Samantha Owens

The Stuttgart Adonis: A recently rediscovered opera by Johann Sigismund Cousser?

The Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart holds a rare treasure from the early history of German-language opera that has lain undisturbed and unnoticed for many years. While the library suffered substantial losses during World War II, its collection does retain a small portion of the music manuscripts formerly belonging to the public library established in 1765 by Duke Carl Eugen of Wurttemberg (1728-93). The handwritten catalogue of the Codices musices II series, today housed in the institutions manuscript department, opens with a somewhat mysterious pair of entries describing an anonymous work entitled Adonis, consisting of a vocal part with bass accompaniment alongside a set of instrumental parts for the same work. Here, Owens discusses the recently discovered opera Adonis by composer Johann Sigismund Cousser.

‘Unmistakeable Sauerkrauts’: local perceptions of itinerant German musicians in New Zealand, 1850–1920

Although largely forgotten today, bands of German musicians (generally from the Westpfalz region) were regular visitors to New Zealand’s shores from the 1850s up until the outbreak of World War I, making them among the earliest professional European musical ensembles to be heard in the country. Plying their trade on the streets and in other public spaces, German bands were also routinely hired to perform for garden parties, school sports days, dances and boat trips, as well as on countless other occasions. Yet despite their apparent popularity, contemporary comment published in newspapers of the day demonstrates that reactions to their performances were decidedly mixed. While some members of the public clearly enjoyed the contribution German bands made to local musical life, others were less than delighted by their (often noisy) presence. In 1893, for example, one Wellington resident complained that ‘a German Band … may be heard braying at every street corner at all hours of the day and night’, while noting also that ‘It is the genuine article, all the performers being wanderers from the “Vaterland”, unmistakeable “sauerkrauts”’ Within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, ten members of a German band had been arrested in Auckland and taken to Somes Island in Wellington harbour, where they were interned for the duration of the conflict. This article examines the New Zealand public’s changing perceptions of this particular brand of street musician from colonial times until shortly after the end of the First World War.

Johann David Heinichen, Selected Music for Vespers

earlier volumes in the Early English Church Music series have praised the decisions of previous editors to retain ‘unreduced note values’ (one review of volume 42 in this series noted that such notation ‘eliminates the use of rhythmic values only amoebas could love’) and this editorial procedure is maintained here; the semibreve remains the most common note value, but the black void of the early manuscripts is presented in the more accessible modern notation (cf. volume 65 in this series, reviewed elsewhere in this journal). With only occasional exceptions, John Sheppard’s settings of sacred music in Latin have been absent from the Early English Church Music series since the 1970s, but scholarly interest in the composer and his works has continually increased. The introduction to this volume notes that Sheppard ‘was the servant of two successive monarchs with radically different religious practices’ (p. xiii) and that, of the decade he served at the Chapel Royal, Hymns, Psalms, Antiphons and other Latin Polyphony represents only half his musical and liturgical life there—the settings Sheppard wrote, in English, for the reforming court of Edward VI (who oversaw the completion of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549) are unrepresented here. Williamson’s foreword hints at the ongoing preparation of a further volume, to feature the composer’s settings in the vernacular, and it will be with the publication of this fourth volume of Sheppard’s music that we will fully appreciate Sheppard’s command as a composer, and the contribution of Williamson and the earlier editors to our understanding of him.

Robert Dalley-Scarlett (1887–1959) and Handel Reception in Australia between the World Wars

In December 1949, the Brisbane-based musician Robert Dalley-Scarlett received a prestigious Handel Medal from the town of Halle (Germany) for his work promoting the composers oeuvre. This paper investigates Dalley-Scarletts pioneering role in the period between the two World Wars, during which time he was not only a key figure in the Brisbane Handel Festivals of 1933 and 1934—among the earliest in the southern hemisphere—but was also active as conductor of the Brisbane Handel Society, a choir established with the intention of ‘broadcasting all of Handels oratorios’ via the Australian Broadcasting Commission. The specific circumstances leading to the initial award of the medal to Dalley-Scarlett on the eve of World War II are also outlined through a close reading of a series of papers held by the Händel-Haus in Halle. These shed some light on German–Australian musical relations during the late 1930s, while also providing a concrete illustration of one of the ways in which the National Socialist regime used culture in their attempts to spread their deeply disturbing nationalistic message across the globe.

‘Not always the same minuets’: Dance at the Württemberg Court, 1662–1711

Abstract In common with many German principalities, the latter decades of the seventeenth century saw the ducal court of Württemberg increasingly emulate French-style music and dance. Reinstituting an earlier tradition abandoned during the Thirty Years’ War, from 1662 until the invasion of French troops in 1688, important occasions in the life of the court were celebrated with major musical-theatrical productions involving ballet. This article outlines what little is known of this activity using extant manuscript records held in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, supplemented by a selection of printed librettos. As well as providing detailed information on such practical matters as the constitution of audiences and the printing and distribution of both tickets and librettos, these sources offer clues as to the changing role of the court dancing master during this period, concluding with an examination of an employment contract dating from 1711.

Johann Sigismund Cousser, William III and the Serenata in Early Eighteenth-Century Dublin

Among the holdings of Hamburg’s Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky is an anonymous fifty-two-page score headed ‘Serenata a 4’, described in the corresponding catalogue entry by its former owner, German musicologist Friedrich Chrysander (1826–1901), as a ‘cantata for the funeral of the English king William III of Orange, 1702’. But both the work’s text and the recent identification of the manuscript as being in the hand of Johann Sigismund Cousser (1660–1727) call for a reassessment of the serenata’s provenance, situating it in either England or Ireland between Cousser’s arrival in London on Christmas Day, 1704 and the end of Queen Anne’s reign in 1714. Over the course of the two decades he resided in Ireland (from 4 July 1707 until his death), Cousser was responsible for the composition and musical direction of one ode and more than twenty serenatas, the majority of which were commissioned by the viceregal court at Dublin Castle for state celebrations of the reigning monarch’s birthday. Taking printed librettos, contemporary newspaper reports, Cousser’s own commonplace book and two further surviving manuscript scores as its primary evidence, this study seeks to establish a likely location and occasion for the performance of the ‘William III’ serenata within Dublin’s musical life during the early eighteenth century. Cousser’s serenatas, which may have incorporated elements of theatrical staging and dancing, reveal his extensive Continental experience in their choice of terminology, compositional style and performance practices, and can be seen to have functioned in part as an operatic substitute, presumably reflecting the limited financial resources of Dublin high society.

CENSORSHIP OF THE GOÛT MODERNE IN 1730S LUDWIGSBURG AND THE MUSIC OF GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BRESCIANELLO

The year 1730 saw the Wurttemberg court (based at the magnificent palace of Ludwigsburg, some fifteen miles north of Stuttgart) promote Kammerjunker (gentleman-in-waiting) Christian Adolf von Ziegesar to the newly created position of aristocratic Obermusicdirector (chief music director). Since no template existed, the officials charged with drawing up his contract were instructed to make discreet enquiries regarding the same position at other ducal and electoral courts – a line of investigation that proved to be rather less than successful. One ‘Baron von Thungen’, a Wurttemberg Kammerjunker with experience of a number of other courts (including Wurzburg), reported unequivocally that to the best of his knowledge no court employed a nobleman in this position, but rather the directorship of musical matters was normally the responsibility of the Kapellmeister. Such a view appears to be confirmed by Julius Bernhard von Rohr (1688–1742) in his contemporary book on court ceremonial: he commented that a few places employed intendants des plaisirs charged with the overall supervision of large-scale divertissements, but made no mention of a similar position relating specifically to music.

Und mancher grosser Fürst kan ein Apollo seyn

Given that many musicologists have investigated manuscript material belonging to the former music collection of Crown Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Wurttemberg (1698–1731), it is somewhat surprising to discover that very little is known of this young noble and his musical activities.1 As noted by Ortrun Landmann in her valuably informative article outlining the remnants of the prince’s music collection (now held by the Universitatsbibliothek Rostock), Josef Sittard’s pioneering 1890–91 study of the Wurttemberg Hofkapelle did not even mention the musically-gifted crown prince.2 And yet, to Telemann Friedrich Ludwig clearly counted among the foremost aristocratic musical dilettanti of early eighteenth-century Germany. In his poem »Verworffene Music!«, published in Johann Mattheson’s »Organisten-Probe« (Hamburg, 1719), Telemann cited a number of prominent noble musicians in a footnote to the line »And many a great prince can be an Apollo« (Und mancher grosser Furst kan ein Apollo seyn). The list included the composers Duke Friedrich II of Sachsen-Gotha (1676–1732), Landgrave Ernst Ludwig of Hessen-Darmstadt (1667–1739), and Prince Johann Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar (1696–1715), with Friedrich Ludwig specifically mentioned on account of instrumental music.33