2021/01/01 by Richard Charteris, Charteris, Richard
Arts and Humanities · #Historical and Archaeological Studies #Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland #Medieval European History and Architecture
paper · doi:10.23636/1194
openalex publication_date 2021/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
This study contains the first detailed survey of the art works connected to the influential Augsburg Kantor_, composer, teacher and music theorist Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625) and demonstrates that they are much more plentiful and widespread than previously realized. For instance, this survey examines nineteen portraits of Gumpelzhaimer whereas only four are mentioned in recent works on the composer, and in the case of one portrait expands the number of known exemplars from six to twenty-nine. Other materials studied here comprise four contemporary printed art works with two of Gumpelzhaimer’s canons and another with one; eleven of his autograph items in Stammbücher_ with art work and music; seven contemporary drawings, a number of which have music; eleven contemporary engravings for which he created music; and nine seventeenth-century oil paintings, some of which include his music. The art works date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries and played an important role in cementing Gumpelzhaimer’s reputation, not least because some of the artists involved were well known. The images shed new light on Gumpelzhaimer and his music, on his interactions with artists and other figures, on his musical, literary and historical interests and on his standing among his contemporaries. In addition, this study includes significant revelations about Adam Gumpelzhaimer’s music treatise Compendium musicae_ which appeared in thirteen editions between 1591 and 1681 and was used extensively throughout Europe. Its editions include art works, theoretical material and musical compositions by Gumpelzhaimer and other composers and mostly comprise canons, but also include bicinia, motets, hymns, instrumental pieces and other items. Gumpelzhaimer made extensive changes to the music treatise and many of them are explored for the first time. The musical items vary throughout the editions and in some cases Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) and others overlook or mischaracterize the composers represented in certain editions. An inventory of the musical works in the series with indications of the specific editions which include them has previously been unavailable in the literature and one appears in Appendix I; it establishes that the series contains more than 350 musical compositions and examples. RISM indicates the whereabouts of the editions, but as this study shows some of its listings are erroneous or overlook certain copies. Several unique copies in the British Library are examined including a sumptuously bound copy which Gumpelzhaimer presented to a distinguished relative. Adam Gumpelzhaimer’s Compendium musicae_ influenced other authors and two are singled out in this study because of important new evidence about them. Until now it has escaped notice that the English editor, composer and music theorist Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1589–c. 1630) appropriated twenty-six canons from Gumpelzhaimer’s Compendium musicae_. In his Pammelia_ published in London in 1609 and reprinted in 1618, Ravenscroft presented the latter canons as anonymous compositions and since then commentators about Pammelia_ and editors of its music have treated these works in the same manner. As the present study reveals, twenty-three of the relevant canons were composed by Gumpelzhaimer and the remaining three were produced by other composers. The other author investigated here is the German Kantor_, music theorist and teacher Maternus Beringer (b. 1580; d. after 1632), who appropriated thirty-three canons from Gumpelzhaimer’s Compendium musicae_. The present study establishes that they comprise twenty-nine by Gumpelzhaimer, three by Giovanni Matteo Asola (c. 1532–1609) and one by an unknown composer. Beringer included them without attribution in one of his music treatises published in 1610. In the eighteenth century and again in the mid-twentieth century, three canons were attributed to William Byrd (c. 1540–1623) and thereafter the attributions were questioned without establishing their origin. This study demonstrates that they derive from Gumpelzhaimer’s Compendium musicae_ and that he composed two of them.