Johann Caspar Aiblinger


Johann Caspar Aiblinger was a German composer associated with the Cecilian Movement.
Aiblinger was born in Wasserburg am Inn, Bavaria. In his eleventh year he commenced his studies at Tegernsee Abbey, where he was instructed in piano and organ-playing. Four years later he entered the gymnasium at Munich, where he studied under Professor Schlett, his countryman.
In 1800 he began his studies at the University of Landshut. Inwardly drawn to the Catholic Church, he completed his philosophy and began theology, but the secularization of many religious orders in Bavaria prevented his entrance into a cloister. He now devoted himself solely to music. Led by the then prevailing idea that without a visit to Italy no musical education is complete, he turned his footsteps southward.
After a stay of eight years at Vicenza, where he fell under the influence of his countryman Johann Simon Mayr, Aiblinger went to Venice and there met Meyerbeer, who procured for him an appointment at the Conservatory. His failure to establish a school for classical music led him to Milan to assume the direction of the local ballet. On his return to Bavaria, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria invited him to Munich to direct the Italian opera. King Ludwig I of Bavaria appointed him director of the royal orchestra, and sent him to Italy to collect old Italian masterpieces. On his return be became the organist of the church of All Saints for which he wrote many valuable compositions.
In the 1820s he wrote two unsuccessful operas, before turning his energies to a crusade against the influence of Italian opera which eventually led to a revival of Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris, re-orchestrated by Aiblinger. Then he then turned to church music, studying the old masters and procuring performances of their works. His numerous church compositions comprise masses and requiems, offertories and graduals, psalms, litanies, and German hymns, many of which have been published at Augsburg, Munich, Regensburg, and Mainz.
In 1864 he resigned from All Saints, on account of advancing years. He died in Munich.

Selected works