No abstract

This book is an examination of the uneasy alliance of two confessions, Lutheran and Catholic, at the prominent seventeenth-century Germany court of Dresden. It examines the implications of this alliance for the repertoire of sacred art music cultivated there; an influential repertoire that has received only scant attention from scholars.

Although the castrato played a central role in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century musical life, he occupied a position at the margins of early modern society. As a consequence of the surgical alteration of his body and the superior musical training that he received as compensation for his ‘acquiescence’ in that act, he found himself navigating a path through a bifurcated world. For him, the surgery had both public and private consequences: while society would publicly celebrate his vocal virtuosity, it would also circumscribe his private activities, and withhold from him the right to marry, or to enjoy an intimate relationship with a woman. As he soon realised, the realities of his special status meant that many of those who would revel in his phenomenal vocal abilities would also ridicule him as effeminate and as a sexual misfit, and would accuse him, ironically, of possessing a voracious sexual appetite that rendered him a threat to women. When he travelled north to work in German-speaking societies, particularly those in which the Lutheran confession held sway, that simple migratory act instantly compounded the number of those qualities that contributed to his ‘Otherness’: while in his homeland his standing as an emasculate and a musician already set him apart from others, in Lutheran regions, his status as a foreigner, an adherent of an outlawed (and highly suspect) confession, and a member of a privileged group that moved in the rarefied atmosphere of the local court all served to intensify his marginality.

"Wer war Johann Georg II.?" Während die Rolle seines Vaters Johann Georgs I. und seines Enkels Augusts des Starken für das Musikleben ihrer Zeit gut erforscht ist, ist der Name Johann Georg II. bislang allenfalls grundsätzlich als Wettiner Fürst bekannt. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht darüber hinausgehend nun die Musikpflege am sächsischen Hof unter der Regentschaft Johann Georg II. und erschließt damit ein wichtiges Kapitel sächsischer Musikpflege.

In the seventeenth century the process of appointing court musicians was often complicated by struggles between conflicting agendas. Recently discovered letters of Saxon Prince Johann Georg II (1613–80) document the nature of the process in Dresden during the tenure of court Kapellmeister Heinrich Schütz, and the attempts of Schütz and the prince to steer Elector Johann Georg I's hiring decisions in a direction that would further their cause: the cultivation of an awareness of the modern Italian style of singing in the Dresden court musicians. The letters reveal the previously unknown collaborative effort of Schütz and the prince to fill the position of vice-Kapellmeister with the ‘right’ musician (i.e. an Italian or Italian-trained one), and to keep the ‘wrong’ man out of the job. In the course of this enterprise, the prince participated in the negotiations for several appointments, including that of Christoph Bernhard, whom he then sent to a northern court to study with an Italian singer. Although the collaborators' mission ended in failure, the story of their efforts casts light on the musical politicking at a seventeenth-century court and on the implications such campaigns had for the lives of individual musicians.