Reinagle, Alexander (EN)

Reinagle Alexander, baptised 23 April 1756 Portsmouth (England), †21 September 1809 Baltimore, English composer, harpsichordist, pianist, teacher and theatre impresario of Austrian origin. Around 1763, the Reinagle family moved to Edinburgh. Reinagle took music lessons from his father, the trumpeter Joseph Reinagle (†after 1775), and subsequently from R. Taylor, musical director of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, composer and organist. In 1770, he made his first public appearance as a harpsichordist. From 1778, he taught the harpsichord in Glasgow; between 1780 and 1781, he published two collections of easy pieces for keyboard instruments. Around 1784, Reinagle visited Hamburg (where he met C.Ph.E. Bach), then Lisbon, where he stayed for several months and performed with his brother, the cellist Hugh Reinagle (ca. 1764–1785). In 1785 he returned briefly to England; he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Musicians in London. In 1786, Reinagle moved to New York and then to Philadelphia, where he settled permanently (1803). There, he pursued his work as a composer and teacher, and organised a series of concerts (1786–1787), introducing the American public to works by European composers as well as his own. Between 1788 and 1792, Reinagle gave concerts in New York, Baltimore and Boston. From 1790 or 1791 until the end of his life, he co-managed The New Company – a theatrical enterprise operating theatres in Philadelphia and Baltimore that staged both plays and musical performances (operas and pantomimes) – together with Th. Wignell (†1803) and others. Reinagle composed extensively for both stages, as well as arranging his own works and those of other composers.

Reinagle was one of the most important figures among the American composers of the earliest generation. He also made an immense contribution as an organiser of musical life in the United States, a theatre impresario, and a promoter of piano playing (an advocate of replacing the harpsichord with the piano in everyday performance practice). The two-movement structure of his earlier keyboard sonatas suggests a connection to the music of J.C. Bach, whilst the three-movement form of his later sonatas testifies to the influence of C.P.E. Bach. Reinagle’s stage works have survived only in fragments; the manuscripts were destroyed in 1820 during a fire at the theatre in Philadelphia. The published arias from The Volunteers follow the conventions of ballad opera (two-part strophic arias with instrumental introductions and codas).

Literature: O.G.Th. Sonneck Zwei Briefe C.Ph.E. Bach’s an A. Reinagle, “Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft” VIII, 1906/07; R.R. Drummond Alexander Reinagle and His Connection with the Musical Life of Philadelphia, “German-American Annals” V, 1907; E. Krohn Alexander Reinagle as Sonatist, “The Musical Quarterly” XVIII, 1932; A. McClenny Alexander Reinagle. An 18th-Century Musician with Modern Ideas, “American Music Teacher” XIX, 1969/70; A. McClenny Krauss Alexander Reinagle, His Family Background and Early Professional Career, “American Music” IV, 1986.