Saxon Court Research Articles

Wagner's Furious Host

Wagner's Furious Host

Stoneware Jars from the 18th Century from the Saxon Palace in Warsaw

The article presents a unique set of 18th century apothecary vessels related to the Warsaw court of the Electors of Saxony. The stoneware jars were excavated at the site of the former Saxon Palace in Warsaw between 2006 and 2008. The collection, consisting of seven intact or almost completely-reconstructable specimens, is a unique find in Warsaw and in Poland. The article describes the vessels (their form, decoration and dimensions) and discusses their possible function (storing medicines used by the Saxon court). The study enlarges our limited knowledge about the material aspects of medicine in the Polish capital in the Modern period.

Porcelain and Catholic Enlightenment: The Zwettler Tafelaufsatz

The mastery of a hard-paste porcelain technology in Dresden in 1708 was a major natural philosophical achievement for the European Enlightenment. From the outset, the material possessed a representative function at the Saxon court, where it served to promote the power and cultural prestige of the Wettin dynasty. As porcelain factories were established at courts across Europe, however, the material's signifying role became complex. On the one hand, its alchemical associations aligned it with unfettered princely power in the realm of the absolutist court. On the other, its origins in laboratory investigation could indicate a princely engagement with the Enlightenment pursuit of scientific knowledge. These contradictory associations reached an apogee in the so-called “Catholic Enlightenment,” producing artworks that sought to consolidate the church. This paper analyzes the Zwettler Tafelaufsatz—the great porcelain table centerpiece that was created in 1768 as part of a multimodal baroque celebration of Abbot Rayner Kollmann's jubilee at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl in Lower Austria. Here the porcelain medium enabled the Cistercian brethren to argue for the continuing role of monasteries and monastic scholarship in eighteenth-century Enlightenment learning, while simultaneously declaring the limits of human learning and the ultimate supremacy of divine revelation in the context of an absolutist world order.

Komerad Martin: Luther as an East(ern) German

Martin Luther was an east German, a fact often overlooked or ignored. He was born and died in Eisleben, studied in Erfurt, and launched what would become the Reformation in Wittenberg, broadly dated with the posting of the Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in 1517. He was sequestered as “Junker Jörg” in Eisenach, his mother’s hometown, because of his refusal to recant his theology at the Diet of Worms (1521). While there (more precisely at the Wartburg), he translated the New Testament into German (1522). Luther used a form of middle German spoken in the Saxon court, which Luther claimed was the most widespread dialect. He used popular German, rather than scientific or academic German. By the end of the 1520s, over 10,000 copies of his translation of the New Testament had been sold throughout Germany. Also in eastern Germany, Luther and Philip Melanchthon composed the so-called Torgau Articles, the basis of the Augsburg Confession (1530), in Torgau, where Luther’s wife, Katharina of Bora, is buried. The present study discusses resources on Luther’s life and teaching within the geographical context of the former German Democratic Republic. Also included is a survey of East German historiography on the Wittenberg Reformer.

Die multiplen Strategien Zar Peters I. und seines Wiener Gesandten Johann Christoph von Urbich hinsichtlich der Krone Polen-Litauens 1707–1709

The Treaty of Altranstadt forced Augustus II to renounce the crown of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as any cooperation with the Tsardom of Muscovy in the context of the Great Northern War. Now Tsar Peter I was isolated facing the military superiority of Sweden. Looking for diplomatic solutions, Peter I pursued multiple strategies, building a political counterweight to Sweden in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth being one of particular importance. The election of a pretender to the Polish crown by the Sandomierz Confederation under the patronage of Peter I developed into a crucial part of Russian diplomacy. Johann Christoph von Urbich was accredited as a Russian envoy in Vienna at a time when the efforts of the Tsar to enthrone an anti-king to Stanislaw Leszczynski stalled. Based on the resources of this experienced diplomat, changes of strategy were discussed. The discrepancy between the Tsar’s high expectations and the limits set by pragmatic politics put the new envoy into a situation in which he had to develop networks for initiatives of his own. His correspondence with the Saxon court and with Jan Szembek, the Polish Vice-Chancellor of Augustus II, show that the diplomat entered into special relations with them. These multiple loyalties only existed for a limited time, but were concurrent with his commitment to Peter I.

Dalla Francia a Dresda. Le Bibbie portatili della Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek

The Sachsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek of Dresden preserves a very interesting collection of medieval and modern manuscripts, once in the most part belonging to the Electoral Library of the Saxon Dukes. The study of the ancient catalogues of the Library has revealed the presence of five portable Bibles copied in the 13th century in the North of France and acquired by the Saxon Court on the antiquarian trade during the 18th century, except for one manuscript which was donated to the Duke Johann Georg I in the 1647. In this essay each Bible has been studied and compared with the others preserved in Dresden and also with the models of the most widespread biblical manuscripts in 13th century Europe. Although these Bibles present codicological and palaeographic features similar to the typical style of the so-called Paris Bibles, each manuscript contains significant textual and codicological variants that lead us to realize the considerable diversity of material forms and reference models circulating in the 13th century. For this reason, the essay is completed not only by a detailed description of the manuscripts but also by three further addenda in which the sequence of the books, the codicological data and the iconography are compared.

Friedrich der Weise als Bauherr in Colditz, 1519 – 1525. Architektur, funktionale Struktur und Raumausstattung eines frühen Renaissanceschlosses zwischen »welsch und deutschen Sitten«

Abstract Frederick the Wise (1463– 1525), Elector of Saxony, was the leading cultural figure among the German princes of the early 16th century. He showed a special interest in architecture, but only little remains of his ambitious building projects except for Colditz Castle (rebuilt 1519 – 1525). This paper explores his active role as patron at Colditz focussing on the palace’s spatial structure and interior. Putting the Elector’s ideas into practice, the Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach the Elder was in charge of a uniform design which reflected humanist approaches to classical antiquity and different Renaissance styles. Following the model of Emperor Maximilian I, Frederick the Wise realised a sophisticated architectural concept at his residences that suited his noble status and ceremonial needs.

The Mind in the Old English Prose Psalms

Abstract The Prose Psalms, an Old English translation of the first 50 psalms into prose, have often been overshadowed by the other translations attributed to Alfred the Great: the Old English Pastoral Care, with its famous preface, and the intellectually daring Old English translations of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Soliloquies. However, this article proposes that, regardless of who wrote them, the Prose Psalms should be read alongside the Old English Consolation and the Soliloquies: like the two more well-studied translations, the Prose Psalms are concerned with the mind and its search for true understanding. This psychological interest is indicated by the prevalence of the word mod (‘mind’) in the Old English text, which far exceeds references to the faculty of the intellect in the Romanum source. Through comparison with the Consolation and the Soliloquies, this article demonstrates that all three texts participate in a shared tradition of psychological imagery. The three translations may well, therefore, be the result of a single scholarly environment, perhaps enduring for several decades, in which multiple scholars read the same Latin, patristic writings on psychology, discussed these ideas among themselves, and thereby developed the vernacular discourse observable in these three translations. Whether this environment was identical with the scholarly circle which Alfred gathered at the West Saxon court remains a matter for debate.

Recent Studies of Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner, by Raymond Furness. Critical Lives series. London, Reaktion Books, 2013. 224 pp. $16.95 US (paper). Richard Wagner: A Life in Music, by Martin Geek, translated by Stewart Spencer. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2012. xviii, 444 pp. $35.00 US (cloth). Tristan's Shadow: Sexuality and Total Work of Art after Wagner, by Adrian Daub. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2014. viii, 228 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). Richard Wagner was theoretical vegetarian, who thought it would reduce prison violence to feed prison inmates meatless diet. He also apparently thought there was species of vegetarian tiger thrived on shores of Canadian lakes. That gave him hope for other carnivores. He had solution, too, to problem of Inuit peoples forced by their Arctic habitat to live on seal meat; they could be transported to tropics, where they could adapt to nuts and fruits. This sort of resolute theory pushing was of course feature of his thinking and writing about music and theatre, too. He was encouraged in this habit by philosophers he read, especially by example of Schopenhauer. Of three books to be considered here--all aimed roughly at two-hundredth anniversary of Wagner's birth in 1813--Furness's is most accessible, Geek's is most considerable and Daub's most eccentric since it is not about Wagner but about his shadow. They have characteristically different ways of dealing with Wagner's love of theorizing. I. Raymond Furness aims to recount saga of Wagner's tempestuous life and discuss operas and music dramas chronologically (p. 13). That is straightforward way to introduce reader to Wagner's world. But he also reads and interprets for us great swath of Wagner's prose writings, demystifying theories and finding sensible positions among Wagnerian eccentricities. Born in 1813, and raised as Richard Geyer, teenaged Wagner began to write. Furness spends time on his early text Leubald, a tangled and wild conflation of at least five Shakespeare plays (p. 17). After finishing high school, young man changed his name back to Wagner, studied composition, and already by 1832 had composed his Symphony in C major, breakthrough beyond his ambitious but undistinguished juvenilia. Wagner pleads for rejection of Romantic operas and demands new forms in an essay on The German Opera' published in 1834. He met and married an actress, Minna Planer, and completed and produced Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love). Then couple moved to Paris to seek their fortune (1939-42). Furness tells story of their penury and disappointments in Paris, highlighting Rienzi, grand tragic opera finished at end of 1840. It was one of his greatest first night successes when premiered in 1842 in Dresden. But it stands in deep contrast to his 1841 project, The Flying Dutchman, which was performed in 1843, closely followed by his appointment as Royal Saxon Court's director of music. Although Rienzi achieved fruitful relationship between text and music, its story of hero's rise and fall is very much part of tinsel world of nineteenth century opera (p. 44, quoting John Deathridge). Dutchman, on other hand, was the first truly Wagnerian opera (p. 47). It has music that outdid Mendelssohn in its portrayal of sea. And theme of redemption through love he would make quintessentially his own (p. 46). It was in Dresden in summer of 1845, the seeds were sown from which would blossom nearly all of Wagner's mature works (pp. 51-2). He worked on Tannhauser, and conceived ever more revolutionary ideas about reforms needed in opera, in culture generally, and indeed in society. In 1848, year of Communist Manifesto, there were protests in streets of Dresden, and armed uprisings in Paris and Vienna. Wagner expressed his enthusiastic support, and when violent revolution reached Dresden in 1849 he was driven to exile. …

Music from the Berlin Sing-Akademie

Music from the Berlin Sing-Akademie Daniel F. Boomhower Carl Heinrich Graun. “Ich suchte den, den meine Seele liebet”: Kantate zum ersten Ostertag, GraunWV B:IX:5, für Soli (SATB), Chor (SATB), zwei Oboen (Oboe d’amore), zwei Violinen, Viola und Basso continuo. Herausgegeben von Tobias Schwinger. (Quellenpublikationen aus dem Archiv der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, Bd. 3.) Beeskow: Ortus Musikverlag, 2011. [Editorial in Ger. and Eng., p. vi–vii; pref. in Ger., p. viii–xi; crit. report in Ger., p. xii–xiv; plates, p. xv–xviii; score, p. 1–53. ISMN M-700296-63-6, 979-0-700296-63-6; pub. no. OM 114. €18.50.] Johann Theile. Der Sionitin Wiegenlied: “Nun, ich singe, Gott, ich knie,” für vier Singstimmen (SATB), drei Violen, Violone (zwei Violinen, Viola, Violoncello) und Basso continuo. Herausgegeben von Ekkehard Krüger. (Quellenpublikationen aus dem Archiv der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, Bd. 4.) Beeskow: Ortus Musikverlag, 2011. [Editorial in Ger. and Eng., p. vi–vii; pref. in Ger., p. viii–ix; text in Ger., p. x; crit. report in Ger., p. xi; plates, p. xii–xiii; score, p. 1–10, and 6 parts. ISMN 979-0-700317-04-1; pub. no. OM 135. €15.00.] Johann Christian Roellig. “Uns ist ein Kindlein geboren”: Kantate für den 1. Weihnachtstag, für Soli (SATB), Chor (SATB), zwei Trompeten, Pauken, zwei Hörner, Flöte, zwei Oboen, Fagott, zwei Violinen, Viola und Basso continuo. Herausgegeben von Klaus Winkler. (Quellenpublikationen aus dem Archiv der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, Bd. 5.) Beeskow: Ortus Musikverlag, 2012. [Editorial in Ger. and Eng., p. vi–vii; pref. in Ger., p. viii; text in Ger., p. ix; crit. report in Ger., p. x–xi; plates, p. xii–xiii; score, p. 1–72. ISMN 979-0-700317-34-8; pub. no. OM139. €29.90.] At the time of Carl Friedrich Zelter’s death in 1832, the music collection of the Sing-Akademie in Berlin stood as perhaps the most tangible representation of how its late director influenced musical life in the Prussian capital. Even in the waning years [End Page 566] of the Enlightenment, a sensitivity toward a historical musical repertory had begun to emerge in Berlin. After his ascension to the throne in 1740, King Frederick II of Prussia explicitly imitated the Saxon court at Dresden, and in doing so promoted a less than innovative state music. Ironically, upon invading Saxony in 1756 in what became known as the Seven Years’ War, music at Frederick II’s court stagnated. Until the end of his reign in 1786, almost all music heard at the Prussian Royal Opera was composed by either Carl Heinrich Graun, who died in 1759, or Johann Adolph Hasse. Some hosts of musical salons mimicked the staid musical fashions of the court, in part to curry favor or standing in Berlin. Meanwhile, several musicians, particularly Johann Philipp Kirnberger, cultivated a different strand of veneration for the musical past, focused to a great extent on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, it was Zelter who institutionalized music historicism in Berlin. At least from the time of his appointment as director of the Sing-Akademie in 1800, Zelter further expanded the audience for music of the past to the educated upper middle class, and constituted the Sing-Akademie as a means of self improvement or cultivation (Bildung). In order that private choral rehearsals would support the attainment of Bildung, the collection needed to include examples of great historic music. Thus, Zelter amassed an impressive array of music, containing repertoire dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and extending well beyond just a performance collection. In the Sing-Akademie’s collection of music, past masters held pride of place. But, despite the growing interest in historical music among a broader segment of the population, the music collection of the Sing-Akademie had remained throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century a collection available only to select members of the private choral society. By the time the collection was removed from Berlin to protect it from bombing raids during World War II, few scholars had examined its contents, despite increasing awareness among musicologists of the richness of...

„Nicolaus Ficke … der sich mit Physiognomie, Astrologie etc. abgab, übrigens ein schlechter Mann war“

This arcticle summarizes what could be learned from newly discovered documents about the biography of Nicolas von Vicken, first known reader of Kepler’s „Astronomia Nova“ and Kepler’s partner in an exchange of more than a dozen letters over several years. Von Vicken stems from a rich and influential family of merchants in Riga, made noble by the Polish King (who ruled Riga at the time) in 1580. His education included legal studies at the universities of Konigsberg, Leipzig and Rostock, partially overlapping with a stay of ten years at the Polish court. There von Vicken pursued family business but also served in an official court role. In 1600/1 von Vicken switched sides and started to serve the Swedish ruler (and later king) Duke Carl IX, who was at war with Poland to gain control over Riga and Livonia. In 1602 a mission for Sweden to Northern Germany brought him in conflict with Francis II, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, who accused von Vicken of withholding money from him, which was supposed to be used for hiring troops. Von Vicken, together with his brother Heinrich, was imprisoned, but could flee. During a mission to Maximilian III, Archduke of Austria, in 1599/1600 von Vicken had been initiated as an alchemist and astrologer through reading the works of Paracelsus and his future stations in life were influenced by this. These include an attempt to get employed at the Saxon court in Dresden, and stays in Wolfenbuttel and Halberstadt, both ruled by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Luneburg. Von Vicken offered various astrological and alchemical services to the Duke and private investors. With one of them he got into a serious conflict over the alleged non-fillment of a contract to produce steel in an alchemical way. During that vonVicken got imprisoned twice, in 1609 and between 1611 and 1614. A subsequent attempt to get employed by Ernst of Schaumburg left us with several letters that detail von Vicken’s alchemical and astrological thinking, two of these are published here in the appendix. Since 1603 von Vicken was also in the service of Emperor Rudolf II; again he got imprisoned in Prague at least once. An interesting speculation based on some hints in the documents is that after reading Paracelsus and during his time in Leipzig von Vicken authored a book on mining, that was later to become part of the works of the alleged medevial monk Basilius Valentinus.

225th Anniversary of the U. S. Dollar or about Czech Way Leading to Its Name

225th Anniversary of the U. S. Dollar or about Czech Way Leading to Its Name

Inside the Kunstkammer: the circulation of optical knowledge and instruments at the Dresden Court

The Kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony, founded in Dresden around 1560, housed one of the richest collections of tools and scientific instruments in its day. A close analysis of the optical objects in the collection in the decades around 1600 is undertaken here—in particular, their arrangement by a mathematically trained curator, Lucas Brunn, and their use in an ‘experiment’ by a distinguished visitor, Johannes Kepler. It is argued that the selection, display and use of optical objects within this collection reflect a specific, playful image of optics promoted at the Saxon court.

Italians at Dresden

The exceptionally rich and diverse musical life at the Electoral Saxon court of Dresden has repeatedly attracted scholarly attention. But only with the appearance of Mary Frandsen's book has it become apparent that while we have had a detailed picture of the first half of the 17th century (the era of Heinrich Schütz) on the one hand and of the Catholic period beginning with the conversion of August the Strong (1697) on the other, the roughly 50 years lying in between were still mostly unexplored territory. Of these, the years 1656–80 were shaped by the reign of the Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony—the subject of Frandsen's study. Johann Georg II was responsible for fundamental—in some respect even drastic—changes and far-reaching developments regarding the organization, structure and personnel of the Dresden court chapel. These changes were guided by his wish to establish an ensemble consisting primarily of first-rate Italian musicians and to cultivate the newest styles and genres of secular and sacred Italian—particularly Roman—music. Frandsen recognizes the motivating factors behind Johann Georg's activities as ‘the desire to keep pace with developments in Vienna and Munich’ as well as ‘quite possibly Catholic leanings on his part’. While this elector previously had received only little attention by historians and biographers, Frandsen portrays him as a central figure in 17th-century German music history—a figure whose ‘vision, dogged determination, and willingness to take risks’ made possible the development of a ‘period of tremendous musical growth and creativity’ (p.5). The main musical protagonists at the Dresden court during this period were the composers Vincenzo Albrici, Giuseppe Peranda, Carlo Pallavicino and Sebastiano Cherici—four names little known today, but famous in their time. Their sacred music is the focal point of Frandsen's discussion.

An ethnic dating of Beowulf

AbstractAn interest in Danish legend first appears at the West Saxon court in the 890s when King Alfred traced his father's lineage to Scyld. Alfred traced his mother's ancestry through the Jutish kings of Wight to Goths and Geats, suggesting a motive for the particular view of the ethnic past we find in Beowulf, especially the friendship the poet constructs between a Geatish ætheling and a Danish monarch. A modification of Michael Lapidge's paleographical dating of the archetype of Beowulf (2000) indicates a West Saxon exemplar before c. 900, confirming the mature king's court as a plausible context for Beowulf's composition.

Fools: From marvels of nature to asylum inmates. Imaginations of natural folly

In medieval and Renaissance times European courts kept fools, who were placed into one of two categories: artificial fools (or jesters) and natural fools. The present study examines natural fools. Extant studies generally treat natural fools as both mentally and physically ill and/or disabled. This study contributes to the discussion of natural folly by examining two sources about the Ernestinian Saxon court fool Claus Narr. According to the documents natural fools were seen as permanently mentally changed people and classified as so-called "wonder men." Therefore they were kept and collected at courts. When permanent mental difference and psychiatric disease amalgamated at the beginning of the 18th century, however, the natural fool became an object of education and medicine. This paper argues that the changing meaning of the natural fool nevertheless retained components of its initial medieval conception.

The Business of Being Princess

Anna von Sachsen was a Renaissance princess with very good business competence. She used her experience and expertise in agriculture at the Dresden Saxon Court to bring about an agrarian boom

Dresden: 1945 / 2003

At the beginning of February 1945 there were 800,000, perhaps one million people in Dresden, 640,000 of them civilians, the rest refugees. In the air attack of February 13/14, 1945, both groups together lost 40,000, next to Hamburg, the highest human loss in a German city during the air war. – Joerg Friedrich, Der Brand 1. Sheep graze by a mound of debris from which two tall stone fingers point at the sky: they're blackened from smoke, dust, and years of pointing out how history is marked by sacked cities. Didn't I learn this at school: Troy, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, Stalingrad, Coventry, Hiroshima . . . I hold a postcard with the archive photo – you can buy it at the local stores – how the shepherd stands patiently by his flock, while under his feet there must be cobblestones of a street and the nearby market square. Before the city crumbled he might have been a mason or soldier – [End Page 154] he looks stubbly and gray enough – but now he's leaning on a stick feeling the ground below him, and the sheep seem happy with the weeds or just indifferent. I look up to see the same place now, what's rising here out of the ground: the old Baroque cathedral, two thirds of it gleaming in cream-colored sandstone, eight slender columns linked by walls with high windows in between, only the huge dome over the building's center is still hidden under scaffolding. Two black fingers fuse with corners in the wall, which, like a freckled face, is speckled where the stone remains blackened: with a glance you see what's salvaged from before and what's newly finished. Now the giant crane moves forward to lift a single stone through the air, turning and lowering it, slowly guided by hands into the waiting gap. The mind has learned to wait like that. 2. A nose plucked from its face – slender ridge flaring into nostrils almost breathing under glass on black velvet, just as that elbow next to it curved so convincingly into the lower arm, reaching out somewhere ready to touch, even if handless, and, separately, fingers in twos and threes, a whole hand gesturing, toes, a foot, two specimens of the male sex, their shades of marble matching gods and mortals posed high on their pedestals. Such lively fragments in the sculpture hall of the Albertinum – were they what was left of figures never completely unearthed? [End Page 155] Then I read about the craftsmen – some famous, like Balthazar Permoser – who had carved these pieces for the king's antique collection, to refit what centuries of war and erosion had spoiled, or carelessness much later while being hauled across the Alps. Snuggly fitted, these prostheses mimicked wholeness to please the Saxon court, until a later age no longer tolerated such pretense or distortion of perfection, and took them off again: amputations by scholars and stone masons, castrations expertly performed to free a space that once was blemish, but now crucial absence carved in air. I stood wondering if both efforts served the same wish: to undo damage – no matter how the mind was given to see, mending what it saw fit to mend. 3. There's fish market today on the Altmarkt: booths spread out over cobblestones, men in bloody aprons slapping limp bodies onto planks, a catch shipped down from Hamburg, promptly gutted and filleted, and someone shouts out names and numbers where people line up with shopping bags before the reconstructed church off to the side, where the hour strikes – It must have struck ten times that February night, minutes before the Master Bomber marked the targets with his flares, floating down as silently as snowflakes. Here under arcades, sheltering windows of fashion manikins and frosted pastries, that photo keeps flashing up behind the eye: there, where the fish booths are a pyre covered this open space and reached up to the second floor of...

Court Culture in Early Modern Dresden by Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (review)

MLRy 99.1, 2004 241 Court Culture in Early Modern Dresden. By Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly. Bas? ingstoke: Palgrave. 2002. xiv + 3iopp. ?30. ISBN 0-333-98448-x(hbk). The Dresden that the visitor encounters today is largely the creation of Friedrich August I (1670-1733) and Friedrich August II (1696-1763). Their reigns as Electors of Saxony in some ways marked the glorious apotheosis of their dynasty.Yet they also represented a sharp break with Saxon tradition. Both were elected kings of Poland, and in order to achieve this dignity Friedrich August I had embraced Catholicism in 1694. F?r one and a half centuries before then his predecessors had been Lutherans, and Dresden had been the most important bastion ofthe Protestant cause in the Holy Roman Empire. Indeed, in some senses the Electors of Saxony were as important politically as the Emperors themselves: their unswerving loyalty to the crown ensured that the Protestant princes repeatedly responded to appeals forthe unity of the Reich. Helen Watanabe-O' Kelly's study makes ample use of the sources that have become fully accessible for the first time since 1989 to explore the cultural ramifications of the Saxon Electors' key political role. Fundamental was the advertisement of their religious identity through the patronage of church music and Lutheran biblical drama and the way that they presented themselves in funerary monuments, paintings, and bas-reliefs. From the second half of the sixteenth century the official culture of Lutheranism was complemented and enriched by the discovery of ltalian art and science. This major development in North German taste influenced virtually every aspect of Dresden's court culture by the 1580s, while Johann Georg I's year-long ltalian tour in 1601 resulted in the physical transformation of the capital into an Italianate city during his reign after 1611. Watanabe-O'Kelly's account of successive building projects and court activities (including 'sectarian' jousting tournaments in the later sixteenth century and ambi? tious cultural propaganda in the middle decades of the seventeenth century) makes fascinating reading. Even more interesting and important, however, is her account of the intellectual and scientific activities that also unfolded at the Saxon court. Vast cabinets of curiosities contained collections aimed at representing, understanding, and controlling the natural world. Patronage of magicians and of adepts of the occult was a logical extension of the business of acquiring, ordering, and managing know? ledge. Similarly, the Saxon dynasty's traditional interest in mining, the mainstay of its revenues since the fifteenthcentury, led naturally to a preoccupation with alchemy and the dream of turning base metals into gold. The reign of Friedrich August I broke with this complex and multifaceted tradition in a number of ways. Conversion to Catholicism for the sake of being elected to the Polish throne undermined the Saxon leadership of the Protestant princes in the Reich. The dynastic alliances that were forged with the Catholic ruling houses of Europe during the Polish period brought but temporary glory; Saxony's pre-eminent position in the Reich was progressively taken by Brandenburg-Prussia. In cultural terms, too, there was a shift as France replaced Italy as a source of inspiration. Gradually the preoccupation with occult science turned into a fascination with more obviously useful applications of knowledge in manufacture, particularly of metals. Not least, though largely accidental, the search for gold yielded the discovery of the secret of porcelain, the manufacture ofwhich rapidly became an obsession throughout Europe, with European products soon rivalling the Chinese wares that had long fascinated the West. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly has written a fascinating book which illuminates the culture ofa major German court. It will be of interest to all students of early modern Germany and its culture. Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge Joachim Whaley ...

Launch of Naomi Cumming's The Sonic Self and the Naomi Helen Cumming Foundation

The musical oeuvre of the Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) has only recently begun to be appreciated by scholars and performers. Zelenka, who was active at the Saxon Court of Dresden from c. 1710 to 1745, contributed much to the musical repertoire of Dresden's Catholic Court Chapel. His sonatas for woodwinds and basso continuo form part of the standard small ensemble repertoire. Performers have, however, paid much less attention to his sacred music, particularly his numerous vocal compositions. About twenty years ago German scholars initiated a thorough examination of Zelenka's output and musical style which culminated in the publication of two comprehensive secondary sources, the Zelenka-Dokumentation and the Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke of Zelenka (ZWV).