The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 25 (2019) No. 1

Weil es ein zierlich und lieblich ja nobilitiert Instrument ist: Der Resonanzraum der Laute und musikalische Repräsentation am Wolfenbütteler Herzogshof 1580–1625. By Sigrid Wirth. Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 34. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017. [384 pp. ISBN 978-3-447-10717-4.]

Reviewed by Alex Fisher^*

1.1 In the third volume of his Syntagma musicum (1619) Michael Praetorius, chapelmaster to the dukes of Braunschweig and Lüneburg, writes of the lute that it is a “fine, lovely, and indeed a noble instrument,” a pithy description that provides a strong opening gambit for Sigrid Wirth’s new book on the lute and its contribution to courtly representation at Wolfenbüttel and environs.^[1] Wirth’s twin goals, outlined clearly in her introductory chapter (pp. 20–21), are to explore the significance of the lute and its music for the ducal court, and to analyze the forms of courtly representation enabled by the lute and music more generally, all within a cultural-historical frame. To a significant degree this requires stepping out of the lengthy shadow cast by the figure of Praetorius, who, thanks to his impressive body of published music and theoretical writings, has tended to dominate the musical historiography of the Wolfenbüttel court. The chapel of which Praetorius was the titular head naturally projected the public face of ducal worship and representation, but it is one of Wirth’s notable contributions to redirect our attention to the far more intimate and private spaces of the court, where the softer sounds of the lute created a distinctive “resonant space” that symbolized the power and cultivation of the ducal family no less profoundly than did the music-making of the formal chapel. Wirth concerns herself less with lute repertory as such, and still less with organology, than with the cultural significance of lutenists in the early modern court. She makes a convincing case that lutenists—and the rarefied figures of “court lutenists” [Hoflautenisten] in particular—occupied a remarkably high social position at court relative to other types of musicians, enjoying unparalleled traffic and intimacy with the highest members of the nobility. Some lutenists, like the long-serving Gregorius Huwet (court lutenist 1591–1616) and John Dowland, who spent time at the Wolfenbüttel court in 1594–95, approached the status of “stars”: Huwet’s intimate relationship with Duke Heinrich Julius (r. 1589–1613) is surely the best example and one that Wirth returns to repeatedly in the course of her book.

1.2 To advance her thesis Wirth deploys an explicit set of theoretical arguments adapted from the ideas of both German and international scholarship, with significant keywords repeatedly highlighted  (somewhat awkwardly, in this reader’s view) in italic typeface. The guiding concept is the “resonant space” of the lute (Resonanzraum der Laute), describing not simply the acoustic environment surrounding the person of the duke, but also the broader symbolic, emotional, and social connotations of the lute’s sound: Heinrich Julius’s dispatch of the lutenists Huwet and Dowland to the court of Count Moritz of Kassel in 1595, for instance (pp. 248–70), was one way in which the duke’s Resonanzraum could be projected outside of his intimate chambers. Wirth’s Resonanzraum enjoys a close relationship with the notion of what might be translated as the “princely soundscapes” (Herrscherliche Hallräume) discussed in the work of Jörg Jochen Berns, a prominent theorist of the aesthetics of courtly ceremonial; both Wirth and Berns argue that it was instrumental sound above all that bore the most profound representational associations for courts such as that of Wolfenbüttel (pp. 132–34).^[2] The “spatial turn” in Wirth’s work is enhanced as well by thoughtful engagement with the work of Martina Löw on the material and symbolic construction of space, by Brandon LaBelle’s work on acoustic territories, and by Arne Spohr’s explorations of the “invisible music” patronized by Christian IV of Denmark, Dowland’s later employer (pp. 38–42).^[3] Throughout her book Wirth deftly traces the networks of influences and relationships that weave the web of the Resonanzraum, building on the theory of “relational aesthetics” proposed by Nicolas Bourriaud and developed in an explicitly musical context as “relational musicology” by Nicholas Cook (pp. 37–41).^[4] In Wirth’s telling the Resonanzraum is a “a relational space”  in which the lute, the lutenist, and its music participate in the creation of an idealized representational discourse, one that connects both to other forms of courtly art (plays, visual art, architecture, etc.) as well as to a wider geographical network of musicians, princes, and regional courts with close ties to Wolfenbüttel, like those of Denmark, Saxony, Brandenburg, and Prague.

1.3 Wirth’s introductory chapter lays out these theoretical frameworks before offering biographical sketches of the three Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg who reigned during the period of her study: Julius (1528–69), Heinrich Julius (1564–1613), and Friedrich Ulrich (1591–1634). While Julius remained committed to a traditional model of a modestly-sized musical ensemble devoted mainly to religious and ceremonial functions, Heinrich Julius ushered in a period of expansion and professionalization in his Hofkapelle, and participated personally in the aesthetics of court representation through his composition of plays performed by visiting troupes of English actors. Heinrich Julius emerges as a key personality in Wirth’s book, the patron of Praetorius, Huwet, and Dowland, and the focal point of the lute’s Resonanzraum. While maintaining a court lutenist remained important to Friedrich Ulrich (initially Huwet, followed by Behrendt Gottschalck), his reign was, in general, a period of musical retrenchment. In Chapter 2 Wirth turns to the position of the lute at the Wolfenbüttel court, tracing the pedagogy of the instrument—the “formative” soundscape (formativer Hallraum)—at Latin schools and at the University of Helmstedt, as well as the educational journey of Huwet’s predecessor, Thobias Kühne (pp. 53–83). Wirth uncovers considerable evidence that members of the ducal family itself played the instrument (pp. 84–107), whose delicate and quiet sound was incorporated within an “internalized” soundscape (verinnerlichter Hallraum).

1.4 Chapter 3, the longest in the book, thoroughly explores the social position of lutenists at the ducal court and offers many rich insights, despite the fact that it was precisely the most intimate spaces surrounding the duke that tended to resist documentation (pp. 160, 245–48). Lutenists, Wirth argues, were exceptionally versatile and were easily able to navigate the boundaries that were so carefully maintained between the public and the private sphere; especially evocative is her account, echoing the work of Berns, on the various “sound curtains” (Klangkulissen) that acoustically marked each of these spaces, ranging from trumpet ensembles for ceremonial occasions to entertainment music for the princely table, and finally to the intimate sounds of lutes and citterns in private quarters (pp. 186–97); “the quieter, the closer” to the person of the duke, in Berns’s words.^[5] Court lutenists like Huwet were extraordinarily privileged relative to the other musicians of the chapel, and as servi delectabiles (pp. 208–9) were the frequent recipients of gifts and favors that bound them ever more closely to the person of the duke (pp. 222–29). Was Huwet, in fact, a “star”?  On this question Wirth takes a moderate position, placing him somewhere between a “star” and a “favorite”; his principal activity, after all, took place in the private sphere, far from the eyes and ears of the public (pp. 245–47). Nevertheless, the sound of Huwet’s lute was indeed a form of “musical heraldry” (p. 206) that represented the duke both at home and abroad. Wirth concludes this chapter by reviewing John Dowland’s sojourn at the court of Heinrich Julius, explaining the mutually advantageous nature of his brief engagement for both men (pp. 248–70). Wirth’s final chapter explores music as a relational medium in the context of court festivals, focusing on the 1585 wedding of Heinrich Julius with Dorothea of Saxony, a series of festal events hosted by Heinrich Julius at the Wolfenbüttel court in the 1590s, and the visit of the crown-prince Christian IV of Denmark in 1595. Wirth argues effectively that these festivals, deliberately organized as a synaesthetic stimulation of all of the senses, functioned as semiotic “total artworks” (p. 275)^[6] and were the loci classici for princely representation (p. 273). It is here that Wirth makes a significant contribution not simply to the musical history of the Wolfenbüttel court, but to a history of the senses more broadly.

1.5 Wirth’s Resonanzraum der Laute offers valuable new perspectives that not only enrich the existing (and rather outdated) literature on the Wolfenbüttel court, but will also encourage new research on the private, intimate soundscapes that contrast with the public profiles of early modern court chapels. It also draws welcome attention to the lutenists who both projected resonant space and were able to serve as cultural mediators both within and outside of the courtly context. Finally, as a contribution to the emerging field of sound studies, Wirth’s Resonanzraum der Laute provides a model for how we might augment the reconstruction of acoustic spaces with a broader understanding of music’s social, symbolic, and emotional profile.