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Performances in Innsbruck

Helen Coffey

Payment lists and chronicles of the far-flung regions visited by Maximilian’s court reveal the great variety of entertainments in which his musicians participated: dances, banquets, jousts, processions, carnivals and church music all featured here. It was for the most important feast days and political events, that Maximilian seems to have reserved the greatest displays of courtly ostentation. The Church’s high feasts of Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and Corpus Christi were all marked by appropriate processions and services that often involved the singers and organist of the Hofkapelle; Christmas and New Year were celebrated with performances outdoors by the court’s trumpeters; and Shrovetide involved all kinds of mummeries and dancing, jousts and weddings.[28]

Unfortunately, records of the court provide only glimpses of such performances in Innsbruck. Yet there is evidence of the repertoire that may have been performed in the palace there. A set of fragments from a large collection of sacred and secular polyphonic music, found in the Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek Linz (» A-LIb Cod. 529), is datable ca. 1490–1492 and probably derives from musicians of the Habsburg musical establishment (» K. The codex of Magister Nicolaus Leopold; » C. Kap. Handschriftliche Quellen zur Missa Salve diva parens). The pieces – song settings, French chansons, liturgical music, ceremonial motets – are largely copied here without texts and in arrangements suitable for instrumental players. A typical piece is the otherwise unknown fragmentary four-voice setting of a German song entitled simply “ein tagweiss” (morning song, alba) (» Abb. Ein tagweiss).

 

Abb. Ein tagweiss

Abb. Ein tagweiss

Fragmentary copy of a German song (tagweise, alba), for four voices (discantus, tenor, altus – bassus missing), probably used by instrumentalists of Maximilian’s court. Linz, Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek, » A-LIb Hs. 529, Nr. 20–21 (Foto: Robert Klugseder).

 

While court records offer only limited descriptions of performances in Innsbruck, ambassadors who visited from various regions of Europe often included details of musical events in reports of their dealings with the king. It is these accounts that will be explored below, as valuable sources of information about performances in Maximilian’s Innsbruck.

[28] Wiesflecker 1971-1986, vol. 5, 401-2.