Josef Rheinberger
Ad te levavi animam meam

A text from Psalm 27 is sung as the Offertory on the First Sunday in Advent and on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity:

Ad te levavi animam meam, Deus meus, in te confido:
non erubescam neque irrideant me inimici mei.
Etenim universi qui te expectant non confundentur.

Unto thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul; my God, I have put my trust in thee:
O let me not be confounded, neither let mine enemies triumph over me.
For all they that hope in thee shall not be ashamed.

One of the many composers who has set this text for choirs is Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839–1901). Born in Liechtenstein, his family moved to Munich when he was eleven years old and lived most of his life there,

Rheinberger’s music for voices has always reminded me of the choral music of Brahms. Bruce Tammen, former Artistic Director of the Chicago Chorale, has described Rheinberger’s works as “lovely, delicate, perfectly constructed and balanced.” In Tammen’s analysis, Rheinberger

combined the current, conservative traditions of Munich’s Roman Catholic church music, with those of the Viennese classical period. . . . Rheinberger was esteemed and admired by like-minded musicians of his own time, but he never won universal fame, and most of his music, with the exception of his organ compositions, is not well-known today. In his last years he became increasingly aware that his compositions had become outdated and unwanted, and responded by writing, shortly before his death, “There is no justification for music without melodiousness and beauty of sound. . . . [M]usic never ought to sound brooding, for, basically, it is the outpouring of joy, and even in pain knows no pessimism.”

In 1893, Rheinberger composed for the Munich Court Chapel a set of nine motets for use during Advent. Here is a performance of the third of this set, Ad te levavi animam meam, sung by the Vocalensemble Rastatt, conducted by Holger Speck.