Franz Xaver Reiter was born in Haag-Oberbayern, Germany on March 19, 1856. He and his brother, Josef Reiter, were students of Franz Strauss in Munich. Mr. Reiter's first engagements were at Sonderhausen and Hanover. In 1882 he participated in the premier of Parsifal at Bayreuth, playing first horn together with his brother. In 1886 he was called again to perform Parsifal at Bayreuth and also Tristan and Isolde. He was also principal horn at Carlsruhe.

Boston
In October 1886 he came to the United States to take the position of principal horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the invitation of Wilhelm Gericke. Only two months after his arrival he made his chamber music debut with Land and Keisel of the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano by Brahms, on December 21. ¹  He replaced long-time Boston horn player Edward Schormann.²  During his first season with the B.S.O. he was featured as a soloist on February 15, 1887 performing "Maieunacht" by Anton Magg. On March 30, 1889 he again appeared as a soloist with the B.S.O. performing Mozart's Third Horn Concerto. Mr. Reiter also established himself as a chamber musician, performing on November 29 and December 5, 1887 "The Faithful Comrade", for voice, piano, and horn by Storch, and a Sonata for horn and piano by Kling, with Mr. J. Phippen at the Apollo Club of Boston. Two days later he played an Adagio by Mozart, accompanied by Mr. W.A. Locke, for the Boylston Club. The following season he was heard on December 17, 1888 in a performance of the Beethoven Sextett for strings and two horns with the Kneisel Quartet and fellow B.S.O. hornist, J. Schneider. On December 13, 1889 he participated in the Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon in E-flat by Mozart in Carl Baermann's first series at Union Hall.

In a scathing review of what he called a "ridiculous" performance of Beethoven's, Fifth Symphony by the B.S.O. on November 9, 1889, Warren Davenport laid blame squarely on the shoulders of conductor Artur Nikisch for the uncharacteristic "hoarse blasts" heard from the horns:

To ask a horn player to force his instrument until the individuality of its tone is destroyed and a hoarse blast emitted instead does not reflect much credit on the taste or judgement of the conductor who would do such a thing. Mr. Reiter and his companions have never before been guilty of such coarse and unseemly sounds as they blasted forth under the baton of Mr. Nikisch. Mr. Reiter is a wonderful artist, and produces a large, voluminous tone that can modulate to the least whisper and expand at his will to the most gratifying magnitude. It is different in quality from the tone that we have been accustomed to in the efforts of the many able performers upon that noble instrument that have been with us at various times, Mr. Reiter's tone being more like that which one gets from the saxhorn type of instrument. I do not say that it resembles it exactly, but rather not so much it leans in that direction. This is not so much because of the heroic element in the player as that he probably uses the high B horn instead of the F horn. Mr. Reiter's equal has never appeared in Boston, and in his greatest moments, under Mr. Gericke's baton, he displayed a broad and noble conception of his part that disarmed all criticism. I would impress upon my readers that never before this mutilation of the Fifth Symphony under Mr. Nikisch, not even in his most emotional efforts have I heard Mr. Reiter overblow his instrument.

Indeed, Mr. Davenport was correct in surmising that Mr. Reiter preferred the B-horn as did his famous teacher, Franz Strauss. This was the first season for Mr. Nikisch as conductor of the BSO. Mr. Reiter had played the previous three seasons under Wilhelm Gericke to great acclaim and success, however, two months after the above performance, in January of 1890, "the picturesque-looking" Mr. Reiter abruptly left Boston with no explanation. Perhaps it was due to artistic differences with Mr. Nikisch, or as several newspaper reports suggested it was because he was being sued by his wife, Babette, for separate support (see New York Times clipping, below). David Mannes relates yet a third story concerning Mr. Reiter's sudden departure from Boston:

On his daily walks in and about the city he was always accompanied by two huge Russian wolfhounds. While bathing them one morning in the fountain on Boston Common, he was arrested with his dogs, and all were confined in jail for a few hours. He was bailed out only in time to play an afternoon concert of the orchestra. This indignity to his pride brought Boston and everything in it his withering contempt. He deserted the community as one unworthy of his services as an artist and a free spirit!

Another account stated that he had gone to New York and would return shortly. But he didn't. Instead, he was temporarily replaced in the B.S.O. by his brother, Josef, who had come to the United States leaving his post with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich to join the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York. According to the American Musician the brothers effectively swapped positions temporarily. At the end of the season Josef returned to the Met where Xaver was now principal horn. Xaver also became principal horn of the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Theodore Thomas. Concerning Xaver's sudden departure from the B.S.O. and its coming season, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "He left the orchestra for private reasons of a domestic kind, and Mr. Hackebarth, formerly with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, will blow the horn in his stead." ³

Baltimore
A few months after leaving Boston, Mr. Reiter was heard in Brahms' Horn Trio, op. 40 as part of a series for the Faelten Music School in Baltimore with his former Boston colleagues, the Kneisel Quartet. This appearance was probably contracted before his departure from Boston. The following season (1890-1891) he became principal horn of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra which was in its first season, and was featured as soloist in a Mozart Horn Concerto. In a retrospective article published a hundred years later (January 5, 1992), The Baltimore Sun reported it this way:

The setting was the fussy, gas-lit, old Academy of Music on North Howard Street. (The Lyric Theatre was not yet on the scene, but soon would be.) Xavier Reiter, a horn virtuoso, was on hand to play a then-rarely-heard horn concerto by Mozart. In the newspaper article, the anonymous critic says that Reiter contributed to the piece "cadenzas composed by himself." The critic found that Reiter "conquered the difficulties agreeably and with the greatest of ease," while perhaps solo horns were not too well adapted for whole concertos and did better as parts of the orchestra.
Ladies of the audience drew a breath when the soloist entered, for he was a tall and "remarkable-looking man" who had long black hair waving over his shoulders in the manner of Franz Liszt, Paganini and other idols of the romantic era.

With only forty-six members, the fledgling Baltimore orchestra with its season of eight concerts, was no doubt a step down from the seventy-five-member Boston Symphony with its season of twenty-four programs at home and many more on national tour. The Reiter brothers apparently commuted to Baltimore from New York. In addition to his commitments in New York and Baltimore, Xaver Reiter also performed a Mozart concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Speil on April 19, 1892. That event was noted in the Boston Evening Transcript: "Xaver Reiter, once first horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has recently made a success with the Detroit Symphony." In the 1892-1893 season he appeared in several more solo performances in Baltimore: On December 6, 1892 Mr. Reiter and his brother, Josef, assisted the Philharmonic Club, a string quartet and piano in its third season. The program included the Brahms Trio in E-flat, op. 40. According to the Baltimore Sun the following day:

Considerable interest was shown in the first appearance as a vocalist of Xaver Reiter, the French horn virtuoso. He rendered Mozart's "Air de Sarastro" and a hunting song with horn obligato, by J. Reiter, composed for the occasion and dedicated to the Philharmonic Club. Mr. Reiter has a basso of power and resonance, and his vocal solos were warmly applauded, but he is not the artist vocally that he is with the horn. Beethoven's "Cavatine" and Padre Martini's "Gavotte" for French horn, with string accompaniment, played by J. Reiter, formed another interesting feature of the concert.

The Liederkranz Society's Seventy-fifth Anniversary Concert and Ball on January 3, 1893 included a solo by Hans Steiner for soprano (Mrs. Richard Ortmann) with horn obbligato. Two days later Xaver Reiter was featured once again as a vocalist on the Baltimore Symphony concert in the "Quoniam tu Solus Sanctus" from the B Minor Mass of J.S. Bach, with his brother, Josef, playing the horn obligato. On the same concert, Xaver gave the premier performance of the symphonic poem with horn solo "Mephisto", composed and conducted by his brother Josef. Josef Reiter also performed the American premier of the "Symphonic French Horn Concerto" in E major by Georg Zeller (1857 - ). On February 2^nd, Xaver Reiter was heard in Mozart's Quintet No. 3 in E-flat, adapted by Baltimore Symphony conductor Ross Jungnickel for horn and string orchestra. On May 16^th, the concert of the Garland Musical Association included the "Serenade" for horn and flute (Fred Lax) by Anton Emil Titl, and another performance of "Mephisto."

New York
The following season he left the Baltimore Symphony and joined the New York Symphony and Damrosch Opera company under Walter Damrosch, replacing Adolf Belz. In the summer of 1895 he joined the new National Symphony Orchestra (New York) under Baltimore conductor, Ross Jungnickel for a series of promenade concerts at Madison Square Garden. On July 9, 1896, the New York Symphony Orchestra was incorporated "for the cultivation and performance of instrumental music and the relief of distressed members", with Xavier Reiter as one of the incorporating directors. In the summer of 1897 Walter Damnrosch and the New York Symphony were engaged for a series of programs at Willow Grove Park, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Monday evenings were "Symphony Nights", Wednesday evenings featured soloists from the orchestra, including Mr. Reiter, and Fridays were "Operatic Nights." On September 19 the last day of that series, Mr. Reiter, billed as the ("World's Greatest French Horn Soloist"), once again performed "Mephisto" composed and conducted by his brother Josef.

Continuing his interest in chamber music, Mr. Reiter took part in the instrumental music series of the Brooklyn Institute on November 3, 1897, performing in the Quintet in E-flat for piano and winds by Mozart, and the Quintet, op. 16 by Beethoven. The same season, on April 21, 1898 he was heard at the Haarlem Philharmonic Society in a performance of composition by Bruno Oscar Klein's for piano, violin, cello, horn, and voice. Of his performance in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with Samuel Franko's American Symphony Orchestra on January 15, 1901, O.G. Sonneck wrote "Of the soloists, hornist Xaver Reiter in particular earned unlimited admiration." In 1902 Mr. Reiter teamed up with bandmaster John Samuel Duss as a featured soloist. On June 15, he appeared with Duss at the St. Nicholas Garden in New York in duets with harpist, Charles Schuetze, on the same program as "southern soprano" Edith Helena. Duss gave "his spirited marches as encores."

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times (March 8, 1901), concerned citizen, Ambros Chorley, Jr. made some strongly-worded unfavorable comparisons between the performance of the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra which he considers far superior. Although he states that in his opinion Philharmonic conductor, Emil Paur "has hardly a superior as a concert conductor ... the Philharmonic Society must be reorganized." In particular, Mr. Chorley finds the tone of the Philharmonic's first horn, Mr. Hermann Dutschke, Sr., generally "woolly" and suggests that he "give way...to a Xavier Reiter." For the 1902 - 1903 season Mr. Paur was replaced by Walter Damrosch, and it was announced that he would "lend his first hornist, Xaver Reiter, to the Philharmonic to strengthen the brass department in that orchestra." ⁴

Mr. Reiter next joined the Metropolitan Opera Company, and his presence was noted by the Washington, D.C. Times (March 26, 1906) in a review of a performance before President Roosevelt of Karl Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba: "One particular feature in the accompaniment form is the picturesque part assigned to the French horns. As a matter of fact, in the main solo work they play an important part, and with Xavier Reiter in the first chair there is nothing left to be desired."

November 4, 1909, Gustav Mahler made his debut as conductor of the New York Philharmonic. In a review of that first performance the next day, The New York Tribune observed that there had been no diminution of the Philharmonic forces, but there has been a radical change in their composition....The brass choir has been strengthened, and this one feature of last night's performance which shone with a refulgence which it would be difficult to find a parallel was Mr. Xaver Reiter's playing of the horn solo in Liszt's "Mazeppa"; it almost redeemed that strange combination of a bombastic, inflated and empty pianoforte etude and a transcribed Cossack march." Also on the program were Beethoven's Third Symphony ("Eroica"), and Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel" which would be a staple of Mahler's programming. Mahler was certainly familiar with Mr. Reiter from previous seasons conducting the Metropolitan Opera Company. Reiter was one of Mahler's new appointments to the reorganized "permanent" New York Philharmonic. In a letter to his wife, Alma, written from the Netherlands on October 6, 1909, Mahler wrote "The enclosed letter from Reitler [sic] does in fact show the man in a different light from that of an orchestral ignoramus." Mr. Reiter would visit the Mahlers in their Savoy Hotel apartment to play chamber music. Mahler had taken an interest in the young Hungarian pianist, Joseph Weiss, and on one occasion had invited him to come to the apartment to play the Brahms Horn Trio with Mr. Reiter and Philharmonic concertmaster, Theodore Spierling. All went well for the first movement, but in the second, Weiss became more and more temperamental, to the point that the others refused to continue. Weiss stalked out leaving Mahler to play the piano part himself. Alma Mahler wrote admiringly that "Brahms's Horn Trio cannot often have been given such a perfect performance." The Viennese conductor, Ernst Jokl (1878 - ?) in describing the "frightful lack of understanding on the part of the orchestra and public" to Mahler in New York stated: "...the cool discipline and impersonal matter-of-factness of the orchestra (with warmth I can record two exceptions; the splendid concertmaster Spiering and the outstanding horn-player Reiter, who both really understood Mahler)."

In addition to his duties to Mahler's Philharmonic, Mr. Reiter once again performed the Brahms Trio on the first concert of the season of the Marum-Zinsig Ensemble, December 3, 1910, Ludwig Marum, violin, and Ferdinand Sinzig, piano. On March 2, 1912 he appeared with the Kneisel Quartet et. al. in a performance of the Beethoven Septet, op. 20, in a benefit concert on behalf of The Musician's Foundation of The Bohemians, the New York Musicians' Club. Eight years later on December 26, 1920, he would once again appear before The Bohemians with the same piece.

Under the headline "GREATEST ARTISTS IN WORLD", the Toronto World announced:

The orchestra which Mr. Nahan Franko has organized for the Toronto Musical Festival, which begins at the Arena on Monday, October 7, [1912] will be one of the finest that have ever been heard in this country. It consists of sixty-two musicians selected from the Metropolitan Opera House and the New York Philharmonic orchestras. Perhaps the most celebrated man in its personnel is Xavier Reiter, admittedly the greatest French horn player in the world. His playing in the Caesar Frank Symphony, when Josef Stransky and the New York Philharmonic organization presented that work here last January, is still a glorious memory among concertgoers.

Later that season Mr. Reiter performed a Mozart Horn Concerto with the Philharmonic, receiving the following comments from The New York Times:

An unusual feature of the concert last evening [January 30, 1913] was the performance of one of Mozart's horn concertos by Xaver Reiter, who plays French horn for the society. This concerto has not hitherto appeared on Philharmonic programmes. In fact, it is doubtful if it has been played before publicly in this vicinity, if one excepts Reiter's own performances of it at one of Seidl's Brighton Beach concerts many years ago.
When played as Mr. Reiter played it, it proved a delight. The last movement, especially, with its jolly hunting theme, awoke the audience to great applause. As for Mr. Reiter's playing one can speak safely in superlatives, for such horn playing is of the first order. Not only did he keep perfect intonation, but his shading, his nuances of tone, were extraordinary. In the first and last movements he played cadenzas of great difficulty brilliantly. His trill in the first cadenza was executed as easily as if he had been a coloratura soprano.

A new chamber group, the Philharmonic Ensemble, was formed for the 1913-14 season, comprising Henri Leon Leroy, clarinet; Anton Fayer, flute; August Mesnard, bassoon; Xaver Reiter, horn; Leopold Kramer, violin; Joseph Kovarik, viola; and Leo Schulz, cello. Two concerts were scheduled for November 18 and January 27 to be held at Aeolian Hall. Five years later, referring to the Philharmonic's performance of Brahms' Third Symphony in 1918, The New York Times said of Mr. Reiter, his "sonorous golden tone evokes memories of that horn vaguely heard in the woodland depths by Alfred De Vigny suffering the claustral seclusion of his ivory tower."

Bruno Jaenicke joined the Philharmonic as co-principal horn with Mr. Reiter for the 1921-22 season, and the next year Mr. Reiter, now 66, moved to third horn. But he was not ready to settle into retirement on his farm in Valhalla, New York. In the summer of 1923, Josef Stransky, recently liberated from his position as conductor of the Philharmonic, launched a new orchestra, The State Symphony Orchestra of New York, said to be organized as a cooperative. It comprised some eighty-five musicians, many of whom were also ex-Phiharmonic, including Xaver Reiter. Mr. Stransky planned a season of fourteen concerts. At the same time the new orchestra was chosen to accompany the itinerate Wagnerian Opera Company, replacing the "lamentable" orchestra of their previous season. The first season with the Wagnerians was a special treat for Mr. Reiter as it included Wagner's "Ring" cycle. On December 31, 1924 it was announced that Mr. Stransky would step down as conductor to spend more time with his art collection. He was succeeded by Ignatz Waghalter, who continued through the 1925 - 26 season, which was apparently the last for the State Symphony. Still not yet ready for retirement, the now seventy-one-year-old Mr. Reiter was spotted in a new gig in 1927 by New Yorker music critic, Robert A. Simon:

There is a new orchestra in town. It is the property of the astounding Roxy and it functions in his fascinating new theatre. Although the organization is only a few weeks old, it has already acquired a homogeneity and a tone that would be a credit to many a more venerable ensemble. Mr. Rothafel, in assembling this orchestra, had no simple task before him, because he could not emulate the conductor who recently engaged the Philharmonic personnel and called it something else. He had to take players whom other bands had not yet captured, but the performance of the young orchestra indicated that the others had not snared all of the good instrumentalists available. We were startled to hear a horn passage played perfectly in a cinema theatre. The orchestra moved up and down on its peripatetic platform so rapidly that it was difficult to identify the members, but the phenomenon of the horn passage was explained when we spied the familiar beard of Xaver Reiter in rapid transit from the audience level to the recesses of the pit. The two concertmasters, also, Joseph Stopak and Henry Nosco, are unusually capable.
The music played in the opening did not test violently the possibilities of the orchestra. There was a home-made tone poem depicting the composition of "The Star Spangled Banner," a few yards of ballet music, Hosmer's "Southern Rhapsody," with choral interpolations, a potpourri of airs from "Carmen" and the score for "The Love of Sunya."

Mr. Reiter continued to perform as a freelancer in New York through the late twenties, and also was a consultant in horn design to the H.N. White musical instrument company of Cleveland.

Personal Life and Family
A press release for the New York Philharmonic's national tour in the spring of 1921 featured a glimpse of Mr. Reiter's private life:

Xavier Reiter is a soloist of international repute on his instrument the, French horn. He is also one of the few orchestral musicians who does not pursue his profession out of season. Instead he is a farmer on a large scale at Valhalla, New York, where he raises not only the usual amount of vegetables and livestock, but even tobacco and wine (in the days that are gone).

The newspaper clipping at the right describes the domestic drama immediately preceding Mr. Reiter's sudden departure from Boston in January, 1890. He is quoted as proclaiming "She is a sparrow and I am an eagle." A year or so later he married his second wife, Josephine Kientz (b. January 1866, Baden, Germany - Valhalla, NY, June 15, 1950), and together they had the following children:

Magdalena Reiter (1892 - 1990), never married.
Francesca Reiter (1895 - 1981), never married.
Josephine Reiter (1896 - 1902) 
Maria Reiter Rodman (1897 - 1979)
Waldtraut Reiter Greenop Schaft (1900 - 1995)
Friedwalt (Fred) Reiter (1902 - 1988)
Edelmut (Herbert) Reiter (1905 - 1996)
Amelia (Emilia or Emily) Reiter Cheney (1907 - 1984)

Franz Xaver Reiter died May 12, 1938 at his home 16 Oxford Street, Valhalla, New York where he had lived for thirty-five years. It was noted in his obituary that in his youth he was a well-known amateur sharpshooter. It is said that he was responsible for suggesting the name "Valhalla" in 1904 due to his association with Wagner's Ring cycle and in particular his notable performances of the Siegfried horn call. David Mann relates:

Siegfried and Gotterdammerung brought Reiter the greatest joy, for was he not the hunting horn of Siegfried? He refused to sit in the orchestra but stood in the wings to sound heroically Siegfried's challenging notes as they had never echoed before, and as they have never echoed since that time. Now Reiter lived apart from his colleagues, deigning to give an occasional nod to us weaklings, for he was Siegfried the Hero Incarnate. ...
Reiter remained in our orchestra [N.Y. Symphony] until it was disbanded a few years later; he then joined the Philharmonic, with which he played up to the time of his retirement a few years ago to a house he had built in Westchester County and which he appropriately enough called Walhalla.... I am told that for years, in and around the locality of his little house, Siegfried's horn sounded often through the early morning hours.