(Ger. Cäcilianismus).
A 19th-century movement, centred in Germany, for the reform of Catholic church music. Reacting to the liberalization of the Enlightenment, the Cecilians sought to restore traditional religious feeling and the authority of the church. They regarded ‘true, genuine church music’ as being subservient to the liturgy, and intelligibility of words and music as more important than artistic individuality.
The movement took its name from St Cecilia, the legendary patron of sacred music and of the 15th-century Congregazioni Ceciliani. The latter inspired the formation of Caecilien-Bündnisse (Cecilian Leagues) in Munich, Passau, Vienna and elsewhere in the 1700s. These organizations of church musicians upheld the ideal of sacred music with little or no instrumental accompaniment; the organ was one of the few instruments accepted as liturgically correct. This line of thought extended unbroken from the Council of Trent (1545–63) through the various regional church councils (notably at Rome in 1725), and from the encyclical Annus qui of Pope Benedict XIV in 1749 to the Motu proprio of Pius X in 1903. Benedict’s encyclical was cited as authority for excluding virtually all instruments from church services; they were to be admitted only to accompany the singers in a subordinate role, and in particular to reinforce small choirs.
At the beginning of the 19th century, when the Caecilien-Bündnisse were undergoing a revival, their work was carried on in the spirit of the stile antico in Germany by Fux, Michael Haydn, Vogler, Mastiaux, Thibaut, Ett, Aiblinger, Heimsoeth, Hauber, Proske, and J.G. and Dominicus Mettenleiter; in Italy by Casciolini, Basili, Spontini, Zingarelli, Raimondi, Mattei, Baini, Santini and Alfieri; and in France by Choron and Niedermeyer. The Cecilians’ theoretical ideas were formulated by Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Sailer (Von dem Bunde der Religion mit der Kunst, 1839), Hoffman (Alte und neue Kirchenmusik, 1814) and Thibaut. Cecilians wrote historical studies of Palestrina (Baini, 1828; Winterfeld, 1832) and the Netherlandish masters (Kiesewetter, 1826), as well as one work of practical aesthetics (Möhler’s Die Ästhetik der katholischen Kirchenmusik, 1910). Choron, Alfieri, Tucher, Dayton, Commer, Proske and Lück edited anthologies of early vocal polyphony, and editions and studies of Gregorian chant were produced by Schiedermeyer, Antony, Alfieri, Vilsecker, Schlecht, Nisard and Lambilotte.
Cecilianism was nurtured by the early stages of industrialization, which engendered a longing for simplicity, unworldliness and the past, and a concentration on essentials, and by the generally historicizing climate of the 19th century. Like the Nazarenes in the visual arts, the Cecilians took the old masters of the 15th and 16th centuries as models for their own compositions. They viewed Palestrina as the leading figure in church music (a complete edition of his works, under the general editorship of Haberl, was published between 1862 and 1903), and based their criteria on the music performed in the chapels of Rome rather than on the more emotional 18th-century repertory. Exaggeratedly graphic word-painting was to be avoided; expansive modulations and chromaticism – in fact all characteristics of theatrical music – were anathema. Church choirs modelled on the choir of the Cappella Sistina were founded in Regensburg, Munich and Cologne. The first practical realization of the Cecilians’ reformist ideas was the revival of Allegri’s Miserere by Ett and Schmid at St Michael in Munich on Good Friday 1816. Hauber and Aiblinger helped establish the restoration movement in Munich, and from there it spread to Regensburg, which became a centre of a cappella singing in the second half of the century.
In 1868, three years after calling for the reform of church music in Der Zustand der katholischen Kirchenmusik zunächst in Altbayern, Witt founded the Allgemeiner Deutscher Cäcilienverein on the occasion of the rally of Catholics in Bamberg. Sanctioned by Pope Pius IX in 1870, it inspired the founding of similar organizations in the Netherlands (by Diepenbrock and others), Italy (Tebaldini, Perosi, Bottazzo), Belgium (Tinel), Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland and North America. Even the Evangelical Church was affected by Cecilianism, as the example of the Berlin Domchor shows. Journals associated with the movement include Fliegende Blätter für katholische Kirchenmusik, Musica sacra, Cäcilienkalender and Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, all founded in the late 1860s, as well as Chorwächter (St Gallen), Gregoriusblatt (Aachen), Kirchenmusikalische Vierteljahresschrift (Salzburg), Wiener Blätter für katholische Kirchenmusik (Vienna), and Caecilia (New York). Among the publishing houses particularly committed to the cause were Pustet in Regensburg, Schwann in Düsseldorf and Böhm in Augsburg.
In 1870 the Cäcilienkalender published the first catalogue of music approved for use in church services. A distinction was drawn between strictly liturgical music for the main divine service, sacred music for shorter devotional services and religious concert music. Gregorian chant headed the list of acceptable music, followed by a cappella polyphony, organ music and community hymns. Although Ett in his Cantica sacra of 1827 shortened the Gregorian melodies and J.G. Mettenleiter adulterated them with harmonizations in his Enchiridion chorale of 1853, from about 1850 attempts were made to revive the original versions of chant, such as those preserved in the Codex Montpellier. The Regensburg edition, prepared by Haberl under the auspices of the Cäcilienverein and based on the Editio medicea of 1614, was approved by Rome in 1868. It was superseded by the Editio vaticana (1905–23) which resulted from the work of Guéranger, Jausions, Pothier and others of the Solesmes school. Community hymn singing was another special concern of the Cäcilienverein. Witt’s Dreihundert der schönsten geistlichen Lieder älterer Zeit, published in about 1860, excluded the songs of the Enlightenment period, which he considered degenerate. Not until the publication of 23 standard hymns in 1916 did the Cecilian movement produce a real community hymnal.
Fierce controversies over the Cäcilienverein’s recommendations led to the increasing isolation of church music from contemporary artistic development. The new polyphonic works by Cecilianist composers, being functionally tied to the liturgy, were artistically rather unassuming. The Cecilians tended to dismiss composers such as Bruckner and Liszt who only occasionally adopted Cecilian ideas, while Rheinberger rejected them altogether. In 1875 a counter-movement to the Cecilians emerged in Austria (where the orchestrally accompanied church music of the Viennese Classicists and of contemporary composers continued to be played) under the leadership of Habert, joined by Brosig and his followers in Breslau. Even within the Cecilian movement there were divisions, for instance pitting the adherents of historicism (Haller, Nekes, Koenen and Piel) against a group more receptive to contemporary music (Stehle, Greith, Mitterer and Kienle). In Munich Schafhäutl became a bitter opponent of Cecilianism, while Witt took up an intermediate position. Not until the 20th century did the movement become receptive to contemporary artistic forms. On the other hand, the founding of the Kirchenmusikschule in Regensburg (1874) and the Gregoriushaus in Aachen (1881) provided a model for the future training of church musicians.
MGG1 (K.G. Fellerer)
MGG2 (W. Kirsch)
C.A. von Mastiaux: Über Choral und Kirchengesänge (Munich, 1813)
J. Thibaut: Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (Heidelberg, 1824)
J.M. Sailer: ‘Von dem Bunde der Religion mit der Kunst’, Sämmtliche Werke, xix, ed. J. Widmer (Sulzbach, 1839), 161–76
F.X. Witt: Der Zustand der katholischen Kirchenmusik zunächst in Altbayern (Regensburg, 1865)
K. Schafhäutl: Der echte gregorianische Choral (Munich, 1869)
R. Schlecht: Geschichte der Kirchenmusik (Regensburg, 1871)
A. Walter: ‘Cäcilianische Kirchenmusik-Reform’, Cäcilienkalender, i (1876)
A.D. Schenk: Zwei wichtige Fragen der Kirchenmusik-Reform (Regensburg, 1877)
K. Greith: Über die Reform in der katholischen Kirchenmusik (Einsiedeln, 1878)
F.X. Witt: Das königliche bayerische Cultusministerium, die bayerische Abgeordnetenkammer und der Cäcilienverein (Regensburg, 1886)
O. Ursprung: Die katholische Kirchenmusik (Potsdam, 1931–3)
W. Wiora, ed.: Die Ausbreitung des Historismus über die Musik (Regensburg, 1969)
H. Hucke: ‘Die Anfänge des Caecilienvereins: zum 100 jährigen Gedächtnis der Approbation des Allgemeinen Caecilienvereins’, Musik und Altar, xxii (1970), 159–78
K.G. Fellerer: ‘Grundlagen und Anfänge der kirchenmusikalischen Organisation F.X. Witts’, KJb, lv (1971), 33–60
J. Schuh: Johann Michael Sailer und die Erneuerung der Kirchenmusik: zur Vorgeschichte der Caecilianischen Reformbewegung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Cologne, 1972)
S. Gmeinwieser: ‘Die altklassische Vokalpolyphonie Roms in ihrer Bedeutung für den kirchenmusikalischen Stil in München’, AnMc, no.12 (1973), 119–42
F.J. Lederer: ‘Caecilianismus und Palestrina-Renaissance im 19. Jahrhundert’, Jahresbericht Regental-Gymnasium Nittenau 1974–5, 44–60; 1975–6, 42–58
J. Schwermer: ‘Der Cäcilianismus’, Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik, ed. K.G. Fellerer, ii (Kassel, 1976), 226–36
A. Scharnagl: Einführung in die katholische Kirchenmusik (Wilhelmshaven, 1980)
E. Moneta Caglio: ‘Il movimento ceciliano e la musica corale da chiesa’, RIMS, v (1984), 273–326
R. Münster: ‘In kritischer Haltung gegenüber dem Caecilianismus: Briefe des Breslauer Domkapellmeisters Moritz Brosig an den Wortführer des österreichischen Caecilienvereins J.E. Habert’, Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte, xliv (1986), 217–38
R. Pozzi: ‘L’immagine ottocentesca del Palestrina nel rapporto tra Franz Liszt e il movimento ceciliano’, Studi palestriniani II: Palestrina 1986, 461–78
Palestrina und die Idee der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie im 19. Jahrhundert: Frankfurt 1987 (Kassel, 1995)
C. Lickleder: ‘F.X. Witts reformatorischer Ansatz’, Musik in Bayern, xxxvii (1988), 69–92
H. Unverricht, ed.: Der Caecilianismus: Anfänge – Grundlagen – Wirkungen: Internationales Symposium zur Kirchenmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1988)
M. Janitzek and W. Kirsch, eds.: Palestrina und die klassischen Vokalpolyphonie als Vorbild kirchenmusiklalischen Kompositionen im 19. Jahrhundert (Kassell, 1995)
SIEGFRIED GMEINWIESER