JOHANN BEER’S BELLUM MUSICUM

BY K. G. KNIGHT

READERS of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Die Brautwahl will recall ‘the casket-scene’ in Chapter VI where one of Albertine’s suitors, Geheimer Kanzlei-Sekretir Tusmann, chooses the silver casket and thereby fails to win her hand. But though hc loses the lady he receives as compensation a small parchmcnt- bound volume which has the magical property of changing into any book the owner desires. The first two books which Tusmann selects in order to test his new-found power belong to the seventeenth century. One is Thomasius’s Kurzer Entwurfder politischen Klugheit. The other is, in Tusmann’s words :

ein kleines Biichlein . . . , das allegorischerweise die ganze Kunst des Kom- ponistcn und Virtuoscn darlegt. Ich rneinc nichts anders, als Johannes Beers musikalischen Krieg oder die Beschreibung des Haupttreffens zwischen beiden Heroinen, als d.er Komposition und Harmonie, wie diese gegeneinander zu Felde gezogen, gescharmutzieret und endlich nach blutigem Treffen wieder verglichen worden-1

Beer’s Bellurn Mtksicum oder musicalischer Krieg must have becn a rare work even in Hoffmann’s day since the bibliophile Tusmann had been unable to find it in any library. Fortunately two versions of the work have been preserved in the British Museum. One is the original Belhrm Musicurn, a light-hearted ‘occasional’ piece written for a wedding which took place in 1684 at Weissenfels where Beer was court musician. This is the version referred to by Hoffmann. The other is a revised and exp,anded version, published as a separate work in 1701, the year following Beer’s death in a shooting accident. A comparison of the two texts shows that the later edition is morc witty, more carefully constructed and, indirectly, throws a little light on literary taste at the turn of the century.2

The Bellurn Musintin of 1701 is set in an imaginary realm described as ‘das musicalische oder cymbalische Reich‘. It is a late specimen of allegorical prose narrative of which one of the earliest examples in Latin was Andrea Guarna’s Bellum G‘rummaticale (ISII), relating the conflict between the verb and the noun. Guarna’s work was followed by a large number of adaptations and imitations in Latin, French, German and English.3 Thus Beer’s first scheme of a contest between two allegorical figures was far from original. But his execution of this scheme was very much his own. He gave free rein to his lively humour and imagination both in the text and in the folding ‘Landt-Carte des Cymbalischen Reichs’ which accompanies it. The latter depicts a country which is watered by several rivers including the great D 291

292 JOHANN BEER’S ‘BELLUM MUSICUM’ ~ ~ ~ ~~~

Fortefluss which rises in the South-West and passes through the fertile Terra Instrumentistarum and Terra Vocalistarum. On its banks stands the fortified town Vestung Systema, above the point where it flows into the Lacus Inventionis. Towards the North-West lies the barren region of the Terra Deserta and the Lacus Ignorantium. Here the rivers Simplicitatis and Despectis have their sources. It is sigdkant that, whereas the place-names of the South are mixed German and Italian, those of the North-West are exclusively German, e.g. Stimperingen, Bierfiedlmgen, Scherzelgeigingen and Sackpfeiffingen. As many passages in his novels show, Beer had a healthy appreciation of Italy as the home of good musical composition and perform- ance.

Unlike the version of Bellum Musicum which Hoffmann knew, the revised version of 1701 is not an account of a conflict between Compositio and Harmonia. It describes the abduction of Compositio and her subsequent rescue by Harmonia. Queen Compositio, whose home is in Greece, has visited Italy and rashly made a trip across the Alps, where she is roughly kidnapped and cast into chains by the so-called ‘Humper und Sturnper’, or botchers and bunglers, of music. These, we are told, include certain d a g e schoolmasters and town organists. They are, in other words, half-trained amateurs who debase musical standards and claim equality of status with professional musicians. These second-rate performers ill-treat Compositio and put her on show in peasants’ inns, at markets, fairs and dances. The Queen writes an urgent letter to her daughter Harmonia appealing for help and this is carried post-haste by her servant Affettuoso with the help of Signor Presto. Harmonia, grieved at her mother’s plight, consults her Councillors, Piano, Piu Piano and Pianissimo. They decide to send an expeditionary force to rescue Compositio and a royal proclamation is issued calling the country to arms.

Harmonia’s recruiting drive is highly successful and an army of thousands of musical notes is raised. As there is no colour bar in the realm of music the black notes from Africa and the white notes from ‘Albania’ join ranks in the common cause. In the end there are five h e s of fighting notes and others in the intervening spaces. Under the leadership of Generals Cantus Durus, Cantus Mollis and Obrist-Leumant Fuga, accompanied by the field-chaplain Falso Bordone, the army prepares to join battle.

An ultimatum is first sent to the ‘Humper und Sturnper’, who remain unperturbed in their beer-houses fiddling to peasants. The army of Harmonia therefore advances and fighting begins. Unfortunately some of Harmonia’s troops prove to be unreliable. Corporals Trillo and Tremolo take fright. Many of the notes desert or are taken prisoner. Harmonia is forced to take refuge in the fortress Systema with her most faithful followers. There follows a seige in which the ‘Humper und Sturnper’ attempt to scale the walls of the

J O H A N N BEER’S ‘BELLUM M U S I C U M ’ 293 ~

fortress with two scahg ladders (scalas rnusicas). This plan is abandoned because no one is able to reach the topmost rungs. At length reinforcements arrive from the giant ‘Choralisten’ who have been summoned by Pianissimo. The ‘Hiimper und Stiimper’ have to retire to the Lacus Ignorantium and sue for peace, setting Compositio free. At the court-martial which follows all the notes who were guilty of treason or cowardice are punished: some are tied up in fours and twos, some are quartered or divided into eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths. Still others are hung by their legs upside down. There is then a general settlement to bring peace to the musical realm. It is ordained that overtures, minuets and courantes shall be deported to their homeland, France, and that Compositio and Harmonia shall henceforth not be separated. The peace terms contain one sighlficant warning comment: ‘Wann man in dem Land keinen Contrapunct sehe, solle man sicher glauben, dasz bose Zeiten kommen und die Stumper iiberhand nehmen werden.’ Beer then concludes with a word of his own to the reader:

Indessen will ich nach Niederlegung solcher Waffen wieder nach Hause kehren, meinen Schild in einen Tisch, das Schwerd in ein Brodmesser, meinen Buchsenlad in die Rohre meines Wasserbrunnens venvandeln, und mit der brennenden Lunte, womit die Canones angeziindet worden, eine Tobackpfeiffe anstecken. Lebet wohl.

It was Beer’s concern for music and the status of professional musicians which prompted him to revise his Bellurn Musicurn. His conception of a ‘Haupttreffen’ between Harmonia and Compositio in the earlier version, was adequate as a j eu d’esprit. But any musician must have felt that this conflict was a little contrived, if not incongruous. Beer therefore reshaped his allegory, turning his two principal figures into allies united against an enemy with whom he himself was familiar-the pretentious ‘Humper und Stiimper’. If these figures appear somewhat shadowy and abstract in the Bellurn Musicurn we need only look through Beer’s novels to frnd their real- life equivalents. One such is the incompetent old organist of Ollingen in the Kurzweilige Sornrnevtiige who could not play more than a few bars of a sonata without making a mistake and so earned himself the nickname ‘ab initio’.4 In his Musicalische Discurse Beer writes in scathing terms of the ‘Himper und Stimper’ or, ‘mit der Herren musicorum giinstiger Erlaubnisz, . . . dem Geschlechte der Ehrbediirfftigen Bierfidler’. After inveighing against their miserably inadequate training and their prostitution of such small talent as they possess, he returns to his main argument, namely that the bad performer lowers the esteem in which professional musicians are held :5

[sie] nehmen kupffern Geld vor kupfferne Seel-Messen, und geben keine geringe Ursach, dasz der einfiltige Povel die music, und also concomitanter auch die musicos, sine gradus comparatione, vor einerley und auf einen so vie1 hdt, als den andern.

294 JOHANN BEER’S ‘BBLLUM MUSICUM’

Before laying the Bellurn Musicurn aside we may note that apart from its ‘musical’ interest, this little work has a s m a l l but unmistakable relevance to the development of German prose. Beer was writing at a time when the high-flown seventeenth-century style, familiar to us from Zigler’s RFiutische Bunire and often labelled ‘baroque’, no longer commanded unquestioning respect. Christian Weise had already poked fun at it and Beer, like Weise, was adept at writing parodies of it. The Belhrn Musicurn contains several exercises in this manner, the best example being surely Harmonia’s call to arms in Chapter 111:

Bellurn! Bellurn! zu Waf€en, zu Waffen, dann der schuldige Gehorsam, welcher Euch durch geleisteten Eydtschwur unserer Mutter und uns verbindet, wird Euch a l s getreue Burger des Cymbalischen Reiches genugsam erinnern, dass gehorsame unterthanen Gut und Blut vor den Wohlstand des Vaterlandes aufiuopfern kein Bedencken tragen, und sich durch solche unverwelckliche Grossmuthigkeit der Nachwelt mit nie ausgeliischten Lobe verewigen sollen.

Apart from its style, the very plot of the Bellurn Musicurn, slight though it is, reminds us distantly of those novels of the time in which a princess is held captive by a cruel tyrant until she is rescued by her gallant prince and his soldiers. Just as Beer returned in his novels again and again to the subject of music, so here, writing about music, he could not resist delivering a sidethrust at the hackneyed style and conventional situations of seventeenth-century fiction.

NOTES

1 E. T . A. Hoffmann, Werke, ed. Harich ( ~ g q ) , vol. Vn, p. 234. 2 J. Behr, Bellurn Musicurn oder musicalkcher Krieg, 1701, 38 unnumbered pages. The earlier version of

1684 was reprinted as a supplement to Beer’s Musicalische Discurse, N h b e r g (1719). See R. Alewyn, Johann Beer (Palaestra I ~ I ) , Leipzig IS)^), pp. 262 ff.

8 See J. Bolte, Andrea Guarnas Bellurn Grammaticale und seine Nachahmungen (Monumenta Germaniue Puedagogica, 43). Berlin (1908).

4 J. Beer, D i e teutschen Winter-Nachte 6. Die kurzweiligen Sornrner-Tage, ed. R. Alewyn, Frankfurt

5 Musicalische Discurse, pp. 156 and 161 E (1963). p,. 65s.