Trading Places and Travelling - Musical Legacies of the Hanseatic League Transcript Date: Thursday, 12 July 2012 - 6:00PM Location: Barnard's Inn Hall 12 July 2012 Trading Places and Travelling: Musical Legacies of the Hanseatic League Dr Geoffrey Webber I'd like to begin with some maps. When I first began studying German music of the 17th century I remember starting with a map of Germany and locating where everyone that I knew about actually worked. Back in 1980 that was of course the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, West and East Germany. Before long I discovered that even putting these two countries together was far from adequate, with several important German composers turning up as far East as what is now Russia. To understand the extent of that great confederation or association of towns and cities known as the Hanseatic League one's geographical view of northern Europe needs to be dominated by the principal trading sea routes. It was essentially the movement of goods by sea that brought these towns and cities together during the middle ages, and thus the most effective maps of the trading area are those in which the sea is at the centre: MAP 1: The extent of the hansa in about 1400 This map shows the extent of the Hansa in about 1400 centred on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The area stretches from London in the west to Novgorod in the east with Bergen in Norway the most northerly outpost. MAP 2: The Baltic Lands and the Hanseatic League This map shows a slightly wider area and crucially has lots of lines showing the actual trading routes linking all the ports together and then continuing onwards inland to nearby cities and towns that were also part of the League. Slide 3: Lynn & ship The East Anglian town of Lynn was like London an important port in the middle ages, and a few years ago the town held a special Festival celebrating its links with the HL [Hanseatic League], rather like the current City of London Festival, during which a replica of a German trading boat, the Lisa von Lübeck, sailed to the port as shown in the picture on the right. Slide 4: Hanse warehouse The town still has a warehouse, shown here, that survives from the heyday of the league built in the characteristic red-brick that dominates the churches, town halls and town gates of the region. Another lecture would deal with the architectural legacy of the HL, but I just happened to be in Worksop College, a Woodard School in Nottinghamshire, earlier this year and was completely taken aback by the presence of red- brick Hanseatic architecture in the main school building on a scale very similar to the buildings of the late middle ages. Slide 5: Lübeck In this modern painting of the port of Lübeck as it may have appeared in the mid-14th century you can clearly see the characteristic Hanseatic stepped gables in an overall circumflex shape on the top of the buildings in red brick. Slide 6: Lübeck today Here's the view as it is today, with a ring round the stepped gables. Slide 7: WORKSOP And here's the Hall of Worksop College in Nottinghamshire which has the stepped gables both at the long and short sides of the Hall. But back to the maps, and this next one is very special: MAP 3 1539 This dates from 1539. Produced by the Swede Olaus Magnus this "Carta Marina" is headed "a Description of the Northern Lands and of their Marvels", and was designed to impress the people of southern Europe who had never been this far north. Magnus' s map naturally places Sweden firmly in the middle, and he's keen to include as much northerly land as possible. Magnus includes many different aspects of life, producing an entertaining and informative map that more than makes up for its comparative lack of accuracy in terms of modern geography. It shows much wildlife and a notably large number of ships emphasising the vital trading routes of the time, together with types of fish, sea currents, ship-building yards etc. MAP Iceland In this portion you can see the volcanos of Iceland shown in the circle. Map Iceland and battles And just below I've ringed a battle between 2 ships on the left - you can see the canon balls flying and men jumping overboard; it's noted as a Hamburg ship attacking a Scottish vessel - and on the right an encounter with whales by a Lübeck ship which looses much of its precious cargo. Does music make an appearance on the map? Yes it does, if only at the outermost reaches of the map where Magnus may have been struggling for things to portray. MAP Iceland Viol player Here we have Iceland's premier gamba player entertaining the local wildlife. MAP dancing And further east we have a man perhaps playing cymbals whilst people of assorted ages dance in the most northerly part of Sweden: But before we leave this splendid map we must have a look at the two cities on which I will mostly focus in this lecture, Hamburg and Lübeck, both ringed here: MAP H & L Lübeck was for many years the chief city of the HL, even more important than Hamburg, and although their relative importance in today's world is drastically different, they were both great centres of commerce, architecture and of course music in the early modern period. There are two things I'd like you to spot just south of Hamburg & Lübeck, both ringed here: Map H & L Bux & salt The first is the town which you will see has the same name as one of the greatest mid-baroque composers, Dieterich Buxtehude, just to the south of Hamburg. You can find the word Buxtehude in a modern German dictionary since there is a derogatory expression used by those living in Hamburg - "oh he comes from Buxtehude" which could be translated as "he comes from the back of beyond", or "from the sticks". But this is indeed the town, which was a Hanseatic town in its own right during the early modern period, that Buxtehude's family originally came from. And secondly at the bottom of the slide you can see the mention in Latin of what was crucial to the wealth of this region: salt. Just near Lüneburg, where J. S. Bach was a chorister, we can see "Hic fit candidissimus sal": here is made the whitest salt. This commodity was one of the most important products on which the wealth of Lübeck was based, as so much of the salt from Lüneburg was distributed via the port of Lübeck. So what can be said of the musical legacy of this great trading area? In essence we are looking at travel and money. The main trading routes allowed ease of travel around the region, and the wealth of the main towns and cities enabled the finer things of life, including of course music, to flourish. In fact, much of the cultural life of the time took place within the realm of the nobility in the prestigious Courts of the region, but much also prospered in the towns, especially those at the heart of the HL. Unfortunately we know comparatively little about the music of the earlier and greatest period of the League during high middle ages, but of the music in the final years of the League and around the time of its demise in 1669 we know a great deal. Musicians obviously had to travel in search of both education and employment and in the 17th century there were 2 clear routes, either east-west along the trading lines of the HL, or north-south to Italy. The latter route is not of relevance to today's lecture, but was perhaps the most important at the time from the perspective of musical style, but a crucial early example of the east-west axis in the 17th century can be found in the form of the so-called North German Organ School. This was led not by a German, but a Dutchman, the organist Sweelinck who worked in Amsterdam, and his German pupils travelled from Hamburg and northern Germany either overland or by sea to study with him: MAP Amsterdam / Hamburg Sweelinck's most important German pupils were Jacob Praetorius, Heinrich Scheidemann and Samuel Scheidt. Scheidt and Sweelinck both featured in the concert given earlier in the current City of London Festival by the BBC Singers and Iain Farrington in St Giles' Cripplegate. Looking towards the eastern side of the region, the career of the composer Johann Meder provides perhaps the best example of the way top musicians travelled around the towns and cities of the HL. Meder came from central Germany and after studying in Leipzig his career took him here: Meder map 1 Bremen (another of the most important HL cities, shown at the bottom left of the slide). Then to Hamburg - 2 - Copenhagen - 3 - Lübeck - 4 - all the way over to Reval, now Tallinn in Estonia (at the top right) - 5 - Riga - 6 - Danzig, now Gdańsk in Poland- 7 - Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, the Russian naval port - 8 - and finally back to Riga where he died - 9. One of his surviving motets "Wie murren denn die Leut'" was composed to mark the liberation of the city of Riga from a Muscovite siege. You can see this Russian threat even in the 1539 map: MAP Riga - canons On the left you can see the city of Riga circled in red, and on the right circled in black a row of cannons facing the threat from the east.