Georg Reiss

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]

Georg Reiss was the son of the music teacher Hans Peter Reiss (1824–1908) and Petronelle Cornelia Hansen (1832–1879). Georg Reiss married Elisabeth Dymling (1861–1920), a merchant's daughter, in Vänersborg in 1893. They were the parents of the actor Thorleif Reiss and the pianist and cabaret performer Elisabeth Reiss. Georg Reiss was the grandfather of the actor Helge Reiss.[4][5]

• 1900: Drei Lieder in altern Stile für gemischten Chor a capella: Op. 3. Christiania: Haakon Zapffe.
• 1908: Det norske rigsarkivs middelalderlige musikhaandskrifter: en oversigt. Christiania: Dybwad.
• 1912: Musiken ved den middelalderlige Olavsdyrkelse i Norden. Kristiania: I kommission hos J. Dybwad. (Dissertation)