THE OFFERTORIES OF PETER VON WINTER: CRITICAL EDITIONS AND STUDIES OF SELECTED WORKS BY JENNY ELIZABETH BENT DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Music with a concentration in Choral Music in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Fred A. Stoltzfus, Chair Professor Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Director of Research Associate Professor Erik R. Lund Professor Emeritus Tom R. Ward ABSTRACT This is a comprehensive study of two offertories by Peter von Winter: Excelsus Super Omnes Gentes and Non Mortui Laudabunt Te. The critical editions included in this study were created through the transcription of manuscripts discovered at St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and those found in the Noseda Collection at the Biblioteca Conservatorio Di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. ii To my mother, Joanne Carrigan iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was made possible with the help and support of many people. Special thanks to my committee at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (in alphabetical order): Erik Lund, Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Fred Stoltzfus, and Tom Ward. In particular, I wish to acknowledge my research adviser, Charlotte Mattax Moersch for her guidance and scholarship. Thank you to Father Jerome J. Purta, O.S.B., whose catalogued Wimmer Collection made this project possible. Thanks to John Wagstaff of the University of Illinois library, for lending his handwriting expertise and to Licia Sirch and the Biblioteca Conservatorio Di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan for providing the MCS. Thanks to my dearest friend, Richard Robert Rossi, whose love, encouragement, and help cannot be measured. Thank you to my husband, Rob Hranac, for embarking on this journey with me. Finally, a special thanks goes to my family, friends, colleagues, and students for their endless support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: THE LIFE AND WORK OF PETER VON WINTER ..........................................11 CHAPTER 3: THE OFFERTORY ................................................................................................26 CHAPTER 4: SVS AND MCS: A COMPARISON ......................................................................37 CHAPTER 5: COMPOSITIONAL FEATURES IN THE OFFERTORIES OF PETER VON WINTER ................................................................................................................64 CHAPTER 6: PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES ...............................................................98 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................143 APPENDIX A: CRITICAL EDITIONS .....................................................................................145 APPENDIX B: EDITORIAL NOTES FOR CRITICAL EDITION OF NON MORTUI LAUDABUNT TE ..............................................................................................146 APPENDIX C: EDITORIAL NOTES FOR CRITICAL EDITION OF EXCELSUS SUPER OMNES GENTES ......................................................................................178 APPENDIX D: SURVEY OF SHORT SACRED WORKS BY PETER VON WINTER .........198 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................201 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Peter von Winter (1754-1825) was a prolific composer whose works were very popular in his lifetime. Despite the fact that Winter was a master of bel canto technique, had a brilliant career alongside composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Spohr, Weber, and Meyerbeer, and had many honors bestowed upon him, his sacred music is relatively unknown today. Although some of his surviving instrumental music and operas have been recorded, his choral music has been virtually neglected by modern scholars. Before the recent discovery of a collection of his music in the Boniface Wimmer Music Collection at St. Vincent Archabbey, choral works by Winter were thought to have been housed in only eight European libraries. Most of Winter’s choral music was composed late in his career, during his compositional maturity, making these recently discovered pieces of a high quality and worthy of publication. The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce Peter von Winter’s sacred music to today’s scholars, performers, and audiences through the creation of critical editions of his two offertories, Excelsus Super Omnes Gentes and Non Mortui Laudabunt Te. The process by which the critical editions included in this study were created involves the transcription of manuscripts from two locations. The first source consists of instrumental and vocal parts discovered in the Boniface Wimmer Music Library at St. Vincent Archabbey, the first Benedictine Monastery in North America, in Latrobe Pennsylvania. The St. Vincent manuscripts will hereafter be abbreviated SVS. The second source is a full score collection of Winter’s choral works known as Canti Sacri, which is housed in the Noseda Collection at the Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. The Milan Conservatory scores will 1 hereafter be abbreviated MCS. Both the SVS and MCS are in very good condition and are quite legible, which has made the project eminently feasible. Editorial decisions were determined after a comprehensive comparison between the two sources. The Boniface Wimmer Music Library The Wimmer Library is named for the founder of St. Vincent Archabbey, Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B. Having spent his early years as a Benedictine monk at Metten Abbey in Bavaria, Boniface Wimmer dedicated the last forty years of his life helping to “revitalize the ancient spirit of monastic missionary zeal” and introducing “the fourteen-hundred-year-old tradition of Benedictine Monachism to a new and alien land.”1 In 1846, Wimmer founded St. Vincent Archabbey in fulfillment of his personal mission to train and provide a Roman Catholic religious order to serve the needs of German Catholics in the United States. At St. Vincent, Wimmer emphasized the importance of his students’ cultural formation. Wimmer wrote, “In a country like America, where Protestant services are so devoid of everything that elevates the mind and heart, religion and art must go hand in hand to give to religious services outward splendor, dignity, and loftiness.” He added, “I am absolutely persuaded, that a monastic school which does not give just as much attention to art as to knowledge and religion is a very imperfect one and that a deficiency in scholarship at the beginning can be more readily excused than a neglect of art.”2 Consequently, the music program at St.Vincent was considered “one of the best in the country.”3 1 Oetgen, Jerome. An American Abbot. Pennsylvania: The Archabbey Press, 1976, 3. 2 Oetgen, Jerome. An American Abbot. Pennsylvania: The Archabbey Press, 1976, 87. Translated from Annalen des Glaubens (Munich, 1853), 17. 3 Oetgen, Jerome. An American Abbot. Pennsylvania: The Archabbey Press, 1976, 87. Quoted from Annalen des Glaubens (Munich, 1853), 396. 2 Wimmer modeled the St. Vincent academic programs and musical traditions on those from his Bavarian heritage at Metten Abbey. These traditions included the performance of concerted sacred music for full orchestra and chorus by composers such as Mozart, Haydn, and Weber, for liturgical services, such as Sunday High Mass, and non-liturgical ceremonies and secular concerts. The orchestra, the large choir, the ceremony of the ‘Hochamt’ -- all were considered absolutely necessary to create this awesome spectacle of nineteenth century Liturgy, the basic principles of which can be traced back to Roman influences, Byzantine court life, and medieval rubrics. Wimmer had a great desire to re-create this experience of liturgical spectacle in his American monastery.4 Copies of Peter von Winter’s Excelsus Super Omnes Gentes and Non Mortui Laudabunt Te are housed in the St. Vincent music library in the Bonafice Wimmer Music Collection,5 consisting of 2,675 works, 320 of which are choral. Much of the music found in this collection was included in the Schwab Catalogue, named for Professor Maurice Schwab, the director of the St. Vincent department of music under Wimmer. The Schwab Catalogue lists St. Vincent’s music holdings before 1860, and, for many of the works, provides information on their date and means of acquisition. The Schwab Catalogue information for Non Mortui Laudabunt Te includes the date 1856. Although the catalogue does not specifically state the means by which the two Offertories arrived at St. Vincent, it is known from the catalogue that Wimmer traveled to Europe in 1851 and 1855. Wimmer also maintained close ties with King Ludwig I in Bavaria, who was a generous Patron of the arts and great supporter of Wimmer’s mission. For example, St. Vincent 4 Fred Moleck, Nineteenth Century Musical Activity in St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh, 1970, 16-17. 5 Catalogued in the Boniface Wimmer Music Collection: Excelsus Super Omnes Gentes: SVS 2023; Non Mortui Laudabunt Te: SVS 2024 3 received nearly three-hundred oil paintings between 1847 and 1851 from King Ludwig I’s collection, as well as a wealth of books for the library. Entries in the Schwab Catalogue indicate that Wimmer acquired music and instruments during these visits, as well.