-
1. Prologue
- University of California Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 Prologue The First Great Dead White Male Composer Why have musicologists been so slow to investigate the role of memory, when our sister disciplines have been thinking about these issues for more than half a century? Since the story I am trying to tell in this book is different from the one currently found in textbooks, it is important for us to understand where our notions are coming from. One of the most exhilarating musicological developments in recent years is that we have become much more conscious of our historical past. We have started to ask where, when, and why many of our views on music history originated. The best way to do this is to go back to the founding father of medieval music, Friedrich Ludwig, and the scholars dependent on him. A fresh look at Ludwig’s background and achievement is needed if we are to understand his extraordinary hold on the way medieval musicology continues to be practiced. LUDWIG’S LIFE, EDUCATION, AND WORK Ludwig was born in Potsdam in 1872, the son of a gardener who tended the orchard of Friedrich Hiller, the Potsdam Stadtrat.1 Since the Stadtrat had no children of his own, he decided to finance the education of the two sons of his gardener, neither of whom would have been able to study otherwise. It was a good investment, since both Ludwig boys became university professors . (Friedrich showed his gratitude by dedicating his dissertation to Hiller.) Ludwig’s mother was a staunch Lutheran, his father a Catholic, and all five children received a strict Lutheran upbringing. Ludwig remained a devout Lutheran until his death. As we shall see, this religious commitment had di9 This chapter is dedicated to Reinhold Brinkmann for his seventieth birthday. 1. Communication from Ludwig’s grandniece Annelotte Malik in Göttingen. rect ramifications on his scholarship. He attended Sunday services regularly. According to his student Joseph Müller-Blattau, his favorite music was Lutheran church music of the seventeenth century, for religious reasons. Late in life, he chose to end an important university speech by reciting Luther’s chorale: “Erhalt uns in der Wahrheit, gib ewigliche Freiheit, zu preisen Deinen Namen, durch Jesum Christum, Amen.”2 Ludwig started out as a historian. He first studied in Marburg with Karl Lamprecht and Max Lehmann, and then wrote his dissertation, Untersuchungen über die Reise- und Marschgeschwindigkeit im XII. und XIII. Jahrhundert (1897), under Harry Breßlau in Strassburg. The dissertation won a first prize in a student competition and is an outstanding example of positivistic research. Ludwig looked at every available document, literary account, and bill to compute the average speed of troop movement during the crusades. He distinguished between trips on foot, by boat on a river, and by boat on the sea, he accounted for every night, every battle fought. He compared the speed of the troop movements to that of the messengers. Every statement is supported by detailed footnotes. There are many references to the work of other historians, and there is not a trace of the arrogance that he displayed in later musicological reviews. And yet this dissertation is very much in the same style as his later musicological work will be: he is concerned only with narrowly defined questions of fact that can be directly answered by reading the sources and he keeps speculation to an absolute minimum. Having completed the dissertation, Ludwig continued his studies in Strassburg with the first German ordinarius in musicology, Gustav Jacobsthal, wrote his Habilitationsschrift with him, and in 1910, on Jacobsthal’s retirement , became his successor. Jacobsthal was probably the most important intellectual influence on his life. Ludwig dedicated his Repertorium to him, had Jacobsthal’s motet “Die Lehrer werden leuchten wie des Himmels Glanz; und die, so viele zur Gerechtigkeit weisen, wie die Sterne immer und ewiglich” (Daniel 12:3) sung at his “Rektoratsrede” in Göttingen in 1930, and made arrangements to have the same motet performed at his own funeral. Jacobsthal ’s intellectual formation was shaped by the Romantic Palestrina revival in Berlin. Several of Ludwig’s students stressed that this movement also formed the most important intellectual background for Ludwig. In fact, Joseph Müller-Blattau draws a direct line from Herder via Thibaut, Winterfeld , Bellermann, and Jacobsthal to Ludwig.3 I will examine this background later on. Originally Ludwig wanted to write a major study of Italian trecento music that would have included a detailed discussion of fourteenth-century no10...