Jacob Reiner

Jacob Reiner was a German composer of sacred music, born in Altdorf, near Weingarten, in the Duchy of Württemberg, around 1560, and died in Weingarten in August 1606. His work belongs to the circle surrounding Orlando di Lasso, and together with Leonhard Lechner and Eccard he is regarded as one of the representatives of the German school associated with that master.

According to his dedication to the Liber cantionum sacrarum (1579), he received his early training as a boy at the abbey of Weingarten. Between 1574 and 1575 he studied with Lasso in Munich and, on completing his studies, returned to the monastery, where he spent the rest of his life as Kapellmeister, music master and composer, although he never took holy orders. He was held in high esteem there. His output, large and soundly crafted, is almost entirely religious and spread well beyond the immediate circle of Weingarten.

His works show the influence of Lasso and also of the Venetian composers. His penitential psalms for three voices, which have been compared with those of Lasso, have an almost ascetic simplicity. This expressive restraint, which includes avoiding chromaticism, is probably related to the liturgical strictness imposed at the abbey following a visitation in 1579. Nevertheless, he drew on secular models in some of his masses. His secular German songs, which combine features of the madrigal, the villanella and the chanson, are by contrast works of lesser force.

Reiner's legacy rests above all on his printed collections of motets, psalms and masses, published in Munich, Dillingen and Frankfurt, as well as on more than a hundred hymns preserved in various libraries. It is also known that three Passions, according to Mark, Luke and John, were lost; Dressler showed that they were for five voices, a fact presented without further precision regarding their date of composition.