|
|
Father Reinhard van Hoorickx 1918 - 1997 |
|
|
|
|
Obituary |
|
|
|
Father Reinhard van Hoorickx ofm, an
honorary member of the Schubert Institute (UK) since its inception,
died on 10 October 1997, aged 78. He had been very frail for some
time, following a serious operation a few years ago.
|
Father Reinhard was born in December
1918 near Ghent in Belgium, and entered the Franciscan order in
1937, being ordained priest at Sint-Truiden in 1943. His subsequent
missionary work took him to Egypt (1947-1956), Jerusalem (1956-1964)
and Syria (1964-1968). In 1968 he returned to Ghent, where he spent
13 years, after which he was transferred to Corsica. He remained in
Corsica until 1993, when illness forced him to return to his native
Belgium for medical treatment. His final years were spent in the
monastery of Sint-Truiden where he had been ordained.
|
Father Reinhard was an obsessive
Schubertian, and is best known for his persistence in tracking down
every fragment of Schubert's work. It was through his patient
persistence, for example, that the 'Therese Grob Songbook', a group
of manuscripts presented to Therese by Schubert in 1816 and guarded
jealously by her family, was released for copying, and he was
responsible for its first publication.
|
While in the Middle East, Father
Reinhard tried his hand at completing some Schubert song fragments,
which he then had printed in private editions. He seldom tried to
second-guess Schubert's intentions, but merely completed the songs
'for practical use'. Some seventy songs were completed in this way,
along with choral and instrumental works. Father Reinhard was
delighted when a record of 13 'unknown Schubert songs' in his
versions was released in 1981, with the tenor Zeger Vandersteene a
winning advocate, and his work has reached a much wider audience
recently with the inclusion of several of his song completions in
the Hyperion Schubert
Edition.
|
Father Reinhard was a friend to many
Schubertians. Before his illness struck, he was an avid and generous
correspondent. Correspondence was kept neatly filed in brown
envelopes in a large cupboard, by surname, with a copy of his reply
appended to each letter. When I visited him in Sint-Truiden last
year, my modest correspondence envelope was there, and I was also
able to examine two large files of letters from Maurice Brown.
Scholars turned to him for advice, and he usually had the answer. In
recent years, his short term memory let him down, but he never
forgot a D number !
|
A traditionalist, he continued to wear
the brown robe of the Franciscans after it had become optional. He
enjoyed the monastic routine and told me how happy he was to be back
in Sint-Truiden, as we paced the monastery garden after the communal
lunch. This gentle man will be greatly missed by Schubert friends
throughout the world.
|
| Paul Reid 1997 |
|
