A Composer for Every Country: Liechtenstein

Whelp. I have to offer an apology. To Luxembourg. When I wrote about Luxembourg (a post still in backlog on my Facebook profile), I made reference to "The Mouse Who Roared." In retrospect, this was unfair to Luxembourg, and a totally unwarranted comparison. For that, I'm truly sorry.

And now... I have to apologize to Liechtenstein. The only reason I used "The Mouse Who Roared" on Luxembourg and not Liechtenstein is because I kind of forgot Liechtenstein existed. This in spite of me looking at a map of Europe every day for a month to make sure I didn't miss any countries in this project. I could blame my awful geography education in the American school system. I could blame the fact that Liechtenstein is literally an order of magnitude smaller than my home town of Houston, Texas, every time I saw it on the map I thought it was just, like, a Costco parking lot.

Of course, size isn't everything. When it comes to countries, culture is the thing. And Liechtenstein's culture is.... German. It's basically Germany. But! There are some cool facts about Liechtenstein. Like, the entire reason the country exists is because the Liechtenstein family bought the area from the Holy Roman Empire to obtain a seat on the Vienna Diet in 1719... and then promptly ignored the area for 100 years, not visiting again until 1806. Also, the last time Liechtenstein was part of a military conflict was the Austro-Prussian war, when they sent 80 troops out and 81 troops came home. The 81st dude was an Italian who I guess was really good at making friends? In any case, the country currently doesn't have a military. Pretty gutsy.

I'm not sure how I would feel if my country was always represented by the same two easily Googleable factoids, but the country hasn't given me a whole lot to work with. Even looking for composers, I came back with, uh. One. Just Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901). He was a famous organist of his day, being a child prodigy who served as church organist in Valduz at the age of 7. In addition to being an excellent organist, he also became a prominent teacher, numbering composer Engelbert Humperdink and and Richard Strauss, as well as conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, as his students. Honestly, a darn good track record.

The movements linked below are from one of twenty organ sonatas. His goal was to write a sonata in every major and minor key, but alas, he did not finish the project before his death. If you like it, you might also try one of his two organ concerti, a rather uncommon genre, to be sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiqQkw7cjEI