You are here

The Schubingers from Augsburg

Markus Grassl

Like many professional instrumentalists since the fifteenth century, Augustin Schubinger came from a family in which this profession was practiced by several members over multiple generations.[3] The first known member of the Schubinger dynasty of wind players was Ulrich (the Elder), Augustin’s father. Ulrich’s career is already typical of the social and economic rise that instrumentalists achieved during the fifteenth century through their association with urban and court institutions. Ulrich Schubinger worked as a city piper in Augsburg from as early as 1457; he is regularly referred to as “Ulrich von Landsberg” in the Augsburg accounting books, the so-called Baumeisterbücher,[4] which suggests that he probably migrated from Landsberg am Lech, only 40 km away. Thus, he belonged to the ensemble of wind players that initially consisted of three musicians, and from 1447 onwards, four.[5] The imperial city of Augsburg, which flourished culturally and economically during the late Middle Ages, maintained this ensemble as the official bearer of urban musical life, like many municipalities in southern Germany from as early as the late fourteenth cyentur.[6]

 

In 1471, Ulrich Schubinger is documented in Innsbruck at the court of Duke Sigismund of the Tyrol.[7] He returned to his position in Augsburg by 1477 at the latest, where he remained until his death in 1491/92. His reputation and wealth are evidenced by the Augsburg tax records from the 1470s and 1480s, which show that “Meister” (master) Ulrich, like other city pipers, belonged to the upper 10–15% of Augsburg taxpayers.[8]

Ulrich had several sons: besides Augustin, there were Michel (c. 1450 – c. 1520), Ulrich the Younger (c. 1465 – c. 1535), and Anthon (c. 1470 – after 1511). They also achieved successful careers that culminated in positions in the service of princes of the Holy Roman Empire and in northern Italian city-states.[9] Their beginnings, of course, lay in Augsburg, where the Schubinger brothers, it is assumed, were trained by their father and initially also entered municipal service. Michel became a city piper in 1472,[10] possibly replacing his father, who is not documented in Augsburg from that year until 1476, and was probably employed elsewhere.[11] Upon returning to Augsburg, Ulrich the Elder received a payment in 1477 for “seine Sun für ain claid” (a garment for his sons).[12] As Keith Polk has plausibly argued, Michel left the city that same year, apparently to work for Maximilian I.[13] His position was likely taken over by the next oldest son, namely Augustin. In any case, Augustin seems to have regularly appeared as a city wind player in the Augsburg sources from 1481 onwards and remained in this position—apart from a short stint at the court of the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1484/85[14]]—until 1487.[15] In 1482, the third of the Schubinger brothers, Ulrich the Younger, was also appointed as a city piper. Thus, from this point on, three of the four Augsburg wind players were Schubingers for several years—a not entirely unusual constellation, as members of a family frequently clustered in courtly and municipal instrumental ensembles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[16]

[3] Initial insights into the biographies of the members of the Schubinger family are mainly owed to Keith Polk. See especially Polk 1989a (with numerous source references); Polk 1989b.

[4] See e.g., D-Asa Baumeisterbücher, vol. 55 (1457), fol. 112v (https://lod.academy/bmb/id/bmb-bm-03uw/1), vol. 56 (1458), fol. 120v (https://lod.academy/bmb/id/bmb-bm-0436/1), vol. 57 (1459), fol. 122v (https://lod.academy/bmb/id/bmb-bm-04cw/1).

[5] D-Asa Baumeisterbücher, vol. 45 (1447), fol. 82r–82v (https://lod.academy/bmb/id/bmb-bm-06yu/1); cf. also Polk 1992a, 237.

[6] Generally on the institution of urban wind ensembles in late medieval Germany, see Polk 1987; Polk 1992a, 108–114; Green 2005; Green 2011; Neumeier 2015, 143–172; specifically on Augsburg, see Green 2012. These studies will be expanded here in  » E. Musiker in der Stadt to cities of the Austrian Region.

[7] Senn 1954, 7.

[8] Polk 1989a, 498, note 1; Polk 1989b, 90, note 6; Polk 1987, 179.

[9] Moreover, the Augsburg accounting books from 1521 record a trumpeter named Jörg Schubinger in the service of Cardinal Matthäus Lang; D-Asa Baumeisterbücher, vol. 115 (1521), fol. 32v (“Item i guldin Jorigen Schubinger des Bischoffs von Saltzburg trumetter”), see Birkendorf 1994, vol. 3, 247. Further details, particularly the family relationship to other Schubingers, about this musician are currently unknown.

[10] Previously, he was recorded in Innsbruck in 1471 together with his father. See Senn 1954, 21.

[11] Polk 1989a, 495, speculates, with a view to the later careers of his sons, about a stay in Italy, which is not documented.

[12] D-Asa Baumeisterbücher, vol. 70 (1477), fol. 92v.

[13] Green 2005, 22–23.

[14] D-Asa Ratsbücher, vol. 10 (1482–1484), fol. 124r; see Green 2005, 23.

[15] The entries in the Augsburg accounting books that record Schubinger as a town piper are: D-Asa Baumeisterbücher, vol. 74 (1481), fol. 64v; vol. 75 (1482), fol. 62v; vol. 76 (1483), fol. 53v; vol. 77 (1484), fol. 60r; vol. 78 (1485), fol. 52v; Ratsprotokolle vol. 10 (1484), fol. 124r; Baumeisterbücher, vol. 79 (1486), fol. 62r; vol. 80 (1487), fol. 65r. (The accounting books from the years 1478 to 1481 have not survived).

[16] For example, at the end of Maximilian I’s reign, the trumpet corps included Ludwig (Lutz) Mayer (Mair) and his sons Georg (Jurig) and Christoph. See the court personnel list of 1519 in Fellner/Kretschmayr 1907, 141, as well as Senn 1954, 20 and 22; Wessely 1956, 104–106. On Vienna musician families, see » E. Instrumentalisten und ihre Kunden. Cf. also the detailed reconstruction of family relationships within the urban instrumental ensembles of Florence in McGee 1999, 732–736.