The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries.
Rawson, Robert G.
The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their
Contemporaries. By Charles Brewer. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. [412 p. ISBN:
978-1859283967 65 [pounds sterling]]
Charles Brewer has produced a detailed monograph on a subject which
has clearly been close to his heart for many years; namely, the
fascinating and often eccentric violin music of Johann Heinrich
Schmelzer (ca. 1623-1680), Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704) and Georg
Muffat (1653-1704). The book is laid out in five chapters: chapter 1 is
devoted to Athanasius Kircher (1601/2-1680) and notions of instrumental
style and genre, 2 is about Schmelzer and the Viennese court, 3 is about
the court of Liechtenstein-Castelcorno at Kromereriz, 4 is devoted to
Biber and Muffat at Salzburg, and 5 concludes with a discussion about
the dissemination of the stylus phantasticus.
One matter of presentation that niggles throughout has to do with
the spelling of places and names. Sometimes Brewer uses
'Janovka' and sometimes 'Janowka'. He argues that
the common spelling of 'Schmelzer' is a Latinisation and so he
prefers 'Schmeltzer'--but this apparent fidelity is not
extended to other composers: leaving the reader with 'Flixius'
for Flixy, among many others. The problems of names and place names
reach a nadir when were told that 'Schmeltzer' fled the plague
'to Praha' (p. 53). Why not use 'Prague' when it is
one of the few Czech place names for which there is an English
equivalent?
The central path of the book follows the writings of the eccentric
Jesuit polymath Kircher with a special emphasis on notions of genre, and
then proceeds to apply those concepts to selected repertoires.
Kircher's musical designations of style and genre are dealt with in
great detail here, but one is not entirely convinced that Kircher's
writings were used by composers in a prescriptive, rather than
descriptive, manner. Brewer certainly makes an excellent case for
Kircher's ubiquity as a writer, but did composers receive genuine
instruction from Musurgia? I suspect that I will not be the only person
to balk at Brewer's claim that 'the single most significant
window into the unique conceptual world of seventeenth-century Central
and East Central European music are the writings of Athanasius
Kircher' (pp. 1-2). Brewer argues that composers followed Kircher
in his genre and style designations and he spends a great deal of time
hoping to demonstrate that certain works were deliberately composed in
the stylus phantasticus (including the opening sonatas of Francois
Couperin's Les Nations).
It is Brewer's preoccupation with definition and genre where
things begin to break down--especially his seeming equation between
title and genre. A fair amount of effort is then expelled looking for
consistent definitions of 'sonata' in the seventeenth and
early-eighteenth century treatises. However, the one he finds the least
helpful might be the most accurate: 'a musical work arranged for 1,
2, 3 or more instruments' (Johann Beyer, 1703). By page 167 we are
told that Tomaso Albertini's Sonata a 10 'is actually a
"Sonata con altre ariae" since' a series of dance
movements follow the opening 'sonata'--thus negating the
composer's own title. All this fascination with title-equals-genre
seldom progresses our understanding of either. It may be disappointing,
but for most central European composers, the title 'sonata' on
the wrapper revealed very little about the contents therein. Brewer does
help to dispel some misunderstandings about ideas of Kircher's
stylus phantasticus in that it also pertains to contrapuntally conceived
works, not only free fantasias.
The section about the pastorella genre is something of a missed
opportunity. Brewer claims that 'by the eighteenth century the term
"pastorella" had a very specific meaning [as] a vocal work
associated with the shepherds who heard the angel's song' (p.
97). It is hard to see how this conclusion is reached, as some of the
earliest examples of the genre are instrumental. This lacuna is somewhat
explained by the absence of Mark Germer's brilliant and
widely-cited dissertation on the subject (1989) in the bibliography.
Brewer claims that Schmelzer seems to have inspired Biber to compose his
pastorella when Germer (and others) have already demonstrated that they
quote a common tune, not each other. Perhaps most surprising of all is
the claim that 'no previous writer has noticed [...] the
relationship between Schmetlzer's Pastorella, Biber's
Pastorellas and one of Schmelzer's most copied vocal works'
(p. 98). This came as some surprise to me as I made exactly that
connection in an article in Early Music in 2005 (p. 594 and endnote 19).
The detailed discussion about Schmelzer is most welcome and Brewer
is quite right to highlight the strange neglect of this important
composer and performer from scholarly literature. Brewer also helps to
dispel the myth that the Austrian musical establishment rejected
everything French and reveals that French music and dances were known
and imitated in Vienna in the late seventeenth century (pp. 90-95).
Alessandro Poglietti (d. 1683) is another composer who has long
awaited further investigation and gets a more detailed treatment here.
We know nothing of Poglietti's early life, though Johann Gottfried
Walther (1684-1748) claimed in his Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732)
that 'Poglietti' was a pseudonym hiding a German. Brewer uses
Poglietti's sympathetic musical treatment of the execution of
Hungarian nobles in his Toccatina sopra la Ribellione d'Ungaria to
suggest that the alleged pseudonym may not be hiding a German, but
rather a Hungarian. There is some fine material here about
Poglietti's music, especially his instrumental music, and Brewer is
right to highlight his masterful use of Italianate elements and command
of counterpoint to considerable effect.
Throughout the book--particularly in the sections about the court
at Kromeriz--Brewer comments about performance practices. His
discussions of instruments and their names contain a number of
worthwhile points. He is right that the designation 'viola'
was often used generically in central Europe, that it can refer to
either the viola 'da braccio' or 'da gamba'. Again
he gets sidetracked by his relentless pursuit of definitions, arguing
that the term 'violetta [...] is an instrument in the viola da
gamba family' (p. 143). To judge by ranges and idiom, at least some
of the 'violetta' parts were probably for the viola da
braccio. It will come as a surprise to many that Gottfried Finger's
music for the viola da gamba--some of the most important of its time,
let alone in Central Europe--is largely overlooked (apart from a single
footnote and one small piece). The most recent assessment of
Finger's viol music is in Peter Holman's Life After Death: The
Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch (Boydell and Brewer,
2010). Moreover, neither Holman nor myself have attributed the (varied)
contents of A4681 to Finger (as Brewer claims), but only those with
known concordances--allowing that some could be by him. When the
fascinating and controversial subject of the meaning of
'violone' is introduced, the lengthy correspondence between
court representatives and Jacob Stainer (c. 1617-1683) relating to the
order and purchase of a 16' bass instrument goes unmentioned. There
are also a few problems of historicity. For example, Brewer lists
'2 bassoonists' as being employed at Vienna in 1665/66 (p. 47)
when the instrument had not yet been invented.
Another controversial area to which Brewer contributes relates to
the use of basso continuo instruments. Here Brewer continues his path of
conflating performance materials with performance. For example, because
lute family instruments are only mentioned by name in a relatively few
number of manuscripts at Kromeriz, Brewer concludes that they were only
rarely used. He argues that the surviving material 'clearly
indicates that at Kromeriz most music was accompanied only by the
organo' (p. 179). This interpretation results from several
fundamental misconceptions. First, that 'organo' parts do not
permit or imply other instruments. Second, that the music collection
only represents music performed there--the Bishop's other
residences (Olomouc, Vyskov, Mirov and Mikulov) go unmentioned. We know
for example that a harp regularly played with the organist at St Vaclav
in Mikulov (Jiri Sehnal, Hudba v olomoucke katedrale v 17. a 18 stoleti
(Brno: Moravske Muzeum, 1988, p. 95). A monk at the Hradisko monastery
just outside Olomouc records several accounts of a fairly large continuo band for smaller-scale works (again including the harp and also the
colochon) in the 1690s--though neither are mentioned by name in
surviving music manuscripts (Josef Lantsch, 'K hudbe v Klastere
Hradisku v letech 1693-1699', Prace z hist. seminare CM. fakulty
bohuslavecke v Olomouci, 38, 1939; Sehnal 1988). Still other sources
only slightly farther afield remind us that the headings of continuo
parts need not be taken literally. Friedrich Niedt (1701) reminds us
that any 'Violon-Bass part is labelled Basso Continuo'; and
Johann Mattheson (1739) claimed that 'organo' was merely a
generic term for basso continuo.
Among the more controversial claims in the book, Brewer
(re)attributes the popular Sonata Representativa by Biber to Schmelzer,
based (at least partly) on the appearance of a flourish in the
'Allegro' designation in the manuscript which does not appear
in any other Biber autograph. It was common at that time that more than
one copyist might work on a manuscript--especially for decorative
elements. I doubt that anyone will be persuaded by Brewer's
argument. Nor are many likely to follow his habit of referring to
Biber's so-called 'Mystery' or 'Rosary' sonatas
as 'Mystery Partitas'--yet again attempting a nuanced reading
of the missing title page for Biber's masterpieces based on
perceptions of the elusive relationship between title and genre.
While a new book in English on this fascinating aspect of
seventeenth-century repertoire is most welcome, it is with reservations.
For details of the court at Kromeriz and its relationship with Vienna,
readers will want to look at Jiri Sehnal's recent Pavel Vejvanovsky
and the Kromeriz Music Collection: Perspectives on seventeenth-century
music in Morvia (Olomouc, 2008).
Robert G. Rawson
Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
