Town in Lower Austria. The strategic location of the fortress Medelica (Melk) on a slope overlooking the Danube led the Babenbergs, Austria's medieval rulers, to establish their court there in 976. Monks from the Benedictine abbey of Lambach were invited to join the court in 1089; shortly after 1110, when the Babenbergs moved to Klosterneuburg, the Benedictines became the owners of Melk and a large area of land. This link with the Austrian monarchal line made the wealthy abbey one of the Empire's most powerful institutions.
Soon after their arrival the Benedictines founded a boys' choir; pueri are mentioned as early as 1140 and a cloister school, training boys for singing in processions and daily church services, is described in a manuscript dating from 1160. The scriptorium was most productive in the first half of the 13th century. A great fire (1297) destroyed most of the manuscripts recording this formative musical period. 133 codices survived intact, about half of which originated at Melk, including the Melker Marienlied (c1125), bearing added marginal neumes notating the 14th-century polyphonic ballade ‘Fujez de moi’.
In the 15th century the abbey was the centre of the ‘Melk Reform’ movement, influential throughout Austria and southern Germany. Its ideal was the ‘total renunciation of polyphony, organ playing and the participation of choirboys and lay vocalists in the divine service’ (Angerer, 1974), although some of these practices were already well established in Melk. They were resumed with ardour during the late Renaissance when a group of musicians of many nationalities was active at the abbey, including the Slav Jacob Handl and the Netherlander Lambert de Sayve. The first organist was recorded in 1565, and a cornett player is found among the salaried musicians after 1598. Melk choirboys were sent to join chapels in Prague and Vienna at the request of the Hapsburg emperors. A number of Melk-trained musicians became Kapellmeister at Stephansdom in Vienna: Johann Windtsauer (1634–63), Augustin Kürzinger (1667–78) and J.G. Albrechtsberger (1793–1809).
The elimination of the Turkish threat to Austria in 1683 and the election of Berthold Dietmayr as abbot (1700–39) marked a new era of creative activity. Dietmayr commissioned Jakob Prandtauer to refashion the abbey in Baroque style, and a costly organ, built by the Viennese Gottfried Sonnholz, was installed in the abbey church in 1731. A theatre was erected early in Dietmayr's rule, but dramatic productions, recorded as early as 1686, continued to be given in temporary quarters. The repertory in the first half of the 18th century consisted of ludi caesarei (Latin dramas with incidental music), German intermedi (including Viennese popular comedy) and Singspiele. Under the direction of a regens chori, the abbey maintained a group of 15 choirboys and up to 12 professional musicians, supplemented by monks and servants. A calendar rich with musical events and feast days, in addition to extravagant entertainments for frequent visitors, kept the musicians busy.
Music in the second half of the 18th century was provided by the ‘Melk Circle’ of composers: Kimmerling (a pupil of Haydn in 1760–61), Albrechtsberger, Franz Schneider, Paradeiser and Maximilian Stadler. By mid-century the Baroque ludi caesarei had disappeared and new categories such as applausus musici (semi-dramatic Latin cantatas) and Viennese-type Singspiele took their place. This productive period came to an abrupt end in the 1780s as a result of the monastic reforms of Joseph II: virtually the entire musical apparatus, including the boys' choir, was dissolved.
With the support of abbots Anton Reyberger and Marian Zwinger (1810–37), music was revived in the post-Napoleonic period. Oratorios and masses by Haydn, Beethoven, Winter, Naumann and others were performed. A valuable thematic catalogue of the abbey's music collection was begun in 1821 by Adam Krieg, regens chori from 1812 to 1825, and was continued into the 20th century. During the rule of Abbot Alexander Karl (1875–1909) productions of plays with incidental music took place during Carnival in the boarding-school theatre.
The task of revitalizing the abbey's musical institutions after World War II fell to Adolf Trittinger (d 1971), a pupil of Guido Adler. His regime discarded 19th-century liturgical traditions and in 1950 initiated the ‘Melker Oratorium’, an annual series of large-scale musical productions. The series continued until 1960; in the same year, the annual Melk Summer Festivals reactivated musical theatre with productions employing professional personnel. The main repertory of these open-air performances has been Viennese popular theatre (Nestroy and Raimund), given with the original music by Adolf Müller, Drechsler and others. In the 1960s, major cataloguing projects were undertaken for the library and the music archive. A new organ was designed by Hans Haselböck and built by Gregor Hradetsky in Krems. With 3280 pipes and 45 stops it was, when installed in 1970, the largest tracker-action organ in Austria. A concert series, the Organ Summers (later known as the Organ and Soloists Concerts), was established in 1972 by Haselböck and Bruno Brandstetter and continued until 1998.
After the election of Burkhard Ellegast as abbot in 1975 it was decided to undertake the complete restoration of the abbey. In 1979 Helmut Pilss initiated the annual Pentecostal Concert Series, with four to six concerts over three or four days. Such musicians as Walter Berry and Peter Schreier, as well as the Vienna SO, members of the Vienna PO and State Opera Chorus, and the Österreichischer Rundfunk (ÖRF) Symphony Orchestra and Chorus have participated. The series was expanded into the Internationale Barocktage in 1992.
1850 codices dating from as early as the 9th century survive in the abbey's manuscript chamber; the library holds over 100,000 volumes from the 17th to the 20th centuries and the music archive holds some 14,000 manuscripts and printed editions, primarily of the 18th and 19th centuries. A catalogue of the collection is in Vienna (A-Wn).
GroveO (R.N. Freeman)
MGG2 (R.N. Freeman)
J.F. Angerer: Die liturgisch-musikalische Erneuerung der Melker Reform (Vienna, 1974)
J.F. Angerer: Lateinische und deutsche Gesänge aus der Zeit der Melk Reform (Vienna, 1979)
M.C. Nequette: Music in the Manuscripts at the Stiftsbibliothek of Melk Abbey, Austria: an Annotated Bibliography (diss., U. of Minnesota, 1983)
M. Bruch: Die Melk Reform im Spiegel der Visitationen (diss., U. of Vienna, 1985)
R.N. Freeman: ‘Musik und Theater im Stift Melk, 1587–1989’, 900 Jahre Benediktiner in Melk: Jubiläumsausstellung 1989, ed. E. Bruckmüller and others (Zell am See, 1989), 415–22
R.N. Freeman: The Practice of Music at Melk Abbey Based upon the Documents, 1681–1826 (Vienna, 1989)
M. Niederkorn-Bruck: ‘Zur Musikpflege in Melk im Mittelalter’, 900 Jahre Benediktiner in Melk: Jubiläumsausstellung 1989, ed. E. Bruckmüller and others (Zell am See, 1989), 411–15
E. Höchtl: Die adiastematisch notierten Fragmente aus den Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek Melk: Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme (diss., U. of Vienna, 1990)
R.N. Freeman: ‘The Fux Tradition and the Mystery of the Music Archive at Melk Abbey’, Johann Joseph Fux, ed. H. White (Aldershot, 1991), 18–39
C. Glassner and A. Haidinger: Die anfänge der Melker Bibliothek (Melk, 1996)
C. Glassner: Inventar der Handschriften des Benediktinerstiftes Melk: Teil 1 von den Anfängen bis zum Jahre 1400: Katalogband (Vienna, forthcoming)
ROBERT N. FREEMAN