Stadsmusikanter i stifts- och universitetsstaden Lund under 1600- och 1700-talet

Abstract

In Denmark and northern Germany, the city musician’s office had its strongest holds in the coastal trading towns. This was also the case in the southern swedish provinces of Skåne, which were submit to danish law until around 1680 and were allowed to maintain danish traditions in spite of their being politically in swedish possession since 1658. Furthermore, wealthy burghers with good international connections were to be found in these trading towns. The city of Lund appears as a different type of town in this region and period: it was an ecclesiastical centre with a cathedral and a cathedral school. Musical practice seems to have been take care of mainly by the teachers and pupils at the cathedral school as well as by the cathedral organist. The University of Lund was
founded in the 1660’s and the city was given the same administrative structure as the other university cities in the kingdom. The musical organization of one of these cities – Uppsala – has been thoroughly investigated by Bengt Kyhlberg, who states that no city musician’s office was established in Uppsala. As one of the reasons he indicates the city’s complicated administrative structure. But Kyhlberg did not observe that the city musician’s office was not as established in the Uppsala region, in the older parts of the swedish kingdom, as it was in the provinces of Skåne. The report’s main problem is trying to find out the reasons for the establishing of a city musician’s office in Lund. The time would seem to link it to the creation of the university, but the comparison with Uppsala shows this an insufficient condition. The main results can be summarized as follows. The first explicitly privileged city
musician in Lund had his privileges ratified by the governor general at the university’s instigation. This musician was tied to the university as well as to the cathedral. As these saw themselves able to pay solely a minor fixed salary, the musician was expected to provide sufficient income for his living by himself, through his privilege as a musician at feasts in and around Lund. The musician’s applying for the city musician’s privileges was seen as a natural step in this part of the country and as completely uncontroversial on the level of the provincial government. But at the same time, the organizational frame created for the city musician’s office in
Lund became different from the one in the surrounding trading towns, a frame with two jurisdictions, marked by the special administrative structure that was a consequence of the creation of the university. In the surrounding trading towns, it was generally the burghers and the borough administrators who by themselves appointed their city musicians and provided them with
the feast-playing privilege within the town, while the county governor provided privileges for the surroundings. A strong reason for the establishing of the city musician’s offices in the trading towns was the ambition on the burghers’ behalf of creating a representative and well-sounding music in the church, honouring both God and the town. The burghers of Lund did not have
to worry about this, since the cathedral functioned as a congregational church as well, where music already was played, by the university and cathedral musician. The burghers’ cool interest in appointing and perhaps even more in paying a city musician is of great interest. This was carried to an extreme in 1735, when the county governor, against the express will of the burghers, appointed the university and cathedral musician as city musician in Lund. The burghers were not forced to pay him a fixed salary,
however. This aversion on behalf of the burghers had consequences such as the fact that the city musician’s office did not attain the same continuity in Lund as in other towns in the region, and that the musicians had to apply for the privileges by themselves directly at the county governor’s, sometimes with the support of the academic jurisdiction. The burghers of Uppsala had the same attitude. There was yet no special university or cathedral musician, but an academic chapel, that could participate in church music.
Concerning music in the private sphere (weddings and banquets) the burghers of Uppsala chose to give the musician’s privilege to the organist of the cathedral, in accordance with the practice prevailing in the older regions of the kingdom. Such a solution seems not to have been even discussed in Lund, where it was found convenient to attach to the city musician traditions in course in the provinces of Skåne since the danish era. This practice was, of course, not alien to the burghers, who, even though for a short period, appointed and privileged as feast musicians three burghers who lacked formal musical training This was contrary to the then prevailing view on the exercise of trade and profession (the guild system), as the county governor among others pointed out.
It was not before the 1760’s that this provincial musical organization in Lund ceased, when the leadership of the academic chapel (founded in 1745), the organist’s and the musician’s duty were bestowed on the same person, in accordance with the Uppsala
model. When it comes to the consideration of the diocesal and university cities as types of cities, it seems that the responsibility for the official musical activity was appointed to the cathedral and the university, while the burghers did not seem to have anything against this loss of responsibility and costs. But when it comes to the musicians’ privileges and to the question of which among the different categories of musicians were expected to play, city musicians, organists, students (academic chapels) etc., variations are obviously bound to appear, depending on the practice in the region the city belongs to. It is thus not possible to define a certain type of musical organization from the type of city, consideration needs to be taken to the prevailing regional practice. Concerning music and musical practice in the swedish diocesal and university cities during the 17th. and 18th. centuries, new and more nuanced knowledge will surely be attained through studies of the musical life in Greifswald, Dorpat and Åbo.