Abstract (eng)
Since its founding, monastery St. Florian played the role of an center of faith and culture in Upper Austria. The care of catholic faith, education, and spiritual welfare were the main missions of the monastery. In the convent school, music always played a very important role. It was especially used in cloistral life, at visits of important persons like kings, and at internal ceremonies. But wars and historical incidents interrupted the upstreaming musical life several times.
In 1770, in spite of financial problems caused amongst others by taxes for the emperor, the construction of a big organ was started. It was built by Franz Xaver Krismann and completed after four years of building time. In the following decades, the organ was altered and expanded several times to improve the playability of the instrument.
This led to the need of well educated organists who not only played the organs but also taught piano, organ, singing, harmonics, and basso continuo at the convent school. Most of them also composed music. Their compositions ranged from church music for cloister usage to secular music used at carnival and birthday celebrations.
This thesis is structured into three main parts. The first one deals with the history of the monastery itself and with the musical history of the federal state of Upper Austria. The history of clergy also played an very important role in the evolution of sacred music. The thesis describes those evolutions and fits them together to introduce a correct order as exhaustive as possible.
In the second part, the evolution of the organs located in the monastery from the original state to the status quo is described. It not only considers the “Big Organ”, but also describes the changes and enhancements of the two coral organs and the small organ located in the Marienkapelle. The musical taste of the culture and the taste of the organ builders is reflected in the changed and newly added registers during the different centuries. But next to sound improving changes, rebuilds which improved playability and some for maintenance reasons were also made. Every larger modification was celebrated with a presentation and a sanctification of the organ and big masses.
The last and also largest part of the thesis describes the life and the work of the organists in St. Florian starting at 1774 until today. Divided into the individual centuries, a brief historical background is given and the tasks of the organists and teachers are described. During the 18th century, Maria Theresia and Joseph II. restricted the use of music in religion. The 19th century also came with musical constraints, so secular music got more important inside the convent. In the 20th century the two World Wars caused throwbacks to the cloister and its musical upgrowth. Recovery came after the second World War by the return of the Chorherren.
This work resulted in 18 biographies and catalogs of the organists employed in St. Florian since 1774. The material used in this work mainly came from the cloister archive and its music archive in St. Florian. It was processed and cleared since most of the material consisted of disordered pictures, letters, sheet music, and autobiographies. Additionally, the National Library of Austria, the archive of the diocese Linz, and archives of some smaller parishs in the district Perg were used.
This work should give an overview of the activities concerning the organ in monastery St. Florian. Next to the famous organists Bruckner and Kropfreiter, in particular the less famous ones should get their tribute by a catalog of their works framed by the history of the cloister and the history of the organ.