Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger (1839–1901) is primarily remembered today as an apparently superlative composition teacher: his students include Ernani Wolf-Ferrari, Ludwig Thuille, Englebert Humperdinck and Wilhelm Fürtwängler. His pedagogic shadow also looms large over the development of American music, because he taught George W. Chadwick (who would teach Roy Harris and others) and Horatio Parker (who would most famously teach Charles Ives).

During his life Rheinberger was certainly a highly regarded composer, too, receiving important commissions and gaining membership into several of the most distinguished academic societies in Europe. But today his music is largely forgotten. The stage works have been ignored, and the orchestral and chamber music is seldom heard. Indeed, among his instrumental compositions, only those for organ are still performed with any frequency.

But a few of his choral works lingered in the fringes of the choral repertoire throughout the first three quarters of the twentieth century, serving as attractive substitutes for the motets and part songs of Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, these compositions – especially Drei geistliche Gesänge op. 69 and the Mass for Double Chorus in E-flat major op. 109 – gradually moved closer to the canon. And many choral musicians were certainly aware that these works represented only the tip of an iceberg.

So, lovers of choral music will most likely applaud Carus Verlag’s release of Rheinberger’s complete sacred choral works, as well as a CD of his lieder and vocal quartets. The collections comprise a treasure trove of attractive repertoire by a composer known to have been a master craftsman.

There is much to applaud in these recordings. The booklet notes (both by Felix Loy) are informative and thorough, the several soloists and various individual instrumentalists excellent, and the engineering highly professional. The choral performances are generally very good, with no appreciable change in quality from one disk to the next, even though several choral ensembles and conductors are involved. While each ensemble has a distinctive and recognizable sound, there is still a certain clinical sameness about the performances – which is surprising, as the recordings were made over a long period of time: 1968–2012. They sound as if each conductor were determined to achieve exactly what was written on the page and nothing more. This holds true even in the instances when a piece appears on two disks with different performers (Abendlied, op. 69, No. 3 and Christus factus est, op. 107, No. 5).

Thus, the ten-CD set of sacred music is more a publisher’s demonstration recording than a showcase for the interpretive skills of the various conductors and ensembles. A listener wanting to become acquainted with a particular motet or mass movement can listen to the appropriate track knowing that the performance is a faithful (yet neutral) realization of the printed page. That said, the generic quality of the performances accentuates the sameness of the music, which becomes a kind of aural anaesthetic when one attempts to listen to more than one of the CDs in a single sitting. One finishes the ten-CD marathon with a greater appreciation for the choral music of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Bruckner, and a realization that Rheinberger’s op. 69 and op. 109 may, in fact, be his greatest works.

This does not mean that the other music on these disks is unworthy: Christus factus est, Stabat Mater op. 138 and Hymne nach dem 84. Psalm op. 35 certainly deserve to be performed. And the other masses, especially the Mass in E-flat op. 155 (for treble voices and organ) and the Mass in B-flat op. 172 (for male voices and organ or wind orchestra), can hold their own either as part of a liturgical service or in concerts paired with other repertoire far removed from nineteenth-century German Romanticism.

The biggest surprise may be the large Christmas cantata, Der Stern von Bethlehem op. 164. Here, Rheinberger demonstrates a mastery of orchestration and a penchant for motivic development perhaps not possible in brief motets. There is also an occasional edgy darkness in this music that, given the subject matter, is both surprising and provocative. It even makes one slightly curious about Rheinberger’s other orchestral music, much still languishing unrecorded.

The CD of lieder and quartets contains its own delights. The two early quartets, Die Wasserfee op. 21 and Lockung op. 25, are engaging and entertaining in spot-on performances. The two large song cycles, Aus verborgnem Tal op. 136 (for baritone and piano) and Am Seegestade op. 158 (for tenor and piano), are varied and emotionally charged, with particularly lovely and idiomatic piano parts. Still, Rheinberger’s music virtually never penetrates the surface of the texts, thereby sharing none of the enduring qualities of the vocal music of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms or Bruckner. Nor can it be aligned with Max Bruch, whose oratorios are not afraid to struggle with larger-than-life issues. Rather, Rheinberger dwells safely within the confines of academic rhetoric, every piece dependably well-crafted and beautiful but generally lacking any kind of depth – a criticism that might also be levelled at some of his students’ compositions. This is music of easy platitudes rather than music of searching questions. No risks are taken. There is no ambiguity, desperate struggle or shades of grey; answers are immediately apparent in black and white. And this is exactly why it resonates with contemporary listeners.

Musical tastes are constantly changing. And the changes that began during the last quarter of the twentieth century – driven in part by an increasing desire to avoid the intellectual and emotional rigors of European modernism – are particularly startling because they seemed, initially, to slam the brakes on musical developments and throw compositional procedures into reverse. But most listeners are not interested in any of this; in these chaotic and uncertain times they simply want to hear triads and melodies they can hum at home. They want their own dogmas reinforced.

In the United States particularly, where choral composers have rarely been cutting-edge (with the notable exception of Charles Ives), there is now an almost incessant demand for new choral music to be unthreatening and reassuring – and, inevitably, in major keys. This trend can be observed in other locales as well. And in other musical genres. The reasons are varied – the rise of technology, the rise of nationalism, the rise of fundamentalism – but can be boiled down to one word: fear. Thus, listeners and some composers alike are discarding impulses toward the new and unknown, and instead embracing music, and musical language, that makes no demands; that is tried, true and comfortable: fleeing, as it were, like terrified children, into the outstretched arms of a loving and protective parent. And in this case, the parent is Josef Gabriel Rheinberger.