thumb|Anton Reicha, 19th century
Anton (Antonín, Antoine) Joseph Reicha (Rejcha) (26 February 1770 – 28 May 1836) was a Bohemia-born, Bavarian-educated, later naturalized French composer and music theorist. A contemporary and friend of Beethoven, he is now best remembered for his substantial early contributions to the wind quintet literature and his role as teacher of pupils including Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and César Franck. He was also an accomplished theorist, and wrote several treatises on various aspects of composition. Some of his theoretical work dealt with experimental methods of composition, which he applied in a variety of works such as fugues and études for piano and string quartet.
None of the advanced ideas he advocated in the most radical of his music and writings, such as polyrhythm, polytonality and microtonal music, were accepted or employed by other nineteenth-century composers. Due to Reicha's unwillingness to have his music published (like Michael Haydn before him), he fell into obscurity soon after his death and his life and work have yet to be intensively studied.
Life
1770–1805: early years, first visit to Paris and the Viennese period
Reicha was born in Prague. His father Šimon, the town piper of the city, died when Anton was just 10 months old. Apparently Reicha's mother was not interested in her son's education, and so in 1780 he ran away from home following a sudden impulse – as he recounted in his memoirs, he jumped onto a passing carriage. He first visited his paternal grandfather in Klatovy (in the Plzeň Region), and then his paternal uncle Josef Reicha, a virtuoso cellist, conductor and composer living in Wallerstein, Bavaria, who adopted him. Reicha's move to Vienna marked the beginning of a more productive and successful period in his life. As he wrote in his memoirs, "The number of works I finished in Vienna is astonishing. Once started, my verve and imagination were indefatigable. Ideas came to me so rapidly it was often difficult to set them down without losing some of them. I always had a great penchant for doing the unusual in composition. When writing in an original vein, my creative faculties and spirit seemed keener than when following the precepts of my predecessors." In 1801, Reicha's opera L'ouragan, which failed in Paris, was performed at the palace of Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz, a prominent patron of Beethoven. Empress Maria Theresa (of Naples and Sicily) commissioned another opera after this performance, Argine, regina di Granata, which was only privately performed. His studies in Hamburg came to fruition here with the publication of several semi-didactic, encyclopedic works such as 36 Fugues for piano (published in 1803, dedicated to Haydn)
Reicha stayed in Paris for the rest of his life. He became a naturalized citizen of his adopted country in 1829 and Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1835. That same year, he succeeded François-Adrien Boieldieu at the Académie des beaux-arts. He published two more large treatises, Traité de haute composition musicale (1824–1826) (Treatise on advanced musical composition) and Art du compositeur dramatique (1833) (Art of dramatic composition), on writing opera. His ideas expressed in the former work sparked some controversy at the Conservatoire. In 1826 Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and Henri Cohen became students of his, as did composers Charles Gounod and Pauline Viardot sometime later. Berlioz in his Memoirs acknowledges that Reicha was 'an admirable teacher of counterpoint' who cared about his pupils and whose 'lessons were models of integrity and thoroughness' – high praise indeed from one so critical of the Conservatoire in general. Frédéric Chopin considered studying with him in December 1831 shortly after arriving in Paris from his native Poland, but ultimately decided otherwise. From June 1835 until Reicha's death in May 1836, the young César Franck took private lessons. His notebooks survive (in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris) with Reicha's annotations (and a later cryptic comment possibly by Erik Satie), showing how hard Reicha worked his 13-year-old pupil. Reicha was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and Luigi Cherubini resumed the teaching of counterpoint at the Conservatoire, replacing Reicha's heretical work on fugue with his own as the standard text.
Works
It is difficult to present a coherent list of Reicha's works, because the opus numbers assigned to them at the time of publication are in disarray, some pieces were supposedly lost, and many works were published several times, sometimes as part of larger collections. His surviving oeuvre covers a vast array of genres and forms, from opera to piano fugues. He is best known today for his 25 wind quintets, composed in Paris between 1811 and 1820, which were mostly premiered from 1817 in the foyer of the Théâtre Favart by some of the world's finest wind soloists, to such effect that they were played all over Europe shortly afterward. Reicha claimed in his memoirs that his wind quintets filled a void: "At that time, there was a dearth not only of good classic[al] music, but of any good music at all for wind instruments, simply because the composers knew little of their technique." Indeed, Reicha's experiences as a flautist must have helped in the creation of these pieces, in which he systematically explored the possibilities of the wind ensemble and invented an extended sonata form variant that could accommodate as many as five principal themes. Reicha wrote his first experimental quintet in 1811; the 'incomparably superior' first two of the later published quintets of Opus 88 were written by 1814 after further study of the instruments and collaboration with his players, with the remaining four completed before publication in 1817. Three further sets of six were published as Opus 91 in 1818, Opus 99 in 1819 and Opus 100 in 1820. Spohr was generally impressed by the virtuosity of the wind soloists and was very pleased with their performance of his own piano and wind quintet. Berlioz The fugues of the collection not only illustrate this point, but also employ a variety of extremely convoluted technical tricks such as polyrhythm (no. 30), combined (nos. 24, 28), asymmetrical (no. 20) and simply uncommon (no. 10 is in 12/4, no. 12 in 2/8) meters and time signatures, some of which are derived from folk music, an approach that directly anticipates that of later composers such as Béla Bartók. No. 13 is a modal fugue played on white keys only, in which cadences are possible on all but the 7th degree of the scale without further alteration. Six fugues employ two subjects, one has three, and No. 15 has six. In several of the fugues, Reicha established a link with the old tradition by using subjects by Haydn (no. 3), Bach (no. 5), Mozart (no. 7), Scarlatti (no. 9), Frescobaldi (no. 14) and Handel (no. 15). Many of the technical accomplishments are unique to fugue literature.
thumb|left|350px|Fugue No. 15 from 36 Fugues of 1803 features six subjects developed simultaneously
The études of op. 97, Études dans le genre fugué, published in Paris by 1817, are similarly advanced. Each composition is preceded by Reicha's comments for young composers. Thirty of the 34 études included are fugues, and every étude is preceded by a prelude based on a particular technical or compositional problem. Again an exceptionally large number of forms and textures is used, including, for example, the variation form with extensive use of invertible counterpoint (no. 3), or an Andante in C minor based on the famous Folia harmonic progression. Reicha's massive cycle of variations, L'art de varier, uses the same pedagogical principle and includes variations in the form of four-voice fugues, program music variations, toccata-like hand-crossing variations, etc., foreshadowing in many aspects not only Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, but also works by Schubert, Wagner and Debussy.
Many of Reicha's string quartets are similarly advanced, and also anticipate numerous later developments. The eight Vienna string quartets (1801–1805) are among his most important works. Though largely ignored since Reicha's death, they were highly influential during his lifetime and left their mark on the quartets of Beethoven and Schubert, much as Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was ignored by the public but well known to Beethoven and Chopin. Reicha also wrote prolifically for various kinds of ensembles other than wind quintets and string quartets, including violin sonatas, piano trios, horn trios, flute quartets, various works for solo wind or string instruments accompanied by strings, and works for voice. He also wrote in larger-scale genres, including at least eight known symphonies, seven operas, and choral works such as a Requiem.
Much of Reicha's music remained unpublished and/or unperformed during his life, and virtually all of it fell into obscurity after his death. This is partly explained by Reicha's own decisions he reflected on in his autobiography: "Many of my works have never been heard because of my aversion to seeking performances [...] I counted the time spent in such efforts as lost, and preferred to remain at my desk."
- ' (4 vols., 1833), on the writing of opera. Provides an exhaustive account of contemporary performance techniques and is supplemented with examples from Reicha's own operas.
In addition to these, a number of smaller texts by him exist. These include an outline of Reicha's system for writing fugues, Über das neue Fugensystem (published as a foreword to the 1805 edition of 36 fugues), Sur la musique comme art purement sentimental (before 1814, literally "On music as a purely emotional art"), Petit traité d'harmonie pratique à 2 parties (c. 1814, a short "practical treatise" on harmony), a number of articles and the poem An Joseph Haydn, published in the preface to 36 fugues (which were dedicated to Haydn).
Notable recordings
- Horn Trios (1980). Zdeněk Tylšar, Bedřich Tylšar, Emanuel Hrdina. Supraphon, VT 2976-2
- Complete Wind Quintets (1990). The Albert Schweitzer Quintet. 10 CDs, CPO, 9992502
- 36 Fugues Op. 36 (1991–1992). Tiny Wirtz (piano). 2 CDs, CPO 999 065-2
- Octet op. 96 (1992) Dieter Klöcker, Consortium Classicum. CD. Orfeo C282921A.
- Clarinet Quintet (1995). Charles Neidich (clarinet), l'Archibudelli. CD. Sony Vivarte SK 57968
- Quintets for Winds and String Quartet, Orchestral Works (1995, 1999). Consortium Classicum, Symphony Orchestra Wuppertal. 4 CDs, MDG. 301 2179-2
- Te Deum (1995). Kühn Mixed Chorus, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Václav Smetáček, conductor. CD. Panton 80 0242-2 211
- Complete Wind Quintets (2005–2012). The Westwood Wind Quintet. 12 CDs, Crystal Records, CD260
- 36 Fugues (2006). Jaroslav Tůma (fortepiano Anton Walter, 1790). 2 CDs, ARTA F101462
- Complete Symphonies (2011). Ondřej Kukal conducting Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. 2 CDs, Radioservis, CR0572-2
- Musique de Chambre (2017). Solistes de la Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. 3 CDs, ALPHA369
- Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 1 (2017). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 10950
- Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 2, Études dans le genre Fugué, Op.97 Nos 1–13 (2018). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 20033
- Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 3, L'Art de varier ou 57 variations pour le piano, Op. 57 (2021). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 20194