Reinagle.

English family of musicians of Austrian descent.

(1) Joseph Reinagle (i)

(2) Alexander Reinagle

(3) Hugh Reinagle

(4) Joseph Reinagle (ii)

(5) Alexander Robert Reinagle

(6) Caroline Reinagle [née Orger]

FRANK KIDSON/R (1), ROBERT HOPKINS (2), FRANK KIDSON/SIMON McVEIGH (3–4), FRANK KIDSON/BERNARR RAINBOW (5), SOPHIE FULLER (6)

Reinagle

(1) Joseph Reinagle (i)

(b nr Vienna; d after c1775). Trumpeter. He is said to have served in the Hungarian army. By the mid-18th century he had settled at Portsmouth, where most of his children were born. Through the influence of the Earl of Kelly he was appointed trumpeter to the king in 1762, and he appears to have moved to Edinburgh about 1763. In 1774 his daughter was married there to the cellist Johann Schetky.

Reinagle

(2) Alexander Reinagle

(b Portsmouth, bap. 23 April 1756; d Baltimore, 21 Sept 1809). Composer, pianist and teacher, son of (1) Joseph Reinagle (i). He was a pupil of his father and of Raynor Taylor, musical director of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh where Reinagle made his first known public appearance on 9 April 1770, playing a harpsichord sonata. By 1778 he was teaching the harpsichord in Glasgow, and his interest in keyboard teaching is reflected in his first publications, two sets of 24 ‘short and easy’ pieces. About 1782 he brought out A Collection of … Scots Tunes with Variations for harpsichord. His six sonatas for piano or harpsichord with violin accompaniment (London, 1783), resemble the styles of Clementi and J.C. Bach while occasionally exhibiting surprising originality. Reinagle visited C.P.E. Bach in Hamburg (c1784), and a brief correspondence between the two ensued. He accompanied his brother (4) Hugh Reinagle to Portugal, arriving in Lisbon on 23 October 1784 (his memorandum of the journey is in US-Wc); on 8 January 1785 he appeared in a public concert and a week later performed for the royal family. After Hugh’s death Alexander returned to England and became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians in London.

In late spring 1786 Reinagle arrived in New York, advertising himself as a teacher of the piano, harpsichord and violin; he gave a concert there on 20 July 1786. Two months later he was in Philadelphia, where on 21 September 1786 he took part in a concert given by the cellist Henri Capron. Reinagle settled there and revived the defunct City Concerts with a series of 12 evenings during the 1786–7 season. The programmes listed orchestral works by European composers of the time and works by Reinagle himself. He was in demand as a music teacher to Philadelphia’s upper class (George Washington engaged him to teach his adopted daughter, Nelly Custis) and brought out in rapid succession four publications probably intended for use in teaching: a smaller edition of his Scots Tunes variations, two collections of song arrangements, and a collection of instrumental pieces arranged for keyboard. He gave many concerts, appearing not only in Philadelphia but also in New York (1788–9), Baltimore (1791) and Boston (1792).

From 1790 or 1791 Reinagle was a partner with the English actor Thomas Wignell (d 1803) and Wignell’s successors in a theatrical company operating in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The New Company, as it was called, erected theatres in Philadelphia (the New Theatre in Chestnut Street, February 1793) and Baltimore (Holliday Street Theater, September 1794). The company’s repertory was divided equally between spoken and musical works, the latter usually English light opera or ballet. In his 15 years with the company Reinagle composed or arranged music for hundreds of productions, the extent of his responsibility ranging from a single incidental song to a completely new score, or the orchestration of an existing score. Nearly all this music perished in the fire that destroyed the Philadelphia New Theatre on 2 April 1820. The largest surviving fragment of any of Reinagle’s stage works is a collection of 14 songs from The Volunteers, printed in a piano reduction in 1795. Typical of ballad opera numbers, they are mostly strophic and written to a binary pattern framed by an instrumental introduction and coda.

Reinagle’s most significant extant works are four piano sonatas written in Philadelphia about 1790, bearing traits of C.P.E. Bach’s empfindsamer Stil. They have been called ‘the finest surviving American instrumental productions of the eighteenth century’ (Krohn, DAB), and are the first American works composed specifically for the piano. Reinagle’s Scots Tunes variations were the first solely secular musical publication in the USA, and he was the first in America to replace the harpsichord with the piano in the orchestra pit.

WORKS

printed works published in Philadelphia unless otherwise stated

stage

first performed at Philadelphia, New Theatre; music mostly lost, unless otherwise stated

other vocal

instrumental

Reinagle

(3) Hugh Reinagle

(b Portsmouth, 1759; d Lisbon, 19 March 1785). Cellist, son of (1) Joseph Reinagle (i). He was a pupil of his brother-in-law, Johann Schetky, and became a proficient player. After making his London début in 1779, he appeared at increasingly important concerts up until 1784, when he was sent to Portugal for reasons of health, accompanied by his brother (2) Alexander Reinagle. Some of his cello music, often mis-attributed to (4) Joseph Reinagle (ii), was published posthumously.

Reinagle

(4) Joseph Reinagle (ii)

(b Portsmouth, 1762; d Oxford, 12 Nov 1825). String player and composer, son of (1) Joseph Reinagle (i). He was at first intended for the navy; after the family moved to Edinburgh he was apprenticed to a jeweller there, but decided to concentrate on music. He learnt the horn and trumpet from his father and the cello from his brother-in-law, Johann Schetky, becoming a noted player at Edinburgh concerts. He abandoned the cello because he considered his brother (3) Hugh Reinagle to be a more skilful player, though he resumed after Hugh’s death. He became a violin and viola player and the leader of the orchestra at St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh. Some time before 1784 he went to London, where he played at the Handel Commemoration that year; he then went to Dublin, playing at the concerts there under the patronage of the Earl of Westmorland. He stated in a letter (GB-Ge) that he stayed in Ireland for two years; in 1787 he was back in London as a cellist and subsequently played at Salomon’s Haydn concerts. He noted that he enjoyed Haydn’s intimate acquaintance and ‘received many serviceable hints on composition from that great master’. In the 1790s he moved to Oxford where, according to Crotch, ‘J[ohn] Mahon was clarinet of the 1st band & Reinagle one of the horns … Thus we kept away Bonaparte’. On the advice of Lord Abingdon and other musical amateurs he decided to remain in Oxford.

WORKS

printed works published in London unless otherwise stated

Reinagle

(5) Alexander Robert Reinagle

(b Brighton, 21 Aug 1799; d Kidlington, nr Oxford, 6 April 1877). Organist, son of (4) Joseph Reinagle (ii). He studied music with his father at Oxford, where he became a teacher, organist and well-known figure in musical circles. He was organist of the church of St Peter in the East from 1822 to 1853. Under the early influence of the Oxford Movement the church was restored in 1836, the musical conduct of the services substantially reformed, and Reinagle was encouraged to cooperate with the Rev. W.K. Hamilton in compiling and arranging collections of psalms and hymns.

Reinagle composed organ works and other church music, including the enduring hymn tune ‘St Peter’. He wrote at least one piano sonata (London, 1825). He also wrote and compiled many teaching manuals for the violin and cello.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DAB (E.C. Krohn)

DNB (J.C. Hadden)

A. Reinagle: Journal of a Journey to Lisbon: Memorandum Book (MS, 1784–5, US-Wc)

W. Crotch: [Annotations to music by J.B. Malchair] (MS, GB-Ob Mus.d.32), f.49

J.R. Parker: ‘Musical Reminiscences’, Euterpeiad, ii (19 Jan 1822), 170

‘The Tune “St Peter”’, MT, xlvii (1906), 542–3 [see also F. Kidson, ibid., 617 only; O.G.T. Sonneck, ibid., 683 only]

O.G.T. Sonneck: ‘Zwei Briefe C. Ph. Em. Bach’s an Alexander Reinagle’, SIMG, viii (1906–7), 112–20

R.R. Drummond: ‘Alexander Reinagle and His Connection with the Musical Life of Philadelphia’, German-American Annals, v (1907), 294–306

O.G. Sonneck: Early Opera in America (New York, 1915/R)

E.C. Krohn: ‘Alexander Reinagle as Sonatist’, MQ, xviii (1932), 140–49

R.J. Wolfe: Secular Music in America, 1801–1825: a Bibliography (New York, 1964)

A. McClenny: ‘Alexander Reinagle: an Eighteenth-Century Musician with Modern Ideas’, American Music Teacher, xix/1 (1969–70), 38, 49–50

K.H. Mahan: ‘Hopkinson and Reinagle: Patriot-Musicians of Washington’s Time’, Music Educators Journal, lxii/8 (1975–6), 40–50

A. McClenny Krauss: ‘More Music by Reinagle’, Clavier, xv/5 (1976), 17–24

A. McC. Krauss: ‘Alexander Reinagle, His Family Background and Early Professional Career’, American Music, iv/4 (1986), 425–56

R. Hopkins: Preface to Alexander Reinagle: The Philadelphia Sonatas, RRAM, v (1978)

S.L. Porter: With an Air Debonair: Musical Theatre in America, 1785–1815 (Washington, 1991)

Reinagle

(6) Caroline Reinagle [née Orger]

(b London, 1818; d Tiverton, Devon, 11 March 1892). Pianist and composer, wife of (5) Alexander Robert Reinagle. Daughter of the actor and writer Mary Ann Orger (1788–1849), Reinagle first came to public attention during the 1840s, when she performed her own Piano Concerto at Hanover Square Rooms (1843) and several of her chamber works were performed in London, often at concerts given by the Society of British Musicians. None of these works, including a piano trio, two piano quartets and a cello sonata, appears to have survived. In 1846 she married the organist and teacher Alexander Robert Reinagle and settled in Oxford, where she worked as a piano teacher and continued to compose, publishing piano pieces and songs as well as a pedagogical essay, A Few Words on Pianoforte Playing (1855), which was serialized in the Musical Times in 1862.

The only work published under her maiden name is a lively and dramatic Tarantella for the pianoforte. Her most substantial surviving work is the Piano Sonata in A major (?1850), a difficult and well-structured work in four movements. Her published songs, including three settings of Adelaide Procter and four of Robert Browning, are fluent and inventive with frequently intricate piano accompaniments.

WORKS

all printed works published in London

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown-StrattonBMB

FullerPG