Early Music History (2010) Volume 29. Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0261127910000082 K P and S R, J. Email:
[email protected];
[email protected] SINGING THE SELF: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN SINGER AND COMPOSER JOHANNES VON SOEST The German singer, composer and writer Johannes von Soest (1448–1506), also referred to as Steinwart or Steinwert, is the author of a vernacular autobiography in verse. One of the very few such documents written by a musician, it gives a highly personal insight into his career, which extended from his training as a chorister in Soest to the ducal chapel in Cleves and afterwards to Bruges (in the company of two unnamed English musicians), Aardenburg (Overijssel), Maastricht, possibly Cologne, Kassel and finally Heidelberg, where he was appointed as Kapellmeister. He subsequently decided to become a physician. The article includes a complete transcription of the text, whose original was destroyed during the Second World War, but has been preserved in Johann Carl von Fichard’s rare edition of 1811, and a translation of the sections of musical interest. In an introduction his training and career choices are discussed, and his observations concerning musical practice are analysed. Johannes von Soest (also referred to as Steinwart or Steinwert) was a German singer, composer and poet. He is the author of a vernacular autobiography in couplets which is not only one of the few examples of late medieval German autobiography but also one of the very few surviving We both wish to thank Joseph Connors, then director of Harvard University’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, for fostering the invigorating interdisciplinary atmosphere at the scholarly utopia where plans for this collaboration were first hatched in the spring of 2009.