A Title Page of Michael Praetorius
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Prejeto / received: 15. 5. 2019. Odobreno / accepted: 6. 9. 2019. doi: 10.3986/dmd15.1-2.01 A TITLE PAGE OF MICHAEL PRAETORIUS Peter Holman University of Leeds Izvleček: Vsem dobro znana naslovna grafika, Abstract: The well-known title page used by ki jo je Michael Praetorius uporabil v več svo- Michael Praetorius for several of his publica- jih tiskanih delih, lahko služi kot izhodišče za tions provides a starting-point for a discussion of razpravljanje o načinu izvajanja glasbe za velike the way large-scale music was directed in early sestave v Nemčiji v zgodnjem 17. stoletju. Razp- seventeenth-century Germany. The practice of rava se osredotoča na upodabljanje skladateljev depicting composers with rolls of paper is dis- z zvitkom papirja v rokah, kar je primer prakse cussed, as is the nature of seventeenth-century nakazovanja glasbene dobe v 17. stoletju, in ugo- time-beating and how it differed from modern tavlja, kako se ta praksa razlikuje od današnjega conducting. dirigiranja. Ključne besede: Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Keywords: Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Hermann Schein, naslovnica, Gabrieli, Johann Hermann Schein, title page, nakazovanje dobe time-beater A familiar, arresting image (Figure 1), the design Michael Praetorius used for a number of his publications, provides us with a convenient starting point for a discussion of musi- cal direction in the early seventeenth century, particularly in large-scale Italian and German music.1 As well as serving as a decorative border for the typeset titles of the respective publications, starting in 1605 with the first part of Musae Sionae and ending with Theatrum instrumentorum in 1620, 2 it is also an ingenious evocation of polychoral music being performed in what appears to be a princely chapel. It was perhaps intended to evoke the long-lost chapel in the castle at Wolfenbüttel, where Praetorius worked on and off from the 1590s until his death in 1621. As we shall see, the image can tell us a good deal about musical direction at the time, despite the fact that Praetorius did not com- plement it with a detailed discussion of the topic in his published writings. It is possible that he intended to make good this deficiency in the volumes of Syntagma musicum that 1 A more extended discussion of this topic will appear in my forthcoming book Before the Baton. 2 Digital copies are conveniently collected on the IMSLP website: https://imslp.org/wiki/ Category:Praetorius,_Michael. 9 DMDtxt_15_KGindd 9 12122019 12:26:45 De musica disserenda XV/1–2 • 2019 Figure 1 The title page of Michael Praetorius, Theatrum instrumentorum, Wolfenbüttel, 1620. (Public domain.) 10 DMDtxt_15_KGindd 10 12122019 12:26:46 Peter Holman: A Title page of Michael Praetorius remained unpublished at his untimely death in 1621. According to the brief description of them he inserted near the end of vol. 3, vol. 12 was to be an “Instruction on how diverse concertos can be arranged for few and many choirs in a variety of styles, formulated for musical directors [Capellmeistern] and singers for further consideration”.3 By 1600 professional musicians in Germany and most other areas of Europe had been performing polyphonic music for several centuries, and therefore did not need anyone to beat time in small groups. Thus, when we see someone doing so in a seventeenth-century picture it probably signifies a group made up partly or wholly of amateurs. A case in point is the vignette on the title page of Johann Martin Rubert’s Musikalischen Arien erster Theil, published in Stralsund in 1647 (Figure 2). It presumably illustrates a performance of music from the volume, with three singers, two violins, a bass violin or viol, two lutes and a spinet. The motto “Musica noster amor” suggests that it depicts a music club or collegium musicum in the Hanseatic town of Stralsund, where Rubert was organist of the Nikolaikirche.4 He is presumably the person playing the spinet and is the real director of the ensemble; the singing time-beater is probably just a club member. Figure 2 Block illustrating the title page of Johann Martin Rubert, Musikalischen Arien erster Theil, Stralsund, 1647. (Public domain.) As this picture suggests, time-beating was often done by singers simply because they did not have to hold or play an instrument and therefore usually had a hand free. Among 3 Praetorius, Syntagma musicum III, 209–210. 4 For Rubert, see Kirwan and Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Johann Martin Rubert”. 11 DMDtxt_15_KGindd 11 12122019 12:26:48 De musica disserenda XV/1–2 • 2019 instrumentalists, lutenists had the advantage that the necks of their instruments could easily be waved and were highly visible. Mersenne wrote in the 1630s that “those who currently lead concerts” in Paris “mark the beat” (“marquent la mesure”) for the singers with “the movement of the neck of the lutes of theorboes on which they play”,5 while the unknown author of the Burwell Lute Tutor, an English manuscript of the 1660s, wrote that “in a Consort one beates it [the time] with the motion of the necke of the Theorbo, and every one must have the eye upon it and following in playing his motion and keep the same time with the other players”.6 A violin bow is another obvious time-beating imple- ment, much used for this purpose from the early eighteenth century onwards, but, rather surprisingly, there seems to be no evidence for violinists directing large ensembles until the late seventeenth century; an early example is a picture of Corelli directing an outdoor performance of a serenata in Rome in 1687.7 He stands on a platform with the second concertino violinist, where they can be seen by all the other performers: five singers, two lutenists, two harpsichordists and a string orchestra of fifty-seven. Returning to Praetorius’s title page, in the earthly part of the image – as opposed to the vision of Heaven at the top – we see three groups of musicians, labelled respectively Choir 1 (top left), Choir 2 (top right) and Choir 3 (bottom). Choir 3 consists of nine musi- cians. There seem to be two trombonists and two singers on the left; two more singers and a large woodwind instrument, possibly a sordun, on the right;8 and a large organ in the centre, with a figure beating time standing behind the organist. Choirs 1 and 2 are in two facing galleries at first-floor level. On the left there is a time-beating singer with instrumentalists playing what appear to be a violin, a viola and a large four-string bass violin; at the back of this gallery we can see the pipes of a second, rather smaller organ. On the right there is a choir seemingly consisting of another singer with three cornett players, accompanied by a fifth musician playing a regal with conical resonators. The first thing to notice is that this three-choir ensemble is directed by three time- beaters, one in each choir. We will see that it was common practice in polychoral music for the principal time-beater to stand next to the main organ, and for his beat to be relayed by subsidiary time-beaters stationed in each choir, so we can presume that Praetorius’s Kapellmeister is at the bottom of the image, with Choir 3. The three time-beaters hold part-books in one hand and beat time with the other. I call them time-beaters because their function was just to use simple vertical hand movements to maintain good ensemble, not to do all the other things required from modern conductors – who of course need to use both hands for this reason. It is not clear whether the Kapellmeister is meant to be singing as well as beating 5 “[…] par le mouuement du manche des Luths ou des Tuorbes, dont ils ioüe[n]t.” Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 324v–325. I am grateful to Thérèse de Goede for drawing my attention to this passage and for providing me with a translation. A full transcription and discussion will appear in Holman, Before the Baton. 6 Spencer, “Chitarrone, Theorbo and Archlute”, 413. 7 Reproduced in Spitzer and Zaslaw, Birth of the Orchestra, 112, fig. 4.1. There are also digital images, such as at https://artsandculture.google.com. 8 I am grateful to Wouter Verschuren for suggesting to me that it was intended to be a sordun rather than a dulcian, my initial identification. 12 DMDtxt_15_KGindd 12 12122019 12:26:48 Peter Holman: A Title page of Michael Praetorius Figure 3 The title page of Johann Hermann Schein, Fontana d’Israel / Israelis Brünlein, Leipzig, 1623. (Public domain.) time, but the other two time-beaters are probably doing both. Depicting singers holding music was an obvious way for artists and engravers to signal their status as musicians. By contrast, instrumentalists are often depicted without music, in part presumably because their instruments sufficiently identified them as musicians, but also because professional 13 DMDtxt_15_KGindd 13 12122019 12:26:49 De musica disserenda XV/1–2 • 2019 instrumental ensembles traditionally performed in public from memory, as with the six-man wind group portrayed in one of Denis van Alsoot’s paintings of the Triumph of the Archduchess Isabella, a processional pageant performed in the streets of Brussels on 31 May 1615,9 or the engraving of the funeral of Charles III of Lorraine at Nancy on 19 July 1608,10 in which the singers have part-books but the instrumentalists do not. A state funeral of this sort would have required specially composed (or at least specially revived) polyphonic music, so it is hard to believe that the instrumentalists had really memorized their parts at short notice.