Tower music

For the album, see Tower Music (Joseph Bertolozzi album). For the production company, see Tower Records.

An alta capella playing from a tower.

Tower music is a musical performance from the top of a tower. It can also designate the music composed for or played in such a performance.

In the early European Middle Ages, musical instruments on towers were used to warn of danger and mark the passage of time. At first this was done by a tower watchman, later by ensembles of instrumentalists employed by the city.<ref>Die Turmmusik, Duden dictionary entry, Bibliographisches Institut GmbH</ref> The music became more choral, and came to by played on specific days of the week, and to mark specific dates (feast days such as Christmas and Easter, for instance). The practice largely died out in the late 19th century, but was revived in the early twentieth, and continues to this day.<ref>Gerlinde Haid: Turmblasen. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon. Online-Ausgabe, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5; Druckausgabe: volume 5, edition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7001-3067-8.</ref> Modern tower music is often played by volunteers.

The tower used would often be a church tower, but the tower or balcony of a civic building might also be used.<ref>Wolfgang Schnabel: Die evangelische Posaunenchorarbeit. Herkunft und Auftrag. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, S. 174 f. (online auf Google Bücher)</ref>

The instruments had to be audible to someone not on the tower. This eliminated the quieter (basse) instruments, leaving the louder (haut) instruments. Apart from bells, natural trumpets, slide trumpets, trombones, shawms, bagpipes, and drums were used.

Music was written specifically to be played from towers, but other works could also be used. Alta capella musicians playing the tower music would generally also perform in processions and ground-level outdoor events, and in some cases would also perform (on different instruments) indoors.

History

Many English cities in the 1500s had town waits, as did rich individuals and institutions. In 1571, London ordered its waits to play "upon their instruments upon the turret at the Royal Exchange every Sunday and holiday toward the evening", (with winter break, between September and late March, excepted). These may have been London's first regularly scheduled public concerts. London's waits also played from its walls.<ref name=kimball_16>Timeline of trombone history, Will Kimball</ref>

These civic wind bands of town pipers had been a feature of larger German towns and cities since well before the beginning of the sixteenth century, similar to the employment of waits with their sackbuts and shawms in England.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200228">Collins 2002, p. 28.</ref> Martin Luther, one of the chief figures of the Reformation, encouraged music-making in the service of God, and by around 1570 town councils were employing musicians specifically to take part in church services to supplement the organ playing.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200227">Collins 2002, p. 27.</ref>

One of the most popular forms of outdoors public music-making in the 17th century in Germany and central Europe was tower music (German: Turmmusik), organised by the town piper (Stadtpfeifer) or tower master (Turmmeister). He and his band of musicians, also called Stadtpfeifer (the German plural is the same as the singular) played music for loud and penetrating wind or brass instruments from church towers and town hall balconies.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200228">Collins 2002, p. 28.</ref><ref>Hofer, Achim (1992). Blasmusikforschung (in German). Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992, p. 101.</ref><ref group="lower-alpha"></ref>

Generations of the Bach family in Erfurt filled the office of Stadtpfeifer or Ratsmusiker (German: 'town council musician'). By 1600 Halle, Dresden, Berlin, Cologne, Stettin, Nordhausen and even Eisenach (J. S. Bach's birthplace) with only 6,000 inhabitants, all had Stadpfeifers, whose job it was to sound the hours (Stundenblasen) in the days before striking clocks were common in towers and churches.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins2002289">Collins 2002, p. 289.</ref><ref name="FOOTNOTESuppan20062002 ff">Suppan 2006, pp. 2002 ff.</ref> They started around 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to start the working day, sounded (German: blasen, lit. 'blew') the mid-morning break around 10 o'clock (Latin: decima hora) and the afternoon break around three or four o'clock in the afternoon. Finally, at around 9 or 10 o'clock, there was an Abendsegen, or evening blessing.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200229">Collins 2002, p. 29.</ref> Well known pieces by and for Stadtpfeifer include Johann Schein's Banchetto musicale (1617) and Samuel Scheidt's Ludi Musici (1621).<ref name="FOOTNOTEHerbert200698–99">Herbert 2006, pp. 98–99.</ref>

In Nuremberg and Leipzig and there was a particular penchant for antiphonal tower music: three verses of a hymn would be echoed back and forth three times between the bands stationed in the towers of the Neukirche, St. Thomas Church and St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200229">Collins 2002, p. 29.</ref> The Leipzig Stadtpfeifer and tower master ('Turmmeister') of the St. Nicholas Church from 1669 was Johann Pezel (or Petzold, etc.) whose Hora decima musicorum Lipsiensium ('Leipzig 10 o'clock music') was published the following year,<ref>Petzel, Johann (1670). Hora decima musicorum Lipsiensium. Leipzig: G. H. Frommann. IMSLP. Retrieved 26 September 2017.</ref> as well as Fünff-stimmigte blasende Music (1685) with five-part intradas and dance pieces for brass instruments. Another Leipzig Stadtpfeifer and virtuoso trumpet player Gottfried Reiche (1667–1734)<ref name="FOOTNOTECollins200059">Collins 2000, p. 59.</ref> described tower music in his preface to Vier und zwanzig Neue Quatricinia (1696) for cornett and three trombones, as "a sign of joy and peace", an embodiment of the spiritual-cultural life of the city "certainly whenever the whole country is in mourning, or in war, or when other misfortune is to be lamented."<ref group="lower-alpha">"Und so, wie Gottfried Reiche im Turmblasen „ein Freuden und Friedens-Zeichen“ sieht, da „wo solche Musik muss eingestellet werden, gewiss ein Land-Trauern, Krieg oder sonst ein Unglück zu beweinen ist“, so könnte die Turmmusik als ein solches „Freuden- und Friedens-Zeichen“ auch das geistig-kulturelle Leben unserer Stadt wesentlich bereichern.<ref name="Nikolaikirche" group="">"Turmmusik vom Nikolaikirchturm". Kulturbund der DDR, Gesellschaft für Heimatgeschichte, Kreisvorstand Altenburg. 1983. Retrieved 26 September 2017. </ref> </ref>

Although the revival of music in churches was a particularly Lutheran initiative, Catholic areas like Vienna and Salzburg were just as keen to promote tower music.<ref name="FOOTNOTESpitzer2017228">Spitzer 2017, p. 228.</ref> Among the most popular of tunes were the Heilig-Leider, paraphrases in German of the Sanctus from the Latin Mass, which came into fashion after the enlightened reforms of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I promoted the use of the vernacular in church services.<ref name="FOOTNOTESpitzer2017228">Spitzer 2017, p. 228.</ref> According to one Stadtpfeifer named Hornbock, quoted in Johann Kuhnau's Quack-Salber: "We know from experience that when our city pipers in the festive season play a religious song with nothing but trombones from the tower, then we are greatly moved, and imagine that we hear the angels singing.".<ref name="FOOTNOTESpitzer2017228">Spitzer 2017, p. 228.</ref>

In Austria, trombones were typically played from church towers (German Turmblasen, lit 'tower blowing') or in cemeteries on All Souls' Day and the previous day (Hallowe'en in England). Their use is mentioned in a handbook explaining the multitude of church music regulations, Kirchenmusik-Ordnung (1828), by the Linz Stadtpfeifer Franz Glöggl.<ref name="FOOTNOTEGlöggl1828">Glöggl 1828.</ref><ref group="lower-alpha">A review of the book shows how useful the book was in gathering together and explaining the many rules concerning music at church services.

"There appears an explanatory guide of musical worship, according to the existing church music-order for all functions occurring on Sundays, festivals, vespers, litanies, masses, funerals, processions etc. while chants, songs for the congregation, motets, introiten, versicles, graduals, offertories, responses etc. It explains the ritual-texts from the measurement book and Breviarium, and is found at a very cheap price. In all countries where Roman Catholic worship prevails, through its essential usefulness of numerous sales, where the lack of such a reliable signpost has been felt for a long time: until the present moment when—wonderfully enough—under the supervision of some well-informed experts—the simple expedient of this book has been devised.<ref>Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. No. 6, 13 February 1828 (in German). Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, p. 111.</ref></ref> Glöggl commissioned the Three Equals from Beethoven in 1812.<ref name="FOOTNOTEHenkeWinkler2002225–6">Henke & Winkler 2002, pp. 225–6.</ref><ref name="FOOTNOTEB&H Revisionsbericht1888vi">B&H Revisionsbericht 1888, p. vi.</ref> They were both pupils of Johann Albrechtsberger (d. 1807), who wrote one of the first trombone concertos.<ref name="FOOTNOTEBassanon.d.">Bassano n.d.</ref>

Tower music reached a peak in around 1750, and thereafter declined towards the end of the 18th century. From around 1800 official civic concerts began to replace those given by the nobility, and what has been termed "Saint Culture" ('St.-Kultur') suffered a split, leading on one side to the growth of professional symphony orchestras, and on the other to amateur Stadtkapellen conducted by professional or semi-professional town music directors.<ref name="FOOTNOTESuppan2006">Suppan 2006.</ref>

Modern tower music is common in German-speaking areas.

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  A c. 1425 picture showing a "Turner" (Türmer, in modern German) named Peter.

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  The Neukirche (New Church), Leipzig in 1749

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  Tower music on Easter morning, 1890 illustration

Musical pieces

Pieces named "tower music"

• Turmmusiken und Suiten by Johann Pezel (1639–1694), tower music portion scored for two cornets and three trombones (scan of public-domain publication, public-domain scores, and related works)
• Tower Music, composition by Václav Nelhýbel
• Tower Music (Richard Drakeford)

Pieces written as tower music

• "Drei Equale für vier Posaunen" ("Three Aequales for four Trombones"), by Ludwig van Beethoven

See also

• Aequale, a form of music played from a tower on All Souls' Day and its eve
• Alta cappella outdoor musical group
• Carillon, musical bells often played from a tower
• Hejnał Mariacki, a traditional tower music of Kraków
• Three Equals for four trombones, WoO 30#Town pipers

Sources

• Bassano, Peter (n.d.) [2001?]. "God's Trombones". Translations by Howard Weiner and Matthias Feile. British Trombone Society. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
• Drei Equale für vier Posaunen: Revisionsbericht. Supplement, Nr.310 (in Deutsch). Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. 1888. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Collins, Timothy A. (April 2000). "'Of the Differences between Trumpeters and City Tower Musicians.' The Relationship of Stadtpfeifer and Kammeradschaft Trumpeters". The Galpin Society Journal. Galpin Society. 53: 51–59. doi:10.2307/842316. JSTOR 842316. (subscription needed)
• Collins, Timothy A. (2002). "'Hora Decima': the musical theology of the 'Stadtpfeifer'" (PDF). CrossAccent. Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. 10 (3). Retrieved 25 September 2017.
• Glöggl, Franz Xaver (1828). Kirchenmusik-Ordnung: Erklärendes Handbuch des musikalischen Gottesdienstes, fur Kapellmeister, Regenschori, Sänger und Tonkünstler. ('Church Music Regulations - An explanatory handbook for musical church services, music directors, choir directors, singers and composers'). (in Deutsch). Vienna: J. B. Wallishauser.
• Herbert, Trevor (2006). The Trombone. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300100957.
• Henke, Rudolf Maria; Winkler, Gerhard (2002). Geschichte des Buchandels in Linz (PDF) (in Deutsch). Archiv der Stadt Linz.
• Spitzer, Michael (2017). Beethoven. Routledge. ISBN 9781351574297.
• Suppan, Wolfgang (2006). Stadtpfeifer. Volume 5, Online edition (in Deutsch). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 3700130775. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons