Paris, 1817), vol. II, p. 119).
35 Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Miserere von Palästrina (wie es in der Sixtinischen
Kapelle in Rom gesungen wird)’, AmZ 12 (1810), 591 –2.
36 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise, Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz
and Herbert von Einem (Munich, 1978), vol. XI, pp. 530, 524.
37 Tieck, Phantasus, pp. 424–5.
38 In May 1814, Breitkopf & Härtel sent Hoffmann copies of the respon-
sories, the Missa Papae Marcelli, and part five of Reichardt’s Musikalisches
Kunstmagazin (1791) which contains the ‘Gloria Patri’ from the Magnificat
tertii toni. (Friedrich Schnapp (ed.), E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel (Munich,
1967), vol. I, p. 466.) The extent of Thibaut’s knowledge of Palestrina’s
music can be gauged from two sources, though it is impossible from these
to be sure precisely which compositions he knew at the time of Über
Reinheit: a chronological list of the works performed by Thibaut’s Heidel-
berg Singverein from autumn 1825 to spring 1833 is given in Eduard Baum-
stark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut. Blätter der Erinnerung für seine Verehrer und für
die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1841), pp. 160–81; a table listing the
contents and sources of the music collection of Johann Georg Behagel (one
of the participants in Thibaut’s choir) can be found in Wilhelm Ehmann,
‘Der Thibaut-Behagel-Kreis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der musikalis-
chen Restauration im 19. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1938),
436–44.
39 Peter Lüttig, ‘Das Palestrina-Bild bei Hawkins und Burney’, PK1, pp. 75–6;
Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present
Period, 4 vols. (2nd edn, London, 1789), vol. I, p. 57.
40 Burney, A General History, vol. III, p. 168.
41 Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, p. 193; vol. II, pp. 56–7.
42 Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 39; Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 12.
43 Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. II, pp. 55–6; F. Schlegel,
‘Nachricht von den Gemälden in Paris’, KFSA, vol. IV, p. 42.
44 Anon. ( Johann Gottfried Hientzsch), ‘Hauptübersicht des ganzen Streites’,
Der Streit zwischen der Alten und der Neuen Musik, ed. Hientzsch (Breslau, 1826),
p. 113.
45 Hans Georg Nägeli, ‘Beurtheilung der Schrift: die Reinheit der Tonkunst’,
Der Streit, ed. Hientzsch, p. 34.
46 Ibid., p. 36 (Nägeli refers to the poetic evocation of these composers in Tieck,
Phantasus, pp. 429–31).
47 Ibid., pp. 9–10, 38.
48 Ibid., p. 6.
49 F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [ V ]’, no. 192, KFSA, vol. VIII,
p. 338.
50 F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [II]’, no. 631, p. 82.
51 F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [ VI ]’, no. 237, p. 454.
52 See especially Novalis, Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799), Werke, Tagebücher und
Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel
(Munich and Vienna, 1978), vol. II, pp. 732–50.
54 Ibid.
55 Eduard Krüger, Beiträge für Leben und Wissenschaft der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1847),
p. 197.
56 Tieck, Phantasus, p. 426; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 40.
57 Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte’, 327–8.
58 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans.
Richard Crouter (Cambridge, 1996); Friedrich Schlegel, Gespräch über die
Poesie, KFSA, vol. II, p. 297.
59 Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Briefe auf einer Reise durch die Niederlande,
Rheingegenden, die Schweiz und einen Theil von Frankreich’ (1806), KFSA,
vol. IV, pp. 155–204.
60 These paintings are discussed in greater detail in Keith Andrews, The
Nazarenes: A Brotherhood of German Painters in Rome (Oxford, 1964), pp. 68–9;
and Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Nazarener in der Musik” oder “Der Caecilianismus
in der bildenden Kunst”’, CU, pp. 45–7.
62 F. Schlegel, ‘Dritter Nachtrag alter Gemälde’, KFSA, vol. IV, p. 149.
63 Joseph von Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte der neuern romantischen Poesie in
Deutschland, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Mauser (Regensburg, 1962), ser.
VIII, vol. I, pp. 31, 41 –2.
64 Ibid., pp. 39–41, 43.
65 Heinrich Heine, Die Stadt Lukka, HSA, vol. VI, pp. 143, 153; this translation is
based on ‘The Town of Lucca’, Heine, Selected Prose, trans. Ritchie Robertson
(London, 1993), p. 163.
66 F. Schlegel, ‘Zweiter Nachtrag alter Gemälde’ (1805), KFSA, vol. IV, pp. 80,
82; ‘Über die deutsche Kunstausstellung zu Rom, im Frühjahr 1819, und
über den gegenwärtigen Stand der deutschen Kunst im Rom’ (1819), KFSA,
vol. IV, p. 246.
67 Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, pp. 52–3.
68 Tieck, Phantasus, pp. 425, 427.
69 Hoffmann, ‘Sinfonie . . . par Louis van Beethoven . . . no. 5 des Sinfonies’,
Werke, vol. XIII, p. 41; ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 39.
71 Ibid., p. 54.
72 Tieck, Phantasus, p. 425.
73 Ibid., p. 428; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 42.
74 Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci coll’ accompagnamento dell’ Orchestra,
composta da Luigi van Beethoven’, Werke, vol. XIII, p. 133.
75 Hoffmann, ‘On a Remark of Sacchini’s’, Charlton (ed.), Hoffmann’s Musical
Writings, p. 153.
76 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, Sämmtliche Werke,
ed. Carl Lommatzsch (Berlin, 1842; repr. Berlin and New York, 1983),
series III, vol. VII, p. 415. (Schleiermacher’s earlier discussions of this
relation probably influenced Tieck and Hoffmann; see Schleiermacher,
On Religion, p. 75.)
78 Ibid.
79 Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of
Transcendence (Baltimore and London, 1976), p. 36.
80 Hoffmann, ‘Sinfonie’, p. 41.
81 Ibid., p. 42.
82 F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, pp. 43–4.
83 Ferdinand Hand was later directly to compare the sublimity of
Winckelmann’s oldest style with the music of Palestrina and his prede-
cessors (Aesthetik, vol. I, p. 365).
84 F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, p. 44; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 42.
86 Ibid.
87 AmZ 11 (1809), 470 (footnote).
88 Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci’, p. 134.
89 Ibid.
91 Ibid., p. 54; see also ‘Briefe über Tonkunst in Berlin. Erster Brief ’, Werke,
vol. XIV, pp. 87–8.
92 Gottfried Weber, ‘Über das Wesen des Kirchenstyls’, Cäcilia 2 (1825), 187ff.,
repr. in Hientzsch (ed.), Der Streit, p. 73.
93 Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Neu-Altes’, Für Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1830),
vol. III, p. 354.
94 Ibid., p. 357.
95 F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’, p. 246.
96 Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. 54; F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’,
p. 260.
97 F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’, p. 251.
98 Ibid., p. 261.
100 Ibid.
101 Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci’, p. 135.
102 Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, pp. 54, 42.
103 Weber, ‘Über das Wesen’, p. 74.
104 Anon., ‘Friedrich Schneider, Missa solis vocibus humanis’, AmZ 19 (1817),
250; anon., ‘Die heilige Cäcilia. Geistliche Lieder, Oden, Motetten, Chöre
und andere Gesänge’, AmZ 21 (1819), 170.
105 Hoffmann’s own earlier compositional essays on church music are discussed
in Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Wahrhaft frommer Sinn und Selbstverleugnung”:
E. T. A. Hoffmanns Canzoni per 4 voci alla Capella’, Studien zur Kirchenmusik
im 19. Jahrhundert–Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Christoph-
Hellmut Mahling (Tutzing, 1994), pp. 13–34.
106 Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte, p. 41.
3 THE PROTESTANT PALESTRINA REVIVAL
1 Carl Friedrich Zelter, ‘Zweite Denkschrift’ (c. 1803), as presented in Georg

Schünemann, Carl Friedrich Zelter, der Begründer der Preussischen Musikpflege
(Berlin, 1932), p. 15.
2 Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Denkschrift’ (1809), as presented in Schünemann,
Carl Friedrich Zelter, pp. 29–31.
3 Ibid., p. 30.
4 Zelter, ‘Vierte Denkschrift’ (1804), as presented in Cornelia Schröder (ed.),
Carl Friedrich Zelter und die Akademie: Dokumente und Briefe zur Entstehung der
Musik-Section in der Preußischen Akademie der Künste (Berlin, 1959), p. 106; Friede-
mann Milz, A-cappella-Theorie und musikalischer Humanismus bei August Eduard
Grell (Regensburg, 1976), p. 250.
5 Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Über Reinheit der Tonkunst, ed. Raimund
Heuler (Paderborn, 1907), p. 19.
6 Grundriß der Verfassung der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, den Mitgliedern im Entwurf
mitgetheilt von der jetzigen Vorsteherschaft (Berlin, 1816), p. 5, facsimile edn in
Sing-Akademie zu Berlin: Festschrift zum 175 jährigen Bestehen, ed. Werner Bollert
(Berlin, 1966), p. 65; Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 106.
7 Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 109; Thibaut, letter of 25 June 1818 to Bernhard
Klein, Wilhelm Ehmann (ed.), ‘Musikalische Briefe von A. F. J. Thibaut’,
Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher. Neue Folge (1939), 33.
8 A critical report from 1800 perfectly illustrates the first of these points:
‘the church music which fills our high feast days is normally so meagre
in quality that it is not worth mentioning. If one wants to obtain a truly
artistic experience in Berlin, the only way to receive it is to gain entry to
the Singakademie founded by the worthy Fasch.’ (Anon., ‘Ueber den Zustand
der Musik in Berlin’, AmZ 2 (1800), 587.)
9 Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut. Blätter der Erinnerung für seine
Verehrer und für die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1841), p. 5.
10 Zelter, ‘Zweite Denkschrift’, p. 10.
11 Ibid., pp. 13, 11; Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 80.
12 Thibaut, Über Reinheit, pp. 49, 63.
13 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790), trans. Werner S. Pluhar
(Indianapolis, 1987), pp. 198–201 (§ 53).
14 Zelter, ‘Erste Denkschrift’ (1803), as presented in Schröder (ed.), Carl
Friedrich Zelter, p. 75.
15 Zelter, ‘Dritte Denkschrift’, as presented in Schröder (ed.), Carl Friedrich
Zelter, p. 91; Thibaut, Über Reinheit, p. 57.
17 Martin Blumner, Geschichte der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin, 1891), p. 33.
19 Blumner, Geschichte, p. 143. The historical grounds behind this usage of the
term a cappella are explored in Chapter 4.
20 Monika Lichtenfeld, ‘Zur Geschichte, Idee und Ästhetik des historischen
Konzerts’, HW, pp. 47–9.
21 Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut, p. 155.
22 Ibid., pp. 179, 173.
24 Ibid., p. 48.
25 Ibid., pp. 34, 84.
26 Thibaut, letter of 7 December 1818 to Klein, Ehmann (ed.), ‘Musikalische
Briefe’, 37.
28 Ibid., p. 60.
29 Ibid., p. 22.
30 Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse hatte die Wiederbelebung der älteren Musik
im 19. Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, 1900), p. 12; Lydia
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Music (Oxford, 1992), pp. 246–7.
31 HÄ, vol. I, p. 61.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., p. 60.
34 Ibid., p. 64; compare Friedrich Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik,
Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Carl Lommatzsch (Berlin, 1842; repr. Berlin and New
York, 1983), ser. III, vol. VII, p. 217.
36 Ibid.
37 Philipp Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung protestantischer Kirchenmusik auf
geschichtlicher Grundlage’ (1882), repr. in Zur Musik: Sechzehn Aufsätze (Berlin,
1892; repr. Hildesheim and New York, 1976), p. 35; Eduard Hanslick, ‘Verdi’s
Requiem’, Musikalische Stationen (Berlin, 1885; repr. Farnborough, 1971), p. 7.
38 Grundriß der Verfassung, p. 5. Well known in this connection is Beethoven’s
assertion, in a supplicatory letter to Zelter, that his Missa solemnis could
be performed by a cappella forces (i.e., voices and keyboard). See Blumner,
Geschichte, p. 57.
39 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Zelter of 23 February 1814, Goethes
Briefe, ed. Karl Robert Mandelkow, 4 vols. (Hamburg, 1967), vol. III,
pp. 260–1.
40 Although the Singakademie practised Spohr’s mass from 1825–6, only the
Sanctus was performed in public, and not until 1829. Louis Spohr, Lebenserin-
nerungen, ed. Folker Göthel, 2 vols. (Tutzing, 1968), vol. II, p. 248.
41 Otto Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, Musikalische Aufsätze, ed. Georg Richard
Kruse (Regensburg, [1913]), pp. 26–7, 40.
42 Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle in Rom’ (1837), Musikalische Aufsätze,
pp. 57, 71.
43 Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. I, p. 287.
44 Ibid.
45 Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle’, p. 74.
46 Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, p. 31.
47 Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, pp. 26–7.
48 Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, pp. 31 –2.
49 Ibid., p. 96.
50 Ulrich Konrad, ‘Der Beitrag evangelischer Komponisten zur Messenkom-
position im 19. Jahrhundert’, KJb 71 (1987), 76.
52 Otto Biba, Preface to Louis Spohr, Messe für fünf Solostimmen und zwei
fünfstimmige Chöre (Altötting, 1978).
54 Spohr’s commitment to Bildung through choral music can be seen in an essay
from the same year as the mass: ‘Einige Bemerkungen über die deutschen
Gesang-Vereine, nebst Ankündigung eines neuen für sie geschriebenen
Werkes’, AmZ 23 (1821), 817–20.
55 Sergio Lattes, ‘Baini, Giuseppe’, NG, vol. II, p. 40; see also Richard Boursy,
‘Historicism and Composition: Giuseppe Baini, the Sistine Chapel Choir,
and stile antico music in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Ph.D.
thesis, University of Yale (1994).
56 Franz Sales Kandler, Ueber das Leben und die Werke des G. Pierluigi da
Palestrina . . . . Nach den Memorie storico-critiche des Abbate Giuseppe Baini, ed.
Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (Leipzig, 1834), p. 73.
57 Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle’, pp. 58–9.
58 Nicolai, diary entry of 30 March 1836, in W. Altmann (ed.), Otto Nicolais
Tagebücher (Regensburg, 1937), p. 148, as quoted in Ulrich Konrad, ‘Otto
Nicolai und die Palestrina-Renaissance’, PK1 , p. 130.
59 Ulrich Konrad, Otto Nicolai: Studien zu Leben und Werk (Baden-Baden, 1986),
p. 261; a catalogue of the old Italian works in Nicolai’s music collection is
presented in Konrad, ‘Otto Nicolai’, pp. 139–42.
60 Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. 16.
61 See, for example, Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (3rd edn, Berlin,
1887), p. 181.
62 Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Neu-Altes’, Für Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1830),
vol. III, p. 352.
63 Ibid., pp. 356–7.
64 Ibid., pp. 355–6.
65 Ibid., p. 356.
66 See Konrad, Otto Nicolai, pp. 69–70; Martin Geck, ‘Richard Wagner und
die ältere Musik’, HW, p. 142.
67 Programme note for the planned concert of 2 April 1838, as quoted in
Konrad, ‘Otto Nicolai’, p. 130.
68 Hermann Hübsch, In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? (Karlsruhe, 1828). This
pamphlet, and other contributions to the debate that it stimulated, have
been translated in Wolfgang Herrmann (ed.), In what Style should we build?
The German Debate on Architectural Style (Santa Monica, 1992).
69 Alan Barfour, Berlin: The Politics of Order 1737–1989 (New York, 1990),
pp. 30–9.
70 Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (3rd edn,
Leipzig, 1875), vol. III, p. 35.
71 Abraham Mendelssohn, letter of 10 March 1835, Felix Mendelssohn, Briefe
aus den Jahren 1833 bis 1847, ed. Paul and Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy
(Leipzig, 1863), p. 85.
72 Letters of 6 April, 25 March and 1 April 1825, New York Public Library,
as quoted in Susanna Großmann-Vendrey, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und die
Musik der Vergangenheit (Regensburg, 1969), pp. 21, 22.
73 Letter of 20 September 1827, Felix Mendelssohn, Letters, ed. G. Selden-Goth
(London, 1946), pp. 34–5.
74 Wulf Konold, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und seine Zeit (Regensburg, 1984),
p. 188; Judith Silber, ‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony: A
Critical and Historical Study’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale (1987), p. 120.
75 Rauol Meloncelli, ‘Palestrina e Mendelssohn’, BR, pp. 443–5, 448.
76 Annemarie Clostermann links these double-choir echoes to Gabrieli and
Schütz, but this relation is unlikely, ten years before the publication of
Carl von Winterfeld’s Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (1834). (Mendelssohn
Bartholdys kirchenmusikalisches Schaffen: Neue Untersuchungen zu Geschichte, Form
und Inhalt (Mainz, 1989), p. 178.)
77 Susanna Großmann-Vendrey, ‘Mendelssohn und die Vergangenheit’, HW,
p. 73.
78 Georg Feder, ‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys geistliche Musik’, RW,
p. 104.
79 Abraham Mendelssohn, letter of 10 March 1835, Mendelssohn, Briefe, p. 86.
80 Ibid., p. 84.
81 Ibid., pp. 85, 86.
82 Peter Sutermeister, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Lebensbild und Briefe (Zurich,
1958), p. 55, as quoted in Clostermann, Mendelssohn Bartholdys kirchenmusikalis-
ches Schaffen, p. 51; letter of 23 November 1830, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,
Reisebriefe aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832, ed. Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (5th
edn, Leipzig, 1863), p. 65.
83 Letter of 18 December 1830, Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. 96.
85 Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse, p. 64.
86 Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. 94.
87 Ibid., pp. 138–9.
88 Ibid., pp. 195, 196.
89 Mendelssohn, Briefe, pp. 10–12.
90 Ibid., p. 75.
91 Wolfgang Dinglinger, Studien zu den Psalmen mit Orchester von Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy (Cologne, 1993), p. 14; see also Feder, ‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn’,
pp. 114–15; David Brodbeck, ‘A Winter of Discontent: Mendelssohn and
the Berliner Domchor’, Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd (Cambridge,
1992), p. 23.
92 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie nach den Grundsäzen der evan-
gelischen Kirche, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Jacob Frerichs (Berlin, 1850; repr. Berlin
and New York, 1983), ser. I, vol. XXX, pp. 74–5.
93 Friedrich Adolph Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten der königlichen Hof- und
Dom-Kirche für die Feste des Kirchenjahres (2nd edn, Berlin, 1853), p. 93.
94 Mendelssohn, letter of 14 February 1844, Wolfgang Dinglinger (ed.),
150 Jahre Staats- und Domchor Berlin: unbekannte und unveröffentliche Briefe und
Dokumente (Berlin, 1993), pp. 14–15.
95 Sebastian Hensel, Die Familie Mendelssohn (2nd edn, Leipzig, 1903), vol. II,
p. 275, as quoted in Großmann-Vendrey, Felix Mendelssohn, p. 176.
96 Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his Reformation Symphony’, Jour-
nal of the American Musicological Society 40 (1987), 324; Moritz Hauptmann,
The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, ed. Alfred Schöne and Ferdinand
Hiller, trans. A. D. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London, 1892), p. 74. Hauptmann’s
comments are quoted (and endorsed) in Brodbeck, ‘A Winter of
Discontent’, p. 32.
97 Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse, p. 66; Hans-Elmar Bach, ‘Mendelssohn als
Komponist geistlicher a cappella-Musik’, MS 88 (1968), 167; Meloncelli,
‘Palestrina e Mendelssohn’, p. 459.
98 Eduard Krüger, ‘F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Drei Psalmen (2. 43. 22.)
Opus 78’, Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 4 (1850), 4–5.
99 Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. 180.
100 Ibid., p. 182.
101 Heinrich Heine, ‘Rossini und Felix Mendelssohn’ (1842), Lutezia. Berichte
über Politik, Kunst und Volksleben (1853), HSA, vol. XI, pp. 141, 140.
102 Ibid., p. 142.
103 Heinrich Heine, ‘Musikalische Saison in Paris’ (1844), Lutezia, p. 248.
104 Eduard Devrient, Meine Erinnerungen an Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und seine
Briefe an mich (Leipzig, 1872), p. 115, as quoted in Friedhelm Krummacher,
‘Bach, Berlin und Mendelssohn: Über Mendelssohns kompositorische
Bach-Rezeption’, Jahrbuch des staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung preußischer
Kulturbesitz (1993), 63.
105 Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, pp. 96–7.
106 Friedrich Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben,
Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 2, Nietzsches Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed.
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1972), ser. III, vol. I,
p. 294.
107 Philipp Spitta, ‘Palestrina im sechzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert’,
Deutsche Rundschau 79 (1894), 90.
108 Alfred Einstein, Music in the Romantic Era (New York, 1947), p. 160.
109 Carl von Winterfeld, Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina. Seine Werke und deren
Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Tonkunst. Mit Bezug auf Baini’s neueste Forschungen
(Breslau, 1832), pp. 28, 29, iv–v.
110 Ibid., p. 66.
111 Ibid., pp. 52–3.
112 Ibid., p. 66.
113 Ibid., pp. 53, 45, 58.
114 Ibid., pp. 57–8.
115 Ibid., pp. 54–5.
116 Ibid., pp. 53–6.
117 Ibid., p. 57.
118 Ibid., pp. 55–6.
119 Winterfeld’s most significant contribution to the revival of choral music
from the age of the Reformation is Der evangelische Kirchengesang und sein
Verhältniß zur Kunst des Tonsatzes, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1843–7); the implications
of this study for contemporary liturgical practice receive greater empha-
sis in Über Herstellung des Gemeine- und Chorgesanges in der evangelischen Kirche:
Geschichtliches und Vorschläge (Leipzig, 1848).
120 Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, p. 43; Georg Feder, ‘Decline and Restora-
tion’, trans. Reinhard G. Pauly, Protestant Church Music: A History, ed.
Friedrich Blume (London, 1975), p. 390; Adolf Nowak, ‘Johannes
Eccards Ernennung zum preußischen Palestrina durch Obertribunalrat
von Winterfeld’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im frühen 19. Jahrhundert,
ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, 1980), pp. 296–8; Heiner Wajemann,
‘Caecilianische Bestrebungen auf evangelischer Seite’, CU, p. 241.
121 Eduard Krüger, ‘Die Wiederbelebung des evangelischen Kirchengesanges’,
AmZ 48 (1846), 571.
122 Winterfeld, Der evangelische Kirchengesang, vol. I, p. vi.
123 Ibid., pp. 481, 478.
124 Ibid., vol. II, p. 215; vol. I, p. 7.
125 Ibid., vol. I, pp. vii, viii.
126 Winterfeld, Über Herstellung, pp. 155–6.
127 Winterfeld’s influence became more direct following his appointment in
1847 as Extraordinary Commissioner for Prussian church music (see Arthur
Prüfer (ed.), Briefwechsel zwischen Carl von Winterfeld und Eduard Krüger (Leipzig,
1898), pp. xxi–xxii).
128 Heinrich Bellermann, August Eduard Grell (Berlin, 1899), pp. 69–70.
129 Otto Strauß, ‘Allgemeine Bemerkungen über den musikalischen Theil
der liturgischen Andachten’, in F. A. Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten,
pp. 99, 100.
130 Three volumes in this collection are of particular interest in this connec-
tion: August Neithardt (ed.), Sammlung religiöser Gesänge älterer und neuester Zeit
zum bestimmten Gebrauch für den Königl. Berliner Domchor, Musica sacra (Berlin,
[1853–]), vols. V, VII and XII.
131 Neithardt was director of the Domchor from 1838 until 1861; during the
short periods for which Mendelssohn and Nicolai held the position of
Generalmusikdirektor, he was demoted to deputy director (see Max Thomas,
‘Heinrich August Neithardt’, Ph.D. thesis, Free University of Berlin (1959),
pp. 72–82; Dinglinger, 150 Jahre, pp. 12–14).
132 Contemporary reactions to the reforms are discussed in Dinglinger, Studien,
p. 154.
134 Winterfeld, Über Herstellung, p. 156.
135 Ibid., pp. 156–7.
136 Bunsen’s adaptation was first published in a supplement to Die heilige
Leidensgeschichte und die stille Woche (Hamburg, 1841); it was reprinted in two
of Neithardt’s collections: Sammlung kirchlicher Chorgesänge zu den liturgischen
Andachten, in Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten, and Sammlung religiöser Gesänge,
vol. V.
137 Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. 67; Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, p. 34.
138 Schleiermacher considered such responsorial singing to be ‘the healthiest
element in the Evangelical liturgy’ (Die praktische Theologie, p. 169).
139 Krüger, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, 571.
140 O. Strauß, ‘Allgemeine Bemerkungen’, pp. 99–100.
141 Nicolai’s appointment is discussed in Thomas, ‘Heinrich August
Neithardt’, pp. 83–7.
142 Winterfeld, Über Herstellung, pp. 160, 163–4.
143 Emil Naumann (ed.), Psalmen auf alle Sonn- und Fest-Tage des evangel.
Kirchenjahres . . . . Zum Gebrauche des Königl. Domchores so wie aller evangelischen
Kirchenchöre, Musica sacra, vols. VIII, IX and X (Berlin, [1855]).
144 Naumann (ed.), Psalmen, vol. VIII, preface.
145 August Neithardt (ed.), Sammlung kirchlicher Chorgesänge zu den liturgischen
Andachten (1855), in F. A. Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten, pp. 97–144.
146 Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (3rd edn, Berlin, 1887), p. viii (see also
Otto Schneider, Heinrich Bellermann: Gedächtnisrede (Berlin, 1903), pp. 10–11);
Eduard Grell, Aufsätze und Gutachten über Musik, ed. Heinrich Bellermann
(Berlin, 1887), p. 7.
147 Grell, Aufsätze, p. 39.
148 Ibid., pp. 34–5.
149 Ibid., p. 34.
150 Ibid., p. 39.
151 Eduard Grell, ‘Emser Aufzeichnungen’ (1857), as quoted in Milz, A-cappella-
Theorie, p. 127; Grell, Aufsätze, p. 25.
152 Grell attempted, nonetheless, to demonstrate that Greek musical instru-
ments merely served the function of modern tuning-forks (Aufsätze, p. 82).
153 Peter Lüttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen 1750
und 1900 (Tutzing, 1994), p. 200.
154 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1887 edn), p. ix.
155 Grell, Aufsätze, pp. 69, 101.
156 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
157 Blumner, ‘Gedächtnißrede auf Eduard Grell’, Geschichte, p. 208.
159 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. 99, 60.
160 Ibid., p. 30.
161 Ibid., p. 38.
162 Ibid., p. 89.
163 Ibid., pp. 99, 69.
164 Milz, A-cappella-Theorie, pp. 104–5.
165 See, for example, Eric Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and
his Age, trans. Dika Newlin (New York and London, 1963), p. 442; Feder,
‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn’, p. 105; Wajemann, ‘Caecilianische Bestrebungen’,
p. 251; and James Garratt, ‘Mendelssohn’s Babel: Romanticism and the
Poetics of Translation’, Music and Letters 80 (1999), 33, 36.
166 Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse, pp. 66, 68–9.
167 ‘Wise’ ( Julius Schladebach), ‘Kirchenmusik’, AmZ 46 (1844), 833–7.
168 Ibid., 836.
169 Ibid. (the review refers to Gottlieb Freiherr von Tucher’s collection
Kirchengesänge der berühmtesten älteren italiänischen Meister, 2 vols. (Vienna, n.d.
[1827])).
170 Ibid., 837.
171 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, p. 112.
173 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. 187–8.
174 Ibid., p. 188.
175 August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. IV, ed. Hugo Leichtentritt
(3rd edn, Leipzig, 1909), pp. 33–4.
176 Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse, p. 69; Milz, A-cappella-Theorie, p. 107.
177 Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. 49.
178 See Knud Jeppesen, ‘Problems of the Pope Marcellus Mass: Some Remarks
on the Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’, in Palestrina:
Pope Marcellus Mass, ed. Lewis Lockwood (New York, 1975), p. 104.
179 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, p. 106.
180 Knud Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance (2nd edn, London,
1946), Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century (New
York, 1939; repr. 1992); Heinrich Schenker, Counterpoint: A Translation of
‘Kontrapunkt’, ed. John Rothgeb, 2 vols. (New York, 1987).
181 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), p. ix.
182 Ibid., pp. ix–x.
183 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Geschichte als Problem der Musiktheorie: Über einige
Berliner Musiktheoretiker des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte
Berlins im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Dahlhaus (Regensburg, 1980), pp. 412–13.
184 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), p. vii.
185 Ibid., pp. xiv–xv, x.
186 Ibid., p. v.
187 Ibid., p. 53.
188 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), pp. vii–viii, (1887 edn), pp. 101 –2.
189 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), pp. viii–ix.
190 Ibid., p. 53.
191 Ibid.
192 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1887 edn), pp. 151, 158.
193 Jeppesen, Counterpoint, p. 124; The Style of Palestrina, p. 179.
194 Peter Lüttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis–Die Motette “Wie der Hirsch
schreiet” von Heinrich Bellermann’, PK3, pp. 101 –2.
195 Ibid., p. 103.
196 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), p. 296.
197 Ibid., p. 297.
198 Ibid., p. 292.
199 Lüttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis’, p. 103.
201 Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (1862 edn), p. 37 (1887 edn, pp. 124–5).
203 Some of Bellermann’s homophonic quasi-liturgical pieces, such as the Drei
Motetten op. 11, suggest a conception of old Italian music little different from
that of Hoffmann or Zelter.
204 While the spelling of the title of this work on its first publication is different–
Missa sollemnis [sic] senis denis vocibus decantanda auctore Eduardo Grell (Berlin,
1863), the customary version has been retained, since this form is used in
all references to this mass by Bellermann and by modern musicologists.
205 Bellermann notes that the first performance lasted two hours fifteen min-
utes (‘A. E. Grell’s sechzehnstimmige Messe’, AmZ 6 (1871), 161).
206 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. 149–51 (Gumprecht’s review appeared
in the Berlin Nationalzeitung on 11 February 1861, and Bellermann’s discus-
sion of it was first published in ‘Grell’s sechzehnstimmige Messe’, 228–30).
208 Ibid., p. 150.
209 Ibid.
210 Reinhold Brinkmann, ‘Grell, (August) Eduard’, NG, vol. V, p. 701; Gottfried
Eberle, 200 Jahre Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin, 1991), p. 164.
211 Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. 150–1.
212 Ibid., pp. 158–9.
214 Rochus Freiherr von Liliencron, Ueber den Chorgesang in der evangelischen Kirche
(Berlin, 1880), p. 4.
215 Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, pp. 36–7.
4 THE CATHOLIC PALESTRINA REVIVAL
1 Unfortunately, the origins of this term are not discussed in the most recent
definition of it: Winfried Kirsch, ‘Caecilianismus’, MGG2, Sachteil, vol. II,
pp. 317–26. See also Otto Biba, ‘Der Cäcilianismus’, Bruckner Symposion:
Anton Bruckner und die Kirchenmusik, ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, 1988), p. 123.
2 Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Zum Palestrina-Stil in München’, PK1 , p. 215.
3 Franz Sales Kandler, Ueber das Leben und die Werke des G. Pierluigi da
Palestrina . . . . Nach den Memorie storico-critiche des Abbate Giuseppe Baini, ed. R.
G. Kiesewetter (Leipzig, 1834), pp. 73–7.
4 Ibid., p. 73.
5 See Helmut Loos, ‘Alter Stil und Fastenzeit – Zur Komposition von
Quadragesimalmessen’, PK3, p. 77.
6 Susan Wollenberg (trans.), ‘Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum (1725):
Concluding Chapters’, Music Analysis 11 (1992), 219.
7 Ibid., 231.
8 Ibid., 241.
9 C. W. Fröhlich, ‘Ueber die musikalische Feyer des katholischen Gottes-
dienstes überhaupt; und die Art einer dem Zeitbedürfnisse gemässen
Einrichtung und Verbesserung derselben’, AmZ 22 (1820), 380.
10 Ibid., 395.
11 Ibid., 409.
12 Ibid., 391, 380.
13 Friedrich W. Riedel, Kirchenmusik am Hofe Karls VI. (1711 –1740): Untersuchungen
zum Verhältnis von Zeremoniell und musikalischen Stil im Barockzeitalter (Munich and
Salzburg, 1977), pp. 101 –7, 109.
14 Theophil Antonicek, ‘Biedermeierzeit und Vormärz’, Musikgeschichte
Österreichs, vol. II: Vom Barock zum Vormärz, ed. Gernot Gruber (2nd edn,
Vienna, 1995), p. 327.
15 The repertory of Kiesewetter’s concerts is discussed in Herfrid Kier,
‘Kiesewetters historische Hauskonzerte: zur Geschichte der kirchen-
musikalischen Restauration in Wien’, K Jb 52 (1968), 95–119, and ‘Musikalis-
cher Historismus in vormärzlichen Wien’, HW, pp. 55–69.
16 Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, Geschichte der europaeisch-abendlaendischen oder un-
srer heutigen Musik (2nd edn, Leipzig, 1846; repr. Walluf, 1972), p. 68; Kandler,
Ueber das Leben, pp. ii–v.
17 Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Die altklassische Vokalpolyphonie Roms in
ihrer Bedeutung für den kirchenmusikalischen Stil in München: Eine
Untersuchung über die Bestände des Musikarchivs der Theatinerkirche
St. Kajetan in München’, Acta Musicologica 12 (1973), 138.
18 See Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse hatte die Wiederbelebung der älteren
Musik im 19. Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, 1900), p. 14; Otto
Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance in der katholischen Kirchenmusik
der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte: Vergangenheitsfragen und Gegenwartsaufgaben (Augs-
burg, 1924), p. 23; and Udo Wagner, Franz Nekes und der Cäcilianismus im
Rheinland (Cologne, 1969), p. 24.
19 See ‘Briefe über die Musik in Kassel’, AmZ 14 (1812), 603. The Miserere
had entered the Hofkapelle during the reign of Leopold I and remained an
important part of the Holy Week services throughout the eighteenth century
(Riedel, Kirchenmusik am Hofe, pp. 109–10).
20 ‘Pellisov’ (Karl Emil Schafhäutl), ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik des katholischen
Cultus’, AmZ 36 (1834), 724.
21 Ibid., 723–5; Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance, p. 23.
22 ‘Pellisov’, ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik’, 744.
23 Ibid., 725, 745.
24 Johann Caspar Ett, Missa in F, ed. Leo Söhner (Mainz, 1936). The two ver-
sions of this mass are compared in Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Caspar Etts Missa
Laetare Jerusalem und ihre Bedeutung für die kirchenmusikalische Restaura-
tion in München’, PK3, pp. 43–55.
25 Caspar Ett, Busspsalm Miserere für gemischten vierstimmigen Chor (Straubing, n.d.);
Missa quadragesimalis. Messe für vierstimmigen Chor für die Advents- und Fastenzeit
mit einem Bläsersatz ad libitum, ed. Bernd Dudek (Munich, 1986).
26 Anon., ‘München’, AmZ 36 (1834), 543–8.
27 Ibid., 547.
28 Ibid., 548.
29 ‘Pellisov’, ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik’, 726.
30 Ibid., 732, 734.
31 Ibid., 738–40.
32 Ibid., 739, 738.
33 Ibid., 740.
34 Georg Jakob, ‘Dr. Karl Proske: Lebensskizze’, CK 2 (1877), 35; Raymund
Schlecht, Geschichte der Kirchenmusik. Zugleich Grundlage zur vorurtheilslosen
Beantwortung der Frage: ‘was ist echte Kirchenmusik?’ (Regensburg, 1879),
pp. 153–4.
35 Karl Weinmann, Karl Proske: der Restaurator der klassischen Kirchenmusik
(Regensburg, 1909), pp. 40–1.
36 The first volume of Musica divina contains Palestrina’s Missa brevis, Missa
Dies sanctificatus, and Missa Iste confessor, alongside works by Lassus, Gabrieli,
Hassler, Giammateo Asola, Lotti and Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, while the
two volumes of the Selecta novus missarum edited by Proske contain his Missa
Assumpta est Maria, Missa Veni sponsa Christi and Missa Dum complerentur.
37 Carl Proske (ed.), Musica divina, ser. I, vol. I (Regensburg, 1853; repr. New
York and London, 1973), pp. xviii, vi.
38 Ibid., pp. xxi, xx.
39 Ibid., pp. xx, v.
40 Ibid., pp. l, xxii.
41 Ibid., pp. xxvi, v.
42 Ibid., pp. li, xviii.
43 Ibid., pp. xviii–xix.
44 Ibid., p. lii.
45 Ibid., p. xix.
46 Ibid., p. xxx.
47 Ibid., p. xxxii.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., p. vi.
50 Ibid., p. xxxii.
51 Weinmann, Karl Proske, p. 64.
52 Bernhard Janz, ‘Das editorische Werk Carl Proskes und die Anfänge der
kirchenmusikalischen Reformbewegung’, PK1 , p. 157; Proske (ed.), Musica
divina, p. xxii.
53 Carl Proske, ‘Musikalische Aphorismen’, CK 1 (1876), 27.
54 Carl Proske, letter of 28 May 1839 to Mettenleiter, as presented in Georg
Jakob, ‘Johann Georg Mettenleiter. Eine Skizze seines Lebens und Wirkens’,
CK 3 (1878), 1 –2.
55 Proske’s ‘De profundis’ was later published in CK 2 (1877), 27–30; excerpts
from both pieces are presented in Weinmann, Karl Proske, pp. 71 –4.
56 Acta et decreta Conc. Prov. Col. 1860 (n.p., 1862), p. 123, as quoted in Karl Gustav
Fellerer, ‘Das Kölner Provinzialkonzil 1860 und die Kirchenmusik’, KJb 36
(1952), 61.
57 Franz Xaver Witt, ‘Caspar Ett’, FB 21 (1886), 104; Witt, ‘Die erste
Generalversammlung des allgemeinen “deutschen Cäcilien-Vereines”’, FB
3 (1868), 85, DC1 , p. 21.
58 Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Grundlagen und Anfänge der kirchenmusikalischen
Organisation Franz Xaver Witts’, KJb 55 (1971), 38.
59 DC2, p. 40.
60 See Edmund Langer, ‘Zur territorialen Abgrenzung von Unternehmungen
idealer Tendenz’, MS 18 (1885), 9–12.
61 Franz Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencomponisten’,
Cäcilia. Organ für katholische Kirchenmusik 4 (1865), 2.
62 Letter of 11 February 1869 to Ludwig II of Bavaria, as presented in Franz
Witt, ‘Die (19.) Vereinsgabe des Cäcilien-Vereines pro 1886’, FB 21 (1886),
74–5.
63 Franz Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung des allgemeinen deutschen
Cäcilien-Vereins zu Regensburg am 3., 4. und 5. August 1869’, FB 4 (1869),
78ff., DC1 , pp. 34–40.
64 DC1 , pp. 34, 38.
65 Ibid., p. 34.
66 Ibid., p. 35.
67 Ibid., p. 34.
68 Joseph Jungmann, Aesthetik (Freiburg am Breisgau, 1884), pp. 831 –41;
Wilhelm Bäumker, ‘Die Alten und die Neuen’, MS 13 (1880), 98 (editorial
fn.).
69 Franz Witt, ‘Messe Nr. III von Jos. Haydn und 6. Messe von E. Horak’,
MS 5 (1872), 81, DC3, p. 187.
70 Franz Witt, ‘Ueber den Palestrinastil’, MS 7 (1874), 49–53, in Franz Witt,
Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Kirchenmusik, ed. Karl Gustav Fellerer (Cologne, 1934),
p. 75.
71 Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung’, p. 35.
72 Franz Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’
MS 7 (1874), 75–9, DC1 , p. 72.
73 Franz Witt, ‘Witt’s Raphael’s-Messe’, MS 12 (1879), 135, DC3, p. 170; ‘Was
haben die modernen’, p. 71.
74 Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. 72.
75 Franz Witt, ‘Crucifixus’, FB 15 (1880), 2, DC1 , p. 102.
76 August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. II, ed. Heinrich Reimann
(2nd edn, Leipzig, 1891), p. xii.
78 CVC, nos. 1 –164 (2nd edn, Regensburg, 1882), no. 73; Witt, ‘Was haben
die modernen’, p. 72.
79 Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung’, p. 37.
80 CVC, nos. 304–467 (Regensburg, 1879), no. 437.
81 Witt, ‘Ueber den Palestrinastyl’, p. 78 (cf. ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, 22).
82 Franz Witt, ‘Sammlung ausgezeichneter Compositionen für die Kirche’,
FB 20 (1885), 18, 19.
83 DC2, p. 81.
84 MS 2 (1869), 6, DC3, p. 162.
85 Schlecht, Geschichte der Kirchenmusik, pp. 198–9.
86 Franz Witt, ‘Was soll in der heiligen Advent- und Fastenszeit beim Gottes-
dienste zur Aufführung kommen?’ FB 2 (1867), 74–5; Witt, ‘Die zweite
Generalversammlung’, pp. 40–1; DC2, p. 77.
87 Franz Witt, ‘Aufgaben des Generalpräses’, FB 13 (1878), 7, DC1 , p. 23.
88 Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, 3.
89 Ibid., 22–3.
91 Ibid., pp. 69–70.
92 Ibid., p. 68.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid., pp. 68–9.
95 Anon. (Franz Witt), ‘P. Gall Morel und die Instrumentalmusik in der
Kirche’, MS 8 (1875), 59, DC 3, p. 178.
96 Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, pp. 68, 69.
97 Ibid., p. 71.
98 CVC, no. 372; Anton Walter, Dr. Franz Witt, Gründer und erster Generalpräses
des Cäcilienvereines. Ein Lebensbild (Regensburg, 1889), p. 138, as quoted in
Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Wir können den liturgischen Text vielfach schöner und
besser darstellen lernen, als Palestrina” – Zu den Messen-Kompositionen
Franz Xaver Witts’, PK3, p. 163. A catalogue of Witt’s compositions is
presented in KJb 5 (1890), 110–13.
99 Franz Nekes, Witt’s Raphael’s-Messe auf den zehnten Generalversammlung des
Diözesan-Cäcilienvereins in Köln (Regensburg, 1879), p. 6, as quoted in Johannes
Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Raphaels-Messe von Witt’, ZkK 8 (1879), 74.
100 Bäumker, ‘Die Alten’, 97–8; Franz Xaver Haberl, as quoted in Habert,
‘Die Raphaels-Messe’, 74.
101 Habert, ‘Die Raphaels-Messe’, 77–86.
102 Ibid., 79.
103 These pieces were reprinted in two collections: Gradualien, Alleluja und Tractus,
Hymnen, Sequenzen und Motetten des ganzen Kirchenjahres für 1 -, 3-, 4-, 5- und
6 stimmigen Männer- und gemischten Chor (Witt’sche Gradualiensammlung) op. 34,
8 vols. (Regensburg, 1879–82); and Offertoria totius anni. F. X. Witt’s Sammlung
mehrstimmiger Offertorien für das ganze Kirchenjahr op. 15 (Regensburg, 1892).
104 Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Fuge in der katholischen Kirchenmusik’,
ZkK 5 (1872), 37–8, 27.
105 Franz Witt, ‘Bericht an den Cardinal-Protektor’, FB 20 (1885), 43, DC1 ,
p. 81.
106 Franz Witt, ‘Liturgie und Kunst’, MS 5 (1872), 28, DC3, p. 54.
107 Peter Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, vol. IV: Reaktion
und Reform (Regensburg, 1916), pp. 321 –32.
108 The compositions of Nekes and Piel are discussed in Wagner, Franz Nekes;
and Gabriela Krombach, ‘Die kirchenmusikwerke von Peter Piel und der
Palestrina-Stil’, PK3, pp. 113–25.
109 A full catalogue of Haller’s works is given in Heinrich Kammerer, ‘Michael
Haller (1840–1915)’, KJb 44 (1960), 111 –30.
110 Michael Haller, Kompositionslehre für polyphonen Kirchengesang mit besonderer
Rücksicht auf die Meisterwerke des 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1891), p. 22.
111 Ambrosius Kienle, Choralschule. Ein Handbuch zur Erlernung des Choralgesanges
(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884), as quoted in Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. 15.
112 Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. 22.
113 Ibid., p. 17.
114 Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunct oder Anleitung zur Stimmführung in der
musikalischen Composition (Berlin, 1862), p. x; Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. 5.
116 Ibid., p. 21.
117 Franz Witt, ‘Die fünfte Generalversammlung des deutschen Cäcilien-
Vereins in Regensburg’, FB 9 (1874), 87.
118 CVC nos. 468–690 (Regensburg, 1883), no. 501.
119 Max Sigl, ‘Michael Haller als Kirchenkomponist und die kirchenmusikalis-
che Gegenwart’, MS 48 (1915), 150, as quoted in Peter Ackermann,
‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie im Werk Michael Hallers’, PK3, p. 143.
120 August Scharnagl, ‘Haller, Michael’, MGG, vol. V, p. 1373; Hohenemser,
Welche Einflüsse, pp. 55–6.
121 Michael Haller, Missa prima ad tres voces inaequales op. 4 (3rd edn, Regensburg,
1893), p. 2.
122 The expanded second edition of the Zwölf Motetten has been consulted:
20 Motetten op. 2[a] (Regensburg, 1894).
124 Ibid., pp. 22–6, 375–87.
125 Ibid., p. 44.
126 Knud Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance (2nd edn, London,
1946), p. 273.
128 Haberl described the foundation of this society and the resumption of the
edition in his preface to PGA, vol. X; see also Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Die
Gesammtausgabe der Werke Palestrinas’, CK 5 (1880), 66–74.
129 All of Haller’s additions are clearly labelled, even where trivial: see
‘O gloriosa Domina’ (PGA, vol. XXX, p. 183) and ‘Ecce nunc benedicite’
(PGA, vol. XXXI, p. 156).
130 The edition does however contain some fragments of this kind; some of
the pieces deemed beyond completion, such as those for which only single
vocal parts were known to survive, are included in PGA, vol. XXXIII.
131 Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe’, 70, 72–3, 74.
132 The third-choir parts of these six compositions had been believed to be no
longer extant since the early eighteenth century, because only eight part-
books (for the eight voices of choirs I and II) survived in the Vatican archive;
in 1828 Baini commented that the existing parts indicate that the com-
plete compositions must have been masterpieces, and described a remark-
able earlier completion of ‘Ad te levavi’ by Giovanni Biordi (1691 –1748).
(Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. 129.)
133 PGA, vol. XXVI, p. iv.
134 Ibid.
135 Michael Haller, ‘Motivierung des neukomponirten III. Chores in sechs
12stimm. Compositionen Palestrina’s’, KJb 3 (1889), 40.
136 Ibid., 40, 43.
137 See, for example, the three-choir motets in POC, vol. XXXII.
138 Haller, ‘Motivierung’, 40–1; Kompositionslehre, p. 350.
139 A set of twelve partbooks for these three pieces has been rediscovered in the
Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome (Mss. Mus. 77–88). See Giovanni Pierluigi da
Palestrina, Three Pieces for Triple Choir, ed. Noel O’Regan (Edinburgh, 1994),
preface.
140 A useful (and entertaining) survey of some of the referees’ comments is pre-
sented in Eberhard Kraus, ‘Die Referenten des Caecilienvereins-Katalogs
und der von ihnen in ihren Beurteilungen vertretene kirchenmusikalische
Standpunkt’, CU, pp. 183–202.
141 ‘An die S. T. Mitglieder des allgemeinen deutschen Cäcilien-Vereines
(Geschäftsordnung bei Herstellung eines Vereinskataloges)’, FB 5 (1870),
1 –4.
142 DC2, p. 68.
143 CVC no. 9.
144 CVC nos. 193, 425.
145 MS 18 (1885), 110.
146 Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, p. 290.
147 Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe’, 70.
148 DC2, p. 66.
149 Anton Walter, ‘Der katholische Kirchengesang in seiner Bedeutung und
Aufgabe’, FB 18 (1883), 95, DC3, p. 38.
150 DC2, p. 69.
151 Ibid., p. 44.
152 Ibid., p. 69.
153 Ibid., p. 70.
154 Ibid.
155 Ibid.
156 Ibid., p. 69.
157 Ibid.; CVC no. 238.
158 Witt, Gradualiensammlung, vol. II, preface; CVC no. 464.
159 Carl Dahlhaus, Analysis and Value Judgment, trans. Siegmund Levarie
(New York, 1983), pp. 35–7.
160 Ibid., p. 37.
161 Hermann-Josef Burbach, ‘Das “Triviale” in der katholischen Kirchen-
musik des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Studien zur Trivialmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed.
Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, 1967), p. 81.
162 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Trivialmusik und ästhetisches Urteil’, Studien zur
Trivialmusik, ed. Dahlhaus, pp. 15–16.
163 Ibid., p. 16. A problem arises in considering the status of quasi-liturgical
pieces written for Singvereine. It could be argued that through being allied
to functional church music, and because of the primacy placed on value
for Bildung rather than aesthetic worth, these works too cannot be subject
to aesthetic criteria.
164 Dahlhaus, ‘Trivialmusik’, p. 20.
165 Burbach, ‘Das “Triviale”’, pp. 77–8.
166 Ibid., pp. 79–81.
167 Franz Witt, ‘Die 3. General-Versammlung des allgemeinen deutschen
Cäcilien-Vereines zu Eichstätt’, FB 6 (1871), 65ff., DC1 , p. 53.
168 Elmar Seidel, ‘Über die Wirkung der Musik Palestrinas auf das Werk
Liszts und Wagners’, Liszt-Studien 3, ed. Serge Gut (Eisenstadt, 1983),
pp. 162–74; Michael Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism: The Evidence of
Documents and Scores’, CU, pp. 203–13; Peter Ackermann, ‘Ästhetische
und kompositionstechnische Aspekte der Palestrina-Rezeption bei Franz
Liszt’, PK1 , pp. 243–56; Raffaele Pozzi, ‘L’ immagine ottocentesca del
Palestrina nel rapporto tra Franz Liszt e il movimento Ceciliano’, BR,
pp. 463–78. Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik und der
Cäcilianismus’, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 29 (1974), 404–12; Otto Biba,
‘Der Cäcilianismus’, Bruckner Symposion: Anton Bruckner und die Kirchenmusik,
ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, 1988), pp. 123–8; Wolfgang Witzenmann, ‘Echi
Palestriniani nei mottetti di Anton Bruckner’, BR , pp. 515–25.
169 Franz Liszt, ‘De la musique religieuse’, Revue et Gazette musicale, 30 August
1835, as presented in Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of
Liszt (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 19–20; Franz Liszt, Gesammelte Schriften, ed.
Lina Ramann, 6 vols. (Leipzig, 1880–3), vol. II, p. 48, as quoted in Ernst
Günter Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung mit der geistlichen Musik:
zum Konflikt von Kunst und Engagement (Munich and Salzburg, 1978), p. 67.
170 All catalogue numbers appended to pieces by Liszt refer to the work lists in
Humphrey Searle, ‘Liszt, Franz’, NG, vol. XI, pp. 51 ff., and Peter Raabe,
Liszts Schaffen (Stuttgart, 1931; 2nd edn, Tutzing, 1968), pp. 241 ff. Bruckner’s
pieces are numbered according to Renate Grasberger, Werkverzeichnis Anton
Bruckner (WAB) (Tutzing, 1977).
171 See Merrick, Revolution and Religion, p. 34.
172 A. C. Howie, ‘The Sacred Music of Anton Bruckner’, Ph.D. thesis,
University of Manchester (1969), p. 36.
173 Witzenmann, ‘Echi Palestriniani’, p. 517. Witzenmann considers it likely
that Bruckner accompanied the choir’s performances of the Missa Aeterna
Christi munera.
174 Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, 409.
175 See Johann Joseph Fux, Motetten I, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, ed.
Johannes Evangelist Habert, ser. II/i, vol. III (Graz, 1959).
176 Merrick, Revolution and Religion, pp. 97–8.
177 Hermann Kretzschmar, Führer durch den Concertsaal, part II, vol. I: Kirchliche
Werke (Leipzig, 1888), p. 199, as quoted in Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Ueber
Liszt’s “Missa choralis” und prinzipielle Fragen’, MS 23 (1890), 100.
178 Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance, p. 52.
179 See, for instance, Seidel, ‘Über die Wirkung’, p. 163; Merrick, Revolution and
Religion, p. 212; Charles White, ‘The Masses of Franz Liszt’, Ph.D. thesis,
Bryn Mawr University (1973), p. 35.
180 Michael Saffle discusses Liszt’s personal relationships with Witt and Haberl
in ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’ (pp. 205–7), but minimizes the impact these
had on Liszt’s music. Liszt’s effusive response to Witt’s dedication of the
Litaniae Lauretanae can be seen in a letter of 10 February 1869; see ‘Vierzehn
Original-Briefe Liszts an Witt’, MS 46 (1913), 289.
181 Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’, p. 206; Alan Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. II:
The Weimar Years 1848–1861 (London, 1982), p. 294.
182 Franz Liszt, letter of September 1871, which appeared in FB in 1874
(DC1 , p. 61).
183 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, 1902), vol. VII, p. 160.
184 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, 1899), vol. VI, p. 178, as quoted in
Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. 65.
185 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. 145; see also Briefe, vol. VII, p. 338.
186 MS 18 (1885), 144.
187 Often quoted in this connection are three assessments of Witt and the
Cecilians attributed to Bruckner; these aphorisms are disregarded here
since, in addition to being dubious, they present a contradictory pic-
ture. (See Winfried Kirsch, ‘Zwischen Kunst- und Liturgieanspruch: die
Kirchenmusik Anton Bruckners’, Bericht über den internationalen musikwis-
senschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth 1981 , ed. Christoph Hellmut Mahling and
Sigrid Wiesmann (Kassel, 1984), p. 249.)
188 Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, 404; Michaela Auchmann, ‘Anton
Bruckners Messe Nr. 2 E-Moll ( WAB 27). Zur musikalischen Gestaltung,
Wirkungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Vienna
(1991), p. 47.
189 Howie, ‘The Sacred Music’, pp. iv, 36. See also A. C. Howie, ‘Traditional
and Novel Elements in Bruckner’s Sacred Music’, The Musical Quarterly 67
(1981), 556–7.
190 Traumihler’s role as a referee for the Vereins-Catalog is discussed in Kraus,
‘Die Referenten’, pp. 185, 195.
191 Franz Witt, ‘Ett’s achtstimmige Messe in A-Dur’, MS 18 (1885), 99–100.
192 Biba, ‘Der Cäcilianismus’, p. 127.
193 MS 19 (1886), 39, DC1 , p. 62.
194 These changes are listed in Anton Bruckner, Kleine Kirchenmusikwerke
1835–1892: Revisionsbericht, ed. Leopold Nowak, Sämtliche Werke ( Vienna,
1984), vol. XXI, p. 75.
195 The relationships between the short-lived ÖCV and its successor the
OÖCV (founded in 1875) are explored in August Scharnagl, ‘Die
kirchenmusikalische Reformbestrebung von Johannes Evangelist Habert
in Österreich’, CU, pp. 307–20; and in Josef Moser, ‘Zum Thema Kirchen-
musik: Cäcilianische Bestrebungen in der Diözese Linz’, Oberösterreichische
Heimatblätter 39 (1985), 62–85.
196 Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Aufruf zur Gründung eines “Oesterreichis-
chen Cäcilien-Verein”’, ZkK 3 (1870), 9–10.
197 Moser, ‘Cäcilianische Bestrebungen’, 64.
198 Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Oesterreichischer Cäcilien-Verein’, ZkK 5
(1872), 94–5; Habert, ‘Würdige Kirchenmusik’, ZkK 5 (1872), 76.
199 Anton Bruckner, letter to Traumihler of 25 July 1879, Briefe: Band I
1852–1886, ed. Andrea Harrandt and Otto Schneider, Sämtliche Werke
(Vienna, 1998), vol. XXIV/i, p. 166.
200 ZkK 6 (1877), 6, 22.
201 Moser, ‘Cäcilianische Bestrebungen’, 69.
202 A table listing all performances of sixteenth-century compositions in
the Hofkapelle from 1858 to 1900 is presented in Gabriela Krombach,
‘Aufführungen von Werken Palestrinas am Wiener Hof in der zweiten
Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, PK1 , pp. 199–213.
203 Ibid., p. 201.
204 The most substantial contemporary collection of liturgical pieces by Liszt
is the Neun Kirchenchorgesänge (Leipzig, 1871), expanded a decade later as
the Zwölf Kirchenchorgesänge mit Orgelbegleitung (1882). In Bruckner’s case, the
motets under consideration are those composed from 1861 onwards – the
year in which his counterpoint tuition with Sechter ended – excluding
revisions of earlier works.
205 Ackermann, ‘Palestrina-Rezeption’, pp. 252–3; Witzenmann, ‘Echi
palestriniani’, pp. 520–4.
206 Ackermann, ‘Palestrina-Rezeption’, p. 253 (Palestrina’s ‘Cantantibus
organis’ can be found in POC, vol. VIII).
207 Witzenmann, ‘Echi palestriniani’, pp. 520, 522.
208 Ibid., pp. 520–1.
209 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. 329.
210 Alexander Dmitryevich Oulibischeff, Mozarts Leben (Stuttgart, 1847),
vol. II, p. 85, as quoted in Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, 2–3.
(3rd edn, Leipzig, 1909), p. 56.
212 See Seidel, ‘Über die Wirkung’, pp. 163–5; Ackermann, ‘Palestrina-
Rezeption’, pp. 249–52; and Merrick, Revolution and Religion, pp. 207–8.
The significance of this reference has even been discussed in the liner notes
to recordings of the work: see Hermann Wilske, ‘Franz Liszt und seine
späte Kirchenmusik: Zur Werkidee und Wirkungsgeschichte des Christus-
Oratoriums’, Christus, cond. Helmuth Rilling (Hänssler-Verlag, 1998),
pp. 29–30.
214 Prominent references also occur at the opening of Liszt’s Kirchenlied
‘Christus ist gebornen’ (S 31.1 /R 536a) and in Septem sacramenta, no. 6, bars
27–32.
215 See also the Kirchenlied ‘Ave Maria’ [III] (WAB 7), bars 23–31.
216 See Richard Cohn, ‘Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and
the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions’, Music Analysis 15
(1996), 9.
217 White, ‘Masses of Franz Liszt’, p. 119.
218 Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina, p. 35.
219 Outside of this collection, however, some movements by Liszt can be consid-
ered modal, most notably the eighth movement of Christus, ‘O filii et filiae’
and the organ piece Salve Regina (S 268.2/R 390b). Both these pieces are
discussed in Serge Gut, ‘Die historische Position der Modalität bei Franz
Liszt’, Liszt-Studien 1, ed. Wolfgang Suppan (Graz, 1977), pp. 97–104.
220 Timothy L. Jackson, ‘Bruckner’s Metrical Numbers’, 19th-Century Music 14
(1990), 130–1.
221 Anton Bruckner, ‘Antrittsvorlesung als Lector der Wiener Universität’,
Gesammelte Briefe. Neue Folge, ed. Max Auer (Regensburg, 1924), pp. 131 –4.
222 See Witzenmann, ‘Echi Palestriniani’, p. 517.
223 Leopold Nowak, ‘Stile und Ausdruckselemente in Anton Bruckners
Kirchenmusik’, Bruckner Vorträge. Rom 1986. Anton Bruckner e la musica sacra,
ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, 1987), pp. 9–10.
224 Witt described the difficulties involved in introducing falsobordone to
Bavarian churches in his speech to the third general assembly of the ACV
in 1871 (DC1 , pp. 52–3). Traumihler’s reforms at St Florian presumably
also included the introduction of falsobordone; it is likely that this is what
Bruckner’s successor as organist, Josef Seiberl (1836–77), was referring to
in complaining to Bruckner that the ‘most liturgical’ (liturgischsten) pieces
were being introduced to the services there (Bruckner, Briefe, ed. Harrandt
and Schneider, p. 166).
225 See, for example, Biba, ‘Der Caecilianismus’, p. 124.
226 Imogen Fellinger, ‘Die drei Fassungen des “Christus factus est” in Bruckners
Kirchenmusikalischen Schaffen’, Bruckner Symposion, ed. Wessely, pp. 146–8.
227 See Hans Bauernfeind and Leopold Nowak, ‘Anmerkungen’, Kleine Kirchen-
musikwerke, p. 185; Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p. 56.
228 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VII, p. 427.
229 See, for instance, Merrick, Revolution and Religion, p. 214; Fellerer, ‘Bruckners
Kirchenmusik’, 405, 404.
230 Raabe, Liszts Schaffen, pp. 162–3.
231 Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. 100.
232 Ibid., p. 96.
233 See, for example, Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’, pp. 212, 213.
234 CVC no. 79.
235 Ibid.
236 Haberl, ‘Ueber Liszt’s “Missa choralis”’, 99.
237 Ibid., 100.
238 Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Aufführung der Bruckner’schen
Fest-Messe bei der feierlichen Einweihung der Votivkapelle des Mariä-
Empfängniss-Domes in Linz am 29. September d.J.’, ZkK 2 (1869),
99.
239 Ibid., 100.
240 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. III, p. 177, as quoted in Heinemann,
Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. 93; Bruckner, Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Auer,
p. 83.
241 Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VI, p. 80, as quoted in Heinemann, Franz
Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. 92.
242 Manfred Wagner, ‘Liszt und Bruckner – oder ein Weg zur Restauration
sakraler Musik’, Liszt-Studien 1 , ed. Suppan, p. 231.
243 Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p. 148 (internal quotation, Nowak,
‘Stile und Ausdruckselemente’, p. 10); Merrick, Revolution and Religion,
pp. 122, 127.
244 Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse, p. 51.
245 Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p. 123.
246 See Peter Phillips, ‘Reconsidering Palestrina’, Early Music 22 (1994), 575.
247 Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Das deutsche Chorlied im 19. Jahrhundert’,
Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. Wulf
Arlt, Ernst Lichtenhahn and Hans Oesch (Bern and Munich, 1973),
p. 799.
5 PALESTRINA IN THE CONCERT HALL
1 Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German

Literary Theory (London, 1997), p. 26.
2 Ulrich Konrad, ‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie in den Oratorien Carl
Loewes’, PK3, p. 82; see also Winfried Kirsch, ‘Religiöse und liturgische
Aspekte bei Brahms und Bruckner’, RW, pp. 143–4.
3 Eduard Hanslick, ‘Die “Graner Messe” von Liszt’, Aus dem Concertsaal:
Kritiken und Schilderungen aus den letzten 20 Jahren des Wiener Musiklebens (Vienna,
1870), p. 153.
4 Hanslick, ‘Die “Graner Messe”’, p. 155.
(3rd edn, Leipzig, 1909), p. 67.
6 See, for example, Eric Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and
his Age, trans. Dika Newlin (London, 1963), pp. 216–18.
7 Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Marxian Programmatic Music: A Stage in
Mendelssohn’s Musical Development’, Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd
(Cambridge, 1992), p. 155.
8 Spohr’s piece is quoted and discussed in Ulrich Konrad, ‘Der Beitrag evan-
gelischer Komponisten zur Messenkomposition im 19. Jahrhundert’, KJb 71
(1987), 75–6.
9 Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his Reformation Symphony’, Journal
of the American Musicological Society 40 (1987), 313. See also Silber Ballan,
‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony: A Critical and Historical
Study’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale (1987), pp. 110–11.
10 These celebrations are described in Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his
Reformation Symphony’, 316–24.
11 Martin Witte has also linked the ‘Reformation’ Symphony to Lutheran
rather than Catholic ideals, but does so by entirely denuding the polyphony
at the opening of the movement and the quotations of the Dresden Amen of
their Catholic associations. For Witte, the opening is reminiscent only of old
church music, while the Dresden Amen citations merely evoke generalized
liturgical associations, and thus symbolize the Protestant service. (Witte,
‘Zur Programmgebundenheit der Sinfonien Mendelssohns’, Das Problem
Mendelssohn, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, 1974), pp. 121 –2.)
12 See Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony’,
pp. 106–9.
13 See, for example, Robert Schumann, ‘Fragmente aus Leipzig’, Gesammelte
Schriften über Musik und Musiker, 3 vols. (3rd edn, Leipzig, 1875), vol. I,
pp. 327–8; Ferdinand Hand, Aesthetik der Tonkunst, 2 vols. (2nd edn, Leipzig,
1847), vol. II, p. 575.
14 Moritz Hauptmann, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, ed. Alfred Schöne and
Ferdinand Hiller, trans. A. D. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London, 1892), vol. I, p. 122.
15 Julius Schubring, ‘Reminiscences of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’, Musical
World (1866), as presented in Mendelssohn and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd
(Princeton, 1991), p. 231.
16 See Arnold Schering, Geschichte des Oratoriums (Leipzig, 1911; repr. Hildesheim,
1966), pp. 415–17; Konrad, ‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie’, pp. 84–8.
17 See Martin Geck, ‘Richard Wagner und die ältere Musik’, HW, p. 133.
18 See, for example, Joseph Jungmann, Aesthetik, rev. edn of Die Schönheit und die
schöne Kunst (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884), pp. 827, 831 –6.
19 Richard Wagner, ‘Entwurf zur Organisation eines deutschen Nationalthe-
aters für das Königreich Sachsen’, Richard Wagners Gesammelte Schriften,
ed. Julius Kapp (Leipzig, n.d.), vol. XII, p. 125.
20 Ibid., p. 127.
21 Ibid., p. 126.
22 Richard Wagner, ‘Beethoven’, Sämmtliche Schriften und Dichtungen. Volks-
Ausgabe, ed. H. von Wolzogen and R. Sternfeld (6th edn, Leipzig [1914]),
vol. IX, p. 80.
23 Josef Lewinsky, ‘Bei Richard Wagner. Ein Domchor-Erinnerung’, Allgemeine
Musik-Zeitung 37 (1910), 443–5, as presented in Wolfgang Dinglinger (ed.),
150 Jahre Staats- und Domchor Berlin: Unbekannte und unveröffentlichte Briefe und
Dokumente (Berlin, 1993), p. 46.
24 Nineteenth-century attitudes towards the performance and adaptation
of Renaissance music are explored more extensively in my ‘Performing
Renaissance Church Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Issues and
Challenges in the Study of Performative Reception’, Music and Letters 83
(2002), 187–236.
25 Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Über Reinheit der Tonkunst, ed. Raimund
Heuler (Paderborn, 1907), p. 75.
26 Ibid., p. 76.
27 Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut: Blätter der Erinnerung für seine
Verehrer und für die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1841), pp. 92–3.
28 HÄ, vol. I, p. 272.
29 Ibid., pp. 270, 272.
30 Hand, Aesthetik, vol. II, pp. 243, 493.
31 Ibid., p. 493.
32 Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei, Missa Ad regias agni dapes, ed. Heinrich
Oberhoffer (Leipzig, 1885), preface, as quoted in Franz Witt, ‘Cantus
divinus’, FB 20 (1885), 30.
33 Wagner, ‘Entwurf zur Organisation’, pp. 128–9.
34 Richard Wagner, ‘Stabat mater von Pergolese. Arrangiert für großes Orchester
mit Chören von Alexis Lwoff ’, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VII, p. 63.
35 Ibid., p. 60.
36 Ibid., p. 59.
37 Franz Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, 1905), vol. VII, pp. 329–30.
38 Matthias Buschkühl, ‘Richard Wagners Bearbeitung von Palestrinas
“Stabat mater” ’, Wagneriana: eine Ausstellung der Universitätsbibliothek Eichstätt
zum 75. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Wagner, ed. Buschkühl (Tutzing, 1994), p. 24.
39 CVC nos. 304–467 (Regensburg, 1879), no. 437.
40 In addition, the quasi-modal harmonies in bars 36–41 of no. 6 Hymne de
l’enfant à son reveil could be associated with the Palestrina revival. A useful
discussion of relationships to a wider range of older religious music in Liszt’s
instrumental works, especially the piano music, is given in Klaus Wolfgang
Niemöller, ‘Zur religiösen Tonsprache im Instrumentalschaffen von Franz
Liszt’, RW, pp. 119–31.
41 Peter Ackermann, ‘Ästhetische und kompositionstechnische Aspekte der
Palestrina-Rezeption bei Franz Liszt’, PK1 , p. 253.
42 Franz Liszt, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, ed. Imre Sulyok and Imre Mezö
(Kassel and Budapest, 1981), ser. I, vol. IX, p. 30.
43 Heinrich von Kleist, Die Heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik, Sämtliche
Erzählungen und Anekdoten, ed. Helmut Sembdner (Munich, 1978), p. 223
(translations based on ‘Holy Cecilia and the Power of Music’, in Linda
Siegel (ed.), Music in German Romantic Literature: A Collection of Essays, Reviews
and Stories (Novato, CA, 1983)).
44 Ibid., pp. 226–7.
45 FB 20 (1885), DC 3, p. 183.
46 Johannes Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, ‘Richard Wagner und die katholische
Kirchenmusik’, MS 46 (1913), 131 –2.
47 Johannes Evangelist Habert, Beiträge zur Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition
(Leipzig, 1899), vol. I, p. 89, as quoted in Peter Lüttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als
Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen 1750 und 1900 (Tutzing, 1994), pp. 269–70.
48 Franz Liszt, Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth. Oratorium von Franz Liszt
(Leipzig, 1869; repr. Farnborough, 1971), pp. 311 –13.
49 Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einflüsse hatte die Wiederbelebung der älteren Musik
im 19. Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, 1900), p. 134.
50 Hans Redlich, Parsifal (Bonn, 1948), p. 28; Karl Gustav Fellerer, Palestrina:
Leben und Werk (2nd edn, Düsseldorf, 1960), p. 138 (see Elmar Seidel, ‘Über
die Wirkung der Musik Palestrinas auf das Werk Liszts und Wagners’,
Liszt-Studien 3, ed. Serge Gut (Eisenstadt, 1983), p. 169).
51 Seidel, ‘Über die Wirkung’, pp. 165–6; Karl Weinmann, Karl Proske: der
Restaurator der klassischen Kirchenmusik (Regensburg, 1909), p. 32.
52 Cornelia Knotik, Musik und Religion im Zeitalter des Historismus: Franz Liszts
wende zum Oratorienschaffen als ästhetisches Problem (Eisenstadt, 1982), p. 76.
54 Seidel, ‘Über die Wirkung’, pp. 164, 166.
6 INTERPRETING THE SECONDARY DISCOURSE OF

NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC
1 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Geschichtliche und ästhetische Erfahrung’, HW, p. 243;

Walter Wiora, ‘Grenzen und Stadien des Historismus’, HW, p. 302.
Cf. Friedhelm Krummacher, ‘Historismus’, MGG2, Sachteil, vol. IV,
pp. 348–51.
2 Erich Doflein, ‘Historismus in der Musik’, p. 38 (‘Eine Geschichte des
reinen Historismus in der Komposition wäre eine Geschichte der Kopien
und musikalischen Sackgassen’).
3 See Walter Kolneder, ‘Das Wiederfinden vergessener Grundwahrheiten.
Ein wichtiger Aspekt des sogenannten Historismus’, HW, p. 277.
4 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms
(London, 1985), p. 8.
5 Peter Mercer-Taylor, ‘Rethinking Mendelssohn’s Historicism: A Lesson
from St Paul’, The Journal of Musicology 15 (1997), 228–9.
6 Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (New
York, 1984), p. 6, as quoted in Mercer-Taylor, ‘Rethinking Mendelssohn’s
Historicism’, 229.
7 Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athenäum Fragmente’, no. 287, KFSA, vol. II, p. 214;
Novalis, ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’, Werke, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Munich,
n.d. [1969]), p. 329.
8 Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [IV]’, no. 87, KFSA, vol. VIII,
p. 204.
9 Eve Tavor Bannet, Postcultural Theory: Critical Theory after the Marxist Paradigm
(London, 1993), p. 168.
10 Franz Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’
MS 7 (1874), 75–9, DC1 , p. 68.
11 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford, 1975,
rev. edn, 1992), p. 246.
12 See André Lefevere, Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to
Rosenzweig (Amsterdam, 1977), p. 7.
13 See Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London, 1991), p. xv.
14 Ibid., p. 5.
15 Bannet, Postcultural Theory, pp. 165–6; see Gary E. Aylesworth, ‘Deconstruct-
ing Translation: Preliminary Remarks’, The Textual Sublime: Deconstruction and
its Differences, ed. Hugh Silvermann and Gary E. Aylesworth (Albany, 1990),
pp. 164–6.
16 See Barbara Godard, ‘Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation’,
Translation, History, and Culture, eds. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere
(New York, 1990), pp. 87–96.
17 Bannet, Postcultural Theory, p. 166.
18 John Dryden, Preface to Ovid’s Epistles (1680), as quoted in Reuben Brower,
Mirror on Mirror: Translation, Imitation, Parody (Cambridge, MA, 1974), p. 2.
19 Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des
Uebersezens’, Sämmtliche Werke, ser. III, vol. II (Berlin, 1838), pp. 207–45, as
presented in Das Problem des Übersetzens, ed. Hans Joachim Störig (Darmstadt,
1963), pp. 38–70 (p. 38).
20 Ibid., pp. 47, 49.
21 The useful terms ‘source language’ and ‘target language’ are not of course
Schleiermacher’s, but are borrowed from late twentieth-century translation
theory.
22 Schleiermacher, ‘Methoden des Uebersezens’, p. 47.
23 Ibid., p. 46.
24 Ibid., pp. 50, 51.
25 Ibid., p. 64.
26 Ibid., p. 51.
27 Ibid., p. 59.
28 Ibid., p. 53.
29 Ibid., p. 60.
30 Ibid., p. 65.
31 Ibid., p. 54.
32 Ibid., pp. 55–6.
33 The role of Blendlinge in Schleiermacher’s essay is discussed in Anthony Pym,
‘Schleiermacher and the Problem of Blendlinge’, Translation and Literature 4
(1995), 5–30.
35 Ibid., pp. 66–7.
36 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Preface to Aeschylos Agamemnon metrisch übersetzt von
Wilhelm von Humboldt (Leipzig, 1816), as presented in Störig (ed.), Das Problem
des Übersetzens, p. 82.
37 Franz Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencomponisten’,
Cäcilia. Organ für katholische Kirchenmusik 4 (1865), 4.
38 Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Über Sprache und Worts’, Parerga und Paralipomena
(1851), as presented in Störig (ed.), Das Problem des Übersetzens, p. 102.
39 Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe der Werke Palestrina’s’, CK 5
(1880), 70.
40 Peter Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, vol. II: Polyphonie
(Regensburg, 1912), p. 438.
41 Vladimı́r Macura, ‘Culture as Translation’, Translation, History, and Culture,
ed. Bassnett and Lefevere, p. 68.
42 Ibid., pp. 68, 67.
43 August Wilhelm Schlegel, ‘Homers Werke von Johann Heinrich Voss’ (1796),
translated by Douglas Robinson as ‘A. W. Schlegel on the German Homer’,
Translation and Literature 3 (1994), 112.
44 Karl Vossler, Geist und Kultur der Sprache (Heidelberg, 1925), as presented in
Lefevere, The German Tradition, p. 97.
45 A. W. Schlegel, ‘Geschichte der klassischen Literatur’ (1802), as presented
in Lefevere, The German Tradition, p. 52; Humboldt, Preface to Aeschylos
Agamemnon, p. 83.
47 Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athenäum Fragmente’, no. 149, KFSA, vol. II, p. 188.
48 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung:
Studien zur frühromantischen Utopie einer deutschen Weltliteratur (Zurich and
Freiburg im Breisgau, 1969), pp. 116–17.
49 Novalis, ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’, no. 68, Werke, p. 337.
50 Huyssen, Übersetzung und Aneignung, p. 133.
51 Franz Witt, ‘Die erste Generalversammlung des allgemeinen “deutschen
Cäcilien-Vereines”’, FB 3 (1868), 75, DC1 , p. 18. Cf. Felix Mendelssohn,
Briefe aus den Jahren 1833 bis 1847, ed. Paul and Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy
(Leipzig, 1863), p. 2.
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Index
absolute, 30, 33, 48, 55–6, 255 appropriation, 11, 52, 104, 215, 244–5
absolute music, 53–7, 65, 223 archaism, 27, 59, 76, 77, 78, 118, 119,
academicism, 129 209
a cappella architecture, 19–20, 21, 24, 78, 142, 169
ideal, 53–4, 60 63, 65–6, 69, 70, 85, 99, 101, Ariosto, Lodovico, 33
109–12, 120, 128, 129, 146, 152, 223 arrangement and adaptation, 100, 177, 223–7,
performance, 65–6, 69, 70–1, 112, 134–5, 254
143, 225, 272 n.38 art
see also stylus a capella and artificiality, 67, 81, 179, 221
Ackermann, Peter, 190–1 vs. craft, 24, 129
aesthetics of feeling (Gef ühlsaesthetik), 64, 65, 67, decline of, 15, 16, 23, 29, 36–7, 40, 41, 64–5,
146, 152, 162, 208 96, 122–3
affections, doctrine of the (Affektenlehre), 162 for the masses, 63, 84, 110–12, 119, 146
Aiblinger, Johann Kaspar, 136, 138 vs. nature, 26, 67, 94, 162, 201
Allegri, Gregorio, 3 see also painting
Miserere, 41 –2, 43, 57, 71, 83, 87, 89–90, 104, Auchmann, Michaela, 186–7, 209, 211
105, 135, 136, 182, 202, 253, 267 n.26, Augsburg Confession, 219
280 n.19 authenticity, 9, 11 –12, 32, 35, 224, 234
Allgemeine Deutsche Cäcilien-Verein (ACV ), 5, in composition, 3, 5, 57–8, 152, 179, 180,
6, 133–4, 137, 141, 145, 146, 184–90, 209
204–5, 213 see also conviction, artistic
music of 149, 153–61, 163–8, 176–7, 178–81, authorship, 177
186, 190, 200–1, 204, 212, 242, 256 autonomy, aesthetic, 67–8, 69, 83, 84,
Vereins-Catalog, 173–7, 185, 187, 205, 207, 111 –12
208, 227
allusion and quotation, 102, 190–95, 214–216, Bach, August Wilhelm, 82, 220
227–40 Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 39, 65
Ambros, August Wilhelm, 115–16, 148, 192, Bach, Johann Sebastian, 39, 47, 66, 90, 91 –2,
216–7 97, 112, 121, 129, 131, 220, 266 n.13
anachronism, 34, 72–3, 224–5 chorales, 82, 105, 219
Anerio, Felice, 3, 99, 186 Mass in B Minor, 80, 222
Anerio, Giovanni Francesco, 3 St Matthew Passion, 83, 105
Anglican chant, 104 Bai, Tommaso, 83, 135
Animuccia, Giovanni, 137 Baini, Giuseppe, 70, 72-3, 76, 141, 142
antiquity, 55 Memorie storico-critiche, 73, 94–5, 96, 97, 120,
art of, 15, 16, 17–18, 19, 30, 45, 47, 134, 148, 285 n.132
110–11 Bann, Stephen, 12
music of, 47, 110–11 Bannet, Eve Tavor, 246
poetry of, 19, 24, 259 Bate, W. Jackson, 22
Antonicek, Theophil, 136 Bauer, Ernst Friedrich, 83, 84
Apelles, 16 Baumstark, Eduard, 66
311
312 Index
Bavaria, cultural politics of, 145–6, 175–176, vs. Protestantism, 48, 51, 97–8, 99–100, 130,
213 218, 229
see also Munich; Regensburg Cecilianism (Cäcilianismus), 133–4, 279 n.1
Bayreuth, Festspielhaus, 223 Cecilian Society see Allgemeine Deutsche
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 71, 147 Cäcilien-Verein
and absolute music, 54–6, 223 Centrumspartei, 145
Missa solemnis, 79, 128, 272 n.38 Cherubini, Luigi, 79, 121, 223
Bellermann, Heinrich, 5, 109–11, 112, chorale, 42, 43, 131, 215, 218, 222, 232
114–15, 129, 130, 131 –2, 149, 196, motet, 97
279 n.203 reform, 82, 100, 104, 105, 219–20
Der Contrapunkt, 121 –8, 130, 162, 163, 166 choral societies, 38, 61 –8, 69–70, 71, 72, 79,
Benevoli, Orazio, 69 80, 81, 98, 216, 217, 223
Berlin, 78, 114, 141 chromaticism, 72, 96, 102, 162, 184, 207–208,
Domchor; Hof- und Domkirche, 5, 84–5, 87, 209
98–109, 113, 115, 131, 223 church style, 37–43, 60, 61, 62, 68, 69, 70, 72,
Institut f ür Kirchenmusik, 113 79, 82, 99, 139, 147, 220, 223
Königlicher Normalsingechor, 112 classicism, 17, 19, 23, 38, 47
Nikolaikirche, 108 Cologne, 83, 144
Singakademie, 5, 62, 63–4, 65–6, 67, 70, 79, Cathedral, 217
80, 81, 109, 111, 112, 128, 131, 271 n.8 Commer, Franz, 168
Biba, Otto, 187 concerts, historical, 66, 78
Bildung see cultivation contemporaneity, 3, 9, 11 –12, 28, 29, 33–34,
Bismarck, Otto von, 63, 130 35, 58, 72, 131, 152, 209, 256
Blumner, Martin Traugott Wilhelm, 111, 131 content see form and content
Bonn, 83 conviction, artistic, 29, 32, 33, 34, 57, 58,
Bowie, Andrew, 215 90–2
Brahms, Johannes, 7 copy, copying, 9, 12, 58, 59, 72, 90–2, 113–14,
Brendel, Franz, 150 119, 138–9, 143, 149–153, 157, 163, 173,
Brotherhood of St Luke see Nazarenes, The 181
Bruckner, Anton, 181, 182, 183–4, 186–191, Correggio, 23, 41
193–205, 244, 248, 252, 287 n.173, Cortona, Pietro da, 50
287 n.187 counterpoint, 45
Mass in E Minor, 207, 208–12 theory of, 43
Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias Freiherr von, 70, critique, 26, 27, 28, 80, 244–6
71, 98, 99, 100, 101, 105, 254 cultivation, improvement (Bildung), 62–8,
Burbach, Hermann- Josef, 179, 180 111 –12, 129, 131, 146, 217
Burgstaller, Johann Baptist, 189 culture, ills of modern, 35, 36–7, 54, 64–5,
Burney, Charles, 45 66–7, 110–11
Buschkühl, Matthias, 226
Dahlhaus, Carl, 1, 17, 18, 122, 179–80, 242
Cäcilienbündnis der Hofmusiker, 136 Dante Alighieri, 33, 47, 50, 52, 216, 217,
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 51 224, 237
caprice, 25–6, 32, 34, 92, 243 Dehn, Siegfried, 121
Caracci, Agostino, Annibale and Ludovico, 16 Devrient, Eduard, 91
Casciolini, Claudio, 157 dialogue, dialogism, 8, 71, 243, 244–6,
Catholicism 247–8
aesthetic, 51 –2, 69, 96, 99, 130 diatonicism, 96, 162, 163, 179, 209, 210
Catholicizing, 130 Diebold, J. B., 186
clericalism, 189 dilettantism, 47, 48
conversions to, 24, 33, 51, 130 Dinglinger, Wolfgang, 84
as foundation for art, 23, 24, 33, 48–52, 81, Dresden, Hofkirche, 218, 223, 226
100, 130, 142 Dryden, John, 45, 249
medieval and Renaissance, 24, 26, 49–50, Durante, Francesco, 39, 41, 99
56–7, 99–100, 135, 217, 219 Dürer, Albrecht, 50, 57
particularism, 130, 133, 141, 145 Düsseldorf, 83
Index 313
Eccard, Johannes, 96, 97, 99, 108, 123, genius, 10, 11, 25
131 genre, 37–8, 39, 62, 67, 68, 81
eclecticism and stylistic pluralism, 6–7, 16, see also style
25, 26, 72, 76, 77–8, 79, 98, 102, 104, Gmeinwieser, Siegfried, 134
105, 132, 137, 154, 156–157, 177, 209, Gmunden, 188
242–3, 248 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 10–11, 14, 21,
ecumenicism, 99, 130 22, 26, 28, 68, 69, 81, 110, 244
Eichendorff, Joseph von, 27, 51, 61 Italienische Reise, 18, 43–5, 70, 82, 83
Eichstätt, 185, 188 ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’, 19–20, 50
Elberfeld, 83 golden age, 27
emulation, 18, 35 of church music, 40–3, 48, 49–51, 55–56,
Enlightenment, the, 9, 23, 36, 48 57–9, 95–6, 97, 100–1, 122, 135, 142, 223,
in France, 22, 37 260
in Germany, 15, 19, 20, 21, 37 of Greek art, 16
Espagne, Franz, 168 of painting, 16, 17, 23, 24, 49–50, 55–56, 59,
Ett, Caspar, 136–40, 183, 187 95–6
Evangelical Church, Prussian Gothic
see also liturgy architecture, 19–20, 21, 50, 78, 99, 217
novel, 51, 229
falsobordone, 87, 89, 102, 104, 105, 135, 144, 149, revival, 2, 19–20, 50, 169
157, 177, 181, 183, 201 –202, 209, 221, Goudimel, Claude, 40, 123, 137
222, 228–31, 236, 289 n.224 Graun, Carl Heinrich, 39
Fasch, Carl Friedrich Christian, 39, 62, 69, 80, Greece, ancient see antiquity
128 Grell, (August) Eduard, 5, 65, 68, 99, 104–8,
Feder, Georg, 81 109–121, 124, 131, 132, 146, 148, 149, 157,
Fellerer, Karl Gustav, 183, 186, 213, 234 166, 196, 219, 252, 253, 277 n.152
Feo, Francesco, 39 Missa solemnis, 128–30, 279 n.204
Fétis, François- Joseph, 66 Griesbacher, Peter, 161, 256
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 32 Gumprecht, Otto, 128, 129, 130
folksong, 27, 31, 91, 245
formalism, 129 Haberl, Franz Xaver, 43, 168–9, 174–5, 185,
form and content, 29–35, 57–9, 92, 101, 187, 205, 206, 207–9, 256, 267 n.33
150, 151 –3, 224–5, 226, 245–6, 254–255, Habert, Johannes Evangelist, 154, 157, 188,
257 189, 207, 208–9, 232
Foucault, Michel, 12 Haller, Michael, 5, 6, 161, 167–9, 171 –3, 181,
Franck, Melchior, 99 185, 196, 200, 210, 252
Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 39, 41 Kompositionslehre, 162–3, 164, 165, 166,
Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, 98, 99, 170
101, 104, 115 Hammerschmidt, Andreas, 39
Froberger, Johann Jacob, 39 Hand, Ferdinand, 38, 225
Fröhlich, C. W., 135, 142 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 39, 47, 57, 63, 71,
Fuchs, Martin, 189 90, 121, 182, 220, 225
function, functionality, 5, 18, 83–4, 85, 104, Messiah, 98, 102, 224, 225–6
108, 114, 120, 147–9, 153, 161, 173–81, ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum, 65, 80
187–8, 206–7, 208, 213 Handl, Jakob, 99, 123
Fux, Johann Joseph, 39, 137, 184 Hanslick, Eduard, 69, 215, 216, 236
Gradus ad Parnassum, 2, 3, 18, 43, 112, Hasse, Johann Adolf, 137
113, 120, 121, 123, 134, 135 Hassler, Hans Leo, 39, 157
see also stylus a capella Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, Johannes, 231
Hauptmann, Moritz, 85, 221
Gabrieli, Andrea, 95 Haydn, Joseph, 39, 54, 56, 65, 83, 137, 146,
Gabrieli, Giovanni, 41, 95, 274 n.76 182
Gaehrich, Wenzel, 102 ‘Nelson’ Mass, 147
Gasparini, Francesco, 39 Seasons, The, 147
Geißel, Johannes von, 144 Haydn, Michael, 39, 137
314 Index
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 8, 28–35, imitation, 9, 10, 20, 22, 25, 26, 29, 31, 58, 77,
57–8, 68, 78–9, 110, 224–5, 227 80, 91 –2, 135, 139, 143, 149, 157, 179,
influence of, 29, 35, 92, 101, 129, 150 241 –2, 244
Heidelberg Singverein, 62, 63–4, 65, 66, 67, 70, and mass production, 24
71, 72, 268 n.38 theories of, 3–4, 15, 17–18
Heine, Heinrich, 22, 23, 24, 51 –2 see also copying; emulation;
and irony, 26–8, 90–1, 220, 244, 245–6, 252 replication
Heinemann, Ernst Günter, 206–7 industrialization, 110–11
Hensel, Fanny, 63, 79, 85 Ingegneri, Marc’ Antonio
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 14, 15, 19, 20–21, Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, 43–4, 136, 196,
28, 38, 140, 182 267 n.33
‘Cäcilia’, 37, 39, 42 inspiration, instinct, 10, 25–6, 29, 30, 58, 59,
Hientzsch, Johann Gottfried, 47 67, 91
historicism irony, 25–6, 27, 28, 32–3, 34, 51, 243–6
antiquarian, 14, 18–21, 38–40
critical, 14, 21 –2, 27–8, 36 Jackson, Timothy L., 200
and determinism, 66 Janz, Bernhard, 143
monumental, 14, 15–18, 19, 20, 23, 38, 40, Jean Paul ( Richter), 21, 24, 25, 64
94, 242 Jeppesen, Knud, 121, 124, 166, 170, 196
objective, 12–14, 31, 93–4, 95, 130–1, Jommelli, Nicolò, 65, 69
168–9 Joos, O., 174
origins of, 12–13, 15
relativism, 12, 18–21, 23, 28, 38, 93 Kahnt, Christian Friedrich, 226
as return to origins, 12, 17–18, 28, 76, 169 Kandler, Franz Sales, 136, 142
subjective, 13–14, 31, 95, 169 Kant, Immanuel, 65, 110
vs. tradition, 17–18, 22, 37, 72–3, 76, 80–1, Karl VI, Emperor of Austria, 136
98, 102, 122, 133–40, 141, 203–4, 212 Kassel, 42
history Katholische Arbeitervereine, 145
abuse of, 12–14, Kienle, Ambrosius, 162
fictionalization of, 15–17, 49 Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg, 136, 182
and narrative emplotment, 15, 16–17, 40–2, Kirchenlied, reform of, 146, 203
45–6, 47, 57, 94, 95–96, 97 Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, 80, 112–13, 121
philosophy of, 34 Kirsch, Winfried, 2
and progress, 15, 20–1, 35, 47–8, 52–3, kitsch, 178–9
57, 59 Klein, Bernhard, 70
principle of non-repetition, 34 Kleist, Heinrich von, 229
warping of, 11 –12, 28, 242 Knotik, Cornelia, 236
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, Koenen, Friedrich, 177, 187, 200, 210, 244, 252
268 n.38, 271 n.105 Konold, Wulf, 79
‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, 4, 36–47, Konrad, Ulrich, 72, 73
48, 49–61, 65, 68, 79, 80, 95–6, 122, 147, Korsyn, Kevin, 7
150, 222–3, 254, 255 Kretzschmar, Hermann, 185
influence of, 36, 70, 98, 135, 140, 183 Kronstorf, 183
Hohenemser, Richard, 67, 113, 119, Krüger, Eduard, 50, 86, 97
233–234 Kühnast, Eduard, 108
Holbein, Hans, 57 Kuhnau, Johann, 39
Holy Roman Empire, 49 Kulturkampf, 130
Homer, 33, 224 Kümin, J. B., 174
Homilius, Gottfried August, 39
Howie, A. C., 183, 187 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 228–9
humanism, 63, 110–12, 146, 182, 186 language, historicity of, 12
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 63, 93, 247, 254, 258 Lassus, Orlande, 40, 56, 66, 95, 99, 112, 123,
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 79, 137 137, 142, 144, 145–6, 147, 149, 154, 157,
Hutcheon, Linda, 244 163, 186, 226
Huyssen, Andreas, 260 ‘Justorum animae’, 148
Index 315
Missa Puisque j’ay perdu, 148 Milz, Friedemann, 119
Missa super Qual donna attende, 140 Mitterer, Ignaz, 161, 185, 200
Leipzig, 42, 61 modality, modes, 73–4, 105, 106–7, 108, 109,
Leo, Leonardo, 39, 41, 57 119–20, 129, 151, 154–5, 167, 173, 177,
Leonardo da Vinci, 23 198–200, 210, 236
Le Sueur, Jean-François, 79 quasi-modality, 73, 156, 198–9, 209–210,
Lichtenfeld, Monika, 66 232, 233, 253
Liedertafel style, 101, 102, 120, 129, 154 modelling, 73–5, 78, 100, 101, 147
Liliencron, Rochus Freiherr von, 130 modernism, 7
Linz, 188, 189–90, 205 Molitor, J. B., 176–7, 180
Liszt, Franz, 5, 147, 153, 181 –3, 184–6, 190–9, Monteverdi, Claudio, 95
200–1, 202–3, 205–7, 212, 223, 226, Morales, Cristóbal, 40
227–9, 232–3, 244, 252, 287 n.180 moralism, 63, 64, 64–8, 146
Christus, 191, 192, 236–40, 289 n.219 Moser, Josef, 188
Missa choralis, 185, 197, 207–10, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 55, 56, 66, 71,
Missa solemnis, 215 137, 147, 182, 224, 225–6, 231
liturgy, 64 Requiem, 38–9, 72
Catholic, 5, 134–5, 136, 141, 142–3, 146, 149, Müller, Wilhelm, 27
162, 163, 173–77, 187, 204, 216, 217 Munich, 144, 149
Evangelical, 5, 83, 84–5, 87, 96, 97–8, 99, Hofkapelle, 66, 136, 146
100, 105, 124 Michaelshofkirche, 135–7
reform of, 83, 84–5, 98, 133–4 museum, 20
Loewe, Carl, 6, 102, 220, 221 –2 mythology, new, 22–3, 26, 32–3, 48–52, 53,
Lotti, Antonio, 41, 67, 99, 157 55, 56–7, 236
‘Crucifixus’, 126, 204
Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, 141 Nägeli, Hans Georg, 47–8
Lüttig, Peter, 2, 45, 111, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130 naivety, the naiv, 22, 24, 27, 49–50, 52, 58,
Luther, Martin, 219 59, 60–1, 90–1, 240, 245
Lutheranism, 34 naiv vs. sentimental, 26, 48, 56–7, 216, 255
Lyssipus, 16 Napoleon I, Emperor of France, 22, 37, 49
nationalism
Macura, Vladimı́r, 257 Austrian, 189–9
mannerism, 10, 11, 16, 29, 31, 81, 82 German, 37, 47, 96, 130–1, 247, 257
Maratta, Carl, 16 pan-German, 189
Marcello, Benedetto, 39, 41, 47, 63, 182 Prussian, 96, 97, 213
Marx, Adolph Bernhard, 129 see also Bavaria, cultural politics of
mask, form as a, 35 Naumann, Emil, 101, 102–3, 104, 107–8,
Mass, Protestant settings of, 81 213, 253
medievalism, 26, 27, 49 Naumann, Johann Gottlieb, 218
Meloncelli, Rauol, 85, 93 Nazarenes, The, 49, 50, 51, 58, 59, 81, 82
Mendelssohn, Abraham, 63, 79, 81, 82 Neithardt, (Heinrich) August, 99, 101, 102,
Mendelssohn, Felix, 5, 63, 78–93, 98, 100, 103, 104–105, 108, 276 n.131
101, 109, 113, 114, 128, 132, 243, 260 Nekes, Franz, 154, 161, 177–8
Drei Psalmen, 84, 85–7, 98 neo-classicism, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24,
‘Reformation’ Symphony, 218–20, 37, 49
291 n.11 Nicolai, Otto, 5, 69–71, 72–8, 85, 100, 101,
St Paul, 90–1, 220–1, 244–5 103, 118–19, 132, 273 n.59
Mercer-Taylor, Peter, 244–5 Nietzsche, Friedrich
Merrick, Paul, 184, 209 and objective historicism, 13–14, 93
Mettenleiter, Johann Georg, 144 and subjective historicism, 13, 14, 15–16,
Meyer, Leonard B., 10 19–20, 21 –2, 27, 35, 39
Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, 39, 43, 50, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg), 21, 49,
135, 182 246, 259–60
Michelangelo, 16, 23, 47, 142 novelty, 9, 11, 26, 112
Last Judgement, The, 45, 216, 217 Nowak, Leopold, 202
316 Index
Oberhoffer, Heinrich, 225 Palestrina-Stil, 119, 121, 122, 134, 148, 149, 162
Oberösterreichischer Diözesan Cäcilien-Verein meanings of, 2–3, 17–18, 113–14, 129, 147,
(OÖCV ), 188, 189, 204–5 151, 241, 261 n.3
Ockeghem, Johannes, 137 see also counterpoint; stile antico; strict
Olivier, Johann Heinrich, 50 style; stylus a capella
opera, theatrical style, 37, 40, 41, 96, 122 Palestrinianism (Palestrinismus), 161
oratorio, oratorio style, 37–8, 39, 62, 65, 68, pantheism, 51, 55
90–1, 220–2 papal choir, 81, 142, 209
organicism, 10, 148, 154, 209 Holy Week performances and repertory, 42,
and historical narrative, 16–17, 18, 20–1, 23, 43–5, 53, 70–1, 82–3, 86–7, 96, 98, 104,
40–1, 48, 94, 95–6, 123, 142, 148, 223 105, 109, 131, 135, 192, 228
and music theory, 47–8 parody, 25, 27, 51, 58, 244
originality, 3, 9–12, 26, 28–9, 67, 112, 114, mass, 165
131, 214 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 39, 41, 47, 225
Ortwein, P. Magnus, 177, 181 Pforr, Franz, 49
Österreichischer Cäcilienverein (ÖCV ), 188–9, 207 Phidias, 16
Oulibischeff, Dmitryevich, 191 –2 Piel, Peter, 161, 177
Overbeck, Friedrich, 49, 50 Pius IX, Pope, 145
Pius-Verein für religiöse Freiheit, 145
painting plagiarism, 139
German Romantic, 49, 50, 51, 77, 142 plainchant, 38–9, 86–7, 96, 140, 142, 146,
medieval Italian, 23, 49, 50 153, 154–5, 162, 164, 171, 176, 184, 186,
Renaissance Italian, 15, 16, 17, 23, 41, 45–7, 215, 236
48, 49, 50, 52, 95 harmonization of, 153, 157, 206
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da Plato, 110, 111
‘Ad te levavi’, 169, 171 pluralism, stylistic see eclecticism; style
‘Beati omnes’, 169, 171 Poesie, 22, 24, 26
‘Cantantibus organis’, 191 poetry, 22, 23, 24, 27, 50, 52
‘Domine, quis habitabit’, 169 polyphony, rhythmic, 115–17, 124–5, 148–149,
‘Fratres, ego enim’, 191 154, 157–9, 164, 173, 202, 212
Gesamtausgabe, 43, 162, 166, 168–73 Porpora, Nicola, 39
‘Hodie Christus natus est’, 191 postmodernism, 7, 244, 245
Improperia, 43, 83, 84, 85, 96, 100, 105, 148, Praetorius, Michael, 95, 99, 108
202, 254 Praxiteles, 16
‘Jubilate Deo’, 169, 170–1 Pre-Raphaelite movement, 2
Lamentations, 87 see also Nazarenes, The
Miserere, 43, 46, 228 programme music, 218–19
Missa ad Fugam, 45 Proske, Carl, 141–4, 145, 147, 162, 183, 186,
Missa Aeterna Christi munera, 137, 140, 164, 183 211, 222, 226, 242, 256
Missa brevis, 147, 154, 211 Pustet, Friedrich, 205, 206, 226
Missa Dum complerentur, 147–8
Missa Hodie Christus natus est, 148 quasi-liturgical music, 62, 63, 69–78, 79–82,
Missa Papae Marcelli, 40, 42, 45, 115–20, 141, 128–30, 131, 191, 233, 286 n.163
148, 149, 154, 221, 253
‘O Domine Jesu Christe’, 66 Raabe, Peter, 206
‘O quam bonus’, 169 Racine, Jean, 22
‘Pater noster’, 73 Ranke, Leopold von, 93, 94, 95
‘Salvator mundi’, 191 Raphael, 15, 16, 17, 23, 39, 47, 49, 50, 52, 57,
‘Salve regina’, 169, 171 –3, 252 95, 97, 142, 216, 217
‘Stabat mater’, 43, 45, 73, 148, 153, 191 –2, Rauch, J. N., 168
202, 223–4, 226–7 reception, aesthetics of, 7–8
‘Stabat mater’ progression, 45, 153, 191 –5, Redern, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von, 85
202, 232, 233, 234–6, 237–240, 248, Redlich, Hans, 234
289 n.214 reflection, 10, 25, 26, 27, 32–3, 48, 50, 56, 60,
‘Victimae Paschali laudes’, 168 79, 90–1, 151 –2, 163, 215, 243–6
Index 317
Reformation, 49, 82, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 50, 54, 63, 84,
218–20 246, 249–51, 253, 254, 255, 258, 259,
Regensburg, 186 277 n.138
Alten Kapelle, 141, 144, 161 Schmidt, Friedrich, 161, 168, 200
Cathedral, 141, 144, 168 Schneider, Friedrich, 61
Kirchenmusikschule, 161 –2, 168 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 10, 11, 25, 255
Reich, Second, 130, 133, 145, 213 Schöpf, Franz, 174
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 37, 39, 40, 41, Schorn, Ludwig, 28–9, 30
42, 45, 147 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel,
Reinthaler, Karl, 102 41, 42
Reischl, Wilhelm, 224 Schubring, Julius, 221
religioso idiom, 215–16, 221, 231, 233, 236 Schumann, Robert, 79
replication, stylistic, 3, 6, 9, 24, 28, 33, 34–5, Schütz, Heinrich, 97, 99, 131, 274 n.76
57, 59, 69, 72, 73, 77–8, 100, 101, 105, 113, sculpture, 16, 17, 29, 45
118–19, 124, 128, 132, 149, 153, 157, 161, Sechter, Simon, 186
166, 167–168, 173, 213, 242–3, 251 –2, secularization, 36–8, 55, 56, 146–7
256 Seidel, Elmar, 234–5, 238
Rheinberger, Joseph, 177 Senfl, Ludwig, 95, 137
Riedel, Valentin von, 143 Shakespeare, William, 19, 26, 33, 35,
Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich, 150 224
Rochlitz, Friedrich, 39, 41, 43, 58, 76–8, 182, Sigl, Max, 163, 168
211 Silber Ballan, Judith, 79–80, 218, 219
Romano, Giulio, 23 simplicity, 17, 20, 22, 23, 27, 38–9, 40, 41,
Romantic circle, 14, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 32–3, 42–3, 45–6, 60, 67, 69, 80, 82, 102,
35, 36–7, 48, 49, 52, 54, 61, 82, 90–1, 140, 110, 122, 131, 135, 140
142, 246 sincerity see authenticity; conviction
Rome, 49, 95, 142, 194, 207 Singvereine see choral societies
Prussian legation, 70, 100 Società musicale romana, 191
Sistine Chapel, 42, 45, 53, 70–1, 73, 82–3, Sophocles, 33
85, 86–7, 96, 98, 105, 131, 135, 182, 184, Soriano, Francesco, 3
209, 216, 217, 228, 229 spirit of the age, world spirit, 9, 53, 55, 56–7,
St Peter’s, 56, 57 59, 60, 67, 101
see also papal choir Spitta, Philipp, 13, 41, 69, 94, 97, 130–1
Rousseau, Jean- Jacques, 67 Spohr, Louis, 5, 69–72, 78, 219, 272 n.40,
Rudigier, Josef, 188, 190 273 n.54
Rumph, Stephen, 37 spontaneity, 9, 10, 25, 26, 91, 92, 129, 151, 152,
243–6
Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess Carolyne von, Stanley, Glenn, 38
185–6 Stein, Friedrich Karl Freiherr von, 22
Scarlatti, Alessandro, 79, 141 Steinbach, Erwin von, 20
Schäffer, Julius, 237 St Florian, 183, 187, 205, 289 n.224
Schafhäutl, Karl Emil von, 137, 139–40, 142, stile antico, 3, 40, 43, 65, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 79,
143, 175–6 80, 99, 128, 134, 142–3, 184, 204, 220,
Schäfler, Franz Xaver, 183 221, 222, 225
Scharnagl, August, 163, 168 Stimmungsbrechung, 27, 244–5, 252
Schenker, Heinrich, 121 Stölzel, Gottfried Heinrich, 47
Schiller, Friedrich von, 63, 110 Strasburg, Minster, 19–20, 56
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 78–9 Strauß, Friedrich Adolph, 84
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 21, 22, 23, 24, 136, strict style (der strenge Satz), 3, 43, 69, 74–6, 96,
140, 247, 257, 258 107, 109, 111, 112–113, 114, 117–19, 120,
Schlegel, Friedrich, 21, 22–6, 27, 47, 121 –2, 123, 124, 128, 129, 131, 140, 151,
48–49, 50, 51, 52–3, 55–6, 57, 58–9, 161, 166, 201
236 style
and irony, 25–6, 27, 32–3, 244 historicity of, 33–4, 58, 66, 78–9, 80–1, 247,
and translation, 246, 258–9 255
318 Index
style (cont.) Hofkapelle, 136, 188, 189–90, 205, 288 n.202
lofty vs. beautiful, 16, 40, 41 University, 201
purity of, 37–8, 62, 67, 76, 77–8, 99, 143–4, Vinci, Pietro, 123
163 virtuosity and instrumentalism, 64–5, 66, 67,
stylus a capella, 3, 6, 29, 133, 134–5, 137, 139, 109–111, 112, 121, 146–7
140, 141, 142–3, 144, 149, 183–4, 191, Vogler, Georg Joseph (Abbé), 137, 140
203–4, 205, 212
sublimation, 60, 61, 93 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, 21, 23, 24,
sublime, the, 53–7, 80, 217, 221, 222, 228, 41, 42, 43, 49
229–30, 232 Wagner, Manfred, 209
Succo, Reinhold, 131 Wagner, Richard, 6, 154, 196, 222–7, 230–2,
suppression, 60–1, 67, 71, 86, 101, 102, 109, 233–6, 237
131, 177, 183–4, 189, 205, 252, 253, Waldeck, Karl, 189
255 Walter, Anton, 175
Waugh, Patricia, 244–5
Thibaut, Anton Friedrich Justus, 62–9, 70, 71, Weber, Gottfried, 58, 60
72, 80, 109, 129, 182, 268 n.38 Weinmann, Karl, 234–5
Über Reinheit der Tonkunst, 40, 41, 42–3, 45–7, Weiskel, Thomas, 55
64–5, 66–7, 69, 79, 82, 95–6, 99, 122, Werner, Zacharias, 51
136, 147, 222–3, 224 White, Charles, 196
influence of, 40, 81, 98, 136, 141, 184 Willaert, Adrian, 95
Tieck, Ludwig, 21, 49, 51, 70, 91, 136 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 14, 15–18, 19,
Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, 24, 216, 217 20, 23, 28, 31, 40–1, 45–6, 48, 50, 55, 57,
Phantasus, 37, 40, 41, 45, 47, 52, 52, 53–4 242
Titian, 23 Windthorst, Ludwig, 145
translation, 61, 100, 246 Winterfeld, Carl Georg Vivigens von, 5, 93–8,
linguistic interaction in, 247–8, 249–53 99, 101, 108, 120, 130, 141, 168, 276 n.119,
recovery of content in, 246–7, 250, 254–5 276 n.127
Romantic theories of, 246, 247, 249–251, Wiora, Walter, 12, 242–3
253, 254–5, 257–60 ‘Wise’ ( Julius Schladebach), 113–14
transubstantiation, 34 Witt, Franz Xaver, 5, 6, 144–53, 158–61, 162,
Traumihler, Ignaz, 183, 187, 188–9 163, 164, 173, 174–7, 180–1, 184–5,
Trent, Council of, 42, 115, 148, 175, 221, 186–89, 191, 192, 196, 205, 206, 207, 208,
258 210, 227, 231, 243–244, 252, 254, 257–8,
Trivialmusik, 178–81 260
trope of the sacred, 215 Raphaels-Messe, 153–4
Tucher, Gottlieb Freiherr von, 114 ‘Wittian style’, the, 153–7, 203, 253
Witt, Theodore de, 168
Universalpoesie, 26, 247, 258–9 Witzenmann, Wolfgang, 191
Ursprung, Otto, 185 word-painting, 37, 54
work-concept, 10, 78, 176
value see also autonomy, aesthetic
aesthetic vs. functional, 5, 18, 61, 67–8, 78, world-view, modern, 12, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 48,
84, 114, 147, 148–9, 161, 173–81, 187–8, 58, 78
206–7, 286 n.163 vs. medieval, 23, 49–50
judgements of, 9, 64, 173–81 vs. Renaissance, 49–51, 56, 81, 150, 179, 217,
see also originality; authenticity 224, 255
van Eyck, Jan, 55–6
Veit, Philipp, 50 Zappe, Karl, 189
Venice, 73, 95 Zelenka, Jan Dismas, 39
Viadana, Ludovico, 177 Zelter, Carl Friedrich, 62–9, 70, 79, 80, 81, 92,
Victoria, Tomás Luis de, 163, 165, 186 98, 109, 110, 112
Vienna, 81, 137 Zenetti, Leopold von, 184
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 78 Ziolkowski, Theodore, 20

(James Garratt) Palestrina and The German Romantic

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PALESTRINA AND THE GERMAN

Focusing on the reception of Palestrina, this bold interdisciplinary

J A M E S G A R R A T T is a lecturer in music at the National University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

© James Garratt 2004

First published in printed format 2002

ISBN 0-511-02917-9 eBook (Adobe Reader)

AmZ Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

This study explores historicism in nineteenth-century German music,

Historicism in nineteenth-century art,

ORIGINALITY: CONSENSUS OR CONTROVERSY?

The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and Palestrina’s

The gulf separating Goethe and Schopenhauer, both of whom ex-

‘ON THE BENEFIT AND DETRIMENT OF HISTORY’

The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and the music

Winckelmann’s organic construction serves two purposes, both of

Nietzsche expressly identifies Goethe’s interest in Strasbourg Minster

A. W. Schlegel’s condemnation of the ‘stifling present’ reveals a critical

Friedrich Schlegel explored the predicament of the modern artist and

HEGEL, HISTORICISM AND THE ‘DECAY AND

It will become evident that the three strands of historicism discussed

Romanticism and the problem of church music

HOFFMANN AND THE ROMANTIC IDEALIZATION

So far, we have explored the complex strands of historicist thought that

Rochlitz’s list of ideal church composers from 1803 is similarly wide-

With Palestrina began what is indisputably the most glorious period in

The transition Hoffmann traces from Palestrina’s ‘lofty, simple style’ to

Example 2.1. Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, ‘Tristis est anima mea’,

Example 2.2. ‘Miserere von Palästrina’

analogy with Renaissance painting. Hoffmann describes Palestrina’s style

PALESTRINA AND THE ROMANTIC NEW MYTHOLOGY

The extent to which the mode of emplotment and terminology used by

But while such misjudgements are, for Nägeli, acceptable in a novel or a

PALESTRINA AND ABSOLUTE VOCAL MUSIC

In exploring the implications of their golden age constructions for the

PALESTRINA AND THE MODERN COMPOSER

Hoffmann’s triadic conception of the history of the church style is more

While Weber rejects imitation for compromising the historicity of the

The Protestant Palestrina revival

OLD ITALIAN MUSIC, BILDUNG AND

In examining the relation between the idealization of Palestrina in north

It can be claimed without exaggeration that half of our music is unnatural,

QUASI-LITURGICAL MUSIC: SPOHR AND NICOLAI

In seeking to categorize settings of liturgical texts, nineteenth-century

Example 3.1. Otto Nicolai, ‘Pater noster’, bars 88–100

scheme consistent with Palestrina’s handling of the ionian mode, and

Example 3.1. (cont.)

Example 3.1. (cont.)

Example 3.2. Nicolai, Offertorium in assumptione beatae Mariae Virginis

discourage imitation, Rochlitz sets out a series of guidelines for composers

MENDELSSOHN AND THE BERLIN PALESTRINA REVIVAL

Here, Mendelssohn makes a clear distinction between non-liturgical re-

Mendelssohn and the Berlin Domchor

Example 3.3. Felix Mendelssohn, Psalm 22 ‘Mein Gott, warum’

that elicited re-creations of elements of his language from Mendelssohn.

Example 3.4. (cont.)

Here, Heine unambiguously links Mendelssohn with the irony of the

WINTERFELD AND THE HISTORICAL PALESTRINA

Winterfeld’s Rankean belief in the possibility of ‘pure’ objective facts

BROADER TRENDS IN PERFORMANCE AND COMPOSITION

The impact of Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to Renaissance music

In examining the relation between the modern repertory of the