HABERL, FRANZ XAVIER. — Musician and musicologist, born at Oberellenbach on 12 April 1840, died at Ratisbona on 5 September 1910. He entered the Seminary of Passau, where he was ordained a priest in 1862. Until 1867 he was choirmaster at the Cathedral; he then went to Rome, where he remained until 1870 as organist of S. Maria dell'Anima, beginning profound studies on the history of religious music of the 15th and 17th centuries, which later became the field of his principal activity.
Choirmaster at Ratisbona, in 1874 he founded there the celebrated Schola cantorum, which trained distinguished musicians and gave strong impetus to the Cecilian movement for the restoration of sacred music, later implemented by Pius X. A contributor to numerous periodicals, in 1876 he founded the Cäcilienkalender, transformed in 1885 into the Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch. He published Die römische Schola cantorum, und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Ratisbona 1887); Bibliographischer und thematischer Musikkatalog des päpstlichen Kapellarchiv im Vatican zu Rom (there 1888), and continued Proscke’s collection Musica divina. From the tenth volume onward, he edited the monumental edition of Palestrina’s Opera omnia undertaken by the Breitkopf and Härtel publishing house of Leipzig; he also published part of the works of Orlando di Lasso and Frescobaldi. The new reprinting of liturgical chants in addition to the editio medicea of the Graduale Romanum, considered to be by Palestrina, caused him difficulties among scholars and induced the Holy See to order the suspension of its continuation and dissemination, together with many related writings.