Even early music specialists may need to be reminded of Arnolt Schlick. The highly-paid, widely-travelled organist of the Count Palatine in Heidelberg has the first printed German keyboard music to his name (1512), as well as the first major printed treatise on organ building and performance (1511). His most extraordinary work is the manuscript ten-part Ascendo ad Patrem meum with four-part pedals, which Schlick played with special shoes that straddled the interval of a third.
Schlick’s immense prestige inspired a dedication in a popular treatise, first published in Leipzig in 1517. Its author Latinized his name to Andreas Ornithoparcus from Vogelhofer, or something similar. His Musicae activae micrologus went through several editions, and was translated into English by no less a personage than John Dowland in 1609. That was where I recently came across the dedication to Schlick of its Book IV on counterpoint. Andreas’ “small word on practical music”, translated by Dowland to “Introduction Containing the Art of Singing”, is so…microscopically brief that its use as a pedagogical tool seems questionable. But I found the dedication so touching that I wanted to offer it here.*
Andreas was born in Meiningen in Thuringian Franconia, and travelled throughout central Europe, studying and lecturing at various universities and eventually settling into a teaching job. The fourth and last section of micrologus opens with paeans to “musicke”, counterpoint and the great blind organist of Heidelberg.
“TO THE WORTHY AND INDUSTRIOUS, MASTER Arnold Schlick, a most exquisit Musitian, Organist to the Count Palatine, Andreas Onithoparcus of Meyning, sends health.
“[Animals are born with certain natural abilities, but man is born without any. Man lacks] all Arts, that he may be fit for all: which is proved by the natural desire hee hath to knowledge. For Arts are desired by all, though they be not bought by all; and are praised by all, though they be not searched after by all. The hindrance is sloath, pleasure, unorderly teaching, and poverty. And though we have naturally the desire of all Arts, yet above all we doe desire and love the Art of Singing. For that doth entise all living things with the sweetnes; draw them with the profit; and overcome them with the necessity of it: whose parts (thogh they be al both sacred & divine) yet that which we cal the Counter-point, is more sweet, worthy, & noble, than al the rest. For this is the dwelling place of al the other, not that it contains in it al the difficulties of Musicke; but because to make it, it requires a learned and perfect Musitian. Wherfor having discussed of the rest, least our Office be fayling in this last point, I thought good to handle the Counter-point, placing it in the last place (as it were a treasury) wherin al the secrets of Musicke are laid up: not that hereby all men, to whom nature is not serviceable should fall to composition, but that all men may judge whether those things which may be composed by others, be good or bad. Yet who so can, let them compose by our writings: they which cannot, let them proceed, as farre as they can.
“But not to digresse too wide, (worthy Sir) I have in this last booke, collected the rules of the Counter-point, out of divers places, for the common good of learners; which I bring to you to be weighed, that after your censure, it may be subiected to the carps of the malicious. For from your sentence no man will ever appeal; because there is no man either learneder, or subtiler in this Art, than your selfe, who besides the practise, hath wisdome, eloquence, gentlenesse, quicknesse of wit, & in al kinds of Musicke a divine industry, and further the knowledge of many other sciences. Thou wantest the bodily lamp, but in thy mind shineth that golden light: thou seest nothing without thee, within thou seest al things. Thou wantest the the cleernesse of the eyes, thou hast the admirable quickness of wit: thy sight is weak, thy understanding strong; Wherefore not onely by thy princes, who are to thee most gracious, but even of all men (like Orpheus and Amphion) art thou loved. Farewell, the honour and delight of Musicke, and protect thy Andreas from the Zoilisses and Thersitisses.” **
July 1, 2024
- Dowland’s translation is online at IMSLP.
** Zoilus, a Greek rhetorician critical of Homer, and a carping character in the “Iliad.”
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