Georg Reiss
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Elisabeth Reiss
Georg Reiss | |
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| Born | August 12, 1861 Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway |
| Died | January 25, 1914 (aged 52) |
| Occupations | Lawyer, composer, and musicologist |
| Children | Thorleif Reiss Elisabeth Reiss |
| Relatives | Helge Reiss |
Georg Michael Dødelein Reiss (August 12, 1861 – January 25, 1914) was a Norwegian lawyer, composer, and musicologist.[1] In 1913 he became the first Norwegian to receive a doctorate on a music theory subject.[2][3]
Reiss was trained as a lawyer; he received his candidate of law degree in 1886, and he started working as a secretary in the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs in 1899.[2] He was a pupil of Ludvig Mathias Lindeman, Otto Winter-Hjelm, and Christian Cappelen.[1] Later he also studied at the Academy of Music in Berlin. He was organist at Saint Peter's Church (since 1962 Sofienberg Church) in Kristiania from 1893 to 1914,[1][2] and he was a music reviewer for Dagbladet from 1893 to 1896, for Nordisk Musikrevue from 1903 to 1906, and for Verdens Gang from 1904 onward.[3] Reiss himself wrote a church cantata in 1902, and other compositions for voice and choir, including an eight-part kyrie.[1]
With support from the Nansen Foundation and as a government scholar starting in 1908, Reiss studied neume notation, paleography, and medieval music theory, published manuscripts from the National Archives, worked on two sequences for Saint Olav, and received a PhD in 1913 with his dissertation Musiken ved den middelalderlige Olavsdyrkelse i Norden (Music in the Medieval Olav Cult in the Nordic Countries), which was Norway's first doctorate in music history.[2][3]
