The Sophies of Hanover and Royal Prussian Music Abstract

Kulturgeschichte Preußens Colloquien 6 (2018)

Ellen Exner

The Sophies of Hanover and Royal Prussian Music Abstract:

The history of royal Prussian music was shaped not only by its kings, but also by its queens. Although there were famously patterns of crisis and prosperity in the kingdom's eighteenthcentury history, strands of continuity provided by Prussia's early Hanoverian queens often go unobserved and therefore undescribed. The first Prussian queen, Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, set a precedent for sophisticated music cultivation, which is apparent in Corelli's dedication to her of the Op. 5 violin sonatas—a collection of chamber pieces. Her legacy—and that of her homeland, Hanover—lived on through the private efforts of her daughterinlaw and successor, Sophie Dorothea, whose own legacy is evident in the musical activities of her children.

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Kings are unquestionably important in the histories of kingdoms but queens also had roles to play in creating a reign's culture. Early in Prussia's royal history, two of its queens were the real forces behind music cultivation within the ruling family. Queens Sophie Charlotte (r. 1701 to 1705) and Sophie Dorothea (r. 1713 to 1740) both came originally to Prussia from Hanover and shared more than just their bloodline with the Prussian royal family: they also infused it with a discerning passion for music. Prussia's first queen, Sophie Charlotte, achieved a very high standard of elite music making, setting an impressive precedent for the royal family. Memory of her musicianship remained alive in her descendants, female as well as male. When Sophie Charlotte's own son, King Friedrich Wilhelm I (r. 1713 to 1740), proved a surprisingly destructive force to the cultural achievements of his parents' reign, it took the heroic efforts of her niece and daughterin law, Sophie Dorothea (also of Hanover), to secure a musical future for Prussia's royal children.

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The Electorate of Hanover is perhaps best known today outside of Germany for having produced England's monarchs and for employing Georg Friedrich Handel (1685–1759), but he was only the most famous musician in what was one of Europe's most musically sophisticated courts. Sophie Charlotte had been brought up by her mother, the famous Electress Sophie of Hanover (b.1630–d.1714), to enjoy all the privileges of rank and fortune and was surrounded from birth by the highest caliber of music for church, chamber, and theater – French style for divertissements and Italian for opera. Due to internal conflicts within the family, Electress Sophie raised the future Prussian queen Sophie Dorothea, her granddaughter, as well. Thus, two queens of Prussia were brought up in remarkably similar circumstances. Hanover was a place of high culture. Because the Electorate married its daughters to successive kings of Prussia, Hanover's intellectual and artistic achievements became part of Prussian royal culture, too.

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This article focuses on Sophie Charlotte's musical legacy in Prussia in the context of gifts received and gifts given: Corelli's dedication to her of the Op. 5 violin sonatas provides a new view of her as patron and political

Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der CreativeCommonsLizenz NamensnennungKeine kommerzielle NutzungKeine Bearbeitung (CCBYNCND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/ symbol at the time of Prussia's emergence as a kingdom. Memory of her provided an encouraging model for her royal grandchildren, who were otherwise pathologically deprived of musical opportunities by Sophie Charlotte's own son, King Friedrich Wilhelm I. It is entirely to the credit of his Hanoverian wife, Queen Sophie Dorothea, that the Prussian royal family nevertheless produced music connoisseurs such as Friedrich II ("The Great"), Wilhelmine of Bayreuth, and Princess Anna Amalia. Queen Sophie Dorothea's dedication to the musical education of her children (Sophie Charlotte's grandchildren) demonstrates the heroism of a mother. Even though both Sophies of Hanover enjoyed extraordinary social privilege, they were still women so they therefore acted from the sidelines of official power. Their efforts nevertheless had significant impact on Prussia's future. We will begin the story of musical patronage and power dynamics with Sophie Charlotte and Corelli's Op. 5. We will then turn to how the memory of her accomplishments lived on despite the intentional cultural crisis in Prussia that was the making of her son, Friedrich Wilhelm I.

Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, Electress of Brandenburg, Queen in Prussia

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When in 1684 Sophie Charlotte of Hanover married Friedrich III, Elector of Brandenburg, she left her glittering homeland to preside over what she referred to as "the strangest court in the world".1 The Electorate of Brandenburg was as yet culturally provincial, but politically, it was on the brink of attaining real power: Elector Friedrich would crown himself King in Prussia in January 1701. The marriage of Sophie Charlotte to Friedrich was purely one of political convenience and there was little reciprocal affection. As we know, though, Friedrich soon gave Sophie Charlotte her own residence at Lietzenburg (now Charlottenburg), where she created a highly sophisticated intellectual and musical culture in which she, herself, participated.2 It was here that the works of international luminaries such as Attilio Ariosti, Giovanni Bononcini, Agostino Steffani, and Jean Baptiste Volumier were heard, often in the company of the composers themselves.3 The scale of music making was not Hanoverian, but the result must still have been enviable.

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Even as Queen in thenremote Prussia, Sophie Charlotte's reputation as a remarkably accomplished musician continued to increase. Her talent attracted attention at the time, although (outside of Germany) her name is largely forgotten today even in discussions of noted historical female patrons. Music history remembers her only as the dedicatee of Corelli's explosively popular Op. 5 violin sonatas.4

1 Gunther Wagner (Ed.): Sophie Charlotte und die Musik in Lietzenburg: Herausgegeben anläßlich der Ausstellung vom 9. Juli bis zum 20. September 1987 als Beitrag zur 750 JahrFeier Berlins, Berlin 1987, 9.

2 Wagner, ed., esp. pp. 1620.

3 Sophie Charlotte's musical establishment is described in Wagner: Sophie Charlotte (Fn. 14), as well as Curt Sachs: Musik und Oper am kurbrandenburgischen Hof, Berlin 1910.

4 Arcangelo Corelli, Sonate a Violino E Violone o Cimbalo Dedicate All Altezza Serenissima Elettorale di Sofia Carlotta Elettrice di Brandenburgo …, Rome 1700. The original print is available on IMSLP: http://ks.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/e/e1/IMSLP387134PMLP28348Corelli_ _Sonate_a_Violino_e_Violone_o_Cimbalo_BJ,_colour.pdf.

Op. 5 was a collection of pieces by one of Europe's most famous composers and the fact that there is no known connection between the composer and the dedicatee piques the historian's curiosity. Corelli's gift is now generally viewed as a marker of Sophie Charlotte's extraordinary musicianship, and it was – but the evidence suggests that it was also a targeted political statement. Sophie Charlotte was likely selected as dedicatee more for what she was (daughter of Hanover, wife of BrandenburgPrussia) than for who she was.

Arcangelo Corelli's Op. 5 and Sophie Charlotte

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When in January 1700, Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) selfpublished his fifth opus and dedicated it to Sophie Charlotte, he was doing something he had never done before: choosing a patron outside of Rome. In the context of his previous dedications, the selection of Sophie Charlotte was therefore completely out of pattern:

Op. 1 (12 Trio Sonatas): Queen Christina of Sweden (Rome, 1683) Op. 2 (12 Chamber Sonatas): Cardinal [Benedetto] Pamphilij (Rome, 1685) Op. 3 (12 Trio Sonatas): Duke of Modena [Francesco II d'Este] (Rome, 1689) Op. 4 (12 Trio Sonatas): Cardinal [Pietro] Ottoboni (Rome, 1694) Op. 5 (12 Sonatas for Violin and Bass (cembalo)): Sophie Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg (Rome [1700] and Amsterdam, 1710ff) Op. 6 (12 Concerti Grossi): Dedicated to the Elector Palatine [Johann Wilhelm] (Amsterdam, 1712; Printed 171314)

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Corelli's connection to Sophie Charlotte has been a mystery for nearly three centuries. Although they had numerous shared acquaintances, we have no surviving evidence to link the composer and dedicatee directly – no letters, no record of interaction, no documents whatsoever. We do know from Op. 5's letter of dedication that when the collection was published, the two had never met: Corelli wrote there, "mi trovo in obligo di farmi conóscere" ("I feel the obligation to present myself [make myself known to you] through this music").5

5 "… mi trovo in obligo di farmi conscere". I thank Prof. Thomas Forrest Kelly of Harvard University for his linguistic expertise.

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One feels certain that clues to Sophie Charlotte's relationship with Corelli await discovery somewhere, but they are not contained, for example, in the very few letters from Sophie Charlotte that survived her early death – at least, not unequivocally.6 In lieu of contemporary witnesses to her possible association with the Roman superstar Corelli, the task is to discover the ways in which his dedication of music to Sophie Charlotte of distant Brandenburg makes sense on its own terms.

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We might generally acknowledge that Sophie Charlotte had a reputation for being highly musical but that alone would not place her in the company of Corelli's previous patrons, with whom he enjoyed longstanding relationships as well as geographic proximity. The pattern of dedications insists that there must be another explanation for the composer's choice in this case. Sophie Charlotte was indeed musical, but she must have

6 See Alfred Ebert: Agostino Steffani an Sophie Charlotte, in: Die Musik 6, nos. 2223. Other letters by Sophie Charlotte are found in: Briefe der Königin Sophie Charlotte von Preussen und der Kurfürstin Sophie Von Hannover an hannoversche Diplomaten, mit einer Einleitung von Richard Doebner, Leipzig 1905. Alfred Einstein offers commentary and chronological correction in: Die Briefe der Königin Sophie Charlotte und der Kurfürstin Sophie an Agostino Steffani, in: Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 8 (1907). Sophie Charlotte's correspondence with Steffani is also discussed in context in Colin Timms: Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music, New York 2003, esp. 7582.

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Op. 5's original print provides some clues because it transmits not only Corelli's music, but also the frontispiece, from which we can partially reconstruct something of Sophie Charlotte's public image, at least as far as Corelli and his engravers perceived it:

Figure 2 Corelli, Op. 5, Engraving by Antonio Meloni and Girolamo Frezza (Rome, ca. 1700)

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This page was included in both the original Roman publication of Op. 5 and the 1710 Amsterdam reprint (the one with the famous melodic embellishments, now believed to originate with Corelli himself)7. The allegory in the frontispiece was crafted thoughtfully: there is a goddess whose trappings suggest that she is Minerva8 but clearly emphasizes aspects that point more to her Greek counterpart Athena (specifically, her Nemean lion's pelt), along with the usual symbols of battle, wisdom, music, and the other learned arts, including philosophy, which was famously one of Sophie Charlotte's favorite pastimes.

7 See Neal Zaslaw: "Ornaments for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, op. 5," in Early Music, Vol. 24, no. 1 (Feb. 1996).

8 Hans Oesch (Ed.): Arcangelo Corelli: Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe der musikalischen Werke, Vol. 3, Sonate a Violino e Violone o Cimbalo, Op. V, (ed. Cristina Urchueguía), Laaber 2006, 18.

The engraving is beautifully wrought; the escutcheon carried by the goddess even bears some version of Sophie Charlotte's coats of arms, including both the Welf/Guelph side in Hanover and the Hohenzollern of her husband.

Figure 3

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The engraving in fact is so detailed that the music held by the maiden to the right actually contains the first bars of this collection's opening movement. Thus, we can conclude that the frontispiece was among the last elements of production. The decision to dedicate this collection of works to Sophie Charlotte could thus have been taken very late in the process.

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Corelli clearly held Sophie Charlotte in some esteem and must have believed a public announcement of their connection would be of some benefit. He certainly earned significant profits from the collection but it is not yet completely clear exactly what other work the dedication did for either of them. The superficial benefits of association were in some ways mutual and obvious enough: Sophie Charlotte was an exceptional music lover and was therefore deserving of acknowledgment from one of Europe's most famous composers. A public dedication from him would spread her reputation far and wide. In an unforeseeable consequence, it also preserved the memory of her exceptional musicianship for the next three centuries.

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But dedications were not acts of altruism; they usually entailed a gift in return.9 Corelli's choice was therefore almost certainly motivated, but by what? It must have been something specific to Sophie Charlotte because Corelli's fame by this time was such that if the soughtafter recompense were simply money, he could have gotten that from any number of reliable sources.

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Rudolf Rasch chalks up the mysterious dedication of Op. 5 to the commercial benefits of establishing "a connection with one of the most important cultural and political centers outside Italy."10 That might have been 9 See Rudolf Rasch, "Corelli's Contract: Notes on the Publication History of the Concerti Grossi … Opera Sesta" [1714] in: Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 46 (1996), 90

10 See Rasch, "Corelli's Contract" 83136. Rasch's compelling explanation of Op. 6's complex dedication history is found

Corelli's Other Dedicatees

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As a group, Corelli's dedicatees include some of the most powerful and wellknown Italiandwelling patrons of baroque music: exQueen Christina of Sweden, the Cardinals Pamphilij and Ottoboni, the Duke of Modena, and then, all of a sudden with opuses 5 and 6, a transalpine leap to two Germans—Sophie Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg [1700] and Johann Wilhelm, the Elector Palatine [1712].

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We know what Corelli's connections were to all of the dedicatees except for Sophie Charlotte: in Rome, Corelli worked for Queen Christina and both Cardinals; his music had been heard and enjoyed at the Este court in Modena. The dedicatees of the first four opuses are thus easily explained. With Sophie Charlotte and the Elector Palatine, we note the change to Germanic patrons, but the Elector Palatine's dedication presents less of a puzzle: he was a known admirer to whom Corelli had already sent other music.11 The Elector was also politically connected to the Italian peninsula in that he was a Catholic ruler in a predominantly Protestant region and was married to a Medici: Anna Maria Luise of Tuscany. She and her brother, Grand Prince Ferdinando, were both known to be generous and discerning patrons of music: for example, Vivaldi's L'estro armonico, Op. 3, was dedicated to the grand prince.

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Although Sophie Charlotte's direct connection to Corelli cannot yet be established, they certainly knew many people in common, including her highborn relatives as well as composers who moved between Italian courts and German. These included musicians with whom Sophie Charlotte was personally familiar: Attilio Ariosti, Giovanni Bononcini, and Agostino Steffani. It is highly likely, as Rasch and Hans Joachim Marx after him suggest, that Steffani was the intermediary between Sophie Charlotte and Corelli; the connection is rather obvious.12 What no one has yet explained is why she was chosen.

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Steffani was the link between so many people and courts because in addition to his skill in music, he was

on 9495. The dedication of Op. 5 is discussed in similar terms. The dedication is also discussed briefly by Hans Joachim Marx, "Corelli, Arcangelo" [in MGG Personenteil, p. 1581.]

11 A concertino of 1708. Rasch believes it was later part of the works included in Op. 6. See Rasch, "Corelli's Contract" (Fn. 9), 133, fn 90.

12 See Rasch, "Corelli's Contract (Fn. 9), 95.

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As we know, Sophie Charlotte was promised to Friedrich of Prussia instead, but she and Max Emanuel seem nevertheless to have developed a personal relationship that survived their politicallydriven selection of marriage partners. When the two rulers met nearly twenty years after their own failed marriage negotiations, chamber music for the occasion was provided by Steffani, the failed negotiator himself, who retained their personal friendships despite the external circumstances. He composed for them "Io mi parto", a chamber duet that seems to have had a pointed subtext about two lovers who must part reluctantly.14 For many reasons, including his connections to Rome, Hanover, and Berlin, Steffani is indeed the most likely conduit between Sophie Charlotte and Corelli.15

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It might be coincidence that the text Sophie Charlotte and Max Emanuel sang to each other at the end of her visit to his court at Brussels was written by another Roman cleric, Abbate Francesco Maria Paglia, who was closely associated with the musical gatherings of Cardinals Pamphilij and Ottoboni. These are, of course, the very same Roman musical circles in which Corelli lived and moved, and which Steffani frequented when in Rome. Hawkins reports that Cardinal Ottoboni was Steffani's host on these occasions.16 Steffani's connection to Ottoboni is traceable from 1693; Corelli was in Ottoboni's employ from 1690. It is virtually impossible that Steffani and Corelli would not have met at Ottoboni's palace and we know that Steffani enjoyed close relationships with Ottoboni and Count Fede, both of whom were identified by Rasch as being the real operators behind Corelli's dedication of Op. 6 to Elector Johann Wilhelm. That is a fascinating story in itself, with likely implications for the dedication of Op. 5.

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Rasch discovered, for example, that the opportunities Corelli seems to have been cultivating through his dedication of Op. 6 to Johann Wilhelm were not only commercial, but also had significant largescale political implications, which would interest those in the know, such as Ottoboni and Steffani:

13 For Steffani's remarkable biography, see Colin Timms: Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music, New York 2003

14 See Bernhard Janz, "Io mi parto" / "Resto solo": Königin Sophie Charlotte, Kurfürst Max Emanuel und Agostino Steffani in Brüssel" in Kulturgeschichte Preußens Colloquien 3 (2016). Available online through perspectivia.net

15 More on this in Rasch: "Corelli's Contract" (Fn 9), 95.

16 John Hawkins, Memoirs of the Life of Sgr. Agostino Steffani, some time Master of the Electoral Chapel at Hanover, and afterwards Bishop of Spiga (1750). See also Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, Vol. 2 (Reprint: London, 1875), 673. See also Donald Burrows, Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 54.

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Could a similar situation involving highlevel politics have been in play with Op. 5? The question has not been asked, perhaps because Sophie Charlotte was a woman. Gifts of chamber music to a woman rarely beg explanation: the genre was appropriate to the gender. Also, Sophie Charlotte's political importance has long since faded from view. That is a mistake of modern thinking about the subject. If Corelli's motivations for offering these two opuses were indeed in any way similar—"the sequel to a policy,"18 as Rasch suggests in his article—then the mysterious dedication of Op. 5 might be far more significant than has been assumed. Again, it is obvious enough that the dedication recognizes Sophie Charlotte's truly exceptional position among her peers as a musician, but what has not been acknowledged previously is that it also identifies her as a powerful player in an emerging European political struggle that ultimately ended in all out war—the very same conflict that informed the dedication of Op. 6 twelve years later.

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As Rasch explains:

"The years of preparing the publication [of Op. 6] (17081712) coincided with the second half of the War of the Spanish Succession (17011713/1715), in which France and an antiFrench alliance uniting the Emperor, the Dutch Republic, and England were the main contending parties. It seems to have been papal policy to remain on friendly terms with as many parties as possible, and a dedication by a composer [Corelli] affiliated with a high official in the hierarchy of the Roman Church [Ottoboni] … to a person closely connected with the Emperor [the Elector Palatine] could be explained as a conciliatory gesture to the Empire. […] In addition, a dedication to the Elector Palatine would forge a connection with one of the highestplaced princes in the Empire, a valuable goal in itself."19

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At the time of Op. 6's dedication [1712], Europe was in the throes of the War of the Spanish Succession, which was on the verge of erupting at the time of Op. 5's dedication [1700]. The French and their allies were on one side of that conflict and the Holy Roman Emperor and his allies were on the other. According to Rasch, the dedication of Corelli's Op. 6 advertised a commercially valuable link between the composer and the powerful Elector Palatine, but it also carried with it a political message that would have been recognized in the culture of the time: the Elector favored the music of Rome, which is to say the land of the Holy Roman Emperor. The music of baroque France was of an utterly different style.

17 Rasch: "Corelli's Contract" (Fn 9), 94

18 Rasch: "Corelli's Contract" (Fn 9), 95

19 Rasch: "Corelli's Contract" (Fn 9), 95

Such a declaration through a piece of music might seem inconsequential but this move was actually ingenious: the news of allegiance would be propagated with sales of Corelli's concertos, which were so popular and profitable throughout Europe and beyond (on the heels of Op. 5, an historic bestseller), that the publisher did all the work for free, even agreeing to send the composer an unprecedented 150 gratis copies to distribute and sell for his own profit. Word of the Elector's artistic largess would also accompany this published declaration of his political fealty, increasing his fame and reputation as well. There was therefore some sort of profit in this dedication for all involved—composer, publisher, dedicatee, Emperor, and even the consumer: let it not be forgotten that this was extremely good music. In sum, Corelli's dedication of Op. 6 was surely inspired by the usual hope of recompense but the wartime politics connected with it, though mostly invisible from this historical distance, were also powerful motivating factors.

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We cannot relate the rest of the fascinating, but toonumerous details of Rasch's article here, but suffice it to say that Rasch's discoveries make it clear that the dedication of Op. 6 was calculated to achieve several ends: the Palatine Elector Johann Wilhelm and his Electress, Anna Maria Luisa de'Medici, were both devoted to music's cause but they were also devoted to the politics of their own—a fact those guiding Corelli's choice knew well. The finding that others were involved in choosing Corelli's dedicatees and that their selections were politically motivated is one of Rasch's most important contributions: creating the dedication of Op. 6, Corelli was not acting alone. It turns out that his music was used as an instrument of politics.

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Rasch was able to trace the involvement of several background players behind Op. 6's dedication in part because Corelli himself did not live to see it appear in print. He had completed the business negotiations attached to it but his longterm employer and benefactor, the musicloving and politically savvy Cardinal Ottoboni, involved himself in the original letter of dedication and subsequent dealings with the Elector during Corelli's illness and death. The end result of Op. 6's dedication was not only sales for the publisher and propaganda for the Emperor, but also a noble title for the entire Corelli family (including Arcangelo, posthumously) bestowed by the Elector Palatine, who, like his other Electoral brethren, had the power to create nobility within the Empire. Brilliant musician though he was, it is hard to image that Corelli alone engineered—or even cared much about—the largerscale political equation.

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In fact, Corelli's dedications of Op. 5 and Op. 6 were both conspicuously astute political overtures for a humble musician—far more astute than the rather obvious dedications of his first four opuses. We will recall that Cardinal Ottoboni was the dedicatee of Corelli's Op. 4, which, not coincidentally, marks the last of his published sets dedicated to an Italian patron. Ottoboni was a nobleman by birth as well as a highlyplaced

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Following Rasch's research, Hans Joachim Marx offered the idea that the background political policy behind the dedication of Op. 5 was religious conversion.20 The hand of the Catholic Church is indeed in evidence here, but the motivation was again securing political allegiance, not religious. Sophie Charlotte was a living symbol of two powerful Protestant nations—Hanover and Brandenburg. An astute political observer of the time would know whose wife Sophie Charlotte was as well as whose daughter. In fact, Corelli's dedication appeared just one year before Sophie Charlotte's husband crowned himself King in Prussia and just a few years after her homeland of Hanover was raised to an Electorate under her father, Ernst August. If a dedication to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, was seen as politically advantageous to Rome and the Emperor, how much greater would be the triumph of claiming the loyalty of staunchly Protestant BrandenburgPrussia? Through Sophie Charlotte, it had immediate ties to Hanover as well as legitimate claims to the English throne, very soon to be realized.

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Sophie Charlotte's ancestry thus made her not only a recognized musical patron but also a prominent political symbol. Perhaps her contemporary political significance is overlooked today because she died young (in 1705 at the age of 36) and her husband the king remarried. She thus became little more than a footnote to history, but that is not what she was at the time of Corelli's dedication. As a married aristocratic woman, what she represented in the preEnlightenment social order was more important than who she was as an individual. Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, Electress of Brandenburg embodied the union of two powerful and crucially important political entities as Europe prepared for war.

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Perhaps this is the reason why Sophie Charlotte's dual heraldic shield is featured in Op. 5's frontispiece. The dangerous state of European politics of the time might also explain why she is depicted more as Athena, a wargoddess, than as Minerva, whose association is more generally humanistic.

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If Corelli's dedication of Op. 6 to the Elector Palatine indicated the Palatinate's political allegiances, then Op. 5 also made it clear that the Electorates of Brandenburg and Hanover would be standing with the Emperor if

20 "möglicherweise hing die Widmung mit diplomatischen Schritten zusammen, die der Vatikan hinsichtlich Konversionsbestrebungen am Berliner Hof unternehmen wollte. Als Vermittler wird der Diplomat und Komponist A. Steffani tätig worden sein, der in Dienste des Düsseldorfer Hofes stand. (Vgl. Rasch, 1996, S. 95). MGG 1581

Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der CreativeCommonsLizenz NamensnennungKeine kommerzielle NutzungKeine Bearbeitung (CCBYNCND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/ war came, which in fact it did, and they did. Sophie Charlotte probably came to Corelli's notice not only due to her musical merits, which were truly estimable, but also because of the politics of her position. The choice could not have been purely personal: again, as the dedication text makes clear, they had never actually met. Corelli's selection must therefore have been based on external considerations and guided by those around him who were acutely attuned to such matters—those such as his patron and employer Cardinal Ottoboni. It is difficult to believe that Corelli's choice would have landed on Sophie Charlotte without Ottoboni's guidance. Ottoboni, in turn, might have been led to her by Steffani.

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Similar dynastic concerns were also in play when Sophie Charlotte was selected to be the wife of Friedrich I. She was chosen not principally on the basis of her musical and intellectual accomplishments, but for her bloodline. As a daughter of the powerful and ambitious Elector of Hanover and his wife, the famous Electress Sophie von der Pfalz, Sophie Charlotte had a hereditary lineage to be reckoned with. In fact, Sophie Charlotte's mother (Sophie) was the highestranking female Protestant aristocrat on the European continent. Had the original Sophie not died seven weeks too early, she, and not her son George, would have become the first Hanoverian ruler of England. Like her daughter Sophie Charlotte, Electress Sophie was a great patron of the arts and a champion of the philosopher Leibniz. She spoke many languages, knew and loved music, and was connected to the most powerful courts, to which she also introduced her beautiful and talented daughter. At one point, a marriage to Louis XIV's grandson was under serious consideration. It was not unthinkable: Sophie Charlotte's cousin Liselotte (also raised by Electress Sophie) was married to Louis XIV's brother, Philippe d'Orléans. These dynastic connections might seem to be obscure facts now but they would have been significant to Corelli and his contemporaries.

From public to private: the world stage to the family chamber

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Tragically, Sophie Charlotte's political importance died with her in 1705, just five years after Corelli's dedication, but memory of her as an individual, the example of her musicianship, and tales of rich, Hanoverian court culture lived on within her family and proved an inspiration to granddaughters as well as grandsons whom she did not live long enough to know. We find traces of her in private family correspondence and in possessions later treasured by her royal descendants.

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Among those treasures was Sophie Charlotte's "Reiseklavier," which had been a gift from her Versailles cousin Liselotte.21 After Sophie Charlotte's marriage to Friedrich I, she often retreated back to court life in her native Hanover, bringing with her this keyboard and sometimes their young son, Friedrich Wilhelm, as well. The keyboard later became a family heirloom and, according to musicologist HansPeter Reinecke, it would

21 For a description of this instrument (or one very much like it), see Martin Kirnbauer, Dieter Krickeberg: Musikinstrumentenbau im Umkreis von Sophie Charlotte, in: Wagner: Sophie Charlotte (Fn. 14), 3238.

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Friedrich II never knew his paternal grandmother because she died seven years before he was born. But Friedrich and his sister Wilhelmine most definitely knew about her, because she is mentioned in their correspondence and in his other writings. For example, later in life, Friedrich, so famously unimpressed by the female of the species, seems nevertheless to have held his grandmother in particularly high regard: "This princess had the genius of a great man and the knowledge of a savant; she did not deem it unworthy of a queen to admire a philosopher; the philosopher was Leibniz, and she bestowed her friendship on him with the thought that those to whom Heaven has given noble minds are the equivalent of kings."23

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Reinecke seems to have been onto something therefore when he observed that Friedrich's travel keyboard was not only a bearer of harmony, but of meaning as well: "Und sicher war es für Friedrich wegen seiner Vergangenheit mehr als nur ein Klangwerkzeug zur Begleitung des Flötenspiels, erinnerte es ihn doch an eine Zeit, die er über die pietistischpuritanischen Regierungsjahre seines Vaters, des Soldatenkönigs Friedrich Wilhelm I. hinweg, nur vom Hörensagen her gekannt haben konnte. Es war die Zeit der ersten kulturellen Blüte des jungen Preußen dank der ideenreichen Gönnerschaft seiner Großmutter …"24

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We know that Friedrich II and his siblings grew up hearing tales of their grandmother from their governess Madame de Roucoulles. When Wilhelmine wrote of Roucoulles, it was in the terms of an elderly lady in her dotage, who was the "dreadfulest bore, when she gets upon Hanover and her experiences, and Queen Sophie Charlotte's, in that stupendously magnificent court under Gentleman Ernst".25 They might also have heard about Sophie Charlotte from their mother, Sophie Dorothea. As we have seen, she came from the same family and shared many of her late motherinlaw's/aunt's interests, especially her sophisticated love of music. Sophie Dorothea tried to reinforce the Hanoverian court culture initially introduced to Prussia by Sophie Charlotte but could only do so much. It was definitely better than nothing.

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Even after Sophie Charlotte's death, she remained a topic of conversation between Prussia and Hanover. The details of court musical events in Hanover, too, were sometimes relayed in letters to the thenPrussian crownprincess Sophie Dorothea from her grandmother, the now dowagerElectress Sophie. One such from 1710 contained a report of: "the music of a Saxon who surpasses everyone who has ever been heard in harpsichord playing and composition. He was much admired in Italy. He is very suitable to be Kapellmeister. 22 Wagner, ed., 6.

23 Benson Mates: The Philosophy of Leibniz, New York 1986, 26.

24 Cited in Wagner: Sophie Charlotte (Fn. 14), 6.

25 Thomas Carlyle: History of Friedrich II. Of Prussia called Frederick the Great, Vol. 1, New York 1897, 322.

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We glean some interesting pieces of information about musical life in Prussia from this letter: first, it is clear that the Prussian kapelle was not necessarily in great shape in 1710 (in other words fully three years before the dreaded Friedrich Wilhelm came to power and dismantled it)27; and second, that music and musicians remained topics of mutual interest between the Prussian court and the Hanoverian. A further bit of information in this letter is of a more personal nature: although the two Sophies communicated here about musical matters, the elder Sophie reports that she was merely repeating what she had heard about Handel's playing because following her daughter Sophie Charlotte's death (at this point, nearly five years earlier), music made her melancholy. One wonders whether music made Sophie Charlotte's son, Friedrich Wilhelm, melancholy, too.

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Due to generations of intermarrying between the Welfs and the Hohenzollerns, Friedrich Wilhelm, of course, also descended from the same line as his wife as well as his mother so it could also have been, at some point, even he who told tales to his children of their grandmother's accomplishments even though he certainly did not share her belief in funding splendid music.

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Given what we know of him – of his coarseness, his distaste for courtly indulgences and musical riches – the suggestion that he might have told his children good things about their grandmother might seem far fetched.28 Indeed, it might be. But there are a couple of facts about Friedrich Wilhelm that suggest that he might have retained some love of music after all. One such fact is that his children mentioned (albeit with disdain) their father's affection for his oboe band, which soothed him to sleep on command by playing Handel arias in arrangement:

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Frederick to Wilhelmina, 10 Dec. 1737

26 Cited in Donald Burrows, Handel in Hanover, in: Peter Williams (Ed.): Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, New York 1985, 39. Burrows deals with the question of Handel's employment on pp. 38ff.

27 The story of the Royal Prussian Kapelle's dismantling under Friedrich Wilhelm I is told in Louis Schneider: Geschichte der Oper und des königlichen Opernhauses in Berlin, Berlin 1852, 4243. Another traditional account can be found in Georg Thouret, "Die Musik am preußischen Hofe im 18. Jahrhundert" in HohenzollernJahrbuch 5 (1897). Both accounts are nuanced in Exner: The Forging of a Golden Age: King Frederick the Great and Music for Berlin, 1732 to 1756, Ph.D. diss. Harvard University, 2010, esp. 6672.

28 See, for example, Christopher Clark: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 16001947, Cambridge 2006, esp. 74 and 7880.

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Handel, we will recall, was variously in the employ of the Hanoverian court, at first in their capacity as Electors, and then as the Kings and Queens of England. In all likelihood, Friedrich Wilhelm heard Handel's music while visiting his mother's (and his wife's) ancestral home, but this was likely to have been after 1706 or so. Evidently, he treasured this repertory.

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There is one other point we might also take into consideration with regard to Friedrich Wilhelm's complex relationship with music and, dare we add it, his mother: although it was assumed for centuries that Sophie Charlotte's precious music library disappeared without a trace because there were no materials from it within the royal libraries when an exhaustive search for them was carried out in the 1850s, manuscripts bearing her seal have turned up among the SingAkademie materials.30

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Upon her death, Sophie Charlotte's music library remained part of the royal family's private collection. An annotation by lateeighteenthcentury historian Anton König states that Friedrich Wilhelm I went through her music collection personally and selected items from it that he wished to keep in the royal library.31 One of her granddaughters, Anna Amalia, evidently preserved some of these (now lost) in her famous Amalien Bibliothek, but it was probably from the private royal library, in all likelihood, that Carl Friedrich Zelter acquired Sophie Charlotte's manuscripts when given access by Friedrich Wilhelm IV in the early 1800s. These manuscripts went undiscovered by those looking in the royal libraries during the nineteenth century because they were not looking in the right place. They did not consider important Zelter's collecting efforts for the bourgeois SingAkademie, which now turn out to contain so much that was essential to Prussian musical life.

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Even though Friedrich Wilhelm is infamous for his dislike of lavish court music and for denying his wife and children the quality of music which they all desired and to which they were, according to rank and fortune,

29 Gustav Berthold Volz (Ed.): Friedrich der Große und Wilhelmine von Baireuth. Jugendbriefe 17281740, trans. Friedrich von OppelnBronikowski, Leipzig 1924, 366.

30 See, for example, Axel Fischer, Matthias Kornemann: Die Sammlung der SingAkademie zu Berlin. Catalogue to the Microfiche Edition. Part 2: Operas. Introduction by Klaus Hortschansky, Munich 2005, 39.

31 GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 100 Ministerium des königlichen Hauses, Nr. 2737 (Formerly Rep. 45 Rb 18). Acta regarding den musikalischen Nachlaß der Königin Sophie Charlotte. See also Louis Schneider: Geschichte der Oper und des königlichen Opernhauses in Berlin, Berlin 1852, 38.

Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der CreativeCommonsLizenz NamensnennungKeine kommerzielle NutzungKeine Bearbeitung (CCBYNCND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/ wellentitled, his wife, Sophie Dorothea, nevertheless found ways to have music around her, mostly at times when her husband was not present. She also schemed to enrich the minimal musical education which the king did see fit to provide his children. (We should recall that their father did pay for keyboard instruction with the onetime royal kapellist, then Domorganist Gottlieb Hayne, who both Friedrich II and Princess Amalia must have liked because they kept him close and employed until the end of his days.) It was the queen, though, who secretly engaged Dresden virtuosi to teach Friedrich and Wilhelmine and it was unquestionably she who nurtured and encouraged their considerable musical gifts. In providing for her children as much of a musical education as she dared, she sowed the seeds of Prussia's musical future. Through the marriages of her daughters, her family's musical heritage spread to other courts: for example, Ulrike became the music loving Queen of Sweden and Wilhelmine wrote operas while Margravine of Bayreuth.

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The Prussian princess whose musical legacy emerges as the most historically influential, though, is that of the youngest: Anna Amalia. She alone among her sisters did not marry and she thus remained in Berlin, free to create a music establishment according to her means. Her early intellectual interest in activities such as collecting manuscripts and studying formal counterpoint led to an affinity for music by the sons and students of J. S. Bach who were working in the Prussian capital. Perhaps she was following in the footsteps of her grandmother, Sophie Charlotte, who once also expressed an interest in learning to write counterpoint. Her correspondent Steffani urged her, probably in jest, not to take up the craft, though, lest she then recognize his talents as too meager: "But also I hope very much that Your Majesty does not come to the end of her counterpoint and never learns to composer. There's an impertinent wish—I agree, I know—but I should not know how to prevent it. I am jealous in advance of this new enterprise, and I have a very good reason for being so. Should I tell you? It is that Your Majesty cannot do anything that is not at the height of perfection: if she undertakes to compose some duets, it will be 'Goodbye' to mine. Your Majesty will be right to seek them no longer, and with that the poor Abbé [Steffani means himself] will be completely forgotten."32

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No matter what became of Sophie Charlotte's attempts at composition, Anna Amalia was never dissuaded from her affection for the art. Enabled by her mother's efforts and emboldened by her grandmother's example, Anna Amalia cultivated an informed passion for music. Her thenpeculiar interests ultimately preserved for us all the music of the Bach family in the form of manuscripts, including those that were originally the property of her male relatives, to whom this outmoded repertory seems to have meant little. It was she who became the guardian of her brother's dedication copy of the Musical Offering and her great greatuncle Christian Ludwig's copy of the Brandenburg Concertos. Her collecting habits secured the unique manuscript source of a set of pieces so iconic, so internationally revered, that 250 years later it became one of Earth's cultural ambassadors to outer space on NASA's Voyager 1. Without Anna Amalia's careful curatorship of the Bach legacy and the musical curiosity behind it, we would likely never have known the

32 Quoted in Timms: Polymath (Fn. 6), 80.

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Exploring the tradition of royal female music patronage in Berlin that began with Prussia's first queen, Sophie Charlotte, and clearly extended to her granddaughters illuminates an unbroken line of remarkably strong women dedicated to the art of music. Their opportunities and contributions were not the same and their musical engagement took on different forms but none truly went without, even during the culturally impoverished reign of Sophie Charlotte's son, Friedrich Wilhelm I. One thing the royal Prussian women clearly had in common in addition to their Hanoverian lineage was that music formed a considerable part of their identities. When we consider Sophie Charlotte, the matriarch of royal Prussian musical cultivation, it is little wonder that her descendants were also fiercely intelligent women who surrounded themselves with the best music they could. Their need to find creative solutions in lessthanideal situations (for they all faced significant obstacles of some sort) resulted in enduring gifts to posterity.

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Sophie Charlotte set the precedent, became a legend within the family, and for her efforts while living was immortalized by Corelli in print. Sophie Dorothea nurtured a love of music in her children, fighting for their musical education against her husband's strictures and creating for them whatever cultural opportunities she could. Because of the elevated positions to which Sophie Dorothea's offspring all ascended, her efforts bore fruit among her sons and daughters alike, all of whom shared a pronounced love for music. Her music historical immortality was assured through her devotion as a mother while Sophie Charlotte's was bestowed by Corelli due not only to her musical accomplishments, but for what she symbolized on the wider European stage.

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Corelli's gift to her was chamber music, suited to the traditionally female domestic realm. In this regard, she is little different from Sophie Dorothea, whose sphere of influence was similarly confined to the privacy of the royal chambers. Although the musical legacies of these royal women took on very different guises, their private engagement with music had significant impact on Prussia's future.

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The standing narrative of music in royal Prussia is generally told in terms of the reigns of its kings, and indeed theirs are important and fascinating stories in their own right. But those stories become immeasurably richer when the accomplishments and contributions of the women, of the Sophies of Hanover and of their

33 Anna Amalia's importance to the Bach legacy is discussed in Exner: The Forging of a Golden Age, 261284.

Author:

Dr. Ellen Exner New England Conservatory of Music [390 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts [02115] USA [email protected]