The Musical Quarterly Advance Access published March 23, 2012
“Die Natur und Kunst zu
betrachten”: Carlo Farina’s Capriccio
stravagante (1627) and the Cultures of
Collecting at the Court of Saxony
Rebecca Cypess
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Like many noblemen of his time, Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony
from 1611 to 1656, was a collector. Official court records, together with
accounts left by curious visitors, attest to the variety and richness of the
collections that he inherited, enhanced, and expanded: individual rooms
were devoted to books, live animals, stuffed animals, wine, armor, cos-
tumes, and hunting gear. The Saxon collections focused especially on
practical tools rendered in artistic fashions, from rakes and picks to surgi-
cal instruments, optical instruments, and naturally, musical instruments.
At the heart of the collections at the Saxon court in Dresden was
the Kunstkammer. Translated literally, the title denotes merely a room of
art. But in the Dresden court and other German courts in the late
Renaissance and early modern era, the meanings of the Kunstkammer for
the practice and knowledge of the arts, humanities, and sciences were
much more far-reaching. The Electoral Kunstkammer did indeed contain
paintings that hung on walls, but it also housed a vast array of artifacts,
novelties, and curiosities—some exhibiting distinctly Saxon origins and
characters and others imported from exotic places abroad—that bore
witness to human interaction with and mastery over nature.1 Philipp
Hainhofer—an adviser to the court of Augsburg and himself a theorist
and practitioner of the art of collecting—left two substantial descriptions
of the Dresden collections in his travel diaries of 1617 and 1629;2 a
statement in his diary of 1617 suggests that the exploration of the rela-
tionship between man and the world around him was one of the primary
focal points of the Kunstkammer. Apparently frustrated at the brevity of
his visit to the collection, he wrote that “There are in this Kunstkammer,
on all the tables, in all the chests, and on all the walls so many small
doi:10.1093/musqtl/gds004 1 –54
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Page 2 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
and large, ugly and elegant tools and items that one would need several
days to see everything one wanted and needed to see, and to observe
nature and art [die Natur und Kunst zu betrachten].”3
Hainhofer’s opposition of nature and art highlights the role of the
Kunstkammer as a repository of items meant to inspire wonder, both at
the world in its apparently untouched state and at the observer’s ability
to interact with and control that world. Although the Kunstkammer pro-
vided perhaps the most intense opportunity for the observer to examine
and ponder this dichotomy, the courtly collections as a whole served a
similar purpose. Indeed, the collections seem to have been designed to
serve as a microcosm through which the ruler could learn and assert his
place in his environments, both social and natural.
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Johann Georg also expressed his penchant for collecting through
the collection of things musical. The Kunstkammer contained models of
musical instruments fashioned out of stone and glass, but there were
also extensive collections of more practical instruments outside that
sanctum, in the Pfeiffenkammer, which contained wind and string instru-
ments, and the schlagende Instrumentkammer, which housed keyboard
instruments.4 Johann Georg is known to have updated the musical
establishment of his court, hiring talented composers and commissioning
musical works in the modern style, at least until the economic con-
straints imposed by the Thirty Years War interfered with musical and
other cultural activities at the court.5 To judge from some of the music
composed for the Elector in the 1610s and 1620s, he seems to have
been especially interested in the adaptation of recent Italian innovations
to his native German idiom. Indeed, although the Italian influence on
the Dresden court may be seen as early as the late sixteenth century, it
was Johann Georg’s journey to Italy in 1601 (ten years before the start
of his reign as Elector) that most tangibly shaped the Italianate character
of the musical, cultural, and intellectual environment of his court.6
Most famously, he invited Heinrich Schu ¨tz to Dresden in 1614, the
composer having recently returned to the court of his patron, Landgrave
Moritz of Hesse-Kassel, from a lengthy stay in Venice, during which he
studied with Giovanni Gabrieli.7
Another significant contribution to the Italianate character of the
musical establishment in Dresden was the hiring, in 1625, of the
Mantuan violin virtuoso Carlo Farina as court Konzertmeister. 8 Most of
the music in Farina’s five extant publications, all of which date from his
brief tenure at the Saxon court, is dance music for four-part consort;
also included are ten sonatas in the Italian stile moderno. But the work
that has received by far the most attention in recent musicological
scholarship is the curious Capriccio stravagante, which appears in Farina’s
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 3 of 54
second publication. The title page of that volume announces the book’s
inclusion of multiple genres, including one piece with some highly
unusual features; the title reads as follows: Ander Theil Newer Paduanen,
Gagliarden, Couranten, Frantzo¨sischen Arien, benebenst einem kurtzweiligen
Quodlibet / von allerhand seltzamen Inventionen, dergleichen vorhin im
Druck nie gesehen worden / sampt etlichen Teutschen Ta¨ntzen / alles auff
Violen anmutig zugebrauchen.9 The “kurtzweilig Quodlibet von allerhand
seltzamen Inventionen” (amusing, time-passing, or perhaps fragmentary
quodlibet with various strange inventions) to which Farina refers is the
Capriccio stravagante—in fact, the title seems to be an Italian translation
of the German phrase10—a work in which the violin consort imitates a
host of other instruments, and even animals. As explained below, the
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term Invention seems to refer both to the theatrical conceits of the work
and the virtuosic techniques (col legno, sul ponticello, glissando, multiple-
stopping, and more) used to enact those conceits. The mimetic sections
of the piece are assigned Italian rubrics in the partbooks of the three
highest instruments, and the bass partbook contains both the Italian
rubrics and their German translations. The virtuosic techniques required
for the work’s execution are explained in a list of instructions printed at
the end of the volume, first in Italian and then in German; these are fol-
lowed by a glossary of Italian terms rendered into German. (Table 1
presents an outline of the representational sections of the work, together
with the performance instructions relevant to each section in both
languages.)
In musicological scholarship from the nineteenth century to the
present day, the Capriccio has been noted for its pioneering virtuosity but
dismissed as superficial and meaningless.11 It is easy enough to understand
why the work has elicited such skeptical reactions. Technical virtuosity
has long been associated with superficiality—even with immorality—in
contrast to “true” artistry; scholars of nineteenth-century music have only
recently begun to understand the underlying cultural motivations and
meanings of virtuosity in the works of Paganini, Liszt, and others.12 In
addition, the Capriccio is unusually amorphous and formally open-ended,
features that have bothered some commentators of the past century.13 It
moves erratically between sections of standard Franco-Germanic consort
music—some that are harmonically predictable and others that are sur-
prisingly dissonant—and sections of theatrical mimesis that make use of
the most recent developments in Italian soloistic virtuosity.14 The work as
a whole projects a sense of instability, fragmentation, and disruption.
This essay will suggest that the Capriccio, fragmentary and unstable
as it is, is in fact richly meaningful. Its model may be found in the many
collections at the Dresden court and in the early modern strategies of
Page 4 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Table 1. Representational sections of the Capriccio stravagante, in order of appearance in the composition
Italian title German title1 Likely English Relevant excerpt from “Alcuni avertimenti nel Relevant excerpt from “Etliche Nothwendige
equivalent soprano intorno al Capriccio stravagante”2 Erinnerungen wegen des Quotlibets von
allerhand Inventionen”
La Lira Die Leyer Peasant’s lyre Dove si truovano nota sopra nota con forme Wann zwo Noten uberinander stehen oben mit
(hurdy-gurdy) all’Intavolatura dell’Organo con questo diesem Zeichen gezeichnet / als muß
segno di sopra, all’hora si suonera man dieselben Noten mit dem Bogen
Lirsando, come fanno li Orbi overo Ciechi. schleiffen / gleich einer Leyren. (When two
(Where one finds one note on top of notes stand one on top of another with this
another, as in organ tablature, with this sign sign pictured, then one must play both
above it, it should be played like a lyre, notes with [a single] bowstroke, like a lyre.)
as one-eyed and blind people do.3)
Il Pifferino Das kleine Little shawm Il Pifferino vien sonato con strascini. (The Das kleine Schalmeygen wird gleichsfalls wie
Schalmeygen little shawm is played with slurs.) oben gemeld / schleiffend gemacht. (As
mentioned above the little shawm likewise
[like the tremulant4] is played with slurs.)
Lira Variata Die Leyer uff ein Peasant’s lyre,
andert Art varied
Qui si bate con il Hier schlegt man mit Here one strikes Si trovera una altra volta nota sopra nota come Weiter findet man auch andere Noten
legno del dem Holtze des the strings with di sopra, queste vengono battute con il ubereinander gesetzet / gleich als in der Orgel
archetto sopra Bogens the wood of the legno dell’Archetto come fanno li Tablatur / diese werden mit dem Holtze des
le corde bow tamburini, cio e` non bisogna lasciar fermar Bogens gleich eines Hackebrets geschlagen /
troppo, ma parar via di lungo. (Where one doch daß man den Bogen nicht lange stille
finds again one note on top of another, as halte / sondern immerdar fortfahre. (Further,
above [in the lyre section], these [notes] are one finds more notes set on top of one
hit with the wood of the bow, as tabor another, as in organ tablature; these are hit
players do; that is, it is not necessary to with the wood of the bow like a hammer
leave the bow still for too long, but rather dulcimer; but one should not leave the bow
to spring away directly afterward.) still for long, but rather always move away
[quickly].)
La Trombetta, Il Die Trommeten, Das Trumpet, clarino
Clarino, Le Clarin, Die trumpet,
gnachere Heerpaucken kettledrums
La Gallina Die Henne Hen
Il Gallo Der Han Rooster
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Il Flautino pian Die Flo¨ten still stille Recorders, very Il flautino vien sonato con leggiadria Die Flo¨ten werden gantz lieblichen nahe bey
piano quietly strascinando cio e` che si suona pianino dem Steg / etwan ein quer Finger darvon /
sott’al scannello del violino solamente un gar stille gleich einer Lira
mezzo dito discosto . . . [cont. in “Il geschleiffet . . . [cont. in “Das soldaten
fifferino”] (The recorder is played gracefully, Pfeifflen”] (The recorder is played very
with slurs; [this is accomplished by] sweetly just by the bridge, about a finger’s
play[ing] softly near the bridge of the violin, width away from it, quite softly, [and] bowed
just a half a finger’s [width] away.) like a lyre.)
Il Tremulo Der Tremulant Organ tremulant Il Tremolo va` sonato solamente facendo tremar So wird das Tremuliren mit pulsirender Hand /
il pulso della mano dell’Archetto. (The darinnen man den Bogen hat / auff art des
tremulant is played by making only the Tremulaten in den Orgeln imitiret. (The
wrist of the bow-hand tremble.) tremulant is played with a pulsating bow-
hand, by way of imitating the tremulant of
the organ.)
Fifferino della Das Soldaten Soldier’s pipe and [cont. from “Il flautino”] “ . . . me desimamente [cont. from “Die Flo¨ten”] “ . . . deßgleichen das
Soldadesca, Il Pfeifflen, Die tabor il Fifferino vien sonato conforme il flautino Soldaten Pfeiffgen nur allein daß es etwas
Tamburo Paucken oder ma sonando la mita piu sotto al scanello & sta¨rcker und na¨her / am Stege gemachet wird.
Soldaten Trommel piu` forte. (The fife is played exactly [like (. . . likewise the soldier’s fife, only it is played
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante
the recorder], but played slightly closer to somewhat louder and closer to the bridge.)
the bridge, and somewhat louder.
Continued
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Table 1. continued
Page 6 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Italian title German title1 Likely English Relevant excerpt from “Alcuni avertimenti nel Relevant excerpt from “Etliche Nothwendige
equivalent soprano intorno al Capriccio stravagante”2 Erinnerungen wegen des Quotlibets von
allerhand Inventionen”
Il Gatto Die Katze Cat Il Gatto vien sonato facendo morir quelle note Das Katzengeschrey anlanget wird folgender
cio e` portar la man indietro a` poco alla gestalt gemacht / daß man mit einem Finger
volta, ma le semicrome vengono sonate von den Thon da die Noten stehet /
disgratiatamente alla peggio cio e` facendo mehlichen unterwartz zu sich zeuhet / da aber
fuggir l’Archetto dentro & fuora del die Semifusen geschrieben sein / muß man
scannello; come fanno li Gatti quando mit dem Bogen bald vor / bald hinter den
scappono via`. (The cat is played by making Stegk uffs a¨rgste und geschwindeste als man
the notes die, that is, by shifting the [left] kan fahren / auff die weise wie di Katzen
hand backwards a little at a time; but the letzlichen nach dem sie sich gebissen und
sixteenth notes are played ungracefully and jetzo außreissen zu thun pflegen. (With
badly, that is, by making the bow run above respect to the cat cries, they are made in the
and below the bridge, just as cats do when following manner: That one slides the finger
they scatter away.) gradually toward oneself [i.e. downwards]
from where one [initially] stops the string;
however, where sixteenth notes are written,
one must take care to run the bow, now
above, now below the bridge as badly and as
quickly as one can, in the way that as cats
ultimately do, as they bite each other and run
away in chase.)
Il Cane Der Hund Dog Ecco il Cane questo vien sonato all’incontrario Darkegen das Hundebellen wird mit einem
del Gatto, portando la mano sempre innanzi Finger von der Noten gar geschwinde auff
furiosamente. (The dog is played in the einer seiten / nauffwarts gezogen. (In
opposite way from the cat, continually contrast, the dog’s bark is [played] by quickly
shifting [the left hand] furiously upwards.) shifting the stopping-finger upwards on a
string.)
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La Chitarra Die spannische Spanish guitar La Chitarra Spagnuola vien sonata levando via Endlichen die Spannische Chitarren belangend
Spagniola Cythar il Violino dalla spalla, & mettendolo sott’il wird ihrer art nach mit den Fingern
fianco sonando con le dite, conforma alla geschlagen / indeme man die Geigen unter
Chitarra istessa. (The Spanish guitar is den Arm nimbt / und drauff schlegt als eine
played by lifting the violin from the rechte Spannische Chitarrea wie. (Lastly
shoulder and placing it under the hip, to concerning the Spanish guitar, one plays the
play like the aforementioned, in the manner violin with the fingers in the same manner,
of the guitar itself.) by taking it under the arm and plucking it, as
if it were a Spanish guitar.)
1
A nearly complete set of partbooks survives in Kassel (D-Kl); the bass partbook contains both German and Italian rubrics, and the other partbooks give only
Italian rubrics. The Kassel set preserves only the very brief performance instructions pertaining to the tenor partbook; the more complete instructions in the cantus
partbook survive only in the copy in Dresden (D-Sl). The transcriptions here maintain the spellings, capitalizations, and punctuations from the 1627 print.
2
My thanks to Mary Frandsen, Helen Greenwald, Francesco Izzo, Jeffery Kite-Powell, and Neal Zaslaw for their suggestions concerning these translations.
3
The rosined wheel of the hurdy-gurdy rendered all of its music legato.
4
The order of representational sections in the music is not maintained in the performance instructions; thus Farina’s description of the performance technique for
the tremulant directly precedes that of the shawm.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante
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Page 8 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
learning, knowing, and experiencing the world through the act of col-
lecting. And although the Capriccio is groundbreaking in many respects,
this study will also show that it was not without precedent—that other
works of music and music theory may also be related to the practices of
courtly collecting, and so offer a context for understanding Farina’s
work.
In proposing connections between the Capriccio and the court of
Dresden, I do not mean to imply that Farina denied his own Italian
roots. As is well known, the collection of curiosities was nearly a pan-
European phenomenon, and some features of the work, most notably
its innovative uses of virtuosity, show clear Italian influences. However,
a book of music by the Dresden Konzertmeister, produced by the court
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publishing house, dedicated to the Electress, and possibly composed—as
I will suggest—as a wedding-gift for the Electress’s daughter, calls for
contextualization within the tastes and cultures of the Dresden court.15
The connection between the Capriccio and the cultures of collect-
ing operates on multiple levels. First, to enact his parade of musical curi-
osities, Farina employs the quodlibet—a genre that itself may be
interpreted as a musical collection. Although Farina’s work for instru-
ments seems to stand alone within this otherwise entirely vocal genre,
the composer draws on precedents set by his vocal models. Most impor-
tantly, the quodlibet may be associated with the notion of a “patch-
work,” often quoting preexistent material and assembling it, as in a
collection, for presentation in a new format.
Second, the musical instruments depicted in the Capriccio have
models in the collections of instruments housed in the Electoral palace.
Thus it is possible that Farina intended to offer a sonic tour of his
patron’s instrument holdings. Furthermore, these depictions cover
instruments with a wide range of social associations, suggesting that
Farina sought to encapsulate musical practices in society as a whole.
Michael Praetorius’s Theatrum instrumentorum of 1620—an illustrated
catalog of musical instruments that served as a graphic supplement to
the second volume of the author’s theoretical treatise, the Syntagma
musicum—constitutes a visual parallel to Farina’s musical work. To
judge from these two examples, the culture of musical practice at early
modern German-speaking courts seems to have encouraged a compre-
hensive, encyclopedic approach to the study and use of musical
instruments.
However, the animal noises in the Capriccio disrupt the interpreta-
tion of the work as a simple tour of Johann Georg’s collection of musical
instruments. Instead, a division of Farina’s work into sounds that imitate
animals ( products of the natural world) and those that imitate other
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 9 of 54
instruments ( products of man’s creation) prompts consideration of the
work on a third level, within the broader realm of scientific and human-
istic discovery and exploration through the act of collecting, and espe-
cially against the backdrop of Hainhofer’s theory of the Kunstkammer as a
vehicle for the study of the relationship between nature and art. Farina’s
simulation of the sounds of both natural and artificial creatures may be
linked to the so-called mechanistic philosophy, which informed the
character of early modern Kunstkammern, and which saw self-propelled
activity and motion as the defining component of life. Furthermore,
Praetorius’s Theatrum instrumentorum—actually part of a genre of scien-
tific treatises known as “theaters of machines,” cultivated in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—informs an interpretation of
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the Capriccio within the context of the Kunstkammer, where scientific
instruments themselves were objects of study and fields of discovery. In
his Capriccio, Farina presents the violin as an instrument worthy of
experimentation and inquiry itself, one that could provide multiple
perspectives on the sonic realities of the surrounding world. The curiosity
that led to the assembly and expansion of the many collections in
Dresden may also have informed the exploration of the sonic and
musical worlds in Farina’s Capriccio.
The Capriccio stravagante engages with the cultures of collecting at
the Dresden court on a fourth and final level: the performance of knowl-
edge and wonder. As both Hainhofer’s account of the collections and
official descriptions of courtly events attest, the term Invention referred
not only to a new product of human creativity and ingenuity but also to
the theatrical conceits of courtly processions. Farina’s use of the word
Inventionen to describe the wondrous effects and musical masquerades
employed in the Capriccio connects the piece to those performances. It is
significant that the nonmimetic parts of Farina’s composition bear
resemblance to the genre of the Intrada, used (among other things) to
announce and accompany the courtly masquerade processions known
as Aufzu¨ge. Indeed, the character of the Capriccio as a sonic parade of
curiosities suggests the possibility that the work was intended as a musical
model of an Aufzug—a procession-on-paper that the collector could keep
as a meme-nto, and recreate in his imagination through the act of
reading.
The Quodlibet as a Collection
Farina’s Capriccio stravagante is a big work—modern performances gener-
ally last eighteen to twenty minutes—made up of some thirty-six sec-
tions separated from one another by changes of key, time signature, or
Page 10 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
character. The two broad categories within the piece—sections in which
the violin consort imitates the sounds of animals or other musical instru-
ments, and sections of nonmimetic or nonrepresentational music—both
play a role in conveying the meanings of the work. As this study will
demonstrate, the nonrepresentational sections provide a backdrop for
the representational music, setting in motion Farina’s parade of
curiosities.
The musical medium for the Capriccio is the genre of the quodli-
bet. Although that term originally referred to a serious type of religious
disputation, in sixteenth-century German-speaking areas, it assumed a
meaning specific to polyphonic song: a lowbrow, humorous parody of
preexistent material, in which quoted musical phrases are divided among
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the various voices, or in which different voices quote different songs,
juxtaposing them in silly or unexpected ways.16 The earliest examples of
the musical genre date to the mid-sixteenth century: the 1544 collection
of Wolfgang Schmeltzl typifies many of the features that would charac-
terize the vocal quodlibet into the seventeenth century17—features that
make their way into Farina’s instrumental contribution to the genre.18
The quodlibet’s fragmentary character was noted as early as 1571,
in Simon Roth’s foreign-word dictionary (the first book in that genre).
Roth described the quodlibet as quirky and incongruous, defining it as
“a song [made up] of various melodies or texts put together, of which
none goes with the other. A thing just like any [other] put-together
thing—be what it may—that makes sense neither alone nor together.
A confused misch-ma¨sch.”19 Praetorius echoed this definition of the
quodlibet in the third part of his Syntagma musicum, published in 1619:
Messanza or mistichanza is a quodlibet or mixture of all sorts of herbs—a
tossed salad [una salata de mistichanza]—which is otherwise commonly
spoken of as a quodlibet. It consists of a great variety of half and complete
lines of text extracted from motets, madrigals, and other secular, also
humorous, German songs together with their melodies; out of these many
bits and pieces an entire fur can be sewn and patched together, as it
were.20
Praetorius’s notion of the quodlibet as a garment sewn together from
disparate patches of material resonates with the title of a vocal quodlibet
that had appeared in print in 1606 and was reprinted in 1612: Johann
Groh’s Bettlermantel, von mancherley guten Flecklein zusammen gestickt und
geflickt (Beggar’s Cloak, sewn and patched together from various good
pieces), the title page of which identifies the work as a quodlibet.21
Indeed, given the similarities between Praetorius’s definition and the
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 11 of 54
title of Groh’s work, it seems likely that Praetorius knew Groh’s quodli-
bet, or at least that both authors drew their descriptions from a common
vocabulary and conception of the genre.
The term Bettlermantel points to another significant characteristic
of the quodlibet: its association with lowbrow humor. Quodlibets by
Schmeltzl, Melchior Franck, and Andreas Rauch bring together preexis-
tent songs, the texts of which often center on themes of peasant life,
bawdy love, and drink.22 Perhaps in keeping with their character as
drinking songs, the texts of some quodlibets eventually dissolve into
nonsensical words such as “fa la la” or “dira da, dara da,” or into facile
recitations of numbers or solfege syllables. These vocalizations, like the
patchwork genre of the quodlibet itself, poke fun at the notion of song
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as a coherent medium, and instead isolate musical sound itself as a
source of pleasure and humor.
In this respect, the recitation of nonsense syllables within vocal
quodlibets points to a way of understanding Farina’s contribution to the
genre. Although I have discovered no other instrumental quodlibets
from this period, Farina’s Capriccio may be viewed as an extreme mani-
festation of the quodlibet’s tendency to isolate and exploit musical
sound, independent of a (coherent) text. Indeed, many of the represen-
tational sections of the Capriccio—especially the sections that imitate
animal noises—highlight the ability of the violin to make noise, rather
than music. In “Il Cane” (The Dog) and “Il Gatto” (The Cat), for
example, Farina instructs the performers not to hold their stopping
fingers steady on a single pitch, but to use glissando, sliding their fingers
flat for the cat (see ex. 1)23 and sharp for the dog (see the instructions
for these passages in Table 1).
In other respects, the relationship of Farina’s Capriccio to the
larger genre of the quodlibet is not entirely straightforward. The melo-
dies employed in the illustrative sections of the Capriccio do not appear
to be preexistent, so the notion of quotation, described by Praetorius
and exemplified by the vocal quodlibets of the period, does not fully
apply. However, the music that Farina used to depict his musical instru-
ments seems fairly formulaic—typical, perhaps, of the kind of music
most often associated with those instruments, and therefore a sort of
fabricated quotation. The passage that imitates an ensemble of trumpets
and kettledrums demonstrates this tendency: the key of D major was
most common for these ensembles because of the construction of trum-
pets; the lowest line (“Die Heerpaucken”) imitates kettledrums oscillat-
ing between the first and fifth scale degrees; in “La Trombetta” low- and
mid-range “trumpets” mostly outline D-major triads; and the highest
line (“Il Clarino”) copies trumpets in the clarino register, where the
Page 12 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
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Example 1. “Il Gatto / Die Katze,” mm. 288–95.
natural harmonic series allows for the sounding of a full diatonic scale
(see ex. 2).
As a patchwork of musical quotations and nonmusical noises, the
genre of the quodlibet, and Farina’s quodlibet more specifically, consti-
tutes a musical collection. Farina’s work brings together strains of music
that are not normally juxtaposed, framing and connecting them with
new material. Here the composer acts as a collector, orchestrating and
arranging passages of preexistent music, or in Farina’s case, stock music,
to amuse and entertain.24
The Capriccio stravagante as an Encyclopedia of Musical
Instruments
It may not be surprising that official court inventories, together with
Hainhofer’s descriptions of the instrument collections at the Dresden
court, demonstrate that nearly all of the instruments that Farina imitates
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 13 of 54
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Example 2. “La Trombetta, Il Clarino, Le Gnachere, / Die Trommeten, Das Clarin,
Die Heerpaucken,” mm. 168 –76.
in his Capriccio stravagante are represented in the Dresden collections.
What is perhaps more striking is Farina’s inclusion of instruments from
such a wide range of social contexts and associations.
Page 14 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
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Example 3. “La Lira / Die Leyer,” mm. 67 –74.
Farina was a practical musician, known to have led the instrumen-
tal music at several official celebrations and other occasions, and as such
he must have been familiar with the extensive collections of musical
instruments housed at the Dresden court. Although the Capriccio does
not serve as a comprehensive tour of those collections, those instru-
ments that Farina did select can be taken to stand for musical practice
throughout society. The first instrument represented in Farina’s parade
is the “La Lira / Die Leyer,” the hurdy-gurdy, described by Praetorius as
the “Lyra Rustica, seu pagana, ein gemeine Lyra” (the rustic, or ordinary
lyre)25 and by Hainhofer as the “Teutsche gemaine ly¨ren” (common
German lyre).26 Indeed, Farina’s performance instructions call attention
to the association of the instrument with peasants, noting that it is nor-
mally found in the hands of “li Orbi overo Ciechi” (blind or one-eyed
beggars27). The rich droning of this section, realized by means of
double-stops, serves as a marker both of the instrument itself and its
apparently unrefined harmonic language (see ex. 3).28
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 15 of 54
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Example 4. “Fifferino della Soldadesca, Il Tamburo / Das Soldaten Pfeifgen, Die
Paucken oder Soldaten Trommel,” mm. 274–75.
At the other extreme of the German social landscape is the
section imitating trumpets and kettledrums, described above. As is now
well known, these instruments were associated in this period exclusively
with the music of the uppermost members of the nobility, a connection
confirmed by Imperial edicts issued as early as 1630 delineating a clear
separation between trumpeters and kettledrummers on the one hand,
and ordinary Stadtpfeifer (city wind players) on the other.29
Farina evokes military images as well, not only through his imita-
tion of trumpets and kettledrums (which were used in both courtly and
military contexts), but more specifically through his representation of a
pipe and tabor and military kettledrums (see ex. 4), which he calls the
“Fifferino della Soldatesca / Das Soldaten Pfeifflen” and “Il Tamburo /
Die Paucken oder Soldaten Trommel.”30
The section Farina titled “Il Pifferino / das kleine Schalmeygen,”31
featuring imitation of a shawm at least on the highest line, captures the
sound of a wind ensemble. Such ensembles, which might also include
trombones, dulcians, and other wind or brass instruments, had formed
the core of German civic ensembles by the late fourteenth century—
indeed, the term Stadtpfeiffer (literally, “city shawmists”) was applied to
all members of such groups, regardless of which wind instrument they
played32—and the importance of the shawm in civic music in both
Germany and Italy persisted well into the seventeenth century. Shawm
ensembles, part of the category of hauts instruments (loud instruments),
were sponsored by cities and privately by noble patrons; they provided
music for banquets and accompanied public processions and other civic
functions,33 and Praetorius attests to their use to accompany courtly
dance.34
Page 16 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Perhaps in contrast to the Schalmeygen, the recorder consort, repre-
sented in the section “Il Flautino pian piano / Die Flo¨ten stil stille,”
which highlights the recorders’ softness even in its title, may be taken to
stand for the bas instruments (soft instruments), used primarily in courtly
settings to substitute for or accompany voices in ensemble motets or
madrigals. Indeed, although “Il Pifferino” and “Il Flautino” are not posi-
tioned directly next to one another, their soprano lines are something
close to inverses of each other, a feature that highlights the opposing
nature of the two consorts (see ex. 5A and B). The melody of “Il
Pifferino” starts by ascending in eighth notes, then contains an
ornament in sixteenths; “Il Flautino” opens with descending sixteenth
notes and continues with an ascending eighth-note figure. These
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motives form the core of the two sections in question, calling attention
to the opposition between haut and bas.
Farina’s Capriccio refers also to organ music, in the section that calls
for the use of a measured bow tremolo to imitate the organ tremulant, a
Example 5a. “Il Pifferino / Das kleine Schalmeygen,” mm. 75 –78.
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Example 5b. “Il Flautino pian piano / Die Flo¨ten still stille,” mm. 197–99.
mechanism that varies at a regular metric interval the flow of air through
the organ pipes, creating an oscillation in the volume of the sounded
notes.35 (Thus although the notes are written with larger values, Farina’s
instructions indicate that the tremolo should be played in even eighth
notes.) In general, the tremulant created a somber or melancholy affect,36
here augmented by the harsh dissonances that connect this section with
the Italian tradition of durezze e ligature organ works.37
Only one instrument included in the Capriccio is absent from
Hainhofer’s inventory of the instruments in the Dresden collections.38
Perhaps not coincidentally, it is an instrument that Praetorius describes
with notable inaccuracy: the Spanish guitar. Indeed, the exotic foreign
guitar stands in stark contrast to the hurdy-gurdy—the only other string
instrument represented in the Capriccio—with its distinctly German
character.
Praetorius associates the guitar, like the hurdy-gurdy, with folk
music, writing that “In Italy the charlatans and saltimbanco ([commedia
dell’arte performers] who are like our comedians and buffoons) strum on
these in singing their villanelle and other crude songs. But [nonethe-
less], the quintern [guitar] can be used by good singers for accompany-
ing pleasing and lovely songs.”39 As James Tyler and Paul Sparks have
noted, Praetorius’s description of the stringings and tunings of the guitar
betrays a lack of familiarity with developments in guitar technique and
technology in Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centu-
ries.40 Among other lacunae, Praetorius writes only of a four-course
instrument, whereas the most up-to-date Spanish guitars in Italy had
Page 18 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
five courses. Hainhofer’s inventory of 1629 does not include a guitar,
supporting the notion that the instrument was still not in widespread
use in Dresden, and perhaps at other German-speaking courts as well.
Taken together, the hurdy-gurdy and the Spanish guitar bridge the
gap between the native German music of Farina’s host country and
patron and his own Italian heritage, which included the quasi-exotic
influences of Spain. That Praetorius equivocates about the peasant’s
lyre, including it among his illustrations but only mentioning it cursorily
in the written description in his De organographia, may speak not only to
questions of its suitability in a book dedicated to a member of the nobil-
ity but also to its familiarity among a German readership. The Spanish
guitar, by contrast, had only recently been introduced to Italy and was
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barely familiar to German audiences.41 Its inclusion in the Capriccio may
have signified a nod toward what one might presume Farina’s responsi-
bilities at the Dresden court to have been: to introduce the new Italian
musical styles and to fuse those with the musical practices of his host
country.42
The Capriccio thus offers a snapshot of a sampling of musical
instruments in various social contexts, from instruments used by peas-
ants to those used in court, from instruments destined for church to
those designed for the battlefield. Hainhofer’s catalog of the
Pfeiffenkammer, too, describes a vast range of instrumental types, and
describes them in various ways.43 Some, such as “etliche Cornet,”
“etliche Geigen,” and “2 harffen,” require only brief mention; others call
for more explanation: “Ba¨ugglin und ain pfeiffen zusamen, das man mit
der ainen hand pfeiffet, und mit der andern baugget” (A little bag and
pipe together, that one blows and fingers with one hand, and pumps
with the other). Some are native to Germany—as noted above,
Hainhofer counts “1 Teutsche gemaine ly¨ren”—and others derive from
other, more exotic locations; for example, he mentions a “Tapas, auf
dessen saiten man mit ainem sammetinen kleppel schlegt, und ain
Indianisch instrument ist” (Tapas, on the strings of which one strikes
with a velvet clapper, and it is an Indian instrument). Some of the
instruments in the collection seem to be lavishly decorated, including “2
scho¨ne geigen und 1 lautten, aller mit perlenmutter eingelegt, die dachs-
tern mit stainen gezieret” (two beautiful violins and one lute, all inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, the rosette ornamented with precious stones).
Farina’s composition, which brings together musical materials from
many social contexts, may be seen as analogous to Hainhofer’s descrip-
tion of the Dresden instrument collections—and indeed, to the contents
of the collections themselves—encapsulating the familiar and the exotic,
the ornate and the practical. Like the instrument rooms at the Dresden
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 19 of 54
court, the Capriccio brings together instruments from widely disparate
sources, uniting them within a single collection.
The Spirit of the Kunstkammer I: Farina’s Animal Noises
The musical instruments in the Pfeiffenkammer and the schlagende
Instrumentkammer were not the only ones in the collections at the
Electoral court. Those rooms contained the instruments that were prac-
tical, usable. Even the ones that were lavishly decorated had the poten-
tial to be used. The chronicler Anton Weck, writing in 1680, described
musical instruments in the Kunstkammer—instruments of quite a differ-
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ent kind. These included “various regals, positives, organworks, and
musical instruments, some of alabaster and marble, some entirely of
glass, some of rare wood, and artfully inlaid.”44 Such instruments had
evidently been in the Kunstkammer for some time: the official inventory
of the collection taken in 1619 includes, for example, a “Gla¨serne
Orgel” (glass organ).45 Hainhofer also records the presence of musical
instruments of a sort quite apart from those in the practical collections,
most notably, multiple “self-playing” keyboard instruments, presumably
propelled by clockwork mechanisms. The 1619 inventory includes
descriptions of such mechanical instruments, among them an
“Instrument und Positif von scho¨ner eingelegter und geschnizter arbeit,
schlegt drey stu¨cken von sich selbsten mit vier stimmen” ([keyboard]
instrument and positive of beautifully inlaid and engraved work, which
plays three pieces by itself with four voices).46 As we shall see, these two
categories of instruments—instruments rendered out of unusual natural
materials fashioned in artistic ways, and those with musical automata
that probed the boundary between creation and mechanization—
capture the spirit of the Kunstkammer, aiding the viewer in “observing
nature and art.”
In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt wrote a lengthy letter to Elector
Christian I, father of Johann Georg I, concerning the ideal contents of a
Kunstkammer. He explained that
a well equipped Kunstkammer ought primarily to contain three things.
First, sculptures. Secondly, paintings. Thirdly, curious items from home
and abroad made of metals, stone, wood, herbs—whether from above the
ground, from within the ground or from the waters and sea. Next, utensils
used for drinking or eating which nature or art has shaped or made out of
such materials. Then, antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things
belonging to strange and curious animals, birds, or fishes, including the
skeletons of their anatomy.47
Page 20 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
The first two categories that Kaltemarckt describes are entirely man-
made and pertain to man’s imitation or interpretation of the world
around him. The third category is considerably broader and more ambig-
uous in both its origins and its purposes. Its items begin in nature but
enter through various processes into the domain of man. The “curious
items . . . made of metals, stone, wood, [and] herbs” may be entirely
derived from and fashioned by nature; the utensils made of those materi-
als may be items that “nature or art has shaped.” The skeletons and
other items taken from “strange and curious animals” are entirely
natural, but it is man who disassembles, rearranges, and displays them,
presumably for the purposes of study and marvel. Even though they are
natural items, their inclusion in the ideal Kunstkammer brings them into
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the domain of human creativity. The collector and viewer recreate them
as objects of art.
The timing and contents of Kaltemarckt’s letter denote his antipa-
thy to the Dresden Kunstkammer as it already existed. The collection,
formed around 1560 by Elector August, was filled not with the painting
and sculpture that Kaltemarckt ultimately advocated in his letter, but
with scientific instruments and practical tools for the study, cultivation,
and mastery of nature. Kaltemarckt’s pleas to Christian I that the
Kunstkammer be refashioned in the image of the Italian collections of art
fell on deaf ears, and the Dresden collection was in subsequent years
enhanced with the arrival of curiosities, naturalia, and machines.48
Indeed, although Kaltemarckt devotes the great majority of his
essay to the categories of sculpture and painting, saying that “I believe
there is no need to relate here how and where the curiosities are to be
found, especially since such things are regularly obtainable in large quan-
tities in German and Italy,”49 Hainhofer’s account of his visit to Johann
Georg’s Kunstkammer in 1617 suggests that it was Kaltemarckt’s third
category that had by then assumed the most prominent and important
position within the Dresden collection. These curiosities—from rhinoc-
eros horns to optical instruments—present the viewer with a means of
considering man’s relationship with nature. Hainhofer’s succinct distilla-
tion of the purpose of the Kunstkammer—“die Natur und Kunst zu
betrachten”—underscores the importance of the co-creative role of the
collector. As Horst Bredekamp notes, the collector—the orchestrator of
the Kunstkammer—was theorized as a Promethean figure, able to master
nature’s raw materials and transform them into works of art.50
If the representations of musical instruments in Farina’s Capriccio
stravagante call to mind man’s creative abilities—his activities in the
sphere of art—then the animal noises in the piece address the role of
the collector as a coordinator and interpreter of nature. Indeed, Farina’s
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 21 of 54
imitations of the hen, rooster, cat, and dog, although very brief, prob-
lematize the interpretation of the Capriccio as a tour of musical instru-
ments. These sections interrupt the flow of the piece, which would
otherwise remain strictly in the sphere of music—of man-made artifice.
By including imitations of nature, Farina encourages his listener to con-
sider the relationship between natural sound—even in its most comical
manifestations—and music that originates in human artistry. Indeed, in
probing the boundary between nature and art, Farina asserts his role not
just as a collector or coordinator of musical sound, but as an interpreter
of the natural world as well.
What the natural world meant to the courtiers of Saxony is not an
entirely straightforward matter. The early seventeenth century was, after
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all, a transitional period in the understanding and practice of the scien-
ces. Hainhofer’s diaries, along with the official court inventories and
records, confirm extreme engagement with alchemy in the Dresden
court. As Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly has suggested, superstitions associ-
ated with alchemy took root with particular firmness in Saxony, where
the mining of metals and stones was an important component of the
economy and a source of wealth for the Electoral court.51 At the same
time, early modern Dresden, together with much of the rest of Europe,
stood on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution. Seventeenth-century
practitioners of the sciences did not share twenty-first-century views of
the distinctness of these two categories of fact-based and superstitious
thought. Scientific endeavors during this period often drew on theories
of natural magic, which encompassed both occult beliefs and more
rationalist dealings in mechanics and physics.52
Many of the curiosities within the Dresden Kunstkammer seem to
owe their existence to the dual loyalties of science to natural and artifi-
cial production; in displaying them in the Kunstkammer the collector
sought to demonstrate his position as a master of nature through both
means. The mineral Zimmer (mineral room) of the Kunstkammer was full
of items, many of which have been preserved in Dresden’s present
Gru¨nes Gewo¨lbe (Green Vault), that encapsulated the Saxon preoccupa-
tion with mining and the transformation of raw materials, as well as the
ingenuity of the sculptor as cocreator. In some cases, these items
appeared to have been extracted and retained in their natural forma-
tions, but in reality, they were formed through a combination of natural
and artificial processes.53 These mineral objects—transformed in the
hands of artisans into idealized versions of themselves—were informed
by both mystical alchemy and objective experimentation.
More than in the realm of rocks and jewels, however, the meanings
of the Kunstkammer become clearest through consideration of the
Page 22 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
collection’s attempts to quantify, analyze, and recreate life. At the heart
of the Kunstkammer collections was the so-called mechanistic philoso-
phy, which sought to understand all natural phenomena, including life,
in terms of mechanics,54 and which for early modern collectors repre-
sented a means of both understanding the natural world and joining in
the process of creation. The ultimate goal of the collector was to under-
stand and reproduce animate motion, which was seen as the essential
and defining component of all life.55 Mechanistic philosophy itself repre-
sented a synthesis of objective science and the occult attempts to under-
stand the mysteries of life, as Bredekamp writes:
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The inherent meaning of the Kunstkammer was by no means limited by
their mechanistic structure; on the contrary, it was expanded therein.
One of the most surprising elements of mechanistic philosophy is that it
also supported the expression of occult tendencies that were long consid-
ered the sheer opposite to “cold” Cartesian thought. The strongest con-
nection between these two apparently incompatible schools of thought
could be found in attempts to synthesize life. Since life in its highest form
was defined since Plato’s time as the ability to move independently, the
creation of movement became the decisive criterion.56
In the spirit of these attempts to understand and recreate the mecha-
nisms of life, the Kunstkammern of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries were filled with stuffed animals, skeletons of animals, reproductions
of animals’ muscular structures, sculptures of animals, and animal
automata.
The assembly of animalia in both the Kunstkammer and the
Anatomiekammer 57 (anatomy room) of the Dresden court suggests an inter-
est both in analysis of the physical composition of common creatures (for
example, stuffed birds) and evidence of rare or mythical beings (including
rhinoceros horns and claws of a griffin).58 A set of eight animals sculpted
out of wax, listed in the 1619 inventory of the Kunstkammer, includes not
only lions (a group of real ones were housed in the Electoral Lewenhaus
[lion-house]59), but also a unicorn.60 Man’s role as enabler of these natural
curiosities is made evident in Hainhofer’s description of the chameleon,
“who adopts the color of each thing, where one sets it”61; the animal does
not go where he pleases, but changes color under the supervision of the
observer who sets it down.62
Other objects represent animal life through the fusion of the natural
and the artificial. For example, a set of sculpted cups in the form of
ostriches, still housed in the Gru¨nes Gewo¨lbe, started with real ostrich eggs,
which, taken out of their natural context, were intermingled with silver
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 23 of 54
gilt, so that they give birth, as it were, to new, man-made ostriches.63 The
sculptor of these birds seems to have been toying with the notion of crea-
tion, using technology and artifice to refer to the alchemical quest for life.
The intertwined sciences of chemistry and alchemy are also highlighted in
Hainhofer’s description of “A free-standing deer, in which various medi-
cines were prepared according to the art of chemistry from more than 40
body parts of the noble deer.” (Hainhofer goes on to note that the court
apothecary, Johann Wechingern, sings a song about this animal and the
medicinal experiments done on it.)64
Another category of objects within the Kunstkammer was that of
automata and machines, which emphasize man’s ability to harness his
ingenuity to imitate and participate in the creation of life. Indeed,
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automata of the sort included in the Dresden collection were informed
by—and contributed to—the development of mechanistic philosophy.65
Many of the clockwork automata in the Kunstkammer took the form of
animals. Made through the artistry of a human carver, these animals
would be set into motion through the mechanical ingenuity of a human
artisan-scientist; when the appropriate time arrived, they would spring
to life, imitating the activities of similar animals in the natural world.
So, for example, the Kunstkammer included “two beautiful little dogs, in
which a clockwork mechanism causes them to move their eyes,” “a little
clock with a pelican and its young, which move when the clockwork
strikes,” and “a bear, which, when the clockwork strikes, it moves its
eyes, its paws, its nose, and plays a drum, while a hunter holds up his
horn, as if to blow it.”66
In his Capriccio Farina, too, acts as a collector. This is true not
only in the sense suggested above—that his work functions as a tour of
instruments, offering musical images with a comprehensive array of
social associations—but also in the work’s attempts to isolate and recre-
ate the noises of animals in their natural states, an activity that reflects
the spirit of the Kunstkammer. Like the sculptor who fashioned his
ostriches out of eggs and silver and the anatomist who prepared birds for
stuffing and display, Farina captures natural phenomena—the sound of
hens, roosters, cats, and dogs—and records them in music. Through his
extremely brief imitations of these animals, Farina acts as a creator of
life, highlighting the manner in which courtly collectors and viewers of
collections interact with nature.
Farina exploits the technical capacities of his instrument to render his
animal sounds as realistic as possible. Still, the Kunstkammer (in contrast to
the Lewenhaus) was not a menagerie, displaying real animals making real
noises; rather, it extracted items from nature and rendered them in a
manner that also displayed the collector’s ingenuity. Likewise, Farina
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Figure 1. Nautilus-shell cups in the shape of a rooster and hen, made ca.
1593–1602. First mentioned in the Kunstkammer inventory of 1640; now housed in the
Gru¨nes Gewo¨lbe, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Inventory number III, 156 and
III, 193. Photographed by Ju¨rgen Karpinsk. Reproduced by permission.
presents his animals within the context of man-made artifice, in a refined
setting made up of carefully planned and coordinated harmonies, rhythms,
and motives. The nonrepresentational music serves as a frame—a display
case, perhaps—for Farina’s artificial instruments and synthetic animals.
It seems significant that Farina chooses not to imitate more noble
creatures—or, for that matter, the ones that are more musical. But musi-
cality is precisely not the point. Instead, Farina seems intent on depicting
these natural sounds in a distinctly unmusical manner. The purpose of
the Dresden collections was to experience both the beautiful and the gro-
tesque in nature, to use tools and instruments—in this case, musical
instruments—to understand it, and, as Farina does, to recreate it through
imagination and resourcefulness.67 Indeed, the matching nautilus-shell
rooster and hen drinking cups shown in figure 1, made in the late six-
teenth century and residents of the Kunstkammer by 1640, suggest that
the seemingly mundane barnyard animals of the Capriccio would have
been quite at home within the Electoral collection (see ex. 6).68
It is not at all clear that Farina would have known the contents of
the Dresden Kunstkammer, a visit to which required special invitation
and, apparently, an escort by the curator of the collection or some other
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 25 of 54
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Example 6. “La Gallina, Il Gallo / Die Henne, Der Han,” mm. 181–87.
official with knowledge of it. However, Farina’s familiarity with specific
items within the Kunstkammer is, in a sense, immaterial. At issue is the
more general culture of the study and mastery of nature, evident
throughout the collections at the Dresden court, and, as we shall see, in
courtly practices themselves.
The Spirit of the Kunstkammer II: The Violin as a
Scientific Instrument
The mechanical inventiveness on display in the Kunstkammer did not
stop at animal automata. It also encompassed scientific instruments, and
musical machines and instruments themselves, so that the tools created
by man for the study and enhancement of nature could come to life.
The problems of animate motion and stability are showcased, for
example, in “a perpetual motion, which ascends and descends inside a
glass ring,”69 and “several magnets, of which the largest weighs 5 lots,
but which attracts 66 lots of iron, which it holds day and night, year and
day.”70 Included in the Kunstkammer, too, were large quantities of scien-
tific instruments, including lenses, scopes, and devices for measuring
and weighing.71 Astronomical clocks and mechanical automata made
Page 26 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
possible by recent developments in clockwork technology aided the col-
lector in his amateur study of the workings of the planets. Indeed,
novelty in mechanization was of primary importance in most
Kunstkammern.72
Some of the curiosities in the Dresden Kunstkammer emphasized
the importance of tools and instruments themselves, not only as mecha-
nisms through which to learn about and exploit the natural world, but
also as fields of inquiry in their own right. One of the rooms included
“on various tables, all sorts of cups, dishes, vessels, water pitchers,
spoons and knives, all made of marble, alabaster, serpentine, and other
rocks that are mined in the Electorate of Saxony, and beautifully pol-
ished.”73 In addition to these somewhat ordinary types of tools, and in
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keeping with the character of the collection first assembled by Elector
August, the Kunstkammer in 1629 still contained a large quantity of pro-
fessional tools—a feature that apparently set the Dresden Kunstkammer
apart from similar collections in other German cities74—instruments
pertaining to joinery, hunting, gardening, wool-spinning, and other local
professions.75 However, the tools in the Kunstkammer were no ordinary
items but lavishly decorated and constructed from the finest materials.
The collection also included many worktables and writing tables, most
of them made of expensive or exotic stone or wood and ornamented
with precious metals.76
That musical instruments could also be counted among the tools
meriting inclusion in the Kunstkammer is suggested by the presence of
those instruments described by Weck and Hainhofer—some richly deco-
rated, others worthy of interest because of their automatic mechanisms.
However, a related body of evidence—in the form of published books—
suggests that more ordinary musical instruments, too, might be consid-
ered within the category of machines and tools worthy of collection,
exploration, and study.
Behind the automata, scales, lenses, and other scientific tools in
the Kunstkammer stood the mechanic: the engineer whose knowledge
and resourcefulness led to the development of the wonders of the collec-
tion. Although within the walls of the collection these inventors may
have gone unrecognized, they had other means of advertising their abil-
ities and activities. Most notably, starting around 1570, engineer-inven-
tors began to produce—and in many cases, publish—books known as
“theaters of machines,” which illustrated their mechanical creations or
the theoretical speculations they hoped might one day bear fruit in the
form of such inventions.77
Theaters of machines and books with similar titles and functions
were written and printed throughout Europe in the late Renaissance.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 27 of 54
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Figure 2. Plate 29 of Jacques Besson, Theatrum oder Schawbuch allerley Werckzeug und
Ru¨stungen des hochverstendigen sinnreichen Mathematici, Iacobi Bessoni, auss dem Delphinat
(Mu¨mbelgart, Getruckt durch J. Foillet, 1595). Reproduced by permission of Herzog
August Bibliothek, Wolfenbu¨ttel.
These books brought an understanding of mechanics and an awareness
of new inventions to a wider audience, and in the process they brought
fame and prestige to the patrons of inventors. The machine books nearly
all shared a common format, coupling detailed engraved images of
mechanical inventions with prose descriptions of their mechanisms.
Some achieved remarkable popularity and were translated into multiple
languages. Most famously, Jacques Besson’s Theatrum instrumentorum et
machinorum, probably written around 1571 but first printed in France in
1578, was still being reprinted and translated into the seventeenth
century.78 Following editions in Latin, French, and Italian (and preced-
ing one in Spanish), a German translation appeared in 1595 as the
Theatrum oder Schawbuch allerley Werkzeug und Ru¨stungen.79
Besson’s Theatrum, pioneering what would become the standard
format for such machine books, included a number of different inven-
tions, as well as improvements for machines and instruments already in
use. His plate 29, which depicts a musical instrument (see fig. 2), bears
the following brief explanation: “The Author’s proposition concerning
the twenty-ninth figure. A new form of a musical instrument, whose
metal strings, when touched with fingers or a fiddle-bow, gives a mixed,
equally tempered, and lovely sound, equally comparable to the sound of
Page 28 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
a lyre and trombone.”80 The construction of the instrument is not at all
clear from the picture, but it appears to consist of a violin-like body and
a fretted fingerboard presumably producing Besson’s desired tempera-
ment, with an additional stick, possibly meant to run along the inside of
the fingerboard, which might have produced a sympathetic buzzing.81
The terseness of the description of the instrument does not help the
reader to interpret the picture. Indeed, both Besson and, apparently, the
engraver issue warnings to the effect that the instrument was never
actually built, and therefore the design and drawing might be faulty.82
In the context of the mechanistic philosophy at play within the
Kunstkammer and against the backdrop of these scientific theaters of
machines, the first and arguably most important of which counted a
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musical instrument among its scientific inventions, Praetorius’s
Theatrum instrumentorum takes on a new significance. Although the
author describes this illustrated catalog of musical instruments merely as
the sixth part of his De organographia, its title and format situate it
within the larger context of these machine books, which, like the
Kunstkammer itself, displayed the tools and mechanisms through which
man could study, understand, and master nature.83
Although a thorough study of the relationship between Praetorius’s
Theater of Instruments and similar books published by scientist-inventors
lies outside the scope of the present study, both Besson’s scientific work
and Praetorius’s collection of musical pictures offer another model for an
interpretation of the Capriccio, a work that highlights the role of the
violin as a tool—an instrument—for the study of the natural and man-
made soundworlds. The literary-artistic genre of the theater of machines
functioned both as an outlet and a means of fame for inventors, and as
an engine for the growth of collections of machines themselves, encour-
aging and enabling the collector’s sense of mastery over nature that was
exemplified by and enacted within the Kunstkammer.84 Machine books
recorded and facilitated the collector’s attempts to harness nature—to
reshape and refine natural resources in an artistic mold, to overcome
challenges presented by nature by means of scientific instruments and
tools, to study and understand the mechanics of life, and even to act as
a creator of life in the form of animated automata—all of which in turn
helped him to assert his own place within the sphere of nature. The role
of Praetorius’s catalog in the amateur study of music is made explicit on
the title page of the De organographia, which contains the text that cor-
responds to the illustrations in the Theatrum instrumentorum. There the
author acknowledges that although his work is useful for musicians and
instrument builders, it serves the secondary purpose of being
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 29 of 54
“entertaining and delightful to read for philosophers, philologists, and
historians.”85
In the Capriccio, Farina, too, assumes the role of an inventor or
developer of instruments, akin to the engineers and mechanics who
authored illustrated machine books. The composer presents not a scien-
tific instrument, but a musical one—the violin—and demonstrates how
it can be exploited and manipulated to aid in the project of mastering
nature. Thus the first sense in which Farina uses the word Invention: the
violin in the Capriccio assumes the status of a new invention, compara-
ble to the mechanical inventions in the Kunstkammer, and the composi-
tion expounds upon the technical possibilities of the instruments. In
fact, the violin was something of a new invention in the early seven-
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teenth century.86 Although forms of the instrument had existed since
the early sixteenth century, it served primarily as a functional instru-
ment, to accompany dance or outdoor ceremonies. Not until the 1610s
and 1620s did Italian composers begin to publish idiomatic music to
highlight the virtuosic and expressive capabilities of the violin family.
Indeed, as Aurelio Bianco notes, most of Farina’s published works may
be equally suitable for viol consort, and his use of the term Violen on
the title page of the Ander Theil may be ambiguous, referring to either
set of instruments.87 Still, Farina’s ten lengthy sonatas are idiomatic to
the violin family and in the tradition of the stile moderno sonatas of the
composer’s Italian contemporaries. This is true to an even greater
extent of the virtuosic techniques incorporated into the Capriccio.
(Indeed, as shown in Table 1, the performance instructions that appear
at the end of the Ander Theil refer specifically to the violino and the
Geige.) The collection of technical innovations contained in the
Capriccio represents one of the earliest attempts to define and exploit
the violin itself as an Invention.
One section of the Capriccio uses a virtuosic technique, but does not
bear a title indicating that it imitates an animal or another musical instru-
ment. The rubrics state only, “Qui si bate con il legno del archetto sopra
le corde / Hier schlegt man mit dem Holtze des Bogens” (here [the
player] hits the wood of the bow against the strings) (see Table 1 and
ex. 7).88 In the appendix to the Capriccio, Farina explains further how
this technique is applied: the Italian avertimenti suggest that the player
should use his bow “come fanno li tamburini” (as tabor players do), and
the German Erinnerungen instruct the violinist to use his instrument
“gleich eines Hackebrets” (like a hammer dulcimer). This section does
not imitate either of those instruments, but rather it applies their perform-
ance technique to the violin. Here, mimesis assumes secondary
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Example 7. “Qui si bate con il legno del archetto sopra le corde / Hier schlegt man
mit dem Holtze des Bogens,” mm. 103–11.
importance. Of greater significance is the exploration of the instrument
itself as a tool for the production and contemplation of sound qua
sound.89
The col legno passage of the Capriccio, missing an overt and specific
representational aspect, focuses the attention of the player (as well as
that of the patron-dedicatee) on the violin as an instrument. But of
course, it is the representational portions of the work that spotlight the
ability of the violin to aid the collector in the study and understanding of
life. This is true not only in the passages that illustrate the noises
of animals, which, as we have seen, constituted an essential focal point of
the Kunstkammer. The violin’s capacity to recreate life is also evident in
the portions of the Capriccio that illustrate other musical instruments.
The Kunstkammer’s concern with music as a driving force in
human life is on display, for example, in the automaton shown in
figure 3: a pyramid of turned ivory, the base of which hides a clockwork
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 31 of 54
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Figure 3. Close-up view of a turned-ivory pyramid, at the base of which are
mechanical musicians playing trumpets and kettledrums. (Not shown is a sphere at the
top of the pyramid containing a group of automated banqueters.) Included in the
Kunstkammer inventory of 1595; now housed in the Gru¨nes Gewo¨lbe, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Inventory number II, 133. Photograph by Ju¨rgen Karpinski.
Reproduced by permission.
mechanism that would, at the appointed time, set in motion the trum-
peters and kettledrummers, who would hold their instruments as if
playing them, while the musical mechanism produced their sounds, all
while a group of pages walked up the stairs at the base of the pyramid.
A separate mechanism caused the banqueters inside the sphere at the
top of the column to raise their hands to their mouths, as if eating.90
On a basic level, this artifact uses music to display the creative capaci-
ties of the designers of musical instruments and the players of music. On
a more self-conscious level, and perhaps a deeper one, music within this
automaton-microcosm serves as a marker of life. The banqueters at the
top of the pyramid become animated only through the single medium of
movement. The musicians, by contrast, both move and sound.
So too, in Farina’s Capriccio, does music serve as a marker of
human life. Farina illustrates not simply music, but people making
music—music as a product and function of life. As previously noted, the
work does not stop at the refined music of court, but rather represents
music of all kinds, from the mundane to the sublime, from the familiar
Page 32 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
to the exotic. It is remarkable that all of these aspects of musical
humanity may be observed—or rather, heard—through a single instru-
ment. Much like the optical lenses within the Kunstkammer, which
allowed the viewer to consider nature from multiple perspectives (and
therefore to understand that a single object could be seen in many
ways), the violin is exploited in every conceivable fashion—the bow pro-
duces chords and slurs, playing close to and even over the bridge, its
wood strikes at the strings, the instrument is held on its side, the
player’s stopping fingers slide up and down, the arm vibrates—to offer
the listener a multiplicity of images of musical life.91
In this respect, Farina’s own status as an object of collection must
have served him well. Farina was one of the many Italian expatriate
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musicians who sought their fortunes north of the Alps. The violinists in
particular—among them Biagio Marini, Giovanni Battista Buonamente,
and Antonio Bertali—appear to have been highly prized in German-
speaking courts for their extreme virtuosity, as evidenced in published
works such as Farina’s Capriccio and many of the sonatas and capriccios
in Marini’s Sonate, Symphonie, Canzoni, Pass’emezzi, Baletti, Corenti,
Gagliarde, & Retornelli of 1626.92 In contrast to the virtuosic works in
Marini’s Sonate, however, which were published in Venice (despite the
composer’s residence in Neuberg) and which retain the Italianate
texture of soprano-bass polarity, Farina’s Capriccio fuses Italian virtuosity
with the German medium of the four-part consort—and, as we have
seen, the spirit of the Dresden Kunstkammer.
The Capriccio stravagante as a Performance of Knowledge
That the machine books of engineers like Jacques Besson were called “the-
aters of instruments” signifies an underlying conception of those works:
they are meant to be experienced as theatrical in some way. Like the expe-
rience of hearing music, the act of reading a machine book is time-bound.
The theatrical nature of these books is highlighted in the introduction to
one volume in the genre, the Theatri machinarum of Heinrich Zeising,
published in six volumes between 1607 and 1614.93 Zeising explains the
analogy: Of the three people involved in a theatrical production—the
players, the producers, and the spectators—only the spectators are truly
happy, since the players are full of worry and the producers must go
through a great deal of trouble and work. So, too, do the inventors of
machines and instruments (analogous to the players in a show) and the
engravers and producers of a machine book (equated here with the pro-
ducers of a theatrical production) face a great deal of trial and difficulty.
Only the reader has the opportunity to enjoy the final product.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 33 of 54
A correlation between invention and enjoyment existed on multi-
ple levels at the courts of late-Renaissance Germany. The introduction
to Besson’s Theatrum prefigures that of Zeising, suggesting that all
machine books served the dual purposes of “utilitas et delectation”
(utility and delight).94 As Bredekamp notes, the Kunstkammer was
perceived as a “playroom,” a locus of creation analogous to the world
itself, which was seen as a canvas for Nature the Player.95 In machine
books and in Kunstkammern, the collector could both observe creation
from a distance and join Nature in its creative enterprises. In both cases,
though, the work was done beforehand, by the likes of Zeising’s inven-
tors and publishers. In their final forms, Kunstkammern and machine
books were worthy of presentation—presentation initiated by the
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viewer’s entrance into the collection or the reader’s opening of the
book.
Presentation of knowledge within German courts was enacted on
yet another level, one with a more overt performative component. The
term Invention, used so prominently on Farina’s title page, could refer to
newly developed machines, instruments, or other artifacts. But in the
context of rhetoric, it denoted a theme or topos, and in a meaning
drawn from that sense it also referred to theatrical presentation within
the courtly processions known as Aufzu¨ge. Hainhofer’s diary of 1617
attests to the use of Invention in this sense: he recounts his visit to the
“Churfu ¨rsten Inventions-Hauß” (Electoral Inventions-House), which
contained “vilerley Their, Triumphwa¨gen und Schiffe, und mancherley
Aufzu ¨ge” (many counterfeit animals, triumph-wagons and floats, and
various sceneries for processions), items used in the Aufzu¨ge to display
the power and knowledge of the Elector.96 Invention was used both as a
synonym for Aufzug and as a word that referred to the theatrical compo-
nents of an Aufzug.97
Theatrical Aufzu¨ge were staged to mark a momentous occasion
such as a birth or wedding within a ruling family, or to commemorate an
important entrance of a member of the nobility into a city. Participants
in the procession sometimes wore allegorical costumes, dressing them-
selves as conquerors or beneficent rulers from biblical sources and
ancient mythology. In some pageants, the participants dressed as natives
from exotic locales such as Africa or America, and in others, the nobility
actually dressed as peasants. The procession would advance through the
town in lavishly decorated wagons (Hainhofer’s Triumphwa¨gen) pulled by
costumed horses and sometimes displaying novelties of the court
collections.98
In Dresden, it was the artist Giovanni Maria Nosseni—another
Italian expatriate—who most often conceived and produced the Aufzu¨ge
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Figure 4. Invention-wagon from a volume of paintings, no later than 1613.
Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006 Oberhofmarschallamt, Hieru¨ber 4 (Aufzug und
Inventionen unter Kurfu¨rst August). Image reproduced from Friedrich Sieber, Volk und
volkstu¨mliche Motivik im Festwerk des Barocks dargestellt an Dresdner Bildquellen (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1960), Appendix, 8. Reproduced by permission of the Akademie-
Verlag and the Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden.
of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Indeed, Nosseni
left quite a significant mark on the Aufzug as a genre, initiating in 1613
a tradition of unifying all the theatrical allegories, costumes, and scenery
within a single theme. It is perhaps significant that this first unified
Aufzug was centered around Time and the Seven Planets—that is,
around scientific knowledge and discovery.99 Indeed, as a whole,
the Aufzu¨ge seem to have been designed to display the knowledge of the
ruling family and to enact that knowledge through performance.
The involvement of curiosities was in many ways essential to the con-
veyance of the theatrical conceits of the Aufzu¨ge. For example, one well-
known image produced in 1613 depicts a wagon carrying an astronomer,
identifiable by means of his globe and other scientific instruments.100
The themes of these processions were not always lofty. In an
Aufzug of 1582, Elector August dressed as a peasant celebrating the
harvest season, with courtiers assuming characters of a similar kind, and
many Aufzu¨ge on peasant themes also include characters playing peasant
instruments such as bagpipes.101 Figure 4 shows a processional carriage
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 35 of 54
holding three men whose class is suggested by the fact that one of them
is carrying a rooster.
And of course, the Aufzu¨ge also included music, of which unfortu-
nately very little survives. However, one little-discussed source ties
together several important themes related to the Capriccio. The Intrada
der Trommeter,102 apparently performed at the postwedding homecoming
of Princess Sophia Eleonora, daughter of Johann Georg I and Magdalena
Sibylla, and Landgrave Georg II of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1627, consists of
twenty-two stanzas of poetry in an acrostic spelling the name “Sophia
Eleonora Herzogin zu Sachsen,” and a single page of music to which the
text was apparently sung. The text appears to describe, one by one, the
parade floats included in the Aufzug, most of the themes of which
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derived from Greco-Roman mythology. The music itself is written for a
consort of trumpets and kettledrums, a remarkable fact given that, as
already noted, the performance practices of those instruments were
closely guarded secrets.
Another aspect of the Intrada der Trommeter—not entirely surpris-
ing in light of the etymology of the word—is its confirmation of a link
between the courtly procession and the musical genre of the intrada.
Indeed, the connection is also suggested by Praetorius:
Intrata (commonly intrada) or entrata, which means an “entry” [ingressus]
or “going in” [aditus] derives from intran do [entering] or introitu [entrance]
and is used for entrances of great lords or processions at tournaments and
other functions.103
Hainhofer goes even further, relating the intrada to masquerade, a con-
nection that is entirely appropriate given the costumed Inventionen per-
formed as part of the courtly Aufzu¨ge. His twelve-volume set of lute
tablatures, classified by genre and itself constituting a sort of musical col-
lection, includes a “Zechender Thail . . . welche vor . . . Spagnolette,
Entrate, und andern mascharatischen da¨ntzen tractieret” (Tenth part . . .
which treats Spagnolettas, Entratas, and other masquerade dances).104
Given the function of the Intrada, a reconsideration of the nonrep-
resentational music in Farina’s Capriccio stravagante seems fitting. Two
of the most prominent types of intradas from the early seventeenth
century are represented throughout the Capriccio in the sections that
frame and link the representational passages. The first, in duple meter
using dactylic fanfare rhythms, announces the start of the parade of curi-
osities; the second is in compound meter with dance-like rhythms.105 In
fact, music of both types dominates the nonrepresentational sections of
Farina’s work.
Page 36 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Farina’s use of the term Inventionen to refer to the theatrical con-
ceits of the Capriccio thus suggests another interpretation of the work:
the entirety of the Capriccio as analogous to an Aufzug—a procession
that displays the knowledge embodied by the court collections, or
perhaps, given the comical nature of the animals represented in the
work, a procession celebrating or even jesting with the notion of knowl-
edge on parade. Here the purpose of the nonrepresentational sections of
the Capriccio becomes clear. These passages are intradas, music that
introduces and sets aside the representational sections, which are equiv-
alent to the theatrical Inventionen of the processions. The Capriccio both
encapsulates the musical portions of these parades and offers a musical
analogy for their visual spectacle.106
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Although there is no reason to think that the Capriccio was per-
formed as music for an actual Aufzug—indeed, its construction suggests
otherwise—it may nevertheless have been intended as music to cele-
brate an important occasion—in fact, as a sort of wedding gift. Farina
signed the dedication of the Ander Theil to Johann Georg’s wife,
Electress Magdalena Sibylla, on 1 January 1627, when the court would
have been busy preparing for the wedding of her daughter.107 If
Hainhofer’s account is to be believed, Magdalena Sibylla was herself a
skilled and knowledgeable collector. After touring her Kunstkammer,
separate from that of her husband, he writes that “dise lo¨bliche
Churfu ¨rstin grossen lust und guten verstand hat” (this lovely Electress
has great curiosity and good understanding).108 It may be worth noting
that Magdalena Sibylla’s Kunstkammer also contained—in addition to
shells, stuffed animals, mechanical animals, clocks, and other curiosi-
ties—musical instruments of the kind included in her husband’s collec-
tion, among them “Ain lieblich lautent clavier, alles nur von papir oder
cardon gemacht” (a lovely ringing clavier, all made from paper or
card),109 and musical automata such as “Ain tischlin mit selbs spilenden
musicalischen wercklin” (a little table with a self-playing musical
mechanism).110 Hainhofer himself, between 1620 and 1630, commis-
sioned worktables—small-scale collections—for both Johann Georg
and Magdalena Sibylla. That of the Electress included, among other
things, writing implements, scientific tools, kits of medicines and
toiletries, portraits, games, and a keyboard instrument of around four
octaves.111 Like the worktable, the Capriccio is a sort of portable collec-
tion, a miniature model of a musical – theatrical Aufzug, perhaps pre-
sented in celebration of Sophia Eleonora’s wedding to a patroness
who might appreciate its relationship to the cultures and practices of
courtly collecting.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 37 of 54
Although the dedication of the Ander Theil does not suggest a spe-
cific connection between the Electress and the Capriccio, the fact that a
book dedicated to Magdalena Sibylla would include such a work—
unique in Farina’s oeuvre—implies that the composer expected her to
look favorably upon it.
In its relationship to the courtly Aufzug, the Capriccio stands apart
from the Kunstkammer. It is ephemeral and fleeting; it hinges on per-
formance. To be sure, the act of walking through the Kunstkammer and
observing its contents was also performative in some respects, but the
viewer of the collection could be certain that when the tour was over
and the doors closed, the contents remained safe and stable inside. If
the score of the Capriccio serves as a visual or material memento of the
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work’s performance, the recreation of that performance is no certainty.
After all, the piece does not just require performance: it requires execu-
tion of extremely difficult virtuosic techniques. Although the work is in
many ways analogous to a collection, it ultimately resists the collector’s
control. Still, perhaps like the clockwork mechanisms of the automata in
the Kunstkammer, the printed score may serve as a catalyst for the repro-
duction of the music it contains.
No other source from this period includes explanations of violin
virtuosity like those described in the appendices to the Capriccio, likely
because most performers would have learned the techniques through
apprenticeship, not through reading. The appendices demonstrate an
interest on the part of Farina’s patrons in understanding the many ways
that the violin could produce sound in the hands of skilled players, who
could hold it sideways, pluck its strings, bow close to the bridge, play
multiple notes at once, and so on. Just as the Elector would sit with his
astronomical instruments, dabbling in a study of the heavens, so he
might consider the musical instruments in his collections and the ways
they could be exploited to further his study of art and nature. That
these virtuosic violin techniques emerged from south of the Alps must
have rendered the enterprise of exploration and discovery all the more
engaging.
Like the machines, figurines, maps, optical instruments, decorative
mining tools, and other curiosities of the Kunstkammer, the violin offers
a window onto the various realities of the surrounding world. Yet as a
performance-based work, the Capriccio has the capacity to recreate
life—both human and animal—in a way not available to static visual
artifacts. The representational music of the Capriccio stravagante serves
as a marker of that life, animating a collection of imaginary characters.
It presents a new perspective on the mysteries of the world, inviting the
Page 38 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
listener not only to “observe nature and art,” as Hainhofer suggested, but
to listen to them as well.
Notes
Rebecca Cypess is a faculty member in musicology at the New England Conservatory of
Music, where she teaches courses on the history, interpretation, and performance practi-
ces of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. Her publications have appeared in
the Journal of Musicology, Early Music, and Encyclopedia Britannica, among other places.
She is currently working on a book entitled “Curious and Modern Inventions”:
Humanism and the Mechanics of Italian Instrumental Music, 1610– 1630. E-mail: rebecca.
cypess@gmail.com. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 14th Biennal
International Conference on Baroque Music (Belfast, 2010) and at the 76th Annual
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Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Indianapolis, 2010).
I would like to expess my gratitude to Mary Frandsen, Helen Greenwald, Robert
Holzer, Francesco Izzo, Jeffery Kite-Powell, Keith Polk, Stephen Rose, Gregory Smith,
Bettina Varwig, and Neal Zaslaw for their insightful suggestions regarding content and
translations, and to Ellen Rosand for her constant support and advice. I also thank the
library staff of Spaulding Library at the New England Conservatory of Music—especially
Maria Jane Loizou and Suzanne Jalbert—for their assistance in assembling all the
sources for this project. I am very grateful to my students in Music History 523 at
NEC—in particular Gabe Alfieri, Bryan Burns, Sarah Darling, and Ben Shute—who
asked the insightful questions that inspired this essay. Finally, I owe a great debt to
Martina Minning of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden for her generosity in
sharing both ideas and materials.
1. On Kunstkammern and the purposes and ideals of collecting generally, see Horst
Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the
Evolution of Nature, Art, and Technology, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton, NJ: Markus
Wiener Publishers, 1995); Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order
of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 2001); Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and
Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1990); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific
Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Pamela
H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt, eds., Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe:
Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400 –1800 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
2007); and Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels:
Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2002). On
the Dresden Kunstkammer in particular, see Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in
Dresden from Renaissance to Baroque (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 71 –99. Several cata-
logs of representative items in the Dresden Gru¨nes Gewo¨lbe, the heir to the
Kunstkammer, have been published in recent years; see especially Dirk Syndram and
Antje Scherner, eds., Princely Splendor: The Dresden Court, 1580–1620 (Milan: Electa;
Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2004), which also contains a series of
informative scholarly essays.
2. The manuscript of Hainhofer’s 1617 travel diary was transcribed and published as
Philipp Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch, enthaltend Schilberungen aus Franken, Sachsen, der
Mark Brandenburg und Pommern im Jahr 1617, Baltische Studien 2 (Stettin: Christoph
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 39 of 54
von der Ropp, 1834); see 127 –48 for the passage on Dresden. A transcription of much
of Hainhofer’s diary of 1629 was published as Des Augsburger Patriciers Philipp Hainhofer
Reisen nach Innsbruck und Dresden, ed. Oscar Doering (Vienna: Carl Graeser, 1901); for
the passage on Dresden, see 141 –248.
3. Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch, 135. “Es ist in diser Kunstcammer auf allen Tischen, in
allen Kasten und an allen Wenden so vil klain und groß, schlecht und fu¨rnem Gezeug
und Sachen, daß ainer auch etlich Tag darzue brauchete, alles nach Lust und Nottdurfft
zu sehen, und die Natur und Kunst zu betrachten.” Translations are mine unless other-
wise indicated. Transcriptions from primary sources in German and Italian retain all
original spellings, except that “v” is modified to “u” when it is used as such. Capital
letters in both German and Italian, including those in midsentence, are retained from
the original sources, except in short titles (e.g., Capriccio stravagante and De
organographia).
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4. The official court inventories of the Pfeiffenkammer and the schlagende
Instrumentkammer, both written in 1593, are transcribed, respectively, in Moritz von
Fu¨rstenau, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der Ko¨niglich Sa¨chsischen musikalischen Kapelle
(Dresden: C. F. Meser, 1849), 40–41, and von Fu¨rstenau, “Ein Instrumenten-
Inventarium vom Jahre 1593,” Mitteilungen des Sa¨chsischen Altertumsvereins 22 (1872):
66– 76. Both are translated in Eszter Fontana, “Musical Instruments for the Electoral
Kunstkammer in Dresden around 1600,” Musique, images, instruments: Revue franc¸aise
d’organologie 8 (2006): 8–23. Hainhofer’s lists from 1629 are transcribed in Doering,
Des Augsburger Patriciers, 231 –35. Wolfram Steude, correcting a long-held misunder-
standing among contemporary scholars, has pointed out that the usable instruments
were not those contained in the Kunstkammer, but rather those in the Pfeiffenkammer
and the schlagenden Instrumentkammer; see Steude, “Michael Praetorius’ Theatrum instru-
mentorum 1620, Philipp Hainhofers Dresdner Reiserelation von 1629, und die Inventare
der Dresdner Kunstkammer,” in Theatrum instrumentorum Dresdense: Bericht u¨ber die
Tagungen zu historischen Musikinstrumenten, Dresden, 1996, 1998 und 1999, ed. Wolfram
Steude and Hans-Gu¨nter Ottenberg (Schneverdingen, Germany: Verlag der
Musikalienhandlung Karl Dieter Wagner, 2003), 233–40. The Ru¨stkammer (armory)
also held some instruments, especially those used for hunting; see Stephan Blaut, “Die
Ja¨gerho¨rner in den Ru¨stkammer der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden,” Musica
instrumentalis: Zeitschrift fu¨r Organologie 2 (1999): 8 –22; and Blaut, “Hornfessel,
Quasten und das inhaltsreiche Detail: Zur Ausstattung der Ja¨gerho¨rner in der Dresdner
Ru¨stkammer,” in Theatrum instrumentorum Dresdense, 39 –46.
5. Mary Frandsen points out that Johann Georg I’s interest in Italian music was short-
lived. Although he fostered the adoption of Italian-style music at his court during the
1620s, his subsequent involvement in the Thirty Years War consumed his interests. See
Frandsen, “Allies in the Cause of Italian Music: Schu¨tz, Prince Johann Georg II and
Musical Politics in Dresden,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 125, no. 1 (2000):
1–40, esp. 3n3. Nevertheless, the Elector perhaps deserves more credit than he is gen-
erally given for cultivating musical developments in the Hofkapelle before his involve-
ment in the war. Steude, for example, describes Johann Georg I as “beschra¨nkt”
(narrow-minded), a characterization that does not take sufficient account of musical
activities at the court during the 1610s and 1620s. See Steude, “Die Dresdner
Hofkapelle zwischen Antonio Scandello und Heinrich Schu¨tz (1580 –1615),” in Der
Klang der Sa¨chsischen Staatskapelle Dresden: Kontinuita¨t und Wandelbarkeit eines
Page 40 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Pha¨nomens, ed. Hans-Gu¨nter Ottenberg and Eberhard Steindorf (Hildesheim,
Germany: Olms, 2001), 23–45.
6. On the Italian journey of Johann Georg I and its implications for the Dresden
court, see Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden, 59 –70. Frandsen notes that
even after Dresden became embroiled in the Thirty Years War, the Elector’s son,
Johann Georg II, showed a marked interest in Italian music, probably encouraged by
Schu¨tz, that persisted throughout his reign. See Frandsen, “Allies in the Cause of
Italian Music.”
7. Although Schu¨tz’s trip to Dresden was to have been brief, he remained there, offi-
cially assuming the position of Kapellmeister in 1621 (although by then he had served in
that capacity de facto for several years). One of Schu¨tz’s most significant contributions
to the court culture of Dresden was his composition of what is commonly (if problem-
atically) referred to as the first German opera. Dafne, the music of which is now lost,
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was performed in 1627 as part of the celebrations honoring the wedding of Sophia
Eleonora, the eldest daughter of Johann Georg I and his second wife Magdalena
Sibylla, to Landgrave Georg II of Hesse-Darmstadt. As I shall argue, it seems possible
that the subject of the present essay—Farina’s Capriccio stravagante—was also composed
as a sort of wedding gift for Sophia Eleonora. On the status of Dafne as an opera
modeled on through-composed Italian works such as Peri’s L’Euridice and Monteverdi’s
L’Orfeo, see Wolfram Steude, “Heinrich Schu¨tz und die erste deutsche Oper,” in Von
Isaac bis Bach: Studien zur a¨lteren deutschen Musikgeschichte. Festschrift Martin Just zum
60. Geburtstag, ed. Frank Heidelberger, Wolfgang Ostoff, and Reinhard Wiesend
(Kassel, Germany: Ba¨renreiter, 1991), 169– 79; also Elisabeth Rothmund, “‘Dafne’ und
kein Ende: Heinrich Schu¨tz, Martin Opitz, und die verfehlte erste duetsche Oper,”
Schu¨tz-Jahrbuch 20 (1998): 123 –48; Aurelio Bianco, “Nach englischer und frantzo¨sischer
Art”: Vie et oeuvre de Carlo Farina avec l’e´dition des cinq recueils de Dresde (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2010), 36–37 and 195 –201; Bettina Varwig, “Schu¨tz’s Dafne and the German
Operatic Imagination,” in Music, Theatre, and Politics in Germany, 1850–1950, ed.
Nikolaus Bacht (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 117–38; and Varwig, Histories of Heinrich
Schu¨tz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 58–93.
8. For the most up-to-date biography of Farina, see Bianco, Nach englischer und frant-
zo¨sischer Art, 23– 73.
9. Carlo Farina, Ander Theil newer Paduanen, Gagliarden, Couranten, Frantzo¨sischen
Arien, benebenst einem kurtzweiligen Quodlibet / von allerhand seltzamen Inventionen, derglei-
chen vorhin im Druck nie gesehen worden / sampt etlichen Teutschen Ta¨ntzen / alles auff Violen
anmutig zugebrauchen (Dresden: Gimel Bergen, 1627); this volume is cited as RISM A/I/3,
F98; and in Claudio Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana (Florence: Leo
Olschki, 1952), record number 1627a, 314. A nearly complete set of partbooks is held by
the Universita¨tsbibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der
Stadt Kassel (D-Kl), shelf mark 28 Mus. 25, but it preserves only the very brief appendix
containing the performance instructions for the tenor partbook. The more complete
appendix for the cantus is preserved, however, in the partbook held at the Sa¨chsische
Landesbibliothek, Staats- und Universita¨tsbibliothek Dresden (D-Dl), shelf mark Mus.
1510-N-1. Bianco, Nach englischer und frantzo¨sischer Art, includes a modern edition of all
of Farina’s music on CD-ROM; the Ander Theil appears on the CD-ROM on 123–214,
and the Capriccio stravagante on 179–208. The Kassel exemplar of Farina’s works is
accompanied by a handwritten bass partbook, suggesting that it would have been
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 41 of 54
possible—though not necessary—to accompany the music with a continuo instrument;
see Bianco, “Les sources,” in Nach englischer und frantzo¨sischer Art, CD-ROM [ii].
10. The idea that “kurtzweilig Quodlibet von allerhand seltzamen Inventionen” is
meant as a translation of Capriccio stravagante is supported by many other German
translations of Italian rubrics in this piece, as will be discussed below. The title itself
requires some explanation; see note 24.
11. David Boyden’s characterization is representative: “About 1600 violin music is
remarkable for its experiments in idiom, form, and expression; but it does not follow
that novelty and experiment are always synonymous with the best artistic results. The
most interesting piece violinistically is not necessarily the most interesting musically,
and the exploration of the violin idiom sometimes advances the technique of the
instrument more than its musical ends. Farina’s much-mentioned Capriccio stravagante
of 1627 is a classic case. This piece calls for relatively exotic devices like col legno, sul
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ponticello, and even glissando in the interests of depicting barking dogs, yowling cats,
and crowing cocks. All this is in good fun for the violinist—and was probably intended
as such by Farina—but musically such pieces cannot be considered seriously except in
so far as they advance the technique of the instrument.” Boyden, The History of Violin
Playing from Its Origins to 1761, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),
131 –32. Similar sentiments are expressed in other histories; see, for example, William
S. Newman, The Sonata in the Baroque Era, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1983), 54;
Walter Kolneder, Das Buch der Violine, 5th ed. (Zurich: Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag,
1993), translated and edited by Reinhard G. Pauly as The Amadeus Book of the Violin:
Construction, History, and Music (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 1998), 268–69;
E. Van Der Straeten, The Romance of the Fiddle: The Origin of the Modern Virtuoso and
The Adventures of His Ancestors (London: Rebman, 1911), 21–22. More recent studies
have treated the Capriccio stravagante more cautiously, but still somewhat neutrally; see
Manfred Fechner, “Bemerkungen zu Carlo Farina und seiner Instrumentalmusik,”
Schu¨tz-Jahrbuch 18 (1996): 111 –13. Bianco’s treatment deals in depth with the influ-
ence of the Capriccio on subsequent instrumental program music in German-speaking
areas; see Bianco, Nach englischer und frantzo¨sischer Art, 123–49. Simon McVeigh asso-
ciates the mimetic effects of the Capriccio with the early seventeenth-century interest
in musical theater (see McVeigh, “The Violinists of the Baroque and Classical Periods,”
in The Cambridge Companion to the Violin, ed. Robin Stowell [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992], 48), an idea taken up in Rebecca Cypess, “‘Esprimere la voce
humana’: Connections between Vocal and Instrumental Music by Italian Composers
of the Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Musicology 27, no. 2 (Spring 2010):
181 –223.
12. An excellent example is Dana Gooley, “La commedia del violino: Paganini’s Comic
Strains,” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 370–427.
13. Van der Straeten, for example, disparagingly calls the work “formless”; see The
Romance of the Fiddle, 22.
14. As noted in Cypess, “‘Esprimere la voce humana,’” 211, the ending of the Capriccio
is particularly unstable. In contrast with the opening of the work, solidly in D major,
the ending fades away in F, unprepared by any cadence. The ending of the Capriccio is
reproduced on page 213.
Page 42 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
15. Susan Lewis Hammond has explored the relationship between German
Kunstkammern and German editions of Italian vocal music. The case of Farina’s
Capriccio stravagante may be further evidence in support of Hammond’s assertion that
“like their professional counterparts in the world of the Kunstkammer, German antholo-
gists gathered and domesticated non-native, foreign objects, and fashioned northern
replicas when needed.” See Hammond, Editing Music in Early Modern Germany
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 182; also Hammond, “Collecting Madrigals in
Nuremberg: De’ fiori del giardino (1604) and the Music Anthology as Kunstkammer,”
paper presented at the 69th annual meeting of the American Musicological Society
(Houston, 2003). A similar culture of “aural collecting” in Italy is explicated in
Andrew Dell’Antonio, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011), Chapter 2.
16. German quodlibets were not the only works that involved nonsense syllables and
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imitations of instruments and animals. Farina likely also knew Italian vocal precedents
such as those in Orazio Vecchi’s Il convito musicale (1597). Nevertheless, his situation
of the Capriccio stravagante within the genre of the quodlibet prompts consideration of
the work within that more specifically German tradition.
17. Wolfgang Schmeltzl, Guter seltzamer und ku¨nstreicher teutscher Gesang, sonderlich
ettliche ku¨nstliche Quodlibet, Schlacht, und der Gleichen, mit vier oder fu¨nff Stimmen, biss
her im Truck nicht gesehen (Nuremberg: Petreium, 1544; facsimile ed., Stuttgart:
Cornetto-Verlag, 1997). Modern edition by Rudolf Flotzinger (Graz: Akademische
Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1990).
18. An early study of the vocal quodlibet is Hans Joachim Moser, Corydon: Geschichte
des mehrstimmigen Generalbassliedes und des Quodlibets im Deutschen Barock, 2nd ed.
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), esp. 26 –27.
19. “Quodlibet, Ein Gsang von mannicherley zusam geklaubten Liedern oder Texten /
da keins auff das ander geht. Jtem sonst ein zusam geklaubt ding / es sey was es wo¨l /
das sich doch nindert oder wenig zusamen gattet. Ein durch einander misch ma¨sch.”
See Simon Roth, Ein teutscher Dictionarius / dz ist ein außleger schwerer / unbekanter
Teutscher / Griechischer / Lateinischer / Hebraischer / Wa¨lscher und Frantzo¨sischer / auch
andrer Nationen wo¨rter / so mit der weil inn Teutsche sprach kommen seind / und offt man-
cherley jrrung bringen: hin und wider auß manicherley geschrifften / und gemainer Red
zusamen gelesen / außgelegt / und also allen Teutschen / sonderlich aber denen so zu
Schreibereien kommen / und Ampts verwaltung haben / aber des Lateins unerfarn seind / zu
gutem publiciert: durch Simon Roten (Augsburg: Michae¨l Manger, 1571), transcribed in
Emil O ¨ hmann, “Simon Roths Fremdwo¨rterbuch,” Me´moires de la Socie´te´ Ne´o-Philologique
de Helsingfors 11 (1936): 225 –370, 344. It is noteworthy that Roth’s dictionary, the ear-
liest known of its kind, is itself a sort of collection—a “misch ma¨sch” of curious and
foreign objects—brought together for the edification and entertainment of the reader.
On the tradition of foreign-word dictionaries in Germany beginning with Roth, see
W. T. Jones, “German Foreign-Word Dictionaries from 1571 to 1728,” Modern
Language Review 72, no. 1 (January 1977): 93 –111.
20. “Messanza seu Mistichanza: Ist ein Quotlibet oder Mixtur von allerley Kra¨utern /
una salata de Mistichanza: Wird sonsten in gemein ein Quotlibet genennet. Do
nemlich aus vielen unnd mancherley Motetten, Madrigalien, und andern deutschen
weltlichen / auch possirlichen Liedern / eine halbe oder ganze zeile Text mit den
Melodeyen und Notten / so darzu und daru¨ber gesetzt seyn / herausser genommen und
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 43 of 54
aus vielen stu¨cklin und fla¨cklein gleichsam ein gantzer Peltz zusammen gesticket und
geflicket wird.” See Praetorius, Syntagmatis musici . . . tomus tertius. . . . Sampt angehengtem
außfu¨rlichem Register (Wolffenbu¨ttel, Germany: Elias Holwein in Verlegung des Autoris,
1619), 17. For an English translation, see Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum III,
trans. and ed. Jeffery T. Kite-Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 33.
Praetorius continues by describing three types of quodlibet, defined by their methods of
fragmentation. In some, each voice has its own text, which it recites in full; in the
second category, each voice has its own text but those texts are all truncated; and in
the third category, the voices all have the same text, but they are broken off and taken
up by different voices as the piece proceeds.
21. Groh’s quodlibet was reprinted in Johann Groh, Dreissig neue außerlesene Padovane
und Galliard / mit fu¨nff Stimmen so zuvor niemals in Truck kommen / auf fallen musicali-
schen Instrumenten lieblich zugebrauchen. Sampt einem zu end angehengtem Quotlibet
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genannt. Bettlermantel. Von mancherley guten Flecklein zusammen gestickt und geflickt / allen
denen so ihnen was neues belieben lassen / zu ehren mit 4. Stimmen verfertigt (Nuremberg:
Abraham Wagenman, 1612).
22. See, for example, Melchior Franck, Musicalischer Grillenvertreiber: Jn welchem alle
Quodlibeta so biszhero unterschiedlich in Truck ausgangen / zusamen gebracht / auch mit etli-
chen newen / als einem lateinischen und zweyen teutschen vermehret / Allen der Edlen Music
Liebhabern zu sonderlicher fro¨licher Ergetzlichkeit / Mit 4. Stimmen Componiret und in Truck
verfertiget (Coburg, Germany: Forckel, 1622); Andreas Rauch, Musicalisches
Stammbu¨chlein in welchem Anfangs etliche Geistliche: dann weltliche Gesa¨nglein mit lieblich,
fro¨hlich, und lustig amorosischen Texten sampt einer la¨cherlichen Geschicht eines jungen paar
Ehevolks. Auch einem Rundtruncks Gesa¨nglein, einem Quodlibet und zwo Litanien von
fromm und bo¨sen Weibern (Nuremberg: Wagenmann, 1627). For a modern edition of
Rauch, see A ´ gnes Sas and Antal Jancsocivs, eds., Andreas Rauch: Musicalisches
Stammbu¨chlein 1627, with an introduction by Korne´l Ba´rdos, Ilona Ferenczi, and Ka´roly
Mollay. Musicalia Danubiana 2 (Budapest: Magyar Tudoma´nyos Akade´mia
Zenetudoma´nyi Inte´zet, 1983).
23. All musical examples were prepared from the 1627 print and checked against the
modern edition contained in the CD-ROM that accompanies Bianco, Nach englischer und
frantzo¨sischer Art. Aspects of the 1627 print are quite difficult to interpret. In particular,
slurs seem to have posed substantial problems for Farina’s printer: they float above the
staves, and it is often unclear whether they are attached to a given note or simply imply
a slurred execution throughout the passage. In such cases, the interpretations and edito-
rial suggestions offered in Bianco’s edition have been retained. In addition, the use of
accidentals is inconsistent. As was common in the early seventeenth century, the major-
ity of the Capriccio is printed without barlines. Some accidentals may therefore apply
only to the notes to which they are directly attached, but in many cases (for example, in
fully notated trills), the harmonic vocabulary necessitates application of the accidental to
a series of notes subsequent to its initial appearance. The musical examples in this essay
include editorial cautionary accidentals but omit some of the ficta that Bianco suggests,
unless the harmonic context renders them necessary. Whereas Bianco’s edition standard-
izes and consolidates rubrics, the examples presented here retain original spellings and
punctuations. I have standardized the groupings of beams.
24. The titles that Farina uses for his quodlibet—in both Italian and German—reflect
this notion of the Capriccio as a musical collection. Although composers working in
Page 44 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Italy most often associated the genre of the capriccio with contrapuntal music (as in
the capriccios of Girolamo Frescobaldi), the Italian Biagio Marini, who was employed
at the court of the Duke of Neuberg while Farina was in Dresden, used the term as
Farina did, to refer to works in which the violin engages in role-play. In addition, the
word capriccio evidently connoted wandering: the Vocabolario degli accademici della
crusca, 2nd ed. (1623; 155), translates the word as “val pensiero, fantası´a, ghiribı´zzo,
invenzione” (following one’s thoughts, fantasy, whim, invention). According to the
Crusca linguists, the word stravagante also carried an implication of pretense. Readers of
the Vocabolario, upon turning to the entry for stravagante (845) are referred to fantastico
(323): “da FANTASMA. Finto, immaginato, non vero” (related to a spectre. Feigned,
imagined, not true). Farina’s German title for the work, the kurtzweilig Quodlibet von
allerhand seltzamen Inventionen, likewise implies both imagination and a sense of wander-
ing, even to the point of fragmentation. Kurtzweilig in its most literal sense is that
which makes time seem short (as opposed to langweilig). The Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch of
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Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (assembled in the nineteenth century based on surveys of
earlier literature) defines kurzweilig both in terms of humor (using the words witzig,
unterhaltend and erheiternd [ joking, entertaining, and cheerful]) and with a connotation
of fragmentation (zerstreuend [scattered]). This sense is reflected, significantly, in a
rubric that introduces a category of lute music in the tablature manuscript of Philipp
Hainhofer (the same travel diarist and Augsburg court emissary mentioned above).
Hainhofer’s Dritter Thail P.H. Lautenbucher includes quasi-improvised genres such as
preludes, preambles, fantasies, ricercars, and “andere kurtzweilige musicalische leufflen”
(other fragmentary/amusing/time-passing musical forms). Farina’s phrase “von allerhand
seltzamen Inventionen” may be translated literally as “of various strange inventions,”
but as noted earlier, the term Invention itself requires further explanation, which will be
undertaken below. For these definitions and usages, see Vocabolario degli accademici della
Crusca in questa seconda impressione da’ medesimi riveduto, e ampliato, con aggiunta di
molte voci degli autor del buon secolo, e buona quantita` di quelle dell’uso, con tre indici delle
voci, locuzioni, e proverbi latini, e greci, postiper entro l’opera (Venice: Sarzina, 1623);
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel,
1854–1960), 32 vols., online at http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/
woerterbuecher/dwb/WBB/dwb/wbgui; the definition of “kurzweilig” is in 11:2862; and
Philipp Hainhofer, Dritter Thail P.H. Lautenbucher darinnen begriffen preludi, praeambuli,
phantasiae, ricercate, passionate etc. und andere kurtzweilige musicalische Leufflen. Mit ange-
hencktem tractetlin, auf was weisz die Lauten zulernen ist, 1603, Herzog August Bibliothek,
Wolfenbu¨ttel (call number Cod. Guelf. 18.7þ8 Aug.20). On this last work, and
Hainhofer’s lute music in general, see Joachim Lu¨dtke, Die Lautenbu¨cher Philipp
Hainhofers (1578–1647), Abhandlungen zur Musikgeschichte 5 (Go¨ttingen, Germany:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1999).
25. This description is located in the introduction to the De organographia: “Ist noch
ein Instrument / an welchen zugleich die Clavier geschlagen / und die Sa¨itten mit
einem Rade / an stadt deß Bogens / erreget werden / Nemlich / Lyra Rustica, seu
pagana, ein gemeine Lyra” (There is also an instrument played by keys and with a
wheel to set its strings into motion in place of a bow, namely the lyra rustica or pagana:
the common lyra). Praetorius, De organographia, 5, translated in Harold Blumenfeld,
The Syntagma musicum of Michael Praetorius, vol. 2: De organographia, First and Second
Parts, Plus All Forty-Two Original Woodcut Illustrations from Theatrum instrumentorum
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1980), 5. In the section on the lira itself, Praetorius declines
to comment on this instrument, implying that its social status does not earn it a place
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 45 of 54
in his written work: “Allhier ist nicht zu sagen / von der Bawren- unnd umblauffenden
Weiber Leyre / die mit einem Handgriff herumb gedrehet / und mit der lincken Hand
die Claves tangirt warden” (The peasant lyra and the lyras of street women, instruments
which are ground with one hand while the keys are fingered by the left hand, will not
be treated here). See Praetorius, De organographia, 49. Nevertheless, he does present a
picture of the peasant’s lyre in his Theatrum instrumentorum, one of several representa-
tions suggesting that his illustrative catalog was meant to be more comprehensive than
his written work.
26. See Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 232. On the social associations of the hurdy-
gurdy, see Emanuel Winternitz, “Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies in Their Social Setting,”
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2, no. 1 (Summer 1943): 56–83. Winternitz provides
ample iconographic and written documentation to support an association of the hurdy-
gurdy with peasant music, but also notes that in paintings of the late Renaissance, the
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instrument is frequently pictured in the hands of angels: “Angels seem to have no social
prejudices whatever; like playful children they do not hesitate to take a juggler’s or
beggar’s instrument for the greater glory of the Lord or his Saints” (66).
27. My thanks to Aurelio Bianco for helping to clarify the meaning of this phrase.
28. The presentation of double-stops in “La Lira” and elsewhere in the Capriccio was
apparently difficult for Farina’s printer; in both the Kassel and the Dresden exemplars,
one note of each double- or triple-stop was printed and the others were added by hand.
29. See Caldwell Titcomb, “Baroque Court and Military Trumpets and Kettledrums:
Technique and Music,” Galpin Society Journal 9 (June 1956): 56 –57; Timothy
A. Collins, “‘Of the Differences between Trumpeters and City Tower Musicians’: The
Relationship of Stadtpfeifer and Kammeradschaft Trumpeters,” Galpin Society Journal 53
(April 2000): 51–59; and Don L. Smithers, “The Hapsburg Imperial Trompeter and
Heerpauker Privileges of 1653,” Galpin Society Journal 24 (1971): 84– 95.
30. That Farina’s rubric in the bass partbook offers two German terms for the drum in
question—Paucken oder Soldaten Trommel—raises questions about the identity of this
instrument. Plate 6 of Praetorius’s Theatrum instrumentorum depicts a soldier’s pipe with
a small drum, but the term Paucken may indicate a military equivalent to the
Heerpaucken, or kettledrum; Praetorius depicts Soldaten Trummeln in plate 23. Given
the make up of the music, in which only the uppermost violin plays a melody and the
lower three instruments play various rhythmic motives on a single pitch, it seems possi-
ble that Farina meant to represent a soldier’s pipe accompanied by drums of various
sizes and types.
31. The German phrase is a double diminutive, meaning that the instrument in ques-
tion is a small version of the soprano-register shawm.
32. On the composition of German wind bands, see Keith Polk, “Instrumental Music
in the Urban Centres of Renaissance Germany,” Early Music History 7 (1987): 159–86.
On the use of the term Stadtpfeifer, see page 162. See also Keith Polk, German
Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons, and Performance Practice
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 45 –86.
33. See the images in Polk, German Instrumental Music, 66.
34. In the third volume of the Syntagma musicum, Praetorius writes of the dance genre
known as the ballo, saying that “Der andern Art Balli oder Ballette seynd / welche
Page 46 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
keinen Text haben: Und wenn diselbigen mit Schallmeyen oder Pfeiffen zum tantze
gespielet werden / so heist es stampita” (Balli or ballets of this type have no text, and if
they are played on Schalmeyen or pipes for dancing, they are called stampitas).
Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. 3, 19; trans. in Kite-Powell, 35.
35. In the performance instructions in the appendices, Farina makes the connection
to the organ explicit, as shown in Table 1. See Stewart Carter, “The String Tremolo in
the 17th Century,” Early Music 19, no. 1 (February 1991): 49–60. Praetorius expresses
a fondness for the organ tremulant, calling it “eine fein Stimbwerck” (a fine voice-
mechanism) and outlines some principles for its use in his essay on the organ, Kurtzer
Bericht, waß bey uberliefferung einer klein und grosverfertigten Orgell zu observieren; see
Michael Praetorius und Esaias Compenius Orgeln Verdingnis, Kieler Beitra¨ge zur
Musikwissenschaft 4, ed. Friedrich Blume (Wolfenbu¨ttel and Berlin: Georg Kallmeyer,
1936), 23 –24.
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36. Carter, “The String Tremolo in the 17th Century,” 43ff.
37. Elsewhere I suggested that the dissonances in the “tremulant” section of the
Capriccio were meant to mock an organist becoming lost during the course of his
improvisation. However, what appear to be the contrapuntal improprieties in this
section are actually not far from other works in the “durezze e ligature” tradition, for
example, in works by Trabaci, Macque, and most famously, Frescobaldi. See Roland
Jackson, “On Frescobaldi’s Chromaticism and Its Background,” Musical Quarterly 57,
no. 2 (April 1971): 255 –69.
38. For inventory lists and other sources of information on the instruments at the
Dresden court, see note 4.
39. “In Italia die Ziarlatini und Salt’ in banco (das sind beyn uns fast wie die
Comœdianten unnd Possenreisser) nur zum schrumpen; Darein sie Villanellen und
andere na¨rrische Lumpenlieder singen. Es ko¨nnen aber nichts desto weniger auch
andere feine anmuthige Cantiunculæ, und liebliche Lieder von eim guten Seuger und
Musico Vocali darein musicirt werden.” See Praetorius, De organographia, 53.
40. See James Tyler and Paul Sparks, The Guitar and Its Music: From the Renaissance to
the Classical Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 139–40. The advances in
guitar building and the repertoire of the instrument made in Italy in the first decades of
the seventeenth century—advances of which Praetorius seems ignorant—are described
on 51 –99.
41. On a seventeenth-century compendium of instruments that does demonstrate an
awareness of the Spanish guitar, see J. Patricia Campbell, “Musical Instruments in the
Instrumenta¨lischer Bettlermantl—A Seventeenth-Century Musical Compendium,” Galpin
Society Journal 48 (March 1995): 156 –67. This volume is an undated manuscript, so it
does little to help clarify precisely when information on the Spanish guitar was incorpo-
rated into German musical knowledge.
42. The same purpose apparently helped to motivate the third volume of Praetorius’s
Syntagma musicum, the title page of which lists among its contents an explanation of
“How Italian and other musical terms, such as ripieno, ritornello, forte, pian, presto,
lento, capella, palchetto, and many more, are interpreted and employed” and “the
training of young schoolboys in the current Italian manner of singing.” Translated in
Kite-Powell, 3.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 47 of 54
43. Hainhofer’s travel diaries move fluidly from a narrative style replete with anecdo-
tal information about the people he encountered to a more terse style that catalogs the
artifacts and curiosities he saw during his visits. His descriptions of the rooms of
musical instruments in the Dresden court typify this latter mode of writing. In fact,
Hainhofer’s lists of the instruments in the Pfeiffenkammer, which contained wind and
stringed instruments, and the schlagenden Instrumentkammer, which housed keyboard
instruments, have no obvious structure. Instead, it seems likely that he wrote descrip-
tions of the instruments he saw in the order that he encountered them.
44. “unterschiedene Regale, Positive, Orgelwercke und Instrumenta Musicalia, theils
von Alabster und Marmor, theils gantz von Glaß, theils von kostbaren Holtze und
ku¨nstlich eingelegt.” See Anton Weck, Der chur-fu¨rstlichen sa¨chsischen weitberuffenen
Residentz- und Haupt-Vestung Dresden Beschreib: und Vorstellung: auf der churfu¨stlichen
Herrschafft gna¨digstes belieben in vier Abtheilungen verfasset, mit Grund und anderen
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Abrissen, auch bewehrten Documenten erla¨utert (Nuremberg: J. Hoffmann, 1680). Quoted
in Steude, “Michael Praetorius’ Theatrum instrumentorum,” 234.
45. Inventarium uber die churfu¨rstliche sa¨chß: kunst cammern im schloß und vestung
Dresden Verneu¨ert und auffgericht den 26. Junii anno: 1619, fol. 321r. Transcribed by
Jochen Vo¨tsch in Kunstkammerinventar 1619. HStA Dresden, 10009 Kunstkammer,
Sammlungen und Galerien, Nr. 7 (als Leihgabe in der Direktion des Gru¨nen Gewo¨lbes,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) Vgl. Die kurfu¨rstlich-sa¨chsische Kunstkammer in
Dresden, vol. 3: Das Inventar von 1619, ed. Dirk Syndram and Martina Minning
(Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2010). My thanks to Martina
Minning for sharing proofs of the modern edition of this inventory with me prior to its
publication.
46. Inventarium uber die churfu¨rstliche sa¨chß: kunst cammern, fol. 321r, transcribed in
Syndram and Minning, Kunstkammerinventar 1619. This is probably the same instru-
ment as the one Hainhofer describes as “Ain scho¨n eingelegts selbs schlagendes instru-
ment, so auf allerley¨ scho¨ne muteten zu richten” (A beautiful inlaid self-playing
keyboard instrument, which plays several beautiful motets); see Doering, Des Augsburger
Patriciers, 171.
47. “In einer wolbestelten KunstCammer sollen fu¨rnemlich dreierlei sachen zubefin-
den sein. Erstlich runde Bilder. Zum andern Gemele, und zum dritten wunderbarliche
In und auslendische Gewechse. von Metallen, Stein, Holcz, Kreutern so uff der Erden,
in der Erden, in Wassern und Meer, gefunden wirdt, Item was durch Natur und Kunst
von solchen Gewechsen zu trink und andern Geschirrn formirt und gemacht. Item
Geweihe, Geho¨rne, / Klawen. Federn und anders von frembden selczamen Thieren.
Vo¨geln. und Fischen, darunder / auch die Schelleton der Anatomia mit einge- / bracht
warden sollen.” Quoted and translated in Barbara Gutfleisch and Joachim Menzhausen,
“‘How a Kunstkammer Should Be Formed’: Gabriel Kaltemarckt’s Advice to Christian I
of Saxony on the Formation of an Art Collection, 1587,” Journal of the History of
Collections 1, no. 1 (1989): 11.
48. On the tension between the different approaches to collecting embodied within the
Dresden Kunstkammer, see Joachim Menzhausen, “Elector Augustus’s Kunstkammer: An
Analysis of the Inventory of 1587,” in The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities
in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 69–75. In fact, Italian collections, too, were filled with
curiosities as well as art; see especially Findlen, Possessing Nature, passim.
Page 48 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
49. “Wo und wie solche zuerlangen, achte ich diß orths onno¨tig zuschreiben.
Sintemal derer ding hin und wider in Teutschland und Italia vil zubekommen.
Derhalben Ich die beruhen lassen, und die andern zwei theil der KunstCammer fu¨r
mich nemen will.” See Gutfleisch and Menzhausen, “‘How a Kunstkammer Should Be
Formed,’” 11.
50. Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, 19 –27.
51. On the significance of mining and alchemy for the court culture of Dresden,
including the documentation of alchemical collections and activities there, see
Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden, 100–120.
52. On natural magic in the late Renaissance and early modern eras, see, for example,
Penelope Gouk, Music, Science, and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), especially 66 –111; and Gary Tomlinson, Music in
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Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993).
53. See, for example, the emerald cluster in Syndram and Scherner, eds., Princely
Splendor, 302.
54. Derek J. De Solla Price, “Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and
Mechanistic Philosophy,” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 9–23; Julian
Jaynes, “The Problem of Animate Motion in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the
History of Ideas 31, no. 2 (April–June 1970): 219–34. Athanasius Kircher’s treatises
and collections assembled later in the seventeenth century manifest mechanistic philos-
ophy on numerous levels; on this topic, see especially Michael John Gorman, “Between
the Demonic and the Miraculous: Athanasius Kircher and the Baroque Culture of
Machines,” in The Great Art of Knowing: The Baroque Encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher,
ed. Daniel Stolzenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 59–70. See also
Eric Bianchi, “Prodigious Sounds: Music and Learning in the World of Athanasius
Kircher” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2011).
55. Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, 46 –51.
56. Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, 46.
57. Hainhofer’s account of his visit to the Anatomiekammer can be found in
Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch, 140 –41.
58. On the significance of the rhinoceros as a commercialized symbol of the exotic,
see Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen’s introduction to Merchants and Marvels, 1–28.
59. Hainhofer’s description of the Lewenhaus is found in Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch,
137– 38.
60. 8 Stu¨ck wachßene thierlein, welche der junge Nicol Schwabe gemacht und uber-
geben worden den 2. Augusti anno 90, alß 1. Einhorn, 1 Lo¨we und lo¨win, 1
Pantherthier, 1 Wildtschwein sambt einem leidthunde, 1 Bock sambt einem ledigen
wasserhunde, 1 Wieder mit einem Satyro bildtnu¨ß, so ihn darnieder dringet oder
schlegt, 1 Strauß sambt einem kranich, 1 Adeler.” Inventarium uber die churfu¨rstliche
sa¨chßische kunst cammern, fol. 444v, transcribed in Syndram and Minning,
Kunstkammerinventar 1619.
61. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 159. “Camaleon terrestris, so iedes Dings farb
an sich nimmet, warauf man es setzet.”
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 49 of 54
62. Hainhofer’s description of the contents of the Kunstkammer in 1629 is transcribed
in Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 156– 79.
63. See Syndram and Scherner, eds., Princely Splendor, 232.
64. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 167. “Ain frey stehender hirsch, in welchem
allerley¨ arzney¨ auf etlich 40 stuck von des edlen hirschen glidern auf chy¨mische art
praepariert, vnd von hiesingen geschickten HofApotecker, Johann Wechingern z wegen
gebracht worden, laut hiernach gesetzter beschreibung.” Doering unfortunately does not
reproduce this song.
65. See De Solla Price, “Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic
Philosophy.”
66. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 168. “Zwey¨ scho¨ne hu¨ndlein, darinn uhrwerck
mit bewegung ihrer augen zu befinden”; “Ain uehrlein mit dem pelican und seinen
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iungen, wann es schlegt, so bewegen sie sich”; and “Ain beer wann es schlegt, so
bewegt er die augen, die tazen, ru¨ssel, und baucket, darbey¨ ain way¨dmann das horn
ansetz, als ob er blies.”
67. On the grotesque within the Dresden collections, see Wolfram Koeppe, “Exotica
and the Kunstkammer: ‘Snake Stones, Iridescent Sea Snails, and the Eggs of the Giant
Iron-Devouring Bird,’” in Princely Splendor, 80 –89; esp. 81.
68. On imitations of birdsong in vocal music, see Elizabeth Eva Leach, Sung Birds: Music,
Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).
69. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 167. “Ain perpetuum mobile, welches in ainem
gla¨serinen ring ascendiert und descendiert.”
70. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 167. “Etliche magnet, deren der gro¨ßte 5 lott
schwer, und zeucht 66 loth eisen an sich, so er tag und nacht, iahr und tag haltet.”
71. See J. H. Leopold, “Collecting Instruments in Protestant Europe Before 1800,”
Journal of the History of Collections 7, no. 2 (1995): 151–57; and Sven Dupre´ and
Michael Korey, “Inside the Kunstkammer: The Circulation of Optical Knowledge and
Instruments at the Dresden Court,” Studies in History and Philosohy of Science 40, no. 4
(2009): 405 –20.
72. See J. Schardin, “History of the Horological Collections in Dresden,” Antiquarian
Horology 19, no. 5 (Autumn 1991): 493 –510; Leopold, “Collecting Instruments.”
73. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 172. “Allerley¨ auf etliche taflen, becher,
geschirr, schalen, gieskandten, leffel und messer, alles von marmor, alabaster, serpentin,
und andern stainen, so im Churfu¨rstenthum Sachsen gebrochen werden, gar scho¨n
poliert.”
74. See Menzhausen, “Elector Augustus’s Kunstkammer,” 72.
75. See especially Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 165–67.
76. See, for example, Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 167.
77. On the motivations behind the production of machine books, see Marcus
Popplow, “Why Draw Pictures of Machines? The Social Contexts of Early Modern
Machine Drawings,” in Picturing Machines, 1400–1700, ed. Wolfgang Lefe`vre
(Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2004), 17 –48.
Page 50 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
78. Jacques Besson, Theatrum instrumentorum et machinorum (Lyon: B. Vincentium,
1578). On the 1571 manuscript of Besson’s work, see Alexander Keller, “A Manuscript
Version of Jacques Besson’s Book of Machines, With His Unpublished Principles of
Mechanics,” in On Pre-Modern Technology and Science, ed. Bert S. Hall and Delno
C. West (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1976), 75 –103.
79. Jacques Besson, Theatrum oder Schawbuch allerley Werckzeug und Ru¨stungen des
hochverstendigen sinnreichen Mathematici, Iacobi Bessoni, auss dem Delphinat (Mu¨mbelgart,
Getruckt durch J. Foillet, 1595). Volume available as part of the online digital library
of the Herzog August Bibliothek at the persistent URL http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/od-
2f-3/start.htm.
80. Besson, Theatrum oder Schawbuch, plate 29. “Des Authoris Proposition zu der
Neun und Zwentzigsten Figur. Ein newe form eines Musicalisches Instruments / dessen
Metallische Saiten / mit den Fingern und Fidelbogen beru¨hzet / geben einen gemengten
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/ gleichmessig Temperirten / und lieblichen Concent / der sich mit einer Leyren und
Posaunen schall zum theil vergleichet.”
81. See Luigi Francesco Valdrighi, Nomocheliurgografia antica e moderna: Ossia Elenco
di fabbricatori di strumenti armonici con note esplicative e documenti estratti dall’Archivio di
Stato in Modena (1884; repr., Bologna: Forni, 1967). My thanks to Renato Meucci and
the many others who participated in a lively discussion about this instrument on the e-
mail list of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.
82. Popplow notes that many machine books included such unrealistic or unrealized
designs and offers suggestions for understanding the motivation behind such illustra-
tions. See “Why Draw Pictures of Machines?” 23–24.
83. See Conny Restle, “Organology: The Study of Musical Instruments in the 17th
Century,” trans. Daniel Hendrickson, in Instruments in Art and Science: On the
Architectonics of Cultural Boundaries in the 17th Century, ed. Helmar Schramm, Ludger
Schwarte, and Jan Lazardzig (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 257–68.
84. On the importance of machinery for late-Renaissance culture throughout Europe,
see Jonathan Sawday, Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the
Machine (New York: Routledge, 2007).
85. “Philosophis Philologis und Historicis sehr lustig und anmu¨tig zu lesen.” Although
Praetorius himself does not comment on the relationship between his instruments and
the nature –artifice divide, Marin Mersenne, writing in 1636, did so. Instruments,
according to Mersenne, may have been intended originally to imitate the only natural
instrument—the human voice—but they developed independently of nature, in effect
superseding it. Mersenne thus states explicitly what is implied by the musical instru-
ments of the Dresden Kunstkammer: that musical instruments could aid in man’s project
of mastering nature. Although instrumental music starts with the reference point of
natural music, its artifice soon goes beyond what nature can accomplish alone. See
Restle, “Organology,” 263.
86. On the early history of the violin, see especially the first chapter of Peter
Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995).
87. See Bianco, Nach englischer und frantzo¨sischer Art, 118–23.
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 51 of 54
88. The col legno section of the cantus partbook contains notes that are obviously mis-
taken. In the original print, the bottom note of the triple-stop oscillates between G-
sharp and G-natural; in combination with the other parts this reading is harmonically
untenable. I have followed Bianco’s suggestion of changing each notated G-natural to
an A.
89. The significance of the col legno technique described here is amplified by a
description of one musical instrument found in Hainhofer’s inventory of the
Pfeiffenkammer: a “Neue invention mit stecken, an welche man oben aine aufgeblasene
schweinblasen bindet, und an die sta¨b (so wie die handbo¨gen sein) 3 saiten anmachet,
ueber die blater oben spannet, mit ainem fidel darauf geiget, oder schlegt, und ainen
wunderbahren sonum oder tonum aus den blatern und auf den saiten geben sollen.”
(New invention with pegs, at the top of which one ties an inflated pig’s bladder, and
on the sticks (like an archer’s hand-bow) attaches three strings, stretches them over the
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bladder on the top, plays on them the strings in the manner of a violin [darauf geiget] with
a bow [fidel], or hits, and a wonderful sound or tone is produced by the bladder and on
the strings. [emphasis added]). Although the syntax of this entry is awkward, it seems
possible that Hainhofer is here describing an instrument that may be played like a
violin (that is, bowed in the normal way) or hit using Farina’s col legno technique.
Whether or not Farina’s Capriccio introduced the performance practice of col legno to
Dresden, it appears from Hainhofer’s account that the technique interested musicians
within the Electoral court shortly after Farina’s stay there—enough that someone
thought to produce a “new invention” that incorporated it. See Doering, Des
Augsburger Patriciers, 232.
90. Dirk Syndram, Renaissance and Baroque Treasury Art: The Green Vault in Dresden
(Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2004), 41 –42. This piece is described in the 1619
inventory (fol. 139r –141r) as follows: “Ablenglichter geschraubter Pyramides von
Helffenbein mitt seinem Postament . . . unnd Ceptel gesimbs auff einen schwarz
Eu¨benen geheu¨se stehende, mit 7. mo¨ssenen vergu¨ldten Soldaten, unnd 8. [7] mo¨ssenen
vergu¨ldten Spizenn gezierett, darauff sechs Trommeter unnd ein Heer Peucker Welche
wann das Werck in schwarzen geheu¨se auffgezogenn, zu Tische blasenn, unnd der
Marschalch mitt den zugeordentenn Truxsassenn die essen vortragenn, Oben in den
knopff auff der Seu¨len ist eine fu¨rstliche Taffell, daran 5. Personen sindt, welche bewe-
glich, auch im gehenden Werck sich die Truchseß mitt dem essen sehen lassenn, mit
einer runden Kugell, darinnen ein drey¨eckigt Corpus mit 4. geschraubten Spizender
ander mitt einem dreieckigtenn Corpus mit drey¨ geschraubtenn Spizenn.”
91. On optical instruments in the Kunstkammer, see Dupre´ and Korey, “Inside the
Kunstkammer.” A classic late-Renaissance text on the amateur practice of optics and
natural magic is book 17 of the expanded edition of Giovanni Battista della Porta,
Magiae naturalis libri XX (Naples: Apud Horatium Salvianum, 1589); della Porta’s trea-
tise circulated widely in its original Latin and in translation. On a competing view with
roots in optical experimentation in the Dresden Kunstkammer, see Sven Dupre´, “Inside
the Camera Obscura: Kepler’s Experiment and Theory of Optical Imagery,” Early
Science and Medicine 13, no. 3 (2008): 219–44.
92. Biagio Marini, Sonate Symphonie Canzoni, Pass’emezzi, Baletti, Corenti, Gagliarde,
& Retornelli, A 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. & 6. Voci, Per ogni sorte d’Instrumenti. Un Capriccio per
Sonar due Violini Quatro parti. Un Ecco per tre Violini, & alcune Sonate Capricciose per
Sonar due e` tre parti con il Violino Solo, con altre curiose & moderne inventioni. Opera
Page 52 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
Ottava (Venice: Bartolomeo Magni [1626]). On violin virtuosity in Italian and German
musical centers, see Peter Allsop, “Violinistic Virtuosity in the Seventeenth Century:
Italian Supremacy or Austro-German Hegemony?” Il saggiatore musicale 3, no. 2 (1996):
233– 58. On the dating of Marini’s Sonate, see Cypess, “‘Esprimere la voce humana,’”
209n41.
93. Heinrich Zeising, Theatri machinarum erster Theill, in welchem vilerley ku¨nstliche
Machinæ in unterschidlichen Kupfferstu¨cken zu sehen sindt (Leipzig: Henning Gross the
Younger, 1607), I, [ix– x].
94. Quoted in Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, 72.
95. Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, 69 –80.
96. Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch, 136.
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97. Invention is used as a synonym for Aufzug in, for example, the catalog of the
Electoral library assembled in 1612, in a section presumably referring to a collection of
festival books. See the manuscript catalog, Inventarium u¨ber die Bu¨cher, welche der
Du¨rchlauchtigste Hochgeborne Fu¨rst und Herr, Herr Johans George, Hertzog zu Sachsen . . .
Anno 1612 in der Churf. Bibliothec alhie zu Dreszden einnantworten und beysetzenn lassen,
1612, Sa¨chsische Landesbibliothek, Staats- und Universita¨tsbibliothek, Dresden
(shelf mark Bibl.Arch.I.Ba,Vol.30.b); available on-line at the persistent URL http://
digital.slub-dresden.de/id287023524; the section titled “Inventiones und Auffzuge”
starts on 109. Use of Invention to describe the themes of the processions or the contents
of the sleighs may be found in Hainhofer’s diary of 1617: “darzwischen 35ley Schlitten
von mancherley inventionen” (between those stand 35 sleighs filled with various inven-
tions). See Hainhofers Reise-Tagebuch, 130.
98. Evidence concerning these processions survives in the form of paintings, festival
books, and pamphlets of commissioned poetry. Samples of these documents are pre-
sented and elucidated in, for example, Edmund Bowles, Musical Ensembles in Festival
Books, 1500–1800: An Iconographical and Documentary Study (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1989); Mara R. Wade, “Politics and Performance: Saxon-Danish Court
Festivals 1548–1709,” in Aurifex 1 (2003); and Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus:
German Court Culture and Denmark: The “Great Wedding” of 1634, Wolfenbu¨tteler
Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 27 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996).
99. Jutta Ba¨umel, “Festivities and Hunts at the Dresden Court,” in Syndram and
Scherner, ed., Princely Splendor, 51.
100. See Ba¨umel, “Festivities and Hunts,” 53.
101. Some pictures that include peasant instruments are reproduced in Friedrich
Sieber, Volk und volkstu¨mliche Motivik im Festwerk des Barocks (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1960), appendices 8 and 9.
102. Intrada der Trommeter / welche nach ju¨ngstgehaltenen wolvollbrachten fu¨rstlichen
Beylager / des durchlauchtigen / hochgebornen Fu¨rsten und Herrn / Herrn Georgen /
Landgraffen zu Hessen / Grafen zu Catzenelnbogen / Dies / Ziegenhain und Nidda. Und der
durchlauchtigen / hochgebornen Churf. & Princessin / Fra¨wlein Sophien Eleonoren /
Hertzogin zu Sachsen / Gu¨lich, Cleve und Bergen / Landgra¨ffin in Tu¨ringen / Marggra¨ffin zu
Meissen / und Burggra¨ffin zu Magdeburg / Gra¨ffin zu der Marck und Ravenspurg / Fra¨wlein
zu Ravenstein. Bey der fu¨rstlichen Heimfu¨hrung von Torgaw / abgeblasen worden (Leipzig:
Gregorio Rißsch, 1627). For a fuller discussion of this work and other pieces composed
Carlo Farina’s Cappricio stravagante Page 53 of 54
for Sophia Eleonora, see Rebecca Cypess, “Music for a Saxon Princess,” in Word,
Image, and Song: Essays on Musical Voices, ed. Rebecca Cypess, Beth L. Glixon, and
Nathan Link (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, forthcoming).
103. “Intrata (vulgo` Intrada) vel Entrata, id est, ingressus vel aditus: ab intrando, vel
introitu, welch man bey grosser Herren Einzug oder Auffzu¨gen im Turnieren und
sonsten zu gebrauchen pflegt.” See Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. 3, 24 –25, trans.
Kite-Powell, 40.
104. See note 24. Praetorius links dance music within the Aufzu¨ge to the performance
of Inventionen: “Ballet aber sein sonderliche Ta¨nze zu Mummereyen und Uffzu¨gen
gemacht / welche zur Mascarada gespielet werden; Dieselbe werden uff ihre sonderliche
Inventiones gerichtet” (Ballets are special dances for mummeries and Aufzu¨ge that are
played at mascarades. They are arranged according to their specific inventions). See
Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. 3, 19; translation adapted from Kite-Powell, 35.
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105. The opening of the Capriccio is reproduced in Cypess, “‘Esprimere la voce
humana,’” 212. Margarete Reimann’s study of the intrada suggests that the genre may be
divided into four types in all. See Reimann, “Materialen zu einer Definition der
Intrada,” Die Musikforschung 10 (1957): 337–64.
106. As noted in Cypess, “‘Esprimere la voce humana,’” 214–15, the harmonic lan-
guage of the nonrepresentational sections varies in level of dissonance. This feature of
the work may be interpreted as a humorous commentary on the distinction between
nature and artifice, as the dissonant representations of nature bleed into the artificial
music of the intradas.
107. The two families are known to have been exchanging gifts in preparation for the
wedding as early as the previous year; one such gift is pictured in Syndram and
Scherner, ed., Princely Splendor, 224. Elsewhere I suggest that there may have been a
tradition in early modern Germany for composers to pen quodlibets in honor of the
family of the bride or groom in the year of an important wedding; see Cypess, “Music
for a Saxon Princess,” forthcoming. Other examples of this phenomenon include
Johann Mo¨ller’s quodlibet of 1610, dedicated to his patron, Philipp III, the only
Landgrave of the short-lived realm of Hesse-Butzbach. It was in July of that year that
Philipp married Anna Marghareta of Diepholz. Johann Christenius published his quod-
libet in 1619 as part of his Gu¨lden Venus Pfeil; his patron, Johann Philipp of Sachsen-
Altenburg had been married in 1618 to Elisabeth, daughter of the Duke of
Braunschweig-Wolffenbu¨ttel. Groh’s “Bettlermantel,” discussed above, was first pub-
lished in 1606, the year in which a member of the family who had previously employed
the composer—none other than Johann Georg, who had not yet ascended to the
throne of Saxony—lost his first wife in childbirth and shortly thereafter married
Magdalena Sibylla. See Johann Mo¨ller, Ein new Quodlibet zu untertha¨nigen Ehren und
gefallen dem durchleuchtigen hochgebornen Fu¨rsten und Herrn / Herrn Philipsen / Landgraffen
zu Hessen . . . Componiret mit vier Stimmen (Frankfurt: Wolfgang Richtern, 1610); Johann
Christenius, Gu¨lden Venus Pfeil: Jn welchem zu befinden / newe weltliche Lieder/ teutsche
vnd polnische Ta¨ntze / mit Texten vnd ohne Texte / auch ein kurtzweilig Quotlibet / und zu
Ende angehengter Dialogus, darinnen die Stimmen propter meliorem partem Mundi, mit
einander discurriren; mit Vier Stimmen aus sonderlicher favorisation Componiret und ans
Tageliecht gegeben (Leipzig: Lanckisch, 1619); and Groh, Gu¨lden Venus Pfeil. Although
the notion that humorous works like the Capriccio stravagante and these vocal quodli-
bets may be connected to occasions like a wedding may seem far-fetched, it should be
Page 54 of 54 The Musical Quarterly
remembered that the Bach family a century later evidently also used quodlibets to mark
weddings; the most obvious surviving example is J. S. Bach’s “Wedding quodlibet,”
BWV 524. Despite the social distinction between the Bach family and the Electoral
family of Dresden, the dedication of quodlibets to members of the uppermost ranks of
German society is itself evidence that they incorporated humorous music of this sort
into their social practices in some way.
108. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 225.
109. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 220.
110. Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers, 225.
111. The Arbeittisch of Magdalena Sibylla is preserved in the Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, catalog number KGM 47714.
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