Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio

DREAMS OF THE WOUNDED MUSKETEER

September, 1683

I feel a madness setting in as I lie here on the ground, my blood pooling beside my musket and my trumpet. Was it only last night in the tavern that the musicians were playing that delightful piece, the Sonata Jucunda by a composer no one could identify? A slow dance and a fast one alternated, manic with intensity, and then suddenly there appeared a strange sound, music from a distant land (perhaps Turkish?), like heathen soldiers appearing on the horizon. There was a mighty din in that piece as the battle was joined, impossible dissonances heralding the clash of empires, not unlike the real battle that was to happen the next day, leaving me shattered. I can only hope that we shall emerge victorious from this siege of Vienna, much as did the Christians in Sonata Jucunda.

For most of my life I have been a member of the Kammeradschaft, the trumpet guild to which Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II granted special favors, which were then affirmed and expanded by Ferdinand III and now Leopold I, long may he reign. Out of all the musicians in the Empire, only we have the right to play the most sacred instruments: trumpets and timpani. Our commission comes not only with a salary and lodging, but also a horse, uniforms, firewood, grain, and a daily beer ration. But our privileges include great responsibilities, and these include appearances on the battlefield in times of war. And so here I lie, mortally wounded and feverish, my body and mind weakening.

I recall my first days in Vienna. Ferdinand II had just been elected, and he arrived from Graz with his retinue. The frail Giovanni Priuli was his first Hofkapellmeister, still writing in the old-fashioned polychoral style that had been popular in Venice long before. I remember finding his music attractive but dull. Everything changed a few years later with his successor, Giovanni Valentini. The strangeness of his counterpoint, and the harmonic and metric innovation! One composition did nothing but modulate a short strain of music back and forth between G Minor and B Major! Valentini ushered us into a fantastic new age of experimentation. 

Valentini had the ear of the Emperor, and under him, music flourished in Vienna. My own musical training and my induction into the Kammeradschaft came during this great era. After Valentini’s death, Antonio Bertali continued the tradition he had established. Bertali, a violinist, arrived in Vienna shortly after I did, and I watched him rise through the musical ranks. His music was more tuneful than Valentini’s, but no less wild. I recall one chamber work which had a long Passacaglia passage, the same descending bass line repeated again and again, like madness. He wrote it in such a way that the most jarring dissonances were not only present, but contrapuntally required! 

I’m remembering that there was yet another Italian musician who flourished here in Vienna during the last several decades: the court organist Alessandro Poglietti. He frequently entertained the Emperor with his skill at the harpsichord, sometimes playing dance music or imitative improvisations, sometimes performing the most splendid programmatic works about birds, or battles. The sonatas he wrote for large string ensemble showed off the remarkable counterpoint he was renowned for. Alas, I saw Poglietti fall on the battlefield shortly before I did. I hope his death was swift...

My trumpet is on the ground, just out of reach, and my mind strays to my years in Leipzig. The Swedish occupation had ended in 1650, and Imperial forces re-entered the city at that time. To my great shock, municipal musicians in Leipzig were allowed to sound the hour from the city tower on trumpets, whereas elsewhere for anyone but the Kammeradschaft to play the trumpet was expressly forbidden; in Hannover, for example, when we found an unlicensed trumpeter, we beat him severely and broke his jaw, as was our right. But when I heard Johann Pezel play the high trumpet, I could only feel jealousy and awe, such was his skill. Pezel had traveled and spoke Italian well; the position of Stadtpfeifer seemed below his station. He wrote a complex Ciacona which used two different lengthy bass patterns, one for concertato passages and one for the ripieno.

It was a strange time in Leipzig; Johann Rosenmüller had been employed at the Nikolaikirche and expected to win the Thomaskantor position, but he and several schoolboys were arrested—charged with the sorts of crimes that could only be whispered about—and he escaped and fled the city for Venice. Madness! Rumor has it that he found employment at some famous orphanage for young girls. Each work of one of his collections of sonata-suites—published in Germany in his attempts to curry favor with the Saxon aristocracy and be permitted to return—began with a sinfonia and was followed by an allemande, a corrente, a ballo, and a sarabande.  

My mind jerks from Venice back to Vienna. Samuel Capricornus had been called Friedrich Bockshorn when he arrived in the city, but he soon Latinized his name in a peculiar affectation. He studied composition with Valentini and Bertali, and while still very young—perhaps too young—was appointed Kapellmeister in Stuttgart. Remarkable works bearing Capricornus’s name emerged from Stuttgart from that day forward, but so did absurd stories of his lengthy feud with a local composer named Böddecker, and the letters they sent to their liege lord sniping about each others’ counterpoint, and Capricornus’s published attacks on a musician in his employ—Böddecker’s brother—whom he claimed played the cornetto like a cow horn. The devout Pietist Adam Drese was Capricornus’s opposite in temperament. He traveled a great deal, having been appointed Kapellmeister first in Weimar, then in Jena, and most recently in Arnstadt, spreading the Italian compositional style throughout the Empire.

I burst with national pride to think of Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, the greatest violinist of our time and Vienna’s first homegrown Hofkapellmeister. A lifetime of industry and good will and talent—and studies with Valentini and Bertali—led to Schmelzer finally attaining the highest musical rank shortly before succumbing to the plague only a few years ago. I recall now his music for a masked ball, not one of his best-known works, just a short aria and gigue followed by a delightful ciacona that sounded almost Caledonian in its simplicity. He was surpassed in skill perhaps only by his friend and student, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. But whereas Schmelzer spent his life in Vienna, Biber spent much of his in the employ of a Bishop in a remote Czech castle, and only recently found work in Salzburg.

I feel feverish, music swirling through my head. A musical Battalia! A happy aria in the key of D. Only last night I was laughing in a tavern, celebrating Bacchus, listening as a half-dozen drunken soldiers from a half-dozen countries sang bawdy songs in as many different keys, creating total cacophony. I hear a dance tune, then the rattle of a fife and drum invoking the god Mars, and then another dance, why? I must have a respite, a gentle aria for strings before the canon start firing. They begin with orderly volleys before breaking into chaos. I am hit, wounded! Through my haze I see someone standing over me, and he raises his weapon. Lament for me, a musketeer and trumpeter of the Holy Roman Empire. 

Notes by Kivie Cahn-Lipman