Professional Musicians

in the Service of the Townspeople

The Turner, or tower watchmen (also known as waits), had an informative and protective function in the service of the townspeople. By blowing their trumpets, trombones and pipes they marked the time of day, announced the arrival of important visitors riding into town and attended their entry, saw them out again when they left, and made the people aware of dangers.
In Innsbruck they lived at the top of the city tower, numbering four in all from 1570 on. The city tower watchman Hans Wentseisen (†1636) newly hired in August 1600 was obliged to keep at least three journeymen. He was allowed to play music with them at festivities held by the burghers, including dancing. Only at carnival time were other Spielleute (minstrels) also allowed to play in Innsbruck, for the city’s tower watchmen alone were unable to meet the demand for music then. Adam Gogl, a Spielmann (minstrel) from Steinach, settled in Hötting in 1582 and applied to the city “for permission to play strings in spite of the tower watchman.” An agreement was not reached with the city tower watchman until four years later, namely that the latter “would allow him a reasonable amount of going around to entertain (hofieren) freely and making music.”[1] In 1575 and 1582 the city did not permit violinists from Hall to go “Hofieren” in Innsbruck, but required that the Innsbruck tower watchman “play with one, two or more of the same if anyone wishes it.” In Hall the signals given to the population from the parish church tower were made by a “Heerhorn” (Hornwerk), a mechanically played organ, until 1523. After that date a Turner and his journeymen moved into the tower.[2]
Two night watchmen kept watch in Bruneck around the mid-19th century. While one of them patrolled the streets every hour singing, the other rang a small bell in the Rainturm (tower) every quarter of an hour to indicate he was on guard. In case of fire he rang one of two larger bells, depending on where the fire was. Official communiqués of the municipal magistrate refer to a town crier. He began and ended his messages by beating the big municipal drum. In Innsbruck the news on 31 March 1799 that Mantua had capitulated was announced by a “trumpet blast” from the city tower.[3]
The municipal tower watchmen in Innsbruck were constantly feeling harried by minstrels coming from elsewhere when it came to the work they did on the side to make their living. This was to play at weddings, for public entertainment, dances, in inns, and on the streets in their town. Thus for instance, in 1545 “Italian pipers and fiddlers who wanted to go from door to door” were not tolerated. Foreign minstrels were again turned out in 1582. The Innsbruck city tower watchman and Spielgraf (head of the minstrels’ guild) Bartlmä Kätl insisted in December 1645 in Sterzing that the Spielleute there “were to stay in that place with their violin playing” and were not allowed to play in Innsbruck for any length of time unless upon demand. Gentlemen in the Innsbruck court and the government had the right to bring Italian Spielleute to Innsbruck for their festivities at their institutions and family homes, but the minstrels were allowed to stay on no longer than one week after their performance. The Spielleute of Rattenberg, Kufstein and Kitzbühel in 1643 wanted “peripatetic musicians” to be expelled. Despite repeated attempts to exclude foreign Spielleute from performing in the Tyrol, a few always kept managing to provide their entertainment there, such as, in Innsbruck, two Italian (“welsche”) ones in 1544 and two from Carinthia in 1545. In the town hall of Sterzing a “Netherlander with a harp” provided the music in honor of high-ranking guests in 1536. A Venetian legation in Trent on the way to Emperor Friedrich III in 1492 heard a “buffoon” (Possenreisser), who accompanied a female singer on several instruments, followed by trumpet players and singers when they dined at the Löwen Inn.[4]
In the early 17th century the doctor and scholar Hippolyt Guarinoni (1571-1654), active mainly in Hall and Schwaz, disapproved of the Spielleute in Tyrol “with their improper fiddling and playing or singing” who bewitched the people and “tempted and inspired” them to all kinds of immoral behavior. The municipal and provincial “authorities” should “frown on theminstrels,” for just recently at a wedding “theminstrelswere requested and told to play the most disgraceful songs not only on their instruments but also to accompany them with their voices.”[5]
As early as 1451 the Tyrolean Spielleute were united in a guild, the “Spielgrafenamt an der Etsch und im Inntal.” In the Churches of Our Lady in Wilten and Terlan, where their daily offertory candle was lit, they met once a year for mass, consultation, and doing their accounting. The guild was headed by a Spielgraf appointed by the Tyrolean ruler. His duties were to supervise the observance of the guild’s regulations, settle disputes, and protect the minstrels from outside competition and mutual crookedness. The Spielleute paid him an annual fee, for which he issued them a license (Spielzettel). How the government in Innsbruck regulated the minstrelssocially in the practice of their profession is indicated by an ordinance dated 15 October 1572. It lists the “lute players, violinists, fifers, drummers, bagpipe players and other pipers” as being the instrumentalists who played at weddings, church dedication days, “or any other happy occasions.” Towards the end of the 18th century the government left it up to the Spielgraf to collect the dance tax in the inns as a fee (Lehen). The first Spielgrafen registered by name were the court trumpeters Jeronime Seeger (1463-1508) and Marx Perner (1513-1560). The office was often granted to court musicians, e.g. in 1636 to the falsetto Elias Racholdinger or in 1665 to the violinist and cornet player Martin Gasteiger. In the 18th century it was held by, among others, the court bass singer, theorbo player and timpanist Franz Anton Boussier and from 1733 on by his sons Franz Karl Boussier and Josef Philipp Boussier. Sometimes Innsbruck tower watchmen held it, e.g. Vigil Etlhamer in 1527, Hans Wentseisen in 1600 and Bartlmä Kätl in 1643. The Bavarian government abolished the office of Spielgraf in 1808. From then on the regional courts (Landgerichte) issued letters patent for musicians.[6]

Fussnoten

[1] Quoted as in Lambert STREITER, “Die ‘Turner’ von Innsbruck,” Pfarrblatt für Innsbruck, Hötting und Mühlau 12, no. 4 (1931) p. 7.
 
[2] Lambert STREITER, “Die ‘Turner’ von Innsbruck,” Pfarrblatt für Innsbruck, Hötting und Mühlau 12 (1931) no. 4, p. 6ff; no. 5, p. 5ff;
Lambert STREITER, “Die Innsbrucker Pfarrkantorei,” Pfarrblatt für Innsbruck, Hötting und Mühlau 10 no. 8 (1929) p. 8f;
Konrad FISCHNALER, Innsbrucker Chronik 2, Innsbruck 1929, p. 41, 126, 129;
Walter SENN, “Pfarrschule und Kirchenchor: Die Musikkapelle des Damenstiftes,” Haller Buch (Schlern-Schriften 106), Innsbruck 1953, p. 438.
 
[3] Pauline and Karl MEUSBURGER, “Aus dem alten Bruneck (Ungefähr 1830-1870),” Der Schlern 4 (1923) p. 2, 68;
Franz Carl ZOLLER, Geschichte und Denkwürdigkeiten der Stadt Innsbruck und der umliegenden Gegend 2, Innsbruck 1825, p. 367.
Cf. Florian PICHLER, Südtirol in alten Lichtbildern, Bozen 1979, n.p. (photo “Der Ausrufer von Sterzing”).
 
[4] Lambert STREITER, “Die ‘Turner’ von Innsbruck,” Pfarrblatt für Innsbruck, Hötting und Mühlau 12 no. 4 (1931) p. 8;
Konrad FISCHNALER, Innsbrucker Chronik 2, Innsbruck 1929, p. 127f;
Konrad FISCHNALER, Innsbrucker Chronik 4, Innsbruck 1929, p. 340;
Konrad FISCHNALER, Innsbrucker Chronik 5, Innsbruck 1934, p. 41f;
Konrad FISCHNALER, “Die Volksschauspiele zu Sterzing im XV. und XVI. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift des Ferdinandeums für Tiroler und Vorarlberg 3rd series, no. 38 (1894) p. 373f;
Walter SENN, Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck, Innsbruck 1954, p. 242;
Josef RIEDMANN, “Eine Reise durch Tirol im Jahre 1492,” Das Fenster 23 (1978) p. 2342, 2344.
 
[5] Hippolyt GUARINONI, Die Grewel der Verwüstung Menschlichen Geschlechts, Ingolstadt 1610, p. 189.
 
[6] Lambert STREITER, “Die ‘Turner’ von Innsbruck,” Pfarrblatt für Innsbruck, Hötting und Mühlau 12 (1931) no. 5, p. 7f; no. 8, p. 8;
Walter SENN, Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck, Innsbruck 1954, p. 241ff;
Konrad FISCHNALER, Innsbrucker Chronik 2, Innsbruck 1929, p. 127f;
Franz HATTLER, Missionsbilder aus Tirol: Geschichte der ständigen Jesuitenmission von 1719-1784, Innsbruck 1899, p. 80;
Anton DÖRRER, “Spieltennen und Tanzhäuser,” Der Schlern 21 (1947) p. 299;
Georg MUTSCHLECHNER, “Ordnung für die Spielleute an der Etsch (1572),” Der Schlern 67 (1993) p. 468.