What Is “Kirchlich” in Music?

Church Music Theory of Franz Xaver Witt

Abstract

This paper explores how Franz Xaver Witt, a German priest and founder of the Catholic choir association Allgemeiner Deutscher Cäcilien-Verein, expressed the meaning of “kirchlich (appropriate for the church)” or “unkirchlich (inappropriate for the church)” in his church music theory, focusing particularly on his evaluation for the Masses of the three great masters of the Viennese Classic.

Witt viewed the vulgarity of the Masses of Haydn and Mozart as “unkirchlich;” meanwhile, he considered “Erhabenheit (the sublime)” inherent in the Masses with a simple form as an important factor of “kirchlich.” However, when it comes to the Masses of Beethoven, he expressed a different view. Pointing out the “unkirchlich” aspect of the Masses of the composer, he also found the religious sublime in them. He called Beethoven’s Missa solemnis “Zukunftsmesse (the Mass of future)” and considered it a “hymn of the human united into one universal church.” Witt might have thought that this Mass meant more than the “concept of the church” and the “range of the liturgy,” for the Mass was for the “Catholic (universal) church” which was beyond each individual church in reality.

Witt has often been seen as a traditionalist, but in fact, looking into “the future,” he groped for the way of the liturgy and the church music.