Hermann Edlerawer

Born in the last decade of the fourteenth century, Hermann Edlerawer was an ordained clerk (in minor orders) of the diocese of Mainz, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in the winter of 1413/14, though there is no record that he took a degree. From 1427 he was in the service, in an unknown capacity, of Sigismund, King of the Romans (Holy Roman Emperor 1433), when he was awarded a coat of arms, and from 1434 of Duke Albrecht V of Austria, who was elected Sigismund’s successor as King of the Romans in 1438. On 27 January 1436 Edlerawer sealed a charter as administrator of the Schottenstift (Scottish monastery) in Vienna. Between about 1439 and about 1444[1] he was cantor at the collegiate school of St. Stephen in Vienna (named “Bürgerschule”, ”civic school”: » E. Musik im Gottesdienst, » H. Schule, Musik, Kantorei), and thus in charge of the Kantorey. In this capacity, he was an employee of the city of Vienna, which supervised the school. [2] It is in those same years that the Kantorey was substantially rebuilt and repaired at the corner of the churchyard precinct, above the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene. Edlerawer may also have been involved with the institution of an important endowment made by King Friedrich III in 1445 for the sacrament to be taken out by the priests of St. Stephen’s and St. Michael’s churches on the feast of Corpus Christi to the sick of the town and its suburbs in an elaborate procession involving specified vestments, a bell, flags and lanterns; as many as 32 boys of the choir were trained to sing the prescribed chants.[3]

Edlerawer clearly commanded considerable civic respect, and was called upon both as a jury member in court cases and as a witness of legal documents. In 1445 he dictated (pronunctiavit) to a scribe the response of the important statesman, humanist and poet Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) at a disputation at the University of Vienna, which had been held in the presence of King Friedrich III and Sigismund, duke of Tyrol, as well as Piccolomini himself.[4] From 1445 Edlerawer worked as a representative or ambassador of the city of Vienna, and in 1447 he acted as procurator at the tribunal of the imperial court, where he represented (in the legal sense) the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. At least in 1449, but probably also earlier, he received a full annual salary (jarsold) from the city (52 guilders).[5] By 1450 he had married and was in the service of Count Ulrich II of Celje (guardian of the under-age Ladislaus Postumus, king of Bohemia and Hungary, and duke of Austria). Ulrich died in 1456 at the hands of László Hunyadi, and in the same year Edlerawer presented a gold ring to the city of Vienna in lieu of tax. On 26 November 1457 he is documented as supervisor of the watch on one of the city gates, the Kärntner Tor.

Seven polyphonic compositions are ascribed to Edlerawer in Hermann Pötzlinger’s music book (» D-Mbs Clm 14274), the compilation of which more or less coincided with the former’s cantorship at St. Stephen’s. Pötzlinger graduated as a BA at the University of Vienna in 1439 (» G. Hermann Poetzlinger). In some cases Edlerawer is identified in D-Mbs Clm 14274 by his initials only (‘H.E.’), suggesting a degree of familiarity between him and the circle in which the manuscript was created (» Abb. Edlerawer in Clm 14274).

Abb. Edlerawer in D-Mbs Clm 14274

Attributions of compositions to Hermann Edlerawer in the St.-Emmeram-Codex, c. 1440 (» D-Mbs Clm 14274). Bayerische Staatsbibliothek urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00001643-7 (image nos below).

• Top left: fol. 10v Sequenz Verbum bonum et suave (Image no. 24)
• top right: fol. 97r Antiphon Beata viscera (Image no. 197)
• second row left: fol. 103r [Rondeau, untexted] (Image no. 209)
• second row right: fol. 103v Patrem dominicale(Image no. 210)
• third row left: fol. 114r Kyrie dominicale (Image no. 231)
• third row right: fol.135v Sequenz Sancti spiritus (Que corda nostra) (Image no. 274)
• bottom left: fol. 155v Sequenz Lauda sion salvatorem (Image no. 314).

This is the only musical source in which Edlerawer is mentioned by name, though one of the compositions, the sequence setting Lauda Sion, also appears anonymously in » I-TRcap 93* (» Hörbsp. ♫ Lauda sion salvatorem, Edlerawer). Six of Edlerawer’s surviving compositions are sacred in character, while the seventh is a secular work in the form of a rondeau (» Hörbsp. ♫ Rondeau Edlerawer). The rondeau was copied into D-Mbs Clm 14274 without its vernacular text, probably with the intention of adapting it to sacred use at a later stage. The years during which Edlerawer was cantor at St. Stephen’s (c.1439–c.1444) may be the only period of his life during which he had a significant engagement with music: He was either directly or indirectly involved during that time in teaching the boys of the choir to sing not only the staple diet of plainsong but also mensural polyphonic music. It seems likely that all of his surviving music was composed during that period.

The nature of Edlerawer’s surviving works reflects the fact that music was only a peripheral concern in the context of his career as a whole. For example, fauxbourdon – a simple form of three-part polyphony, derived from techniques of improvisation, in which the middle voice merely duplicates the upper voice a fourth below, while the tenor alternates between the sixth and the octave beneath the upper one – was normally used by other composers only for short compositions or for short sections within longer works. However, it was also employed by Edlerawer for a whole setting of the long text of the Credo, as well as for all of the alternate verses (in alternation with plainsong) of two whole sequences, the Pentecost text Sancti spiritus assit nobis gracia and the Marian text Verbum bonum.

Most polyphonic music of the time is in three parts, but three further works by Edlerawer – a Kyrie setting, a setting of the Marian communion Beata viscera and a textless song – are preserved in only two (discantus and tenor). This may indicate that he did not compose third (contratenor) parts for these works, or it may simply reflect the fact that the scribes of D-Mbs Clm 14274 (or of the sources from which they were copying) often did not copy out the contratenors, even of works for which they are known to have existed.

Edlerawer’s most ambitious work is the setting of alternate verses of the Corpus Christi sequence Lauda Sion, which is preserved incomplete in both D-Mbs Clm 14274 and I-TRcap 93*, but which included a full range of the techniques available at the time – contratenor parts, fauxbourdon, chant paraphrase, different mensurations (time signatures), imitation between two or even three parts, and so on – artistically used to create contrast between the verses.

Edlerawer’s music, then, may be modest in both quantity and quality, but the detailed knowledge we have of his life and career provides us with a fascinating case study of the engagement of a fairly important person of his time with the practice of polyphonic music in Vienna.