The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 26 (2020) No. 1

From “Seiten-Kunst” to “Fürsten Gunst”:
The Careers of the Anglo-German Musicians William, Christian, and Steffen Brade in the Context of the Thirty Years War

Arne Spohr*

Abstract

Music historiography has traditionally focused on the decline of musical culture in Germany between ca. 1620 and 1650 due to the Thirty Years War. It has tended to overlook individual cases of musicians who nevertheless found means to be successful. Taking the professional careers of three expatriate English musicians—the string player and composer William Brade and his sons, the lutenists Christian and Steffen Brade—as case studies, this article analyzes their careers within the changing conditions of courtly music institutions and patronage directly before and during the war, to show how these musicians successfully adapted to these changes.

1. Introduction

2. William Brade’s Career in Denmark and Northern Germany (1594–1630)

3. A Father and His Two Sons: The Brade Family Ensemble

4. Career Choices of British Expatriate Musicians during the Thirty Years War

5. Christian Brade: Lutenist and Valet de chambre

6. Steffen Brade: Lutenist and Soldier

Acknowledgments

Tables

Appendices

References

1. Introduction

1.1 Heinrich Schütz’s famous statement in the preface to the first part of his Kleine geistliche Konzerte (1636) lamenting the decline and destruction of “praiseworthy Music” in war-struck Germany is frequently quoted and echoed in the historiography of seventeenth-century German music.^[1] In his New Grove article on music in Germany after 1648, Ludwig Finscher calls the Thirty Years War “the greatest economic, cultural and political watershed in the German territories before World War II,” inviting comparison between the Peace of Westphalia and the “Stunde Null” in 1945.^[2] Similarly, Richard Taruskin and Christopher Gibbs entitle a chapter in their college edition of the Oxford History of Western Music very strikingly: “Ruin: Germany, the Thirty Years War, and Heinrich Schütz.”^[3]

1.2 While the devastating effect of the war on musical life in Germany cannot be denied, an over-generalizing view that focuses entirely on cultural destruction tends to overlook two aspects. First, the political, economic, and cultural conditions in the areas affected by the war differed greatly from region to region, and were moreover constantly changing during these thirty years.^[4] While many institutions and their patronage of music went almost completely into decline, some others remained intact. Besides the well-known example of the Dresden court,^[5] the dramatic deterioration of musical institutions can also be observed in many smaller courts. The Bückeburg court, for instance, was a thriving musical center in northern Germany before the war. During the reign of Count Ernst III of Holstein-Schaumburg, from around 1607 to his death in 1622, the court musicians comprised up to thirty instrumentalists and singers— equivalent to the size of a large royal or ducal Hofkapelle at the time. Some of those musicians were prestigious performers and composers, such as the British string players William Brade and Thomas Simpson, and the madrigal composer Johann Grabbe who had studied in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli.^[6] By the 1630s, however, there were only three musicians left, one of them Grabbe, who now had to work additionally as a Kornschreiber (grain clerk).^[7] On the other hand, there were also a few places and institutions that were virtually untouched by the effects of war, and were even economically and culturally thriving—for instance, the Free Imperial City of Hamburg, which continued to be a major center of musical patronage, performance, composition, and publishing. Hamburg owed its fortunate position not only to its massive fortification system, which had been completed just before the war reached northern Germany after Denmark’s defeat by Catholic forces in 1626, but also to the diplomatic skill of its government.^[8]

1.3 Second, even though there are many documented cases of musicians who struggled to survive, an over-generalized view of war-struck Germany as a “cultural desert” tends to overlook individual cases of musicians who found means to be professionally successful despite the decline of musical patronage during the war. It is the aim of this essay to analyze individual professional careers of musicians, to show how they adapted to and coped with the effects of war, not only to survive, but even to achieve professional success.

1.4 The careers of three members of a prominent Anglo-German family of musicians active on the continent before and during the war will serve as case studies: the string player and composer William Brade (ca. 1560–1630),^[9] and his sons Christian (ca. 1598–after 1628) and Steffen Brade (ca. 1600–49), who were both professional lutenists.^[10] Their activities in northern Germany and Denmark, so far as they are documented, span over fifty years: from 1594, when William is first recorded as an instrumentalist at the Danish court, to the death of Steffen in 1649 (see the chronology in Appendix 1). The careers of William, Christian, and Steffen Brade illustrate the changing structures of musical patronage and musical institutions in this period, and also point to successful ways to adapt to these changes. While the senior Brade was able to achieve success based solely on his musicianship, when court and city patronage still made this possible, his two sons successfully pursued dual careers during the war: Christian as lutenist and Kammerdiener (valet de chambre), Steffen as lutenist and soldier. In my examination of Christian and Steffen Brade’s careers, I specifically ask how their musicianship contributed to social advancement and success in the other profession.

2. William Brade’s Career in Denmark and Northern Germany (1594–1630)

2.1 William Brade was, along with John Dowland, Thomas Simpson, Walter Rowe, Peter Philips, and John Bull, one of the most influential English musicians active on the continent during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. During this time, English musicians made important contributions to continental music, particularly in Protestant areas, such as northern Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands. In particular, they left a lasting impact on continental instrumental ensemble repertoire (especially for strings), and on the development of idiomatic music for solo keyboard instruments, the viola da gamba, and the lute.^[11]

2.2 Having begun his continental career as an ordinary instrumentalist at the Hofkapelle of Christian IV in Denmark in 1594, Brade eventually managed to rise to the position of Kapellmeister at the court of Margrave Christian Wilhelm of Brandenburg in Halle in 1616. He was not only the first British musician to lead a German Hofkapelle, but he was also the first string player and composer of instrumental ensemble music to do so, since this particular specialization was at the time seen as new.^[12] In the years between 1618 and 1624, Brade was appointed Kapellmeister at the courts at Güstrow, Berlin, and Gottorf. Eight funerary poems published in Hamburg upon his death in 1630 point to his fame as a musician and the remarkably high social status that he had achieved there.^[13]

2.3 Brade’s importance for the transmission of British repertoire and performance practice to Germany and Denmark cannot be overstated. This is evident not only in his remarkable employment history, but also in his activities as a composer and teacher. Between 1609 and 1621, four of his collections of instrumental ensemble music were published in Hamburg, Berlin, and Antwerp. Moreover, Brade’s music is represented in three printed anthologies of ensemble music (see Table 1). He also composed a highly virtuosic set of ostinato variations for violin and bass, “the earliest solo violin piece by an Englishman,” according to Peter Holman.^[14] This piece, titled “Coral: Violino solo Basso del Sigr Wilhelm Brad:,” survives in a late manuscript source dating from the 1670s, kept in the Uppsala University Library, and points to Brade’s impressive skill as a solo performer on the violin.^[15] Even in recent studies it is often claimed that he was a viol player,^[16] but it is much more likely that he was fluent on both violin and viol, as was typical of many string players during much of the seventeenth century. Holman rightly stresses that between 1600 and 1650 the German term “Violen” was a generic term that could refer to both violins and viols.^[17]

2.4 Brade’s success was mainly possible through institutional changes that took place in Hofkapellen in northern Germany and Denmark around 1600.^[18] Smaller courtly music institutions in northern Germany around this time and before consisted mainly of only a few non-specialized musicians who were required to play a variety of wind and string instruments. For instance, in his 1580 Kapellordnung, Elector Johann Georg of Brandenburg demanded his musicians “to be available on all instruments, wind and others, none excluded …, to avoid a severe punishment by His Electoral Highness.”^[19] However, the Danish King Christian IV created a Hofkapelle that consisted of both this type of versatile musician and musicians who were hired as specialists.^[20] In this respect, he likely followed the model of the electoral court of Saxony, which was strongly connected to Denmark dynastically and politically. At the Dresden court, a band of Italian specialists in wind and string instruments had already been hired in the mid-sixteenth century.^[21]

2.5 Specialized musicians at the Danish court, such as Brade and the lutenist John Dowland, received much higher salaries and allowances than the ordinary, versatile instrumentalists of the older type (see Table 2): Dowland, for instance, received 500 daler annually, the cornettist Christopher Zetzinsky 420, Brade 320, while ordinary musicians received only 144 daler.^[22] (The Danish term rigsdaler or daler is the equivalent to the German Reichstaler.) The specialized musicians also had specific functions in courtly ceremony. For instance, they were publicly displayed on special occasions, particularly when foreign guests were present. As Prince Christian II of Anhalt-Bernburg reports from his visit to the Danish court in 1623, it was the custom that the instrumentalists were organized in small ensembles and performed on a rotating schedule, so that every day of the week a different ensemble with its individual skills and qualities could be heard.^[23]

2.6 During his second employment at the Danish court, from 1599 to 1606, William Brade’s duties most likely included playing solo string repertoire in a small chamber ensemble (similar to the “family ensemble” that he directed a few years later, to be discussed below), and also leading a court violin band. There is evidence from his third employment at the Danish court (1620–22) that he was then the leader of a large string ensemble. A diplomat from the Gottorf court, Gosche Wensin, recorded in 1622 in a letter to his employer, Duke Friedrich III, that he had heard “Wilhelm Brade and his lovely whole ensemble perform, and [also] several times marvelously, with instruments alone, on eight Violen”^[24] in Rosenborg Castle. As the wording of Wensin’s letter suggests, the instrumental ensemble of eight Violen (a term likely referring here to instruments of the violin family) was part of a larger ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists that Brade directed on this occasion (“whole ensemble”), and the large “whole” and instrumental ensembles performed successively. The fact that Brade led a group of eight string players suggests that the outer parts were doubled (assuming that the group played five-part repertoire), and that the ensemble represented an early form of an orchestral string band.^[25]

2.7 Some scholars have attributed the fact that Brade changed his employment about fifteen times during the thirty-six years of his continental activity (see Appendix 1) merely to his “restless” character and even to an “unhappy marriage.”^[26] I argue instead that Brade made active use of the cultural, political, and dynastic networks between northern German courts when they still had the economic means to afford cultural competition with each other. A closer look at the overall trajectory of his career suggests that Brade was not simply “restless” but successfully pursued professional and social advancement. As even a cursory glance at his career history reveals, almost every change of employment led to an improvement of his professional standing (at least until 1618, when he became Kapellmeister at Güstrow) and, accordingly, to an increase in his salary. When Brade was first employed at the Danish court in 1594 as an ordinary instrumentalist, he received an annual payment of 100 daler (a basic salary of 40 daler and 60 daler of allowances). Twenty-four years later, in 1618, he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Duke Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, with the impressive annual salary of 1000 Reichstaler.^[27] It was fortunate for Brade that he associated himself with the Danish court of Christian IV at a time when it became the cultural model for smaller courts in northern Germany, which were dynastically and politically linked to Denmark.^[28] While he could not move up in the institutional hierarchy of Danish court music, since the post of Kapellmeister was usually reserved for a singer or organist,^[29] he could make use of these networks to achieve his professional goal and become Kapellmeister at the courts of Halle, Güstrow, Gottorf, and Berlin. That Brade acted as an agent on behalf of his own career is illustrated, for instance, by his conflict with the previously mentioned Count Ernst III of Holstein-Schaumburg. In 1612 Brade decided to break his contract and run away from Bückeburg to seek new employment in Hamburg, despite his extremely generous salary of 400 Reichstaler that elevated him even above the status of the Kapellmeister.^[30] While Brade was forced to return to Bückeburg for the remainder of his contract period, the conflict with Count Ernst III did not hurt him in the long run: in the following year, Brade became the leader of the Hamburg Ratsmusik (town musicians), in a position that the city council had specifically created for him, even though Ernst III had previously attempted to ensure that Brade was denied entry to the city.

2.8 It is significant that Brade moved from Bückeburg to Hamburg to become a Ratsmusiker, regardless of his much lower annual salary there.^[31] This seeming paradox may be explained not only by the favored treatment that he received in the city (shortly after his arrival, the Hamburg mayor Hieronymus Vogler acted as godfather for Brade’s son Hieronymus), but also, more generally, by Hamburg’s role as one of Europe’s most important trading centers, not only for merchandise, but also for cultural commodities such as musical prints and instruments. Moreover, Hamburg was a place where musicians could make professional connections with members of the German nobility, who frequently passed through the city, and win them as potential future employers.^[32] Even though Brade’s tenure in Hamburg in 1613–14 was quite short, it offered him significant networking opportunities that were decisive for his later career. For instance, he likely performed at a meeting between King Christian IV and the Brandenburg Elector Johann Sigismund in November 1613, which would have provided him with an occasion to present a dedication copy of his collection of six-part pavans and galliards to the Elector (see Table 1). It seems highly plausible that this dedication led to the Elector’s attempt to recruit Brade for his Hofkapelle a year later. Even though this attempt was at first unsuccessful (Brade moved to Gottorf instead), it eventually led to Brade’s appointment as Kapellmeister in Berlin in 1619—a position that marks the peak of his professional career. That Brade was a highly sought-after musician, who could rely on a wealth of employment offers, is reflected in his simultaneous appointments as a non-resident musician (“von Haus aus”) in Gottorf, Bückeburg, and Hamburg between 1606 and 1609. His 1614 Gottorf contract specified that he was not allowed to “travel away from the court, without our gracious knowledge and command, and seek employment elsewhere.”^[33] This specification suggests that Brade had a reputation for leaving his employment contracts rather abruptly and without his employers’ permission.

2.9 Despite their often generalizing, genre-specific rhetorical tropes, the eight funerary poems for William Brade can give still further insights into the structures of courtly networks that he was able to use to his own advantage. One of the funerary poems suggests that Brade had caused rivalry among princes because every one of them wanted to become his patron and draw him to his court: “As a living person I was a light, [and also] an object of dispute to the princes.… I was a reason for peace, I was a reason for conflict. Everyone wanted to be my patron [“Maecenas”], wanted me to be his Maro.”^[34] The poem references both the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro and his wealthy patron Gaius Maecenas, who was a great supporter of the arts during the reign of Emperor Augustus. The eight poems also document the high social status that Brade had achieved during his professional life. They are found in a substantial collection of funerary poems held in Commerzbibliothek Hamburg, all the rest dedicated to illustrious Hamburg senators, scholars, and clergymen from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[35] To my knowledge, Brade’s poems are the only ones in this collection dedicated to a musician. It is remarkable that Brade achieved his upward social mobility through his profession as a violin player, a profession that was mostly associated with a low social status during Brade’s lifetime.^[36] Brade’s compatriot Thomas Sacheville, who had come to Germany as an actor and musician in the early 1590s, was able to achieve upward social mobility only after giving up his original professions and becoming a textile merchant.^[37] Brade, however, owed, to quote the funeral poem by his student David Cramer, “the happy end of his troublesome life” to the “excellent art” of his string playing.^[38]

2.10 The string player Brade was ultimately successful because he drew upon three distinct professional skills that made him particularly desirable for courtly and civic employers: he was a renowned virtuoso, featured in a small chamber ensemble comprising him and his two sons Christian and Steffen (see further below); he directed large ensembles of vocalists and instrumentalists in his role as Kapellmeister; finally, he was a composer who provided repertoire for a variety of courtly and civic functions, particularly dancing, Tafelmusik, and, especially, ceremonial occasions such as tournament pageants at court festivals.^[39] Hardly any of his fellow expatriate English musicians could offer such a broad spectrum of musical expertise. For instance, Brade’s colleague at the Berlin court, the English viol player Walter Rowe (ca. 1684/85–1671), fulfilled important roles as chamber musician and teacher (during his long tenure at the Berlin court he taught numerous continental viol players), but he left hardly any compositions behind, presumably because his playing largely relied on improvisatory techniques. He also appears not to have assumed any leadership role in the Hofkapelle outside of the sphere of chamber music. Thomas Simpson (1582–?1628), Brade’s colleague in Bückeburg and Copenhagen, was a prolific and accomplished composer of instrumental ensemble music, yet, as in Rowe’s case, his activities as a performer on the violin and viol seem to also have been largely confined to the chamber: during his tenure in Bückeburg, for instance, he participated in the chamber ensemble designated as the Englische Music.^[40]

3. A Father and His Two Sons: The Brade Family Ensemble

3.1 Perhaps the senior Brade felt that his own career had been rather troublesome indeed, despite all his success, and therefore he had different plans for his sons Christian and Steffen. He had them trained as lutenists and not as violinists, likely because of the higher social status associated with the lute. As Sigrid Wirth has recently shown in her study of lute music at the Wolfenbüttel court, lutenists, especially in their elevated professional position as Hoflautenisten (court lutenists), “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.” Unlike ordinary court musicians, court lutenists had access to private chambers of princes; the soft, quiet sonic quality of their instrument symbolized and communicated their closeness to these intimate princely spaces. Not surprisingly, this unique access made them excellent candidates for spying, as can be illustrated by the example of John Dowland and his engagement at the Danish court. Furthermore, court lutenists often had the duty to teach the instrument to princely children, as was, for instance, the case at the Wolfenbüttel court, and frequently received princely favors and gifts, which signified their close connection to their noble patrons.^[41] Because of the privilege associated with the lute, this “noble instrument” (to quote from the title of Wirth’s book) contributed to the professional and social success of William Brade’s sons, as my following discussion of their careers will demonstrate.

3.2 Until relatively recently, very little was known about these two musicians. However, three sources, largely overlooked by musicologists, can add significant new insights into their careers.^[42] Central for the reconstruction of Steffen’s biography are two poems by leading poets of seventeenth-century Germany, one by Martin Opitz (1597–1639), written on the occasion of Steffen Brade’s marriage,^[43] the other by Simon Dach (1605–59) to commemorate his death.^[44] (For the complete poem by Dach and an English translation, see Appendix 2.) The third source, which contains illuminating biographical information on the other Brade son, Christian, is a manuscript containing Tischgespräche (dinner conversations) between court officials at the Gottorf court of the 1620s, compiled by court preacher and theologian Jacob Fabricius the Younger, and published in a critical edition in the 1960s.^[45] These three sources reveal that both Steffen and Christian Brade were not only sought-after musicians, but were also able to climb the social ladder, despite the devastating effects of the Thirty Years War.

3.3 Christian and Steffen Brade both received their first training as lute players, presumably through their father William, who, as a player of stringed instruments, might also have played the lute. William Brade’s letter of appointment to the Güstrow court expressly mentions his “two sons” who were still receiving his “instruction” (“Unterweisung”) at this time (1618).^[46] Christian Brade was most likely the older of the two. Since Christian received his first personal salary at the Brandenburg court in 1619 (possibly a sign that he had come of age by then), he seems to have been born in the late 1590s when his father served at the Danish court. As his name suggests, it was perhaps the Danish King Christian IV himself who had acted as his godfather. Steffen was possibly slightly younger than Christian, and was, as Dach’s poem suggests, born somewhere on the Jutland peninsula (i.e., either in the northern Danish part, or further south in Schleswig or Holstein), as the geographic designation “land of the Cimbern” indicates (“He soon left the Cimbri and the land that bore him”).^[47] Both Christian and Steffen were members of a family ensemble under the direction of their father, which was employed as a specialized chamber group at different courts in northern Germany and seems to have been similar in structure and function to other courtly chamber ensembles established in the early seventeenth century and comprising musicians of British origin. Examples of such chamber groups are the Engelländische Compagnia at the Württemberg court in Stuttgart under the direction of the English musician John Price (fl. 1609–41), the above mentioned Englische Music at the Bückeburg court, and a chamber ensemble consisting entirely or mostly of British musicians at the Danish court, active in the early 1620s.^[48]

3.4 Brade’s family ensemble is first traceable at the Gottorf court (1614–16) and is also documented at the courts in Halle (1616–18) and Güstrow (1618–19).^[49] Given the family members’ specializations, it likely consisted of a violin or viola da gamba, two lutes, and, occasionally, a bass instrument played by a musician who did not belong to the family (such as in Gottorf in 1614). With its combination of bowed and plucked instruments, this ensemble’s sound resembled that of an English mixed or broken consort, and the ensemble might have provided the context in which a solo piece such as Brade’s “Coral a Violino Solo” originated.^[50] In the following years until 1622, Steffen Brade is missing in the letters of appointment, whereas Christian received separate appointments as lutenist at Berlin and Copenhagen. The family ensemble reunited a final time between 1622 and 1624 at the Gottorf court.^[51] After 1624, the professional ways of the three Brades seem to have gone in different directions. The senior Brade stayed on in Gottorf as Kapellmeister from 1624 to 1626, and then moved to Hamburg, where he may have acted as musical director at one of the city’s main academic institutions (either the Johanneum or the Akademisches Gymnasium) in the final years of his life. Christian was in Halle between 1624 and 1625/6, and in 1626 he returned to Gottorf. In the same year he went to England on his own business. It is possible that he hoped to be appointed to the position of English court lutenist that had become vacant after John Dowland’s death the same year.^[52] However, in 1628 he was employed as a Kammerdiener at the court of Elector Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg. In the late 1620s and early 1630s, Steffen Brade traveled, as musician, to Sweden, France (Paris), and England, and eventually settled on a highly successful career as soldier in the service of the Swedish and Brandenburg armies.

4. Career Choices of British Expatriate Musicians during the Thirty Years War

4.1 When the Thirty Years War reached northern Germany, especially after Denmark’s military intervention and defeat by Catholic forces in 1625–26,^[53] it began to affect the lives of many court musicians in the region. Expatriate British musicians certainly had the option of returning to their countries of origin (unless they had fled the British Isles for religious reasons), but only a few of them successfully managed, or were willing, to move back. For instance, both Christian and Steffen Brade seem to have explored professional opportunities in England in the late 1620s, but were ultimately unsuccessful in their endeavors. Even though many of the expatriate musicians stayed in touch with their families in Britain (for instance, Walter Rowe went back to visit his mother near London in 1628),^[54] the difficulty of forming or cultivating connections with British patrons and musical institutions over a long distance, and the circumstance that many of the expatriates had established families in Germany, made the option of returning more challenging. One of the few who went back was the lutenist Maurice Webster, son of the Kassel and Bückeburg court musician George Webster; Maurice obtained a position at the English court in 1623, which he held until his death in 1635.^[55]

4.2 It was more common for British expatriate musicians to stay in Germany and adapt to the changing political and cultural situation. Some musicians stayed in the very same positions that they had held before the outbreak of the war. However, they often had to endure economic hardship, as in the case of Walter Rowe in Berlin: he not only suffered a steep decline in his salary, but also had not been paid for almost a year and was heavily in debt, as he states in his 1634 petition to Elector Georg Wilhelm in 1634. On top of that, Rowe had been robbed by pirates during his 1628 trip to England, losing a part of his fortune, his clothing, and musical instruments.^[56] Others fared even worse, such as Bückeburg court musician William Benton, who was shot by a Swedish soldier in 1638.^[57]

4.3 An alternative to staying in one place was to look for employment in those cultural centers of the Holy Roman Empire that had been less affected by the war. John Price, a London native and virtuoso on a variety of instruments (known, for instance, for his astounding ability to perform on the three-holed pipe and viola da gamba simultaneously), was employed at the Württemberg court in Stuttgart from around 1609 to 1628, until he was dismissed when the court music was largely disbanded after the death of Duke Johann Friedrich. A year later, he found employment at the Saxon court in Dresden, where he worked as “Cammer-Musicus und Instrumentist” under Heinrich Schütz until around 1636. His time in Dresden was briefly interrupted in 1634, when he was in the service of Prince-Elect Christian of Denmark and participated in the Great Wedding that took place in Copenhagen in the same year. Since his working conditions in Dresden were not favorable (Price unsuccessfully advocated for the establishment of a chamber ensemble under his direction, and like other members of the court music, he was not regularly paid), he and his son eventually moved to Vienna where they obtained positions as instrumentalists at the imperial court.^[58] Like Rowe and Price, Christian and Steffen Brade belonged to the group of British expatriate musicians who stayed in the German “job market,” yet they embraced the less common option of pursuing dual careers—an approach that turned out to work in their favor.

5. Christian Brade: Lutenist and Valet de chambre

5.1 It is important to stress that Christian’s and Steffen’s training and early careers point to their musical professionalism. Even though to date no music by them has come to light, they were clearly accomplished, even famous lutenists. Particularly Christian seems to have been counted among the best of his time. According to Gottorf court preacher Jacob Fabricius, the Administrator of Magdeburg, Margrave Christian Wilhelm of Brandenburg paid Christian a remarkably high annual salary of 400 Reichstaler, and gave him a singular gift of 1000 Reichstaler, Robes of Honor (“Ehrenkleider”), a horse, and a boy servant, and also intended to make him his personal valet de chambre. Moreover, Fabricius tells the anecdote that the Margrave praised his lutenist publicly while Christian was present; he said that he had heard many lutenists, but none had excelled him. According to another anecdote told by Fabricius, a Wolfenbüttel court lutenist, presumably Bernhard Gottschalck, refused to play in Christian’s presence, claiming that this musician was by far superior to himself.^[59]

5.2 Since lutenists and court valets de chambre both worked in the private sphere of the princely chamber, it is not surprising that their positions were occasionally combined, or that they switched from one position to the other: for instance, Esaias Reusner (1636–79), one of the most prominent lutenists of seventeenth-century Germany, worked as a fifteen year-old boy as a valet de chambre in the service of Princess Radziwill, while also receiving instruction in lute playing from a French lutenist.^[60] Wirth lists further examples of such court lutenists who were also valets de chambre in the first half of the seventeenth century, such as Georg Schimmelpfennig in Kassel, Guillaume Landroux in Cologne, and Mathias Mason in London. One may also add to this list the English lutenist and theorbist Johann (John) Stanley, who had been Christian Brade’s colleague in Copenhagen and Berlin, and later served as lutenist and valet de chambre at the Kassel court from 1631 to 1636.^[61] All these cases demonstrate how these two professions were interconnected because of their privileged access to intimate princely spaces.

5.3 Valets de chambre were generally more elevated in the hierarchy of courtly servants than court musicians, including lutenists: they often oversaw princes’ private expenses and regulated access to princes’ private chambers, were often in charge of servants, and often had servants at their own disposal, as Christian Brade did in Halle and later in Berlin.^[62] It seems more than likely that Christian became a valet de chambre in Halle and Berlin not least because of his reputation and skill as a lutenist. The wording of the draft version of his employment contract as Kammerdiener (1628) suggests this was the case: a passage in the contract, later crossed out, states: “Furthermore, he shall attend us [i.e., Elector Georg Wilhelm] with his lute playing, as often and whenever we desire.”^[63] The fact that this sentence was deleted during the process of employment negotiations can possibly be explained by a passage from Fabricius’s Tischgespräche recorded five years earlier (1623) at the Gottorf court, in which the court official Dionysius Podewils noted: “Christian the lutenist, the son of William Brade, has just told me that he wished that he had never touched a lute in his life, unless he would have saved so much money by age thirty that he could live freely and independently and would use the lute only for his own pleasure and not for the necessity [of having to earn money]. He estimates that he needs to have [a fortune of] 30,000 Reichstaler by then.”^[64] It appears that, in 1628 Christian decided that it was about time to use the lute “only for his own pleasure,” and thus he boldly refused the elector’s wish—an attitude illustrating his determination to climb the social ladder above the servant status of a musician who was forced to perform whenever and whatever his employer desired. That he was able to achieve this life goal that he had formulated so succinctly five years earlier is a clear indication of his socio-economic advancement, as well as his remarkable self-confidence.

6. Steffen Brade: Lutenist and Soldier

6.1 As the two poems by Martin Opitz and Simon Dach indicate, Steffen Brade was also an accomplished and famed lutenist. These two poems provide crucial information about his dual profession as soldier-lutenist and his remarkable career. According to Dach’s poem (see Appendix 2), Steffen received his training as both musician and soldier at a young age (“What he loved and favored, and what he pursued straightforwardly in his youth, were the honorable art of music and the brave virtue of war”), and it is possible that the order of professions given by Dach mirrors the actual chronology of his training. In view of surviving documents regarding his court appointments, it seems probable that he received his musical training until around 1618/19, when he is still mentioned in connection with his father at Güstrow, and his training as soldier in the following years, from around 1619 to 1622, when he is not mentioned as musician in the records of the courts of Berlin and Denmark. The following chain of events, so far as it can be reconstructed from Dach’s poem and archival documents, suggests that he first focused on his musical career, until the early 1630s, when his focus seems to have shifted towards the military profession. Steffen returned as lutenist to Gottorf, where he worked with his father and brother. He seems to have spent the years after 1624 traveling extensively. According to Dach, he first traveled to Stockholm and then to France, but the poet does not specify if these visits were related to musical or military business.

6.2 Steffen Brade’s entry in the album amicorum (friendship book) of Holsatian nobleman Johannes von Jessen was made in Paris and dates from July 23, 1630. Significantly, he wrote it in three languages—French, English, and German—demonstrating both his education and the fact that he was well traveled.^[65] Dach’s poem stresses that he had quickly acquired the “courtliness” (“Höffligkeit”) of the French language. Perhaps he came to Paris as he accompanied a young Scandinavian prince on his grand tour. Several other entries in Jessen’s album amicorum point at this possibility. Duke Friedrich, later King Friedrich III of Denmark, stayed in Paris for several months in the summer of 1630, and it is possible that Steffen was in his entourage.^[66] The fact that Steffen uses English in his entry for Jessen demonstrates that he was, like his brother Christian, still connected to the country of his family’s origins. According to Dach’s poem, Steffen traveled to England to follow his musical interests (“Therefore he developed his desire for her [i.e., music], and so he also went to England to pursue her friendship”), perhaps to look for appointment opportunities or to receive lessons from a British lutenist. This continuity of his musical activities again points to the true duality of his career, which Dach calls “two-fold art” (“zweyfache Kunst”).

6.3 The particular combination of Steffen Brade’s professions invites comparison with the better known Tobias Hume (?1579–1645), a Scottish soldier and viola da gamba player who served in the Swedish and Russian armies.^[67] Although Hume did not view himself as a professional composer and performer (he states in the preface to his First Part of Ayres of 1605, “My Profession being, as my Education hath beene, Armes”), he appears to have performed for Queen Anna, King James I, and royal and aristocratic visitors to the English court, such as Christian IV, in 1606–7, and his compositions display remarkable skill, inventiveness, and originality. Very little is known about Hume’s activities as a soldier and musician on the continent, although the fact that he received gifts, most likely for musical performances, at the courts of Wolfenbüttel and Gottorf in 1623 and 1624, indicates that he continued to perform on the viola da gamba in courtly settings in later life. However, Hume apparently never held an actual musical appointment: significantly, in both entries in the court account books he is listed with his military title, “Captain.”^[68] Steffen Brade’s and Tobias Hume’s dual careers went ultimately in very different directions: Brade died as a high-ranking military officer (see further below), while the Scottish soldier-musician spent the later years of his life, from 1629 to 1645, as a “poor brother” in the London Charterhouse, an almshouse for retired soldiers. One can only speculate about the reasons for the social and professional decline that Hume seems to have experienced in his older age. Perhaps this decline was owed to personal circumstances (such as his failing mental health), or perhaps his own instrument, the viola da gamba, did not offer him as many opportunities for professional and social advancement as “the most received instrument” (as Hume called the lute in his 1605 preface) would have.

6.4 Steffen Brade’s friendship with Martin Opitz possibly began in Paris in the summer of 1630 when the famous poet was also staying there: Opitz wrote his entry in Jessen’s album amicorum only two days after Brade.^[69] In his poem written for Steffen’s wedding, Opitz also mentions a time in which both were at a military camp (“als wir zu Felde waren”).^[70] Around 1634, Opitz stayed in the Silesian military camp of the Swedish Field Marshal (“Feldmarschall”) Johan Banér under whom Steffen Brade served as soldier.^[71] Brade married his wife Elisabeth during this time. The friendship between Brade and Opitz is also alluded to in Dach’s poem: “Did not Opitz praise him constantly, for his bravery and his sword? He preferred him to a thousand others, because of his knowledge of languages, his lute playing, and his mastery of weapons.”

6.5 As can be reconstructed from Dach’s poem, Brade began his military career first in the Swedish army under Field Marshal Herrmann Wrangel,^[72] Colonel Pierre Du Verge,^[73] and Banér, first as captain (“Capitein”), then as commander of dragoons and cavalry captain, before he entered the employment of Elector Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg. (Dates are uncertain, though as mentioned above, likely service with Opitz in 1634 provides a reference point.) Elector Georg Wilhelm promoted Brade to leading positions in the Brandenburg-Prussian army. He first served as commander in the administrative district of Samland before he was appointed “electoral major” (“churfürstlicher Major”) in the citadel of Pillau near Königsberg, a position he held until his death in 1649. After an adventurous life, during which he must have encountered many dangerous situations (“How many bullets, how many thrusts did his body receive, his whole head was full of bumps, his body rutted by many wounds”), he eventually died peacefully. In the words of the title of Dach’s poem, the “late noble, honorable, and valiant Stephan Brade, Esq., well-appointed electoral Prussian major in the Fortress of Pillau, etc. … fell asleep, softly and blessedly, in Pillau, on May 28, and received, in the said place, a respectable burial on July 22.” Steffen Brade’s name is mentioned several times in an early twentieth-century Brandenburg-Prussian military history,^[74] suggesting that further research will likely uncover more details of his life and his military accomplishments.

6.6 Despite all of its poetic licenses and imagery, Simon Dach’s funerary poem not only allows a reconstruction of several facts of Steffen Brade’s life, little known until recently, it also illustrates the remarkable social advancement that Steffen experienced during the violent events of the Thirty Years War. The dedication of this extensive poem to him (comprising thirty-four stanzas), which must have been commissioned by a person of high rank, points to the high status that Brade had acquired within the political and cultural elite of Brandenburg-Prussia at the time of his death. This high status is also suggested by Brade’s friendship with Opitz and his acquaintance with Dach, two of the most prominent poets of seventeenth-century Germany.

6.7 As Dach emphasizes, Steffen Brade achieved this social position not only because of his bravery as a soldier and his intelligence as a commander, but also because of his education and his musical abilities. It was Brade’s “Seiten=Kunst,” his “artistic side,” i.e., his art of lute playing, that would have enabled him as a soldier to gain “manches großen Fürsten Gunst”: “the favor of many great princes.” Because of his dual profession as soldier and musician he was able to use music as cultural capital for his career as a soldier, a career that surpassed that of his father William, even though (or, in view of his career as soldier, rather because) it took place during the devastating Thirty Years War.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous JSCM readers, the JSCM editor Lois Rosow, and my colleagues Gregory Decker and Geoffrey Howes (Bowling Green) for offering their valuable suggestions and helpful corrections. I would also like to express my profound gratitude to Peter Holman (Colchester/Leeds), not only for his insightful comments on this article, but also (and especially) for encouraging me to begin my research on Anglo-German musical exchange when I was a graduate student over twenty years ago.

Tables

Table 1. Printed sources of William Brade’s music

Table 2. Instrumentalists in the Danish Hofkapelle and their annual salaries, 1598–1606

Appendices

Appendix 1. William Brade and his sons: a chronology

Appendix 2. Poem by Simon Dach commemorating the death of Steffen Brade