Alexander Reinagle
Alexander Reinagle ( baptized on 23 April 1756 in Portsmouth, † September 21, 1809 in Baltimore ) was an American composer of English origin.
Life and work
About the birth Alexander Reinagle is unclear. According to the traditions of the family, he was born in 1750 in Edinburgh, according to the obituary in the United States Gazette of Philadelphia, he died in 1809 in his 62nd year of life, what would the year of birth in 1747. His father was the Austro-Hungarian trumpeter Joseph Reinagle. He had first lessons from his father and Raynor Taylor, the director of the Royal Theatre in Edinburgh. There he had in 1770 made his first appearance as a harpsichordist.
From 1778 lived Reinagle as harpsichord teacher in Glasgow, where his first compositions appeared in print. In 1784 he got to know Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg, with whom he was for some time in contact by correspondence. In the same year he traveled with his brother, cellist Hugh Reinagle to Portugal where he performed in front of the royal family. In 1785 he became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians in London.
1786 could be Reinagle first as a pianist, violin and piano teacher in New York was down, and there in the same year his first concert. In the autumn of that year he moved to Philadelphia. There he renewed the tradition of the city with concerts a twelve-part concert series with cellist Henri Capron in the season 1786-87. Until 1794, he continued the concert series continues together with Capron, William Brown and Alexander Juhan. In addition, he taught, among others Nellie Custis, the adopted daughter of George Washington.
In 1791 he founded with British actor Thomas Wignell a theater company. This New Company built the New Theatre in Philadelphia ( Chestnut Street Theatre ), which was opened in 1792, and in the Baltimore Theatre on Holliday Street, held its opening the following year. Both houses the genres of theater and musical theater were offered. Reinagle acted as musical director in Philadelphia. At the Chestnut Street Theatre, he engaged the English violinist George Gillingham as a conductor. Here to 1800, almost sixty plays were performed. Reinagle himself wore two ballets in the repertoire and composed, arranged and orchestrated the music for all performances. In case of fire at the Theater am April 2, 1820 all of these materials were lost. After the death of his partner Wignell moved Reinagle to Baltimore, where he was until his death the musical director of the productions of the New Companie.
Reinagle five siblings were all active artists. His brother Joseph Reinagle was also known as a composer, whose son Alexander Robert Reinagle as an organist and composer. His brother Philip Reinagle was a portrait, animal and landscape painter, whose son Richard Ramsay Reinagle and grandson George Philip Reinagle were also painters.
Works
- Variations on Famous Scots Tunes, 1782
- The Volunteers, comic opera ( libretto by Susanna Haswell Rowson ), 1795
- Sicilian Romance, Ballet, 1795
- The Black Castle or The Spectre of the Forest, melodrama ( libretto by Matthew Gregory Lewis, joint composition with James Hewitt ), 1807