Barbara Kluntz

Barbara Kluntz

Barbara Kluntz (baptized February 5, 1661 in Ulm ; funeral sermon May 22, 1730 in Ulm) was a German composer and music teacher . On all of the book titles she has received, she calls herself “Barbara Kluntzin of the Noble Music Art Lover”, to explicitly emphasize her position: She does not consider herself a professional musician.

biography

Barbara Kluntz, known as "Schneiderbärbele", was the daughter and third child of the tailor Peter Kluntz and his wife Katharina Kluntz, née. Messerschmid. She joined the charitable third order of the Ulm Collection Women who were evangelical after the Reformation (Ulm Collection). The monastery-like association - it also owned several villages around Ulm - was located on Ulmer Frauenstrasse at the corner of Sammlungsgasse. The building was destroyed in World War II. Since the women who entered the order did not have to take any vows, Barbara Kluntz was not a nun.

Entry into the Ulm Collection Foundation

Location of the Ulm collection. Detail from the bird's eye view plan 1597.

When she entered the collection, Barbara Kluntz was widely known as a “piano virtuoso, organ player and poet”, according to older research. Excerpts from her will, which no longer exist, show that she had her own organ , a clavichord , many music and books.

How Barbara Kluntz came to her skills and what position her father had as a tailor within the Ulm tailors' guild is not yet known. Until then, only patrician women had been included in the collection. Why Barbara Kluntz did not join the collection pen until she was 44 remains to be explored. Her musical activities can only be documented when she joined the collection pen in 1704. So far, no evidence can be found about her childhood, early and late youth.

Barbara Kluntz was not married, she moved into the collection under her maiden name and as a "maid". Her vocal and instrumental music making was probably dedicated to purely religious purposes; In addition, she also taught her colleagues, their students and many patrician daughters in “piano pounding”. Her great role model was the French poet Georgette de Montenay , whose portrait she had included in her chorale book from 1711.

Contacts and concerts

Barbara Kluntz maintained contacts in Berlin through correspondence and probably had the latest musical works sent from there so that she could study and perform them. She probably accompanied herself and others herself on the clavichord and on the organ. Since the Ulm collection women were able to move freely in the city and in the monastery, it can be assumed that the Ulm collection represented a center of Ulm music practice alongside the permanent Ulm city whistles, which were united in a guild and the emerging theater business.

Poetry

In addition to music, Barbara Kluntz also wrote many poems that she published in her chorale books, including a work that expresses her joy and vitality:

“If David's Harpff sounds in Himel,
let him who sings happily with me.
Lutherus sings to us all,
according to God's word leads the tenor.
We sing along and twitter along,
and God rejects such praise and supplication.
Whoever fears God and likes me,
sings with me to the Lord God. "

(Choral Book 1711)

Barbara Kluntz must have been very familiar with the French language, as she quoted her role model Georgette de Montenay in her chorale book from 1711 and presumably knew their works in the original. With this, Barbara Kluntz entered a tradition of outstanding women who put their literary and musical talents and gifts into the service of the praise of God.

Choral Book 1711

The 245 chorals of the magnificently handwritten Choral Music book from 1711 are recorded only with the title and in some cases without text. The melodies are exposed to chords with up to six voices, whereby the movements can suddenly switch between full part and two-part passages. Occasionally, Barbara Kluntz also offers alternative suspensions to a chorale melody on the same page.

In her works, Barbara Kluntz often used the fifths and octaves in parallel, and the third is just as often missing in the movements despite four and five voices. This could be an indication that she taught herself her art autodidactically, since the use of the third had long been common in music history at this point in time.

At the end of her first chorale book, Barbara Kluntz puts her happiest credo, her way of viewing music:

“I don't know how much good
is hidden in Musica;
God and people like them,
music drives away worries , music drives
away sadness,
music renews the spirit,
music makes
us want, and shortens the time, and it makes us happy forever.
I love music as long as I live,
and cheerfully raise my voice
and sing: O Music! Heaven's art,
you are forbidding all honor and favor. "

(Choral Book 1711)

Posthumously

It remains to be researched what happened to Barbara Kluntz's further legacy such as the instruments and sheet music; A resolution by the Ulm City Council forbade the collection women to bequeath goods to one another in order to give them as little power and financial influence as possible in the city. Only a surviving excerpt from a (no longer preserved) protocol from the Ulm Collection Foundation dated December 10, 1728, on the back of Barbara Kluntz's oil portrait, shows that she wrote a lost will at least two years before her death. Barbara Kluntz bequeathed her music (sheet music and clavichord) to the in-house chapel and decided that her organ should go to the Protestant church in Ersingen . After the Ulm collection was dissolved, however, the organ was (according to Ilse Schulz ) taken to a “German school”. It is likely that Barbara Kluntz's music was destroyed during the Second World War by the bombing raids on Ulm, which also destroyed the Ulm collection.

Archival material

Barbara Kluntz's grave is also considered lost. Only her two remaining chorale books and her portrait in oil by an unknown artist are preserved. It also shows two pages of her second, missing chorale book from 1717. Barbara Kluntz was depicted in the collection costume typical of that time. With her left hand she points to a small cross: As she writes in almost all of her songs and poems, the music she holds in front of her as a chorale book comes from God. Writing implements point to her work as a poet and composer; a lemon in the foreground, which was a luxury item (shown in the original oil portrait, Ulmer Museum), reveals its elevated status. In the background there is probably its own organ.

The diverse activities of Barbara Kluntz as a collector, music teacher, composer, organist and piano player are unparalleled for the Ulm area and in general for her age.

Works

• 3 chorale books from 1711, 1717 (lost) and 1720; with a total of more than 500 individual compositions of sacred songs, chants and arias (Ulm City Archives).
• General Bass booklet (before 1720?), Lost.
• Lauds Jehovah Te Ulma - nine-strophic Latin hymn with the melody of Nun all thanks God as a hymn to Barbara Kluntz's hometown (Choralbuch 1711).
• Death song by Anna Maria Reiser (collection woman) on the death of Barbara Kluntz, published by Daniel Ringmacher in a lost anthology.
• Portrait of Barbara Kluntz by an unknown artist (Ulmer Museum Inv.-Nr. 1928.6048).

State of the chorale books

• Eisen-Gallus ink font in light brown color.
• Edited volumes: look like copies of a predecessor.
• Well-preserved colors of the bindings and pictures.
• clear music, neat handwriting.
• careful handling, as the outside is hardly damaged.
• already ink damage in places!
• there are no copies, copies, microfiche recordings or other facsimiles of the chorale books!

Appreciation

• The city of Ulm named the Barbara-Kluntz-Weg after her.
• In the Ratskeller in Ulm City Hall, her portrait was painted large in gold (approx. 2 × 3 m). There she is in company with other great sons and daughters who have enriched the city of Ulm in the past.

literature

• Kirstin Börchers, Svenja Blocherer (ed.): Ulmer women have a story. From energetic and intelligent women. Mössingen-Talheim 1992, ISBN 3-89376-029-6 .
• Linda Maria Koldau : Women - Music - Culture. A manual on the German-speaking area of ​​the early modern period. Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-412-24505-4 , pp. 931-943.
• Christiane Dech: Barbara Kluntz - a successful music teacher. In: Ulmer Museum [Hrsg.]: Ulmer Bürgerinnen, Söflinger monastery women in imperial city times. Ulm 2003, ISBN 3-928738-37-2 .
• Ilse Schulz: Sisters, Beguines, Masters. Hygieia's Christian Daughters in a City Healthcare. Universitätsverlag, Ulm 1992, ISBN 3-927402-61-3 .
• Ilse Schulz: Blown away tracks. Women in the city's history. Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Ulm 1998, ISBN 3-88294-264-9 , pp. 17–43.
• Susanne Wosnitzka: "I love music as long as I live" - ​​Barbara Kluntz, the most important female composer in southern Germany around 1700. In: Archiv Frau und Musik, Frankfurt / Main (ed.): VivaVoce , No. 97, Frankfurt 2013. pp. 2-4 .

swell

• Barbara Kluntz: Choral Manual 1711 and 1720, Ulm City Archives.