(Ger.: ‘town piper’).
A professional musician employed by civic authorities. The term has been used in German-speaking countries since the late 14th century (der statt pfiffer, 1378, Berne) along with Ratsmusicus (Ratsmusikant), Stadtmusicus (Stadtmusikant), Instrumentist, Kunstpfeifer and Zinkenist and is equivalent to the English ‘town wait’. Earlier titles include speleman dere stat (1227, 1265, Brunswick), figellatori consulum (1335, Lüneburg), des Rades Trometer (1339, Bremen), Stadtspielman or Stad spellude (before 1401, Lüneburg). From the 17th century the Prinzipal of a town band was sometimes also given the title Director der instrumentalen Musik or Stadtmusikdirektor. While in smaller communities the position was usually held by a master together with his apprentices and journeymen, the larger cities had up to ten civic musicians of equal rank.
The earliest evidence of musicians being taken into civic employment in Germany dates from the 14th century: 1335, Lüneburg, and 1348, Frankfurt (outside Germany there is slightly earlier evidence: tubatores del comune, 1291, Florence; 1297, Ypres). The musicians were usually minstrels and their appointment was of a temporary nature; service was for a specific occasion, or at least was paid by the event. Proper written appointments began in the 15th century and were an essential element in the establishing of town musicians. In these the contractual duties as well as the rights of the musicians were laid down, and the mayor and council of the town guaranteed the musician a yearly or half-yearly fixed salary (salarium fixum). The list of duties of the Stadtpfeiferei included performance at official celebrations, festival parades, royal visits, civic weddings or baptisms, participation in church services and church and school festivities, as well as the education of musical apprentices. In return the musicians were guaranteed the exclusive privilege of providing music within the city boundaries. Rural districts were frequently included in their domain, hence the title Stadt- und Landmusicus. They were often entitled to expenses for instruments, music or clothes, collections at Martinmas and the New Year, donations towards fuel and grain, and privileges such as exemption from taxes or watch duty. When players were disabled, substitutes were often engaged.
The town musician’s social status depended mainly on the size of his income. On a fixed salary he generally earned less than the cantors and organists of an area’s principal churches. Details of musicians’ resources and revenue can be gathered from personal account books. Both social position and range of musical work depended largely on the size and nature of the city (whether it was the seat of a bishopric, a court residence, a university or garrison town, a free imperial city, municipal republic or small town) and the amount of ceremony it had to provide. In smaller places the Stadtpfeifer would also have to assume the burden of tower or watch duty, and often combined his official post with a job as organist, schoolteacher, instrument maker or even a totally non-musical post. His counterparts in larger cities, on the other hand, were able to confine themselves to more artistic tasks commensurate with their position as musicians: directing or participating in concerts, musical evenings, feast day masses etc. and, later, in operas. Hanseatic cities such as Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock and Danzig also had, besides their privileged town musicians, Chor- und Köstenbrüder or Rollmusikanten – musicians who were organized according to the statutes of the various guilds and entrusted with providing music for the middle and lower classes. The eight city musicians (Ratsmusikanten) were appointed exclusively to play for patrician families and members of the upper class. As a rule the move from city to court musician meant a rise in social position.
The Stadtpfeifer waged a constant battle to retain his exclusive right to provide music. In order to preserve his professional privileges and to prevent competition from untrained musicians (Pfuscher, Böhnhasen), town musicians from northern and central Germany formed in 1653 a provincial association of mutual interest whose statutes were ratified by Emperor Ferdinand III. But when free exercise of trade followed in the wake of the French Revolution, and with it the introduction of free competition, the legal basis for the town musicians’ privileges disappeared, and with it many of the traditional town bands. Other factors contributed, notably the technical demands made on instrumentalists in music after 1790 which led to the replacement of the old Stadtpfeifer – the all-round musician – by a new type, the specialist, whose education was provided by the newly established conservatories of music.
In many places, anyone wishing to begin study under a Stadtpfeifer was required to present proof of ‘honourable and lawful birth’. After a five- or six-year period of study in which he had to master a large number of wind and string instruments he was ceremoniously released and became a journeyman. As a trained ‘Musikant’ he then chose either to continue working for his master or to undertake several years of travel. A proficient journeyman could obtain a position as Stadtpfeifer (Prinzipal), when one fell vacant, by means of an audition and selection by the local council. As in other trades, it was possible to become a Stadtpfeifer by marriage and to pass on the post within a family. This was how the Bach family held posts for generations as Thuringian town musicians.
The Stadtpfeifer, as a rule, was a practising musician. From the mid-18th century he mastered and taught the newly fashionable piano and guitar, as well as wind and string instruments. A number of exceptional town musicians became famous as instrumental virtuosos: Nathanael Schnittelbach (1633–67) and Thomas Baltzar (c1630–63) as violinists in Lübeck, and the Leipzig trumpeter Gottfried Reiche (1667–1734), whom J.S. Bach valued highly and who was also prominent as a composer of four-part Turmmusik (‘tower music’). To match the wide variety of tasks assigned him, the Stadtpfeifer had a wide repertory. It embraced signal pieces, chorales, dance movements, conversational and representational music, and from the 18th century onwards included sinfonias and concertos as well. Among the better-known composers who developed through training as town musicians or were active as Stadtpfeifers or directors of Stadtmusik the following are noteworthy: Susato (Antwerp, 1531–49), Brade (Hamburg, 1608–10, 1613–15), Hassler (Augsburg, 1600; Nuremberg, 1601–4), Schop (Hamburg, 1621–67), S.T. Staden (Nuremberg, 1623–55), Pezel (Leipzig, from 1664; Bautzen, 1680–94), Zachow (Eilenburg, from 1676), Telemann (Frankfurt, 1712–21; Hamburg, 1721–67), Quantz (Radeberg and Pirna, 1714; Dresden, 1716), Zelter (Berlin, from 1774) and Lumbye (Copenhagen, from 1829).
See Guilds, Minstrel and Wait.
MGG1 (‘Zunftwesen’; H.W. Schwab)
O. Nielsen: ‘Om stadsmusikanter i København under Frederik d. IV. 1699–1730’, Københavns historie og beskrivelse, vi (1892), 243
H. Waltz: Die Lage der Orchestermusiker in Deutschland mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Musikgeschäfte (‘Stadtpfeifereien’) (Karlsruhe, 1906)
R. Wustmann: ‘Die sächsischen Musikantenartikel von 1653’, Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, xxix (1908), 104
K. Nef: ‘Die Stadtpfeiferein und die Instrumentalmusiker in Basel (1385–1814)’, SIMG, x (1908–9), 395–8
F. Wellmann: ‘Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten: ein Beitrag zur bremischen Musikgeschichte (aus den Akten des Staatsarchivs)’, Jb der bremischen Sammlungen, iv (1911), 79–103
F. Brönnimann: Der Zinkenist und Musikdirektor Johann Ulrich Sultzberger und die Pflege der Musik in Bern in der zweiten Hälfte des XVII. Jahrhunderts (Zofingen, 1920)
A. Schering: ‘Die Leipziger Ratsmusik von 1650 bis 1775’, AMw, iii (1921), 17–53
O. Spreckelsen: Die Stader Ratsmusikanten (Stade, 1924)
F. Rollberg: ‘Johann Ambrosius Bach, Stadtpfeifer zu Eisenach von 1671–1695’, BJb 1927, 133–52
H. Rauschning: Geschichte der Musik und Musikpflege in Danzig (Danzig, 1931)
H. Techritz: Sächsische Stadtpfeifer: zur Geschichte des Stadtmusikwesens im ehemaligen Königreich Sachsen (Dresden, 1932)
L. Krüger: Die hamburgische Musikorganisation im XVII. Jahrhundert (Strasbourg, 1933, 2/1981)
A. Werner: Vier Jahrhunderte im Dienste der Kirchenmusik: Geschichte des Amtes und Standes der evangelischen Kantoren, Organisten und Stadtpfeifer seit der Reformation (Leipzig, 1933)
F. Ernst: ‘Die Spielleute im Dienste der Stadt Basel im ausgehenden Mittelalter (bis 1550)’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, xliv (1945), 80–236
H. Federhofer: ‘Die Grazer Stadtmusikanten und die privilegierte Stadtmusikantenkompagnie’, Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines für Steiermark, xlii (1951), 91–118
L.G. Langwill: ‘The Waits: a Short Historical Study’, HMYB, vii (1952), 170–83
G. Hempel: ‘Das Ende der Leipziger Ratsmusik im 19. Jahrhundert’, AMw, xv (1958), 187–97
T. Volek: ‘Pražské muzikantské cechy, městští hudebníci a trubači v druhé polovině 18. století’ [Prague musicians’ guilds, town musicians and trumpeters in the 2nd half of the 18th century], MMC, no.6 (1958), 75–93
H.P. Detlefsen: Musikgeschichte der Stadt Flensburg bis zum Jahre 1850 (Kassel, 1961)
E.A. Bowles: ‘Tower Musicians in the Middle Ages’, Brass Quarterly, v (1961–2), 91–103
A. Downs: ‘The Tower Music of a Seventeenth Century Stadtpfeifer: Johann Pezel’s Hora Decima and Fünffstimmigte blasende Music’, Brass Quarterly, vii (1963–4), 3–33
H. Federhofer and G.M. Schmeiser: ‘Grazer Stadtmusikanten als Komponisten vorklassischer Klavierkonzerte’, Historisches Jb der Stadt Graz, iv (1971), 73–90
H.W. Schwab: ‘Zur sozialen Stellung des Stadtmusikanten’, Der Sozialstatus des Berufsmusikers vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert, ed. W. Salmen (Kassel, 1971), 9–25
H.W. Schwab, ed.: Das Einnahmebuch des Schleswiger Stadtmusikanten Friedrich Adolph Berwald (Kassel, 1972)
H.W. Schwab: ‘Die Institutionen der Lübecker Stadtmusik und die Einführung der Musikantenordnung von 1815’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, lii (1972), 62–72
H.W. Schwab: Die Anfange des weltlichen Berufsmusikertums in der mittelalterlichen Stadt (Kassel, 1982)
W. Greve: Braunschweiger Stadtmusikanten: Geschichte eines Berufsstandes, 1227–1828 (Brunswick, 1991)
G. Andersson: ‘Från Dietrich Buxtehude till Sone Hansson Strängberg: organister, stadsmusikanter och häradsspelmän i Helsingborg och luggude härad’, Kring Kärnan: Helsingborgs museums årsbok, xxiii (1994), 35–62
J.H. Koudal: For borgere og bønder: Stadsmusikantvæsenet i Danmark c1660–1800 (Copenhagen, 1999)
HEINRICH W. SCHWAB