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September 2003 Program Notes
Zimmermann's Kaffeehaus
by Mary Burke
Tonight's concert has its roots in two cultural institutions of 18th-century Leipzig: coffee and the Collegium Musicum.
Coffee, of course, continues to be a pervasive presence all over the world. However, our contemporary landscape of identical sleek chain stores and scruffy local hangouts bears little resemblance to the coffee culture Bach knew.
There are many more and less entertaining legends (many involving sheep) about the discovery of coffee; we may say with some certainty, however, that the plant coffea arabica began to be cultivated about 1000 years ago in eastern Africa and Arabia. The original version of the beverage involved brewing its raw or dried beans; in the latter half of the 15th century, the Turks discovered the advantages of roasting them first. Turkey, in fact, gave the world its first coffeehouse in 1475.
Italian traders brought coffee into Europe around 1600, and within a few decades coffeehouses began to spread across the Continent and Britain. These were not necessarily the low-key, rather spartan places so common in our cities today. They might best be described as a combination of local pub, salon, clubhouse, conference room, and informal academy. Artists, businessmen, politicians, and academics all gathered in these places to discuss ideas and make deals; Lloyd's of London famously began its life in a coffeehouse, as did the London Stock Exchange.
Germany and Austria followed the general trend, with coffeehouses springing up in various cities starting in the 1670s. The one of greatest interest to us, however, did not arrive on the scene until 1720. In that year, one Gottfried Zimmermann opened his Kaffeehaus in the Katharinerstrasse in downtown Leipzig. A contemporary illustration shows it to be located in a quite impressive building, and it boasted two large chambers on the second floor that could accommodate some 150 listeners. Zimmermann also operated a coffee garden near one of the city gates, which had a small shelter or pavilion that housed keyboard instruments.
We cannot know whether Zimmermann was motivated primarily by the commercial possibilities or by sheer love of music; in any case, he enthusiastically cultivated musical activity in his establishment and made a point of keeping fine instruments on hand. One "clavicymbel," acquired in the late 1720s, became almost as much of an attraction as the coffee—and then was supplanted in 1733 by an even better one, "the like of which has not been heard here before."
Zimmermann's hosted regular performances, involving mainly the local musicians, and special ones for major events like the king's birthday, as well as "Sonder-Konzerte" for visiting virtuosi. The special concerts were advertised in the newspaper and had an admission fee; the regular series generally got little publicity and apparently charged nothing. The Collegium Musicum typically appeared on Friday nights at 8:00.
Leipzig's cultural scene had included collegia even longer than coffee. As they are today, collegia then were fairly loose-jointed groups consisting largely of students, up-and-coming professionals, and dedicated amateurs, whose proficiency might rival or even surpass that of professional ensembles. In a university town like Leipzig, collegia came and went; one that endured was started in 1702 by law student and chronic overachiever Georg Philipp Telemann.
Like so many of Telemann's activities, this one mushroomed into a significant social/cultural phenomenon. His group was skilled and versatile enough to start muscling in on other people's territory: The Collegium furnished the orchestra for the city's opera as well as a cantata ensemble for the Thomaskirche, which at the time suffered from rather meager resources (partly because the best singers had deserted its choir to join Telemann's). More importantly, this collegium established the tradition of public concerts in Leipzig. In the early 18th century, musical performances remained largely the property of the church, the court, and the wealthy; the type of concert we have always known, open to everyone and held in a public place, was still quite a novel concept in northern Europe. With his endless energy and initiative in bringing performances to the public, Telemann played a significant role in the growing democratization of music in Europe.
With the stage set by Telemann and Zimmermann, Johann Sebastian Bach assumed directorship of the Collegium in 1729, at a point when his work at the Thomaskirche and its school had apparently begun to pall somewhat. The Collegium provided Bach with a new and highly rewarding creative outlet, with a large and skilled ensemble at his disposal, enthusiastic audiences, and none of the administrative and political tedium that went with the post of Thomaskantor. He poured a great deal of energy into the Collegium; here he enjoyed a feeling of creative freedom that had been missing from his life for some years. He continued to lead the ensemble until 1741, the year of Zimmermann's death.
During the Collegium years, Bach wrote some vocal works (including, not surprisingly, the Coffee Cantata) and quite a bit of instrumental music for the group, as well as leading performances of works by other composers. Perhaps because the keyboard situation at Zimmermann's was so favorable, and because the Collegium boasted several excellent players, he soon began to explore the possibilities of the harpsichord as a concerto instrument. He had made steps in this direction with the harpsichord solos in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto and with solo organ sinfonias in cantatas; now, however, he took up the genre in earnest. He experimented with issues of texture and balance, writing for one, two, three, and even four solo harpsichords. Only one of the keyboard concerti is a fully original composition, the others being reworked from earlier pieces, most of them dating to Bach's years in Cöthen; listeners will recognize tunes from the more familiar versions for violin and/or oboe.
The earliest advertisements for coffee assured us that "coffee quickens the spirits and makes the heart lightsome"; we hope that Bach's music will do the same for you tonight.
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