Music From The Time Of Tilman Riemenschneider

Description

Music from the Time of Tilman Riemenschneider (c.1460-1531)Tilman Riemenschneider was born about the year 1460and grew up in a Germany that still belonged to theMiddle Ages. The latest artistic currents flowed fromFlanders and Northern France, in particular from therich Burgundian possessions of Antwerp and Bruges. InItaly a new world was dawning, but none of this was yetfamiliar to W??rzburg, a town then of six or seventhousand inhabitants, on the river Main, midwaybetween Frankfurt and Nuremberg. It was there thatTilman Riemenschneider settled in 1483, became amaster sculptor and set up his own workshop.Unlike D??rer or Holbein, both of whom werecelebrities in their own time, Riemenschneider, nowgenerally regarded as one of the leading Germansculptors of the Late Gothic, was soon forgotten, withinterest only reviving in the nineteenth century, bywhich time almost all his work had been destroyed,altered or at any rate removed from its original location.Almost everything we know about his life, therefore,comes from public records, municipal accounts,business contracts and details of payments. Theseprovide evidence of a successful master of his craft whorose to a position of high esteem in the community. Heserved not only on the lower council of the city ofW??rzburg, but also four times on the much morepowerful upper council, where seven citizens (one ofthem from the ranks of the craftsmen and artisans)balanced the seven clergy chosen from the cathedralchapter. Resentment smouldered constantly towards thechurch and its clergy, owing to their special privilegesand exemption from the normal taxes. During thePeasants' War, Riemenschneider joined with othermembers of the city council in refusing to allow theircity to be used as a military base against the peasants,but the local prince-bishop had his revenge. In 1525Riemenschneider was subjected to prolongedquestioning and torture, after which part of his estateswere seized.During the first half of the fifteenth century thefinest breeding-ground for musical ideas was Flanders,part of the northern possessions of the duchy ofBurgundy. Germany was relatively slow to embrace thelatest developments, and it was a blind organist fromNuremberg, Conrad Paumann, who had an importantplace, from 1450 onwards, in transmitting Franco-Flemish polyphony and its repertories to Germanaudiences. A copy of his Fundamentum organisandiwas bound together with a manuscript now called theLochamer Liederbuch (c.1452-60), which shows theearliest signs of the assimilation of the more subtlenorthern polyphony into the German secular tradition.Two other manuscripts of the period, the SchedelLiederbuch (1460-67) and the Glogauer Liederbuch(c.1480), contain rather more substantial collections ofsecular songs and sacred works.Songs have always been passed from one musicianto another, and often the recipient likes to adapt orinvent according to preference. The songs of this periodcan be found spread over a wide area, presented in avari