Gregor Aichinger (1564 or 1565 â night of 20/21 January 1628) was a German composer. Karl Proske, in the preface to vol. 2 of his Musica Divina, calls him a priest of Regensburg, and praises him for the devout and ingenuous mastery of his style.
His epitaph states he died in 1628 aged 63, making his birth year 1564 or 1565. In 1577 he moved to Munich to study under Orlando di Lasso, moving the following year to the University of Ingolstadt, where he studied alongside Jakob Fugger, later Prince Bishop of Constance. This put him in contact with the wider Fugger family of Augsburg, to whom he later dedicated many of his works.
Jakob's main patron was Jakob III. Fugger (1542âÂÂ1598), who appointed him his organist in 1584, using an instrument he had paid for in 1580 at the Augsburg basilica of St.s Ulrich and Afra. He also made Aichinger his court composer and director of his chamber-music. Fugger also funded a number of Italian trips for Aichinger â in Venice he became one of Giovanni Gabrieli's first pupils and probably also converted from Protestantism to Catholicism.
Fugger granted him more study leave in 1588 during which he studied theology and philosophy back at the University of Ingolstadt. In 1599 or 1600 Aichinger travelled to Rome, spending two years there â the main intent of the stay was musical but during it he was probably ordained priest (though some sources state he had taken holy orders before he was appointed by the Fuggers).
Back in Augsburg he was made a canon of St. Gertrud's chapel at the east end of Augsburg Cathedral as well as vicar of the cathedral choir, a position endowed with many rich prebends. He later died in the city, possibly of the plague, which was rife in the city that year, or of a kidney stone for which he had had an unsuccessful operation on 2 January that year.
His successors are recorded as applying for his offices on 21 January, the date of his death. His extensive library, consisting of musical, geographical, theological and botanical works by famous authors, was bequeathed to the cathedral chapter and parts of it were later transferred to the Augsburg and Munich State Libraries.
His epitaph states that "in addition to his piety and other virtues, he was extraordinarily popular both due to his knowledge of music and kindness, and due to his fine manners and his affability". In full it reads:
Aichinger wrote several works for church use, mainly vocal ones in Latin and often in the Venetian polychoral style thanks to his study under Gabrieli â his first published collections of 1590 and 1595 were even both published in Venice. Later he also composed works with basso continuo, published for the first time in his 1607 Cantiones Ecclesiasticae and his 1609 Divina laudes. Aichinger made a major contribution to popularising this 'nuovo musiche' style in the German-speaking lands.