Munich 1667-1688

Abstract

Abstract Munich must have made an immediate impression on the thirteen-year-old Steffani.Founded in the twelfth century by Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, who fortified an ancient monastic settlement (‘Mönche’ [Ger.]: monks) that had grown up on the banks of the River Isar, the city had been the seat of the ruling Wittelsbach dukes for more than four hundred years and capital of Bavaria for over a century. The elevation of the duchy to an electorate—the eighth in the so-called Holy Roman Empire—in 1623 had made the Wittelsbachs one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe (an elector was one of the small number of German princes entitled to take part in the election of the emperor). The prestige of the Wittelsbachs was displayed in the splendid buildings of the electoral residence (‘Residenz’: Fig. 2.1), which were enlarged and improved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and housed a magnificent library and art collection. Music at the court had flourished in the later sixteenth century under Orlande de Lassus, with whom both Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli had come to work, but the establishment had been reduced on the accession of Maximilian I in 1597.