Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nuova Consonanza.

Contemporary music group founded in Rome in 1960. See Rome, §II, 4.

Nurcombe [Nurcome], Daniel.

See Norcombe, Daniel.

Nuremberg

(Ger. Nürnberg).

City in Bavaria, Germany. Its importance as a musical centre reached a peak in the 17th century and afterwards waned with the decline of its instrument making and music printing industries. The city was founded as an imperial stronghold in the 11th century, and between the 12th and 14th centuries grew to be an important trade centre on routes linking Germany with the Mediterranean and eastern Europe. The castle lost its rights and privileges early to the town and by the mid-15th century the corporation was firmly in place. Because of this there were no aristocratic courts where the arts could flourish, but rather the city embraced craftsmanship and corporate rule. The ecclesiastical reins were also held by the city council, and Nuremberg joined the Reformation in 1524, apparently the first imperial city to do so. The Counter-Reformation had little effect on the city, although in 1649 Catholics were permitted to hold services in a chapel. By the early 17th century Nuremberg had become the largest city in the area, but afterwards declined, particularly as a result of the Thirty Years War (1618–48) and a plague in 1634.

1. To 1600.

2. 1600–1700.

3. After 1700.

HAROLD E. SAMUEL/SUSAN GATTUSO

Nuremberg

1. To 1600.

The church was at the centre of Nuremberg life. The two parts of the city, separated by the river Pegnitz, were served by the two large parish churches of St Sebaldus and St Lorenz, a number of smaller churches built in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries (notably the Frauenkirche, the Kirche zum Neuen Spital (Spitalkirche), the Jakobskirche and the Egidienkirche), and ten churches associated with abbeys and convents. The main churches had organs by the 14th century, and by the mid-15th century some had two. Conrad Paumann, an early organ master, was born and probably trained in Nuremberg; he was organist at St Sebaldus from 1446 until 1450, when he transferred to Munich. Both his Fundamentum organisandi (1452) and the Lochamer Liederbuch (compiled in Nuremberg, 1452–60) reflect the city’s musical repertory in the mid-15th century during which period the town band was also important. This had developed from the Stadtpfeiffer known from 1219, when musicians received a pound of pepper and a pair of leather gloves for assisting at the celebration of the removal of imperial taxes. The Stadtpfeiffer were recorded as early as 1363 in the city salary lists, and by the mid-15th century the band had grown to include trumpets and trombones as well as lutes and fiddles.

The city’s sacred music suffered a setback at the Reformation, when the organ and polyphonic music were suppressed. They were not fully restored until 20 years later, about 1544. The chief 16th-century musicians were the teachers in the church schools of St Sebaldus, St Lorenz, and the Spital- and Egidienkirche, whose pupils provided music for the services. The theologian Cochlaeus wrote his Tetrachordum musicae (printed in seven editions between 1511 and 1526) for his pupils at St Lorenz, where he was rector from 1510 to 1515. The Nuremberger Sebald Heyden, a pupil of Cochlaeus, was Kantor and then rector at St Sebaldus, at which time he wrote his treatise Musicae, first printed in 1532.

Music printing in Nuremberg began before 1500. Johannes Sensenschmidt, Johann Petreius and Georg Stuchs were among the earliest figures active there; in the 16th century they were followed by Johann Stuchs, Hieronymus Höltzel, Hans Weissenburger, Friedrich Peypus, Hieronymous Formschneider, Johann Petreius and Nicholaus Knorr. Instrument making was important in Nuremberg very early on. In 1427 Hanns Franck fashioned the first German trumpet and trombone. The Neuschel and Schitzer families were prominent in the 16th century, Georg Voll was active as an organ builder about 1540, and Hans Haiden and Sebastian Lindauer built string instruments. The Meistersinger, all local craftsmen, were most active in Nuremberg in the late 15th and 16th centuries (e.g. Hans Sachs) and are not known to have had any connection with the sacred music of the city (see Meistergesang).

Nuremberg was now established as a major commercial city, and the size and stature of the town band reflected its importance. The band was present at all major civic events and was also available for private functions such as weddings, when the use of both band and church music was regulated by sumptuary laws. In 1590, for example, the patriciate was allowed two or three choirs, organs and performers. Established craftsmen were allowed only one organ and two Stadtpfeiffer. The reputation of Nuremberg's music-printing and instrument-making skills became renowned, with the Neuber, Haas and Hainlain families dominant in these fields. Lutheranism was installed as the dominant religion, and the council appointed church leaders, musicians and teachers in the schools attached to the churches. All major musicians and composers who were to emerge from Nuremberg during this and the next century were employed as church Kantors, organists or music teachers at some time in their profession.

Outside the church, group of amateurs formed ‘Musikkränzleine’ (‘music circles’), sometimes assisted by professional musicians. Members were largely patricians, councillors, lawyers and doctors. The first such formal group was formed in 1568 and consisted of 13 men meeting weekly for a meal and music. They had the reputation of being followers of Melanchthon, and there appears to have been a preponderance of names connected with the church of St Sebaldus. The only musician of repute among the members was Johann Heyden, second son of Sebald Heyden and organist at St Sebaldus. A second society was set up by Ivo de Vento, who worked in or visited the city in the 1570s. He dedicated a book of four-part songs to members of the 1572 society, all members of the Nuremberg council. Leonhard Lechner, a pupil of de Vento, worked in Nuremberg from 1575, taking up a post as musician at St Lorenz's school. By 1582 he had became the town's principal musician, and before he left two years later he had written many madrigals, folksongs and masses, as well as promoting music among young men. He wrote for one specific group of young men, all of whom belonged to prominent Nuremberg families.

During this time the Nuremberg patricians began to send their sons to other German courts or European countries, especially Italy, to broaden their cultural horizons. The arts were then imported on their return, and occasionally with them came recognized musicians. Lassus, for instance, visited Nuremberg in 1581. Meanwhile the Behaim family was instrumental in bringing the arts to the young, educated patrician. Andreas, a poet, and from 1571 Rektor at St Lorenz's school, was also a founder member of the 1568 musical society. His son Paul studied in Italy and returned to Nuremberg to become a prime mover in setting up a new music circle in 1588 (see fig.1). Here again a meal formed part of the meeting and fines were levied if rules were not complied with. No music from this society is extant, but the group had a preference for the Italian style. In 1594 there were visitors from Venice and in 1597 Giovanni Gabrieli visited the society meeting. Composers for the society included Friedrich Lindtner, Kantor at the Egidienkirche from 1574 until his death in 1597.

Nuremberg

2. 1600–1700.

Together with Hamburg and the Leipzig–Dresden area, Nuremberg was a leading centre of German music in the 17th century. At the beginning of the century the Hassler family was pre-eminent. Hans Leo Hassler studied in Italy after early training in Nuremberg; he was the first of many German composers to learn the Italian Baroque style at its source. His brother Kaspar was highly regarded as an organist at Nuremberg churches throughout his life; another brother, Jakob, studied in Italy with support from the Nuremberg city council, but occupied positions elsewhere. Hans Leo, after being employed by the Fugger family in Augsburg (1586–1600), was active in Nuremberg (1601–4) as Oberster Musiker (‘head musician’), a position seemingly created for him. It was apparently under him that the long tradition of Sunday musical Vespers resembling the music-making of a collegium musicum, was established at the Frauenkirche. In the introduction to his Kirchengesäng: Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (1608) Hassler mentioned that the works it contained were specially sung in the Frauenkirche, which did not have its own grammar school to provide a choir, and was the only church in which Communion was not celebrated. The city council provided extra funds for the Sunday afternoon performances, at which there were biblical readings but no sermon. Organists from other churches, instrumentalists and vocalists employed by the city, apprentices and the best singers from the choirs of the church schools all came together for these concerts, which were conducted by the Oberster Musiker. The town band also came under his jurisdiction. In the year 1648–9 the group included four strings, three trombones and three bassoons, and some of the musicians doubled on the cornett or the recorder. Little of Nuremberg’s 17th-century repertory has survived, and there are no records of what was performed at the Frauenkirche. The repertory is likely to have included polychoral sacred concertos and, later in the century, cantatas; organ music was probably also played.

Hassler’s successors were less distinguished; they included Matthias Nicolai, a city assessor, director until his death in 1636, J.A. Herbst (1636–44) and Georg Walch, a bass employed by the city (1644–56). On Walch’s death in 1656 the position was shared by Heinrich Schwemmer and Paul Hainlein, an organist and city musician, who continued until their deaths late in the century.

With few exceptions, the most important musicians of 17th-century Nuremberg were organists: those to hold appointments in the city included Valentin Dretzel (ii), Hainlein, Kaspar Hassler, Kindermann, Johann Krieger, Löchner, A.M. Lunssdörffer, Johann Pachelbel, Schedlich, Schultheiss, Johann and S.T. Staden and G.C. Wecker. The exceptions included Johann Philipp Krieger, whose early positions were as organist but whose chief activity was as Kapellmeister. The most coveted organist’s post was that of St Sebaldus, followed in importance by St Lorenz; of the organists listed above, only the Kriegers, Kindermann and Schultheiss were not promoted to one of the two parish churches.

The main corpus of extant 17th-century Nuremberg music consists principally of sacred strophic songs for one or more voices with and without continuo, occasionally incorporating a ritornello for strings; such music could serve for domestic devotion or at weddings and funerals. The melodies have a forthright, natural style resembling folksong, and often outline the prevailing harmony; they contain few long melismas, though two notes to a syllable is a common mannerism. The melodic structure is unified by using chiefly notes of equal value and often by an echoing of melodic or rhythmic motifs. There is little repetition of text or melodic phrases, and the melody seldom reflects nuances of the text. A four-generation teacher–pupil tradition and the common stylistic traits of this music clearly constitute a 17th-century Nuremberg school. Johann Staden, who may have studied with the Hasslers, taught his son Sigmund Theophil, Kindermann and Schedlich; Kindermann taught Schwemmer, Wecker and Lunssdörffer; and Schwemmer and Wecker taught Johann Krieger, Pachelbel and probably also J.P. Krieger. A pupil of the last generation would have learnt singing and music theory from the schoolteacher Schwemmer; if he showed aptitude for music he would take part in performances at the Frauenkirche with the city’s leading musicians, and would then go to Wecker for instruction on keyboard instruments and in composition.

Like all 17th-century Lutheran music, that of the Nuremberg school has a basic style of composition that is largely an extension of 16th-century practice, but with the addition of concertato techniques and a continuo part that is essentially a contrapuntal line. Other traits common to the choral works of the Nuremberg school are an instrumental melodic style with sparse use of musical–rhetorical figures, a simple harmonic style and a lack of rhythmic vitality. Only Kindermann and J.P. Krieger made expressive use of chromaticism and unprepared dissonance. The most gifted composers either left the city, tried to leave it or returned to it for only a short time. The Kriegers were never employed in Nuremberg; Herbst returned as Kapellmeister for eight years but left again; and Pachelbel, driven from Stuttgart by the French invaders in 1692, only returned to Nuremberg for the last ten years of his life. Johann Kindermann did not leave, but all his life sought positions elsewhere. With the exception of Johann Staden, the other composers remained in Nuremberg during their entire professional lives, but were comparatively unimportant figures. Nuremberg’s lack of appeal to musicians is partly explained by the effects of the Thirty Years War, when the city lost much of its foreign trade and incurred many debts; however, the city paid its musicians well despite the war. The chief reason was probably the conservative and bourgeois Nuremberg culture, which emphasized a civic pride in German art while neglecting foreign accomplishments.

However, as in the 16th century, the city’s musical life was enriched by amateur music circles where foreign music was enjoyed. Both Kriegers dedicated instrumental works to such groups, including the Schönerischer Music-Collegio and the Kaufmännische Collegium Musicum. The 1588 society, after its demise in 1602, was set up again in 1626 by Lucas Friedrich Behaim, son of Paul Behaim (fig.3). The records finish abruptly in 1629. Johann Staden and his son Sigmund Theophil Staden, organist at St Lorenz, were major composers for this society. S.T. Staden also mounted an elaborate concert in 1643, tracing the development of music from earliest times under the title ‘Entwerfung des Anfangs, Fortgangs, Änderungen, Brauchs und Missbrauchs der Edlen Music’. The concert included music of the angels, music recorded at the beginning of the world and music of the Hebrews, all by Staden himself, and works of Lassus, Hassler, Giovanni Gabrieli and Johann Staden. However, the chief circle in Nuremberg at that time in the field of the arts was the Pegnesische Blumenorden, which also sponsored concerts. Founded in 1644 by Harsdörffer and Johann Klaj, the Blumenorden consisted largely of local poets and clerics, who wrote most of the song texts for the Nuremberg composers. In 1649, at a banquet celebrating the end of the Thirty Years War, music was performed by a group of 43 musicians, also under the direction of S.T. Staden (fig.4).

Löhner and S.T. Staden were the only Nurembergers to write operas, and in 1667 the first opera house was established.

Nuremberg

3. After 1700.

Success with the manufacture of brass instruments apparently continued well into the 18th century, and one of the city's instrument makers, J.C. Denner, was noted for the manufacture of the chalumeau and clarinet. Among printers active in the 18th century were Johann Ulrich Haffner, Johann Ernst Altenburg and Balthasar Schmidt, who was also a composer. However Charles Burney, travelling through Europe in the mid-18th century commented that only in Nuremberg was music engraved rather than printed with type, and that there was only one musician of note: Agrel, the town musical director until 1765. Nuremberg was now heavily in debt and reduced to provincial status. It was visited by Mozart in 1780 (‘an ugly town’, he wrote in a letter), Haydn in 1792 and Beethoven in 1795. Works by these composers were also played in the city.

Only in the 19th century did Nuremberg begin to emerge once again as a musical centre, though of lesser status than in its golden age. In 1821 the town music director Blumröder formed a singing school, the forerunner of the conservatory. In 1829 the first men's group was organized, followed in 1842 by a Mozart society. Wagner visited Nuremberg in 1835, and a church music festival was established in 1885.

During the 20th century the city's opera and orchestra became major musical attractions, if of no more than local importance. A new opera house was built in 1905. Before the Hitler years there was a tendency to embrace contemporary music (Stravinsky played his Capriccio here), and the city became well known as a centre for operetta. Richard Strauss brought Frau ohne Schatten and Feuersnot in 1924–5 and Weill's Der Protagonist was given as part of its première tour in 1927–8. All the major opera singers performed in Nuremberg during these years, and such musicians as the bass-baritone Jaro Prohaska and producer Rudolf Hartmann began their careers in the city, and Richard Holm was born there. From 1928 until the war years the city introduced not only major light opera works but new chamber works at the Ars Nova concerts.

The Nazi era brought its own musical style, and carried Nuremberg to the fore when the city became the party conference centre in 1933. Die Meistersinger was performed as the highpoint of the first day's events, and was to return at the conference every year. Nuremberg sponsored the young musician Hans Grimm. Gottfried Müller, born in Dresden in 1914, achieved some fame for his stirring national songs as a teenager, and after the war continued his musical career. In 1961 he was appointed professor of composition at the Nuremberg Conservatory. Other musicians' connections with Nuremberg are tenuous. Distler was a native, but left the city after his secondary schooling. The Berg family included wealthy Nuremberg merchants, but Berg himself had no connection with the city. Hans Gebhard moved to Nuremberg to pursue a career in music; he taught at a girls' school, directed the Chor- und Orchesterklub in the Nuremberg Merkur society, and specialized mostly in choral music, especially with young people. His brother Max became conductor of the Gesang- und Orchesterverein and a professor at the conservatory. Karl Thieme moved to Nuremberg as a school musician before being appointed lecturer in music at Erlangen University, Nuremberg. Willi Spilling (1909–65) was born in the city and studied there and in Berlin before becoming an assistant at Erlangen University. He was the founder of the Collegium Musica and a chamber trio. From 1948 he led the music department at the Nuremberg studio of Bavarian Radio. He was also instrumental in reviving the Ars Nova concerts under the auspices of Bavarian Radio.

After the war the city was able once again to return to its cultural pursuits, and a number of amateur, semi-professional and professional musical groups were founded: the Städtisches Orchester, the Fränkische Landesorchester (later the Nuremberg SO), several chamber orchestras, the Singgemeinschaft, the Madrigalchor and the Nürnberger Philharmonische Chor. The city's historical interest in the organ has been continued with an annual international organ week (Musica Sacra), sponsored by the city council since 1952. A chair in musicology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (founded in 1743) was inaugurated in 1956; its first incumbent was Bruno Stäblein, who established a tradition of plainchant study there. In 1963 the Meistersingerhalle – the first major concert hall complex in the city – was opened. A historical collection of musical instruments, established in 1859 in the Germanisches Museum, has grown into a sizeable collection, but of the little surviving Nuremberg music, that held by the Staatsarchiv was transferred in 1894 to Munich (D-Mbs).

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