Johann Beer

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Johann Beer
Memorial plaque at Neu-Augustusburg Castle

Johann Beer , also Behr or Bär , (born February 28, 1655 in St. Georgen im Attergau , Upper Austria , † August 6, 1700 in Weißenfels ) was a writer and composer .

Life

His father Wolfgang Beer (1621–1699) was an innkeeper and later moved with his family to Regensburg for reasons of faith. The father and probably also the mother, Susanna Stadelmeyr (1625–1694), were of Protestant faith. Beer had 15 siblings. He worked as a musician, composer and music theorist; as a writer he published a large number of novels under various pseudonyms.

As a child, Beer is likely to have come into contact with music in a variety of ways, as singing and playing instruments were more important in the 17th century than they are today. He first attended the school of the Benedictine monastery in Lambach until the Protestant family had to move to Regensburg in 1670 , where Johann attended the Protestant high school poeticum. Here he unfolded his talent as a storyteller by entertaining his classmates with impromptu stories. This talent later made him a writer.

After only a few months of theological studies (1676), Beer entered the service of Duke August von Sachsen-Weißenfels as an alto ( contratenor ?) , Where he found ample opportunity in an art-loving milieu to take part in all kinds of courtly festivities. Beer married Rosine Elisabeth Brehmer in 1679 and had 11 children with her. Eventually he was promoted to ducal concertmaster and librarian. He was injured on July 28, 1700 by a stray bullet during a shooting competition near Weissenfels and died nine days later.

plant

Beer wrote chivalric novels and satirical writings under a number of pseudonyms , the attribution of which is partly uncertain and partly attributed to Johannes Riemer , who had repeatedly expressed criticism of Beer's anti-feminism .

Beer left an autobiographical work that is available as an autograph. In it he reports about his birth, childhood, youth and his further résumé. He drew illustrations himself in the margin of the manuscript. The initially fluid narrative soon turns into a diary-like, chronic listing of life events. Beer also describes numerous accidents, misfortunes, illnesses, executions and other violent events. These records end with the statement from Beer himself that he was seriously wounded in a hunting accident. This autobiographical work became the basis of a psychobiographical study that mainly deals with the consequences of a childhood trauma: the accidental death of his two younger brothers Abraham and Gottlieb when Beer himself was about 5 years old.

Beer also wrote a number of Picaro (picaresque) novels, such as B. The adventurous Jan Rebhu Artlicher Pokazi (1679/80) and the Symplizianische Welt-Kucker (1677/79). Despite the obvious allusions to the works of Grimmelshausen , these novels could not achieve his success. It was not until 1932 that Richard Alewyn revealed that he was the author of these writings . Alewyn wrote a monograph on Beer in which he tried to work out what was new in his literature. In contrast to Grimmelshausen, Beer largely detached himself from the symbolic world view of the Baroque and provides a realistic representation of contemporary reality in his novels. The Teutschen Winter Nights and The Kurdish Summer Days are examples of Beer's moralizing satires of the society of that time.

In addition to musical and literary talent, Beer also had drawing skills, as the story and histori illustrated with his own woodcuts by Land-Graff Ludwig the Springer , Weißenfels 1698, shows.

reception

With the revival of older music, the work of Johann Beer also experienced a renaissance, in the form of a concerto for post horn , french horn and string orchestra. Here Beer shows himself to be a gifted composer with some melodic talent. However, the post horn is not a musical instrument, but served as a signal for the postilion , e.g. B. to alert hikers lost in thought to the dangers posed by an approaching carriage. A critical edition of the complete works by Johann Beer, ed. by F. van Ingen and H.-G. Roloff appeared in Bern 1981 ff.

Beer's music was also played on Bavarian television on the occasion of a crossing of the Alps in a stagecoach as background music, although it did not fail to have an effect despite some contrapuntal weaknesses.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) on the piano and Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) with the help of the oboe later made the post horn or the postilion the subject of their program music. The concertante use of such a signal horn seems a bit strange without knowing a specific occasion, especially since the post horn sounds in all movements of the concert and Beer also does not understand how to use the signal horn monochordically as an organ point or in relation to a hurdy-gurdy harmony.

Since 2009, the Johann Beer Literature Prize in Austria has been awarded jointly by the Medical Association in Upper Austria and Deutsche Bank . The prize is endowed with € 7,000.

Works

literature

  • The Simplician Welt-Kucker. 4 volumes. Halle / Saale 1677–1679.
  • History and Histori of Land-Graff Ludwig the Springer. Weißenfels 1698
  • The adventurous wonderful and unheard-of Ritter Hopfen-Sack from the Speck-Seiten. Halle 1678. Reprint: Shaker, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-8322-1311-2 .
  • Jucundi Jucundissimi Whimsical Life Description. [sl] 1680, ( digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • The fool's hospital. 1681. New edition: Greno, Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 3-89190-414-2 .
  • The political firewall sweeper. Weidmann, Leipzig 1682, OCLC 22567484 .
  • German winter nights. Joh. Hoffmann, Nuremberg 1682, OCLC 84722482 .
  • The European in love, or Warhrachtige love novel . Vienna 1682, ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive ).
  • Musical fox hunt. Weißenfels 1697 ( description ).
  • Adolf Schmiedecke (Ed.): Johann Beer. His life told by himself. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965, DNB 450303241 .

Operas

literature

  • Richard Alewyn : Johann Beer (= Palaestra. 181). Leipzig 1932.
  • Richard Alewyn:  Beer, Johann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 736 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Andreas Brandtner, Wolfgang Neuber : Beer. 1655-1700. Court musician. Satirist. Anonymous. Turia & Kant, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85132-281-9 .
  • Werner Braun:  Beer, Johann. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 2 (Bagatti - Bizet). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1112-8  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  • Arrey von Dommer:  Beer, Johann . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 768 f.
  • Jörg Jochen Berns : Studies on the Willenhag novels Johann Beers. (= Marburg Contributions to German Studies, Vol. 9). Marburg 1965 (also phil. Diss. 1964).
  • Ralph Frenken: Childhood and autobiography from the 14th to 17th centuries: Psychohistorical reconstructions. 2 volumes. (= Psychohistorical research, volume 1/1 and 1/2). Kiel 1999. (on Beer: pp. 626–648)
  • Kuno Gurtner: "I've got a basket full of fruit". Studies on the poetics of Johann Beer's novels. Bern [u. a.], Lang, 1993.
  • James Hardin: "The Political Firecracker". ... Contrasting Views of Woman. In: Modern Language News. 96: 488-502 (1981).
  • Jörg Krämer: Poetology, immanent poetics and reception of 'lower' texts in the late 17th century. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a., 1991, ISBN 3-631-44038-3 .
  • Manfred Kremer: The satire with Johann Beer. Dissertation. Cologne 1964.
  • Helmut Pachler: Johann Beer - attempt to get closer to his time, his person and his literary work. St. Georgen 1999, ISBN 3-9501147-2-6 .
  • Stephen Rose: The bear growls. In: Early music. 33, 2005, pp. 700-702.
  • Stephen Rose: The musician-novels of the German Baroque: new light on Bach's world. In: Understanding Bach. 3, 2008, pp. 55-66 ( online , PDF; 142 kB)
  • Stephen Rose: The Musician in Literature in the Age of Bach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011, ISBN 978-1-107-00428-3 ( description ).
  • Andreas Solbach: Johann Beer. Rhetorical storytelling between satire and utopia. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-8253-5939-3 .

Work and bibliography

  • Gerhard Dünnhaupt : Johann Beer (1655–1700). In: Personal bibliographies on Baroque prints. Volume 1. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7772-9013-0 , pp. 466-489.
  • James Hardin: Johann Beer, a descriptive bibliography. Bern 1983. ISBN 3-7720-1464-X
  • Manfred Lischka: The composer Johann Beer, a directory of the compositions. In: Daphnis. 9, 1980, pp. 557-596.

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Beer  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Johann Beer  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schmiedecke: Beer, His Life ... p. 5; Hardin: Johann Beer, a descriptive bibliography. P. 132 ff.
  2. ^ Schmiedecke: Beer, His life ... p. 128; Frenken: Childhood and Autobiography ... p. 628 ff; F. Speta: Did two of Johannes Beer's brothers die of Colchicum seeds around 1660? In: Contributions to the natural history of Upper Austria. 9, 2000, pp. 47-48. (PDF; 288 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Beer, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Behr, Johann; Bear, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1655
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Georgen im Attergau , Upper Austria
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1700
Place of death Weissenfels