PANTALEON'S PANTALON: AN 18th-CENTURY MUSICAL FASHION

Abstract

FASHION is the way we endow routine matters with social interest. We use the word most often in connection with clothing and habitual activities. For something to be fashionable, it must combine the qualities of being slightly eccentric yet popularly recognized, It seems fitting to speak of the pantalon a fashion, for not only is it associated with a basic item of apparel but it also has a quality of fascination and intrigue which arouses interest. Pantalon, in fact, is another term for pantaloon, a word most commonly used in the plural to mean garments of different styles for the legs, especially in former days a tight-fitting kind of trousers fastened with ribbons below the calf. 1 The history of this word, which in the 18th century also represented a fashionable musical instrument, is curious. In one of its earliest usages (about 1590) the word designated a Venetian stage character, especially in comedy, who was represented as a lean and foolish old man wearing spectacles, pantaloons, and slippers. San Pantalone, a favorite saint of the Venetians, became a nickname for this character. Thus it is that Pantalon exchanged the saintly life for the comic stage, became a pair of trousers, had a career a musical instrument, and is still fashionable today simply pants. What has a pantalon to do with music? While several humorous possibilities might be entertained, we leave them to one's imagination. The pantalon we wish to investigate here is a musical instrument invented by Pantaleon Hebenstreit in the last decade of the 17th century. Although he is relatively little known today, he was very famous in his own time. Discussions of him and his instrument appear in the writings of his German musical contemporaries: Johann Gottfried Walther, Johann Kuhnau, Johann Mattheson, Jacob Adlung, Lorenz Mizler, and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg.