Fritz Reuter Inducted into Minnesota Music Hall of Fame
Composer. Organist. Choir director. Man of faith.
Friedrich “Fritz” Reuter, the first full-time music professor called to Dr. Martin Luther College, was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame this spring. An octet of MLC students sang “God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage” to the famous Reuter-composed tune to honor his legacy. Reuter’s granddaughter, Margo Martens, accepted the award at the induction.
Fritz Reuter (1863-1924) was 44 years old when he became a professor at DMLC in April 1908. He came to DMLC highly qualified in keyboard, choral conducting, music history, stringed instruments, music theory, composition, and pedagogy.
Fritz Reuter gave music “a place and a dignity hitherto unknown at the college” (Morton Schroeder, “Gifted Musician,” Northwestern Lutheran, June 1997). He began singing classes, started mixed and male choirs, taught a 32-hour course load per week, and gave keyboard and violin lessons.
When he could, he composed his own music. His choral piece “Weihnachtsgeschichte,” or “The Christmas Story,” written for mixed choir, organ, and narrator, was performed almost every year at the DMLC Christmas Concert from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, several times between the 50s and 90s, and again at the final Christmas concert of Dr. Martin Luther College in December of 1994.
Confined to bed with illness, Reuter was on a leave of absence from Christmas 1922 to the end of that school year. He never recovered his health and died on June 9, 1924, of a brain tumor. But his musical legacy continues at MLC.
Fritz Reuter’s granddaughter, Margo Martens, played Reuter’s “Cradle Song” on the Reuter Steinway in Chapel of the Christ. She came to campus to get assistance from MLC Professor Grace Hennig in the creation of recordings and a script for a video essay on Reuter. The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame then created the video, which is part of the permanent display at the museum.
Reuter and the men’s choir of 1910. In the Messenger, DMLC’s early newsletter, Reuter said, “The men’s choir, as well as the mixed choir, works diligently in the area of tone and voice formation and intonation, and in the area of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic assuredness” (Messenger, vol. II, 1911-1912, no. 3, 57).
An MLC student octet, under the direction of Professor Adrian Smith MLC ’03, sang “Be Thou Faithful” and “God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage” at the induction ceremony. For many decades, musical ensembles have sung the latter to the tune of REUTER as they arrive back on campus after being away on tour. As soon as the bus begins the final ascent of the Center Street hill, conversation ceases and the a cappella arrangement fills the space. (We could probably have chosen any soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, of any age, who once belonged to a choir on this hill, and they could have sung REUTER in harmony, a cappella, at his induction ceremony!) The octet: Benjamin Foster (Emanuel First-Lansing MI), Josiah Smith (St. Paul-North Mankato MN), Zachary Cole (Immanuel-Taylor AZ), Jason Horn (Reformation-San Diego), Elise Nolte (Riverview-Appleton WI), Abigail Schmitz (Redeemer-Fond du Lac WI), Meg Stangl (Trinity-Watertown WI), and Emma Berg (Eastside-Madison WI).
