‘Collegium musicum’ generally denotes an organized association of music lovers and amateur musicians that holds regular meetings for the performance of music. Collegia musica were characteristic of bourgeois musical life from the 16th century to the 18th; during that period they occupied a position between institutionalized church music and the music of the princely courts.
EMIL PLATEN/IAIN FENLON
The term is found first in fairly small places, such as the university towns and free imperial cities of central Germany, which had no cathedral or court Kapelle. Despite its Latinate name, the collegium musicum became common only in the German-speaking countries, particularly Germany and German-speaking Switzerland, although it was also found in the Netherlands, occasionally in Bohemia and Sweden, and even, in the mid-18th century, in societies of pietist German emigrants to the USA, for example in Pennsylvania. There is a clear connection with Protestantism.
Unlike other kinds of middle-class, social music-making, for instance the Kantorei, for the performance of sacred music, or the ‘convivium musicum’, which combined musical performance with a convivial meal, the collegium musicum was not precisely defined in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The term may owe its adoption to its neutral and flexible nature. There was no standard type of collegium musicum; a diversity of forms existed, differing in the number and social standing of their members, the private or public character of the association, the part played by professional musicians, and its choice of repertory. The common characteristic was its origin in the society of the educated middle classes and its status as an amateur association. In spite of its variety of forms, certain lines can be traced in its development over the period of some 200 years in which it passed from private, domestic music-making to an institution open to the general public, and from musical performance by dilettantes to public recitals by amateur or professional musicians. During this period the repertory shifted in emphasis from domestic vocal music to concerts of instrumental music.
The trend towards greater professionalism in the second half of the 18th century gradually led to abandonment of the term in favour of ‘concert’, or ‘academy’; by the 19th century the term suggested old-fashioned pedantry and was seen as merely a historical relic. After 1900, however, the rise of musicological studies led to a revival of both the term and the kind of association it denoted, particularly in view of historical awareness of the tradition of 18th-century student collegia musica. In this sense collegia musica are now to be found throughout the world, usually attached to universities and music colleges, and often specializing in the historical performance of early repertories.
Authentic information about historical collegia musica is often fragmentary, and has been preserved only by chance. In the absence of the disciplined organization necessary to a Kantorei, and unlike the ‘convivium’, which required regulated finances, these looser associations of amateurs needed no special statutes. There are, consequently, few documentary records of the foundation or dissolution of such societies. Most of the chronological data, based on references in archives, accounts in diaries, chronicles and biographies, and dedications by composers, merely provide evidence that such associations existed.
The earliest appearance of the term seems to be in M. Schmeizel's Jenaische Stadt und Univ.-Chronik of 1726 (ed. E. Devrient, Jena, 1906, p.26), which states that in 1565 ‘a Cantorey society or collegium musicum … was famous and flourished’. The optional use of the term for the society's name is emphasized by a description five years later in which it is called a societas musicalis. There is similar terminological vagueness over a collegium musicum in Torgau to which the local Kantor, Michael Vogt, dedicated a printed collection of masses in 1568; this was also essentially a Kantorei, although the Latinized name seems to indicate that (unusually for a Kantorei) educated amateurs rather than school students performed polyphony. In other early occurrences of the term (in Wernigerode in 1588, Prague in 1616) the statutes indicate that the collegium musicum was actually a convivium musicum.
After the Thirty Years War, which brought cultural activities in many German towns to a standstill, increasing numbers of musical societies were founded among the bourgeoisie, almost exclusively described as collegia musica. In a few cases, because of local tradition, they were linked to earlier organizations with more resemblance to a Kantorei (as in Delitzsch in 1647) or a convivium (as in Weida in 1651), but in general they were a new type of association which devoted itself exclusively to the enjoyment of vocal and instrumental music. A collegium musicum of this kind would consist of a dozen or more members, most of them local dignitaries such as town councillors, lawyers, doctors and prosperous merchants. They met regularly at some neutral place or in their houses; members' guests interested in music were welcome. According to their abilities, the members attending meetings either made music themselves or listened to performances by musicians such as the local Kantor or the town musicians, who might be members of the society with special status or engaged for the occasion. Published works dedicated to such societies indicate the repertory. In the early period the music was mainly vocal, such as Andreas Hammerschmidt's Motetae, written for Görlitz (1649), Christoph Schultze's settings under the name of Collegium musicum Delitii charitativum (1647) and J.C. Horn's Musikalische Tugend-und Jugend-Gedichte for voices and instruments, written for Frankfurt (1678). Later the emphasis shifted to instrumental music, such as Nikolaus Hasse's Delitiae musicae (1656) for the students of Rostock, W.C. Briegel's Musikalisches Tafel-Confect (1672) for Frankfurt and J.P. Krieger's Lustige Feldmusic (1704) dedicated to the merchants' collegium musicum of Nuremberg. Besides these organizations, there are records of collegia musica in Memmingen (1655), Freiberg (1666), Ulm (1667), Hof (before 1684), Augsburg (after 1684) and Jena (1694). The private character of such societies is also evident from the fact that they often depended on the initiative of individuals and ceased their activities when those individuals moved elsewhere or died. Sometimes other societies were founded later; the local musical history of many towns at this period presents a series of such musical associations.
Besides this widespread form of private and sociable collegium musicum, there were associations of the same name that had rather different aims and larger ambitions. Mattheson (Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte, 1740, pp.397–8) mentions the activities of Matthias Weckmann in Hamburg: ‘After his return [in 1660] two notable music-lovers joined him in founding a great collegium musicum … in the refectory of the cathedral. It united 50 persons, who all made their contribution. The best pieces from Venice, Rome, Vienna, Munich, Dresden etc. were performed’. Clearly this was a society with members who contributed to the holding of public concerts ‘performed by various students, merchants, musicians and other praiseworthy lovers of this noble art’ (J. Rist, ‘Hornungsgespräche’, Monats-Unterredungen, Hamburg, 1663). Students who were musical performers would certainly have been welcome as members of bourgeois collegia musica in other university towns. However, the type of student collegium musicum that was so significant for the later development of concert life did not develop fully until the 18th century. The aims pursued by collegia musica in grammar schools were mainly educational, ‘so that this good school might have a permanent seminarium, from which a complete musical ensemble may be made up at any time for performance in artibus solenibus', as Kantor Knipping wrote in a petition to the Bremen town council (Arnheim, 1910–11, p.395). There were similar collegia musica at schools in Görlitz (c1668) and Freiberg (1672).
In some Protestant areas outside the Holy Roman Empire, particularly where the Reformed Church rejected all forms of artificial music on religious grounds, the performance of sacred music fell to the bourgeois and patrician collegia musica. In German-speaking Reformed Switzerland the two oldest collegia musica in Zürich (the collegium ‘zum Chorensaal’ and the collegium ‘ab dem Musiksaal’, the former founded before 1613 and the latter around that date) concentrated chiefly on the singing of psalms and other sacred works in polyphonic settings considered too sensuous for divine service but still tolerated by the clergy in a private context as a means of diversion from even more sinful activities. After the founding of these two collegia musica, others with the same aims were formed in St Gallen (1620), Schaffhausen (1655), Berne (1674), Thun (before 1679) and Basle (1692). During the 18th century these collegia became concert societies. An outstanding example is the collegium musicum of Winterthur, founded in 1629 and still in existence as a Musikkollegium.
Circumstances in the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century were similar. Again, music-making in the bourgeoisie among a small circle of acquaintances, usually directed by a phonascus, compensated for the banning of polyphonic music from church. There are documentary records of a collegium musicum in Arnhem from 1591, and in 1597 Jan Tollius dedicated a volume of madrigals to the Amsterdamensium Musicorum Collegio Optime, which seems to have been the same ensemble as the one to which Sweelinck dedicated a collection of polyphonic settings of psalms. There is evidence of other early foundations in Leeuwarden (c1620), Nimwegen (1632) and Groningen (1638). The collegium musicum Ultrajectinum formed in Utrecht in 1631 by professional musicians and distinguished amateurs concentrated on instrumental music, it remained in existence without a break until the 19th century when it became the nucleus of what is now the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra.
Collegia were also founded in 18th-century America, as a result of the emigration in the 1730s of members of the Unitas Fratrum sect (the Moravian Church) protected by Count von Zinzendorf. By 1741 they were well established as settlers in Pennsylvania, where they formed a collegium musicum in 1744 in their first new settlement, Bethlehem. It was soon followed by the formation of collegia musica in other settlements, particularly in what is today Winston-Salem in North Carolina. These were the point of departure for a tradition of musical performance that still subsists.
The presence of many young, musically educated people, coupled with the tendency (deriving from the practice of polyphony) for musicians to form groups, provided favourable conditions for the development of amateur musical ensembles in towns with colleges or universities. In this the university city of Leipzig was of particular importance. The titles of works printed in Leipzig such as Schein's vocal Studenten-Schmauss (1626) and Rosenmüller's instrumental Studenten-Music (1654) provide evidence of the early activities of anonymous student groups, which probably also included private citizens, and from the middle of the 17th century there are records of various collegia musica with student members directed by Adam Krieger (1657), Sebastian Knüpfer (1672), Johann Pezel (1673) and Johann Kuhnau (1688). Telemann, who studied in the law faculty at Leipzig University (1701–4), founded the Telemannische Collegium Musicum in 1702, which, according to his autobiography of 1718 (ed. W. Rackwitz, 1985, pp. 89–106), consisted ‘entirely of students, up to 40 of them often meeting together’ (p.96). The energetic Telemann, whose real interest was music rather than law, called on the members of his ensemble to perform polyphony at the Neue Kirche and to act as singers and instrumentalists at the Leipzig Opera. By his own account, their music-making could be heard ‘with great pleasure’. J.F. Fasch founded a second collegium musicum in 1708 when he too was a student at Leipzig. The university itself had no formal links with these institutions; these were independent societies of talented young people who hoped to present themselves to the public as musicians. Such societies met in the large rooms of coffee-houses, which were open to the general public. No detailed descriptions are known as to the character of their performances, which has to be deduced from brief, occasional references. The concerts were not carefully rehearsed in the modern sense but involved singing or playing at sight to an audience, in line with normal musical practice at the time. The whole venture seems to have been a preliminary stage in the development of the kinds of commercial concert that were soon to be a feature of the musical life of such cities as Frankfurt or Hamburg but were not introduced to Leipzig until just before the middle of the 18th century. There is no suggestion in the sources that the audience paid to attend or that the musicians received fees; perhaps the coffee-house proprietor considered the increase in his custom deriving from the musical attractions sufficient recompense for the use of his rooms and any modest sum he may have paid the performers. The musicians themselves would have felt it more important to have the chance of presenting themselves as a skilled ensemble, one that could also provide music for the frequent and well-paid occasions calling for the performance of serenades and festive cantatas. The repertory contained concertante pieces and also included vocal works, with the solo and choral parts (including the treble parts) usually performed by the students. At the same time the collegia musica were institutions providing further training, and a springboard for a musical career, for talented students who were often following their university course only for form's sake. Mizler's comment about such students – ‘in time, as is well known, they often become famous virtuosos’ (Musikalische Bibliothek, 1736, p.34) – is confirmed by the number of illustrious musicians, such as Pisendel, Böhm, Heinichen, Stölzel and Graupner, who progressed towards a musical career through these Leipzig institutions. Both the Leipzig collegia musica proved stable enough to be maintained even after their founders had left the city, and they continued in existence until after 1750, although by then they were decreasing in importance. J.S. Bach's activities as director of the Telemannische Collegium Musicum (from 1729 to 1737, and again from 1739 to the early 1740s) are of particular interest. There is good documentary evidence for the performance by the collegium musicum of Bach's homage cantatas bwv213–215 and of other cantatas, now lost. It was probably at the so-called ‘ordinary concerts’, which in 1733 also introduced ‘a new harpsichord of a kind never before heard here’ (Bach-Dokumente, 1969, ii, 238), that Bach performed his concerto arrangements of this period for one or more harpsichords (bwv1052–8) with the help of his growing sons and his more advanced pupils. Conditions in Leipzig, which at one point even had three collegia musica flourishing at the same time, are not typical, but something similar occurred on a smaller scale in other university towns including Jena, Halle, Rostock, Helmstedt and Würzburg, and in Uppsala in Sweden.
Telemann's career after he left Leipzig also illustrates the way in which ambitious musicians aimed to move from private to public performance. The collegium musicum of the Frauenstein Society that he ‘set up’ in 1713 in Frankfurt, where he was then working, was really the revival of a bourgeois musical association dating back to the 1670s. Its members had then listened to performances by professional musicians in their houses and probably made music themselves, ‘partly … to revive their spirits, wearied by their official business, and partly to encourage the further growth of music by constant practice of that art’ (Telemann ed. Rackwitz, 1985, p.83). When Telemann re-founded the organization, however, performances were opened to the general public, who came in particular to hear large-scale works such as his Fünf Davidische Oratorien, expressly dedicated to ‘the great Collegio Musico of Franckfurth am Mayn’. Such works were mainly performed by the members of the town Kapelle, probably still with a few amateurs. Performances were given in churches or large halls and an entrance price was charged. The members of the collegium musicum now fulfilled the function of founders and patrons – an important step towards the evolution of commercial concerts.
This development was even more clearly marked with Telemann's move to Hamburg, where Weckmann's collegium musicum had begun a tradition of public concerts as early as 1660. After a long interim period following Weckmann's death in 1674, Telemann revived the custom immediately after taking up his appointment as musical director, as is clear from the text accompanying the cantata given on 7 December 1722 ‘on the opening of the weekly meetings of the collegium musicum under the direction of Telemann’ (ibid., pp.119ff). To all intents and purposes the institution was now a concert society: the public could subscribe to a series of performances, and the ensemble was recruited from the ranks of paid town musicians. Descriptions of the programmes make particular mention of large-scale works such as oratorios and festive music, and the participation of guest virtuosos.
Although the generation of Bach and Telemann seems to have retained the familiar name ‘collegium musicum’, from about 1720 the term ‘concert’ was increasingly used; it was felt to be more modern and probably also more professional. For a few decades the two terms appear side by side and seem to be of equal importance, but thereafter even private musical performances among the middle classes, which still continued, are called concerts. Local tradition sometimes dictated that court ensembles were also described as collegia musica in the 18th century, for instance at Köthen, as recorded in the payment made in 1718 to ‘Capell Meister Bachen’ for rehearsing the princely ensemble in his house (Bach-Dokumente, 1969, ii, p.70).
The formerly all-embracing term was now confined to academic musical bodies. Adlung (Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrheit, 1758) applied it to university lectures on music. The term seems to have been used only in this restricted sense in the 19th century. In his Aesthetisches Lexikon (1839), Ignaz Jeitteles defined the term as an outmoded one, with a new shade of meaning: ‘Collegium musicum was the name given in the past to the weekly meetings of musicians of the court ensemble, so that they might maintain their level of performance by rehearsing musical compositions they had already studied’.
After 1900, the term collegium musicum was widely revived, although chiefly in a retrospective sense and clearly in relation to the Leipzig tradition (familiar through studies of Bach). In 1908, Hugo Riemann became director of a musiological institute at Leipzig University which he called ‘collegium musicum’. His intention was to perform Baroque instrumental music, the subject of his research, with his own student ensemble, and to publish that music. His concerts were open to the public but drew their audiences largely from the academic community. Either as a result of his ideas or independently of them, similar groups were formed at other universities including Freiburg in Breisgau, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena and Marburg. Closely allied to the development of collegia was the influential organ revival (Orgelbewegung) of the early years of the century, associated in particular with the work of Riemann's pupil Wilibald Gurlitt at the collegium in Freiburg, where efforts were made to reproduce the sound of medieval and Renaissance music. At about the same time, the growing popularity of choral singing in German universities, influenced by the youth movement, led to the establishment of choirs that became associated with instrumentalists to form a ‘collegium musicum vocale.’ Such ensembles were often linked to musicological institutes. Gurlitt's group at Freiburg after World War I was particularly influential; it gave three concerts at Karlsruhe in 1922 and a week-long series in Hamburg in 1934, with ambitious programmes ranging from early chant and polyphony to chansons by Binchois and Du Fay, which were among the earliest performances of medieval music in Germany in modern times. The members, all from Gurlitt's seminar, used specially constructed replicas of medieval instruments; their example led eminent musicologists, among them Curt Sachs, Max Schneider and Friedrich Blume, to direct similar ventures with collegia at other universities.
These developments were arrested by World War II, but a vigorous revival of collegia musica began in 1950. At all German universities, including new foundations, small orchestras and choruses were established and described by the term ‘collegium musicum instrumentale et vocale’. Although these were modelled on the ensembles of Telemann, Fasch and Bach, historical interest was now combined with a more general pleasure in music-making, and the repertory comprised not only early music but works by such contemporary composers as Hindemith and Bartók, in so far as amateurs were able to perform them. Several series of special publications sought to increase the repertory of suitable music, including one with the significant name Collegium Musicae Novae.
With the rise in student numbers in the 1970s, the collegia musica in both Germany and Switzerland also expanded in both their size and the capabilities of their members; the original small groups developed into large organizations, often integrated into general courses of university study, as institutes for musical practice, where students from all faculties met to form orchestras, chamber groups and choirs. In university towns of moderate size their influence came to extend into the musical life of the whole community. Experimental and early music, which call for special abilities generally beyond amateurs, are less frequently performed. These amateur student ensembles are very different from their historical predecessors in terms of repertory, but professional groups have increasingly assumed the name of collegium musicum or such adaptations as Collegium Musicum of Zürich, Collegium Vocale of Cologne, Collegium Vocale of Ghent and New Bach Collegium of Leipzig, to suggest their special familiarity with the repertory and the performing practices of the Baroque collegium musicum.
During the 1930s, the emigration of many distinguished musicologists and musicians to America, many of them refugees from Nazi Germany, encouraged the foundation of collegia musica as part of a general and characteristic interest in applied musicology. As in Germany, these were attached to universities and often specialized in early repertories. The most distinguished, the Yale Collegium Musicum, was established shortly after Paul Hindemith arrived to teach in the faculty in 1940. Its concerts, largely of medieval and Renaissance music, given under Hindemith's direction between 1945 and 1953, rapidly outgrew their didactic function and began to attract audiences from beyond the academic community. Together with Willi Apel's collegium at Harvard and Siegmund Levarie's at the University of Chicago, the Yale collegium served as a model for the many performing groups attached to universities in America and elsewhere in the ensuing decades. Encouraged by the growth of interest in earlier repertories during the 1970s, and stimulated by a concern with historically informed performance, the latter-day heirs to the term have as their primary purpose the ideals of Riemann and Gurlitt: to recreate the authentic voice of earlier music. As such they have been a major force in the training of musicians specializing in the performance of early repertories across the whole of Europe and the USA.
See also Academy and Universities.
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