(Ger.: ‘farce’, ‘broad comedy’).
The noun Bosse (from the French bosse) or Posse denoted in 15th-century usage a decorative figure, especially a grotesque one, or ornamental masonry or sculpture such as a wellhead or fountain. By the 16th century the term usually denoted a prank or trick, and by the middle of the 17th the term Possenspil (or Possenspiel) was in use to denote a type of broad comedy, sometimes specifically including music. Possenspiel was commonly used until the beginning of the 19th century (e.g. by Goethe and Schiller), but thereafter the shortened form Posse was normal, especially in Vienna, for popular comic entertainments. Apart from the non-theatrical Possenreisser (a joker, buffoon), various compound nouns specify types of farce, for example Charakterposse (a farce which lays emphasis on the characterization), Lokalposse (a farce rich in local allusions and dialect), Situationsposse (farce of situation) and Zauberposse (a farce in which magic and machinery play an important part; see Zauberoper).
In Vienna the term Posse mit Gesang became the normal appellation for a farce with songs; much the same phenomenon had earlier been known under a variety of names: Haupt- und Staats-Aktion, Musica bernesca, Maschinen-Comödie, Opera comique and so on. The borderline between Posse and other kinds of comedy, with and without music, cannot be clearly drawn. In the 19th century, however, the term Posse mit Gesang was the most widely used to describe a comic play that, while it contained fewer and shorter musical numbers than would have justified the subtitle Singspiel, nevertheless made extensive use of solo songs, with occasional rather rudimentary ensembles, incidental music and (roughly until the early 1840s) a number of short choruses. The leading authors of Possen, whether or not they preferred to use more pretentious subtitles, were Joseph Alois Gleich (1772–1841), Karl Meisl (1775–1853), Adolf Bäuerle (1786–1859), Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. The most important musicians who furnished them with scores were Wenzel Müller, Ferdinand Kauer, Adolf Müller and Franz Suppé.
PETER BRANSCOMBE