MOUNTAIN GEIST: SWISS ALPINE BODY AND SONG, 1700–1900 by EMILY LAEL LOEFFLER A DISSERTATION Presented to the School of Music and Dance and the Division of Graduate Studies of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2022 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Emily Lael Loeffler Title: Mountain Geist: Swiss Alpine Body and Song, 1700–1900 This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the School of Music and Dance by: Abigail Fine Chairperson Marc Vanscheeuwijck Core Member Lori Kruckenberg Core Member Dorothee Ostemeier Institutional Representative and Krista Chronister Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies. Degree awarded March 2022 ii © 2022 Emily Lael Loeffler iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Emily Lael Loeffler Doctor of Philosophy School of Music and Dance March 2022 Title: Mountain Geist: Swiss Alpine Song and Body, 1700–1900 Between c.1700 and 1900, Swiss Alpine song was used as a tool to cultivate mountainous aspects within human bodies. Scholarship on Alpine song in this period typically focuses on the subgenre of the ranz des vaches, a herding melody rumored in the early eighteenth century to elicit morbid nostalgia for the Alps. English- language literature on the subject typically emphasizes the use of the ranz des vaches in art music, and Swiss literature takes a folkloric and ethnomusicological approach, but Swiss literature is rarely, if ever, available in English. This dissertation considers the cultural-historical context for how Alpine song was understood a tool to connect with the Swiss Alps, and explores what it meant to cultivate Alpine virtues in a body. I consider four main instances: first, the physiological or medical implications of Swiss Alpine song from 1710–c.1800, second, how song was used to cultivate Swiss identity by invoking the Alps from 1767–1815, third, how music was used in a voyeuristic way by tourists and aristocrats to experience the Alps in the nineteenth century, and fourth, how song styles were used to delineate who did and did not belong in the high mountains at the end of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to discuss the mountains without iv discussing Älpler, the people who live in the Alps. Most of my sources are from the upper classes and lowlands; the input from Älpler themselves is astonishingly limited. This study thus becomes a cultural history of projections: the aristocratic ideal of the Älpler is expected to embody the low-lander’s ideal of the mountains. It is also, in a way, a history of voyeurism: this connection between Älpler and Alp is evidenced through song, a fascinatingly intangible but nonetheless sensible object that aristocrats can use to get a glimpse of a rarefied world they had constructed themselves. We find that Alpine song took on the significance of a sentinel species for other cultural anxieties, like disease, modernism, and nationalism, and it offers a rich opportunity to explore how landscape and sound are invoked in notions of morality. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Emily Lael Loeffler GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Northern Colorado Humboldt State University DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Musicology, 2022, University of Oregon Master of Music, Music History and Literature, 2016, University of Northern Colorado Master of Music, Collaborative Piano, 2013, University of Northern Colorado Batchelor of Arts, Music: Piano Performance, 2010, Humboldt State University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Music and Landscape Music and the Body Music, Tourism, and Souvenirs Music and Transnational Politics Music and Romantic Nationalism Music and the Anthropocene PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Instructor, Gonzaga University, Fall 2020–present Piano Teacher, Self Employed, 2010–present Adjunct Professor, Whitworth University, Spring 2021 Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2016–2019 Accompanist, Self Employed, 2013–2015 Assistant Editor, Journal for Musicological Research, 2015–2016 vi GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: University of Oregon’s First Year Fellowship Graduate Dean’s Citation for Outstanding Thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 2016 James Upton Music History Scholarship, University of Northern Colorado, 2015- 2016 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I went into this project I knew I would be relying on help from a few people, but I did not expect the number of people who pitched in to grow to the number it did. This has been a truly collaborative and international project, which has made the experience that much richer for me. My advisor Dr. Abigail Fine leads the charge; she put in an enormous amount of time and energy and helped me take the project from its protean stage to something larger and more coherent. It has been a massive stroke of luck and privilege to work with her for these last few years. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee, Drs. Marc Vanscheuuwijck, Lori Kruckenberg, and Dorothee Ostmeier not only for their suggestions, insights, and intellectual effort but also for their grace with email badminton, paper signing, and the various kinds of tedious clicking that can gobble away an entire day but which are necessary grease for the wheels of the Ph.D. process. I am deeply indebted to a variety of generous interlocutors in various museums and specific associations who helped facilitate special aspects of the research. These people include the curators at the Musée historique Genève, especially Estelle Fallet, Lilane Déglise at the Musée historique Lausanne, David Wells, Alison Biden at the Music Box Society of Great Britain (MBSGB), Niko Weigman from the MBSGB, and Aileen Marcantonio at the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York City. Several others pitched in with specialized knowledge to help with the body of the dissertation. These people include: Dr. Marie Sumner Lott whose thematic viii knowledge related to Chapter V, Dr. Bianca Tredennick who helped by rapidly unpacking theories of banshees related to Chapter IV, Dr. Kristen Paige who tipped me off to the field of psychoacoustics, Dr. Jonathan Hicks who clued me into Victorian street music in Chapter V, Juliette Angoulvant and Emily Korzeniewski assisted with French, Taylor Tyrell helped with very weird pseudo- Latin, and Annegret Retusch Dykstra with Swiss German idioms. A number of generous people helped with feedback for prose portion. These include Dr. Linda Tredennick, Rodney Loeffler, and Eric Hogle. I owe a particularly special thanks to Dr. Chelsea Wright, who has spent countless hours in study sessions over Zoom with me. I also owe a big thank-you to folks who contributed recordings: Meredith Gersten (who expressed a desire to be referred to as a “French 75”), and Michelle Sulaiman and (soon-to-be Dr.) Brad Schultz. ix To the enthusiastic custodians of esoteric knowledge, including my parents. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 A Brief History of Switzerland .............................................................................. 6 The Ranz des Vaches ............................................................................................. 13 Literature Review .................................................................................................. 17 Chapter Overview .................................................................................................. 22 II. THE RANZ DES VACHES IN 18TH-CENTURY PHYSIOLOGY ......................... 28 Nostalgia ................................................................................................................ 34 The Animal Spirits: The Kühreihen as Physiological Memory ............................ 43 Sensibility: The Kühreihen as Moral Memory ...................................................... 52 Sensibilité in Performance: The Ranz des Vaches as Active Remembering ......... 64 Home, Sweet Home! The Ranz des Vaches on the Foreign Stage ........................ 71 III. SINGING ALPINE POLITICS, 1767-1815 .......................................................... 80 Part 1: The Schweizerlieder Tradition in the Helvetic Society ............................. 86 Alpine Values .................................................................................................. 94 Alpine Heroes and Älpler ................................................................................ 102 The Swiss Journey ........................................................................................... 108 Philippe-Sirice Bridel and the Search for “Les Armaillis” .............................. 113 Part 2: Revolution and Republic ............................................................................ 120 William Tell During the Helvetic Republic (1798–1803) and the Stecklikrieg (1802) .............................................................................. 122 Unspunnenfest and the First Songbooks .......................................................... 125 xi Chapter Page Part 3: “Les Armaillis” in Genevan Tabatières ..................................................... 136 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 150 IV. SONIC TOURISM IN THE BERNER OBERLAND .......................................... 152 “Objects of Notice”: Mountain Sound and Song in English Travel Literature ..... 160 “They Sing Their Duties” ...................................................................................... 174 “There Is Somewhat Too Much of the Jodeling in the Alps” ............................... 198 The Moral Collapse of the Ranz des Vaches ......................................................... 217 V. ALTITUDINAL ASSOCIATIONS IN THE KUHREIHEN AND YODEL ......... 222 The Yodel Myth .................................................................................................... 230 The Swiss Alpine Club .......................................................................................... 236 The Taming of the Kühreihen ............................................................................... 242 The Timeless Yodel ............................................................................................... 254 The Manly Yodel ................................................................................................... 267 Yodeling the Heimat .............................................................................................. 280 VI. CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................... 286 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 294 A. HISTORICAL REFERENCE MATERIALS ................................................... 294 B. SELECT PRIMARY SOURCES 1710–1813 ................................................... 300 C. SELECT LIEDKARTEN ................................................................................. 312 D. SELECT PRIMARY SOURCES FOR CHAPTER IV .................................... 315 E. HAMMER-DULCIMER PLAYING DAMSELS ON THE WENGENALP ... 322 REFERENCES CITED ............................................................................................... 323 xii Chapter Page Historical Sources .................................................................................................. 323 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................. 333 xiii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. “Cantilena Helvetica der Kühe-Reyen,” in Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum, Basle (1710), 102–103. ....................... 1 2. The upper voice to “Der Appenzeller Kureien Lobelobe,” in Georg Rhau, Bicinia gallica, Wittemburg (1545), 84. ........................................................................... 2 3. Tschubby and Lesqual, Linguistic Map of Switzerland in 2010, n.d., Creative Commons Lisence 3.0 ........................................................................................... 7 4. An encounter with an Alpine dragon reported around 1660. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Ouresiphoítes helveticus..., Petrus Vander (1725), 395. .................. 9 5. Kaspar David Friedrich, “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer,” (1818). ............. 10 6. Measures 1-20 of Der Kühreihen der Appenzell, in von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805), 17. .............................. 15 7. English horn figure in measures 176–180 of Gioachino Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Overture (1829). ................................................................................................... 17 8. The first fifteen bars of “Cantilena Helvetica der Kühe-Reyen,” in Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum, Basle (1710), 102– 103. ....................................................................................................................... 48 9. The pineal gland sends out animal spirits in response to external stimuli, in Descartes’s “Tractatus de Homine,” Frankfurt (1692), 104. ................................. 49 10. Ranz des vaches from Joseph Weigl’s Emmeline, Ou la famille Suisse: Opéra- comique en trois actes, Paris (1827), 137. ............................................................. 74 11. Opening to “Les Armaillis,” from Le Conservateur suisse (1813), 424–425. ...... 81 12. Frontispiece to the first edition of Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Schweizerlieder, Bern (1767). ........................................................................................................... 90 13. Frontispiece to the 1786 edition of Schweizerlieder, Bern (1786). ....................... 93 14. Score to the “Song for the democratic canton for their yearly Landsgemeinde,” Schweizerlieder, Bern (1775), 56. ......................................................................... 96 15. Score for the “Republican Drinking Song,” Schweizerlieder, Bern (1775), 54. ... 100 xiv Figure Page 16. The first line to Jean-Benjamin Laborde’s ranz des vaches in Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, vol. 2, Paris (1780), 106. ...................................... 114 17. Lithograph of the Unspunnenfest, from Catherine Santschi La mémoire des Suisses, Genève (1991), 41. .................................................................................. 126 18. Frontispiece to Sigismund von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805). .......................................................................................... 129 19. First line to the Kühreihen der Siebenthal in von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer- Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805), 7 .................................................... 131 20. Frontispiece to Johann Rudolf Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, Bern (1812). ........................................................................... 133 21. Top of tabatière A showing the initials "LB" and the text "Souvenir d'amitié et de reconnoissance" .................................................................................................... 140 22. The top of Sonnenberg’s tabatière (1815), property of the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève .................................................................................... 147 23. Staubbach Falls and the Lauterbrunnen Valley as painted by Albert Bierstadt (c. 1865) ...................................................................................................................... 152 24. Teams of travelers with porters passing over the Gotthard, as painted by Johann Gottfried Jentzsch, “Grand roûte au Mont St. Gotthard, en Suisse,” Swiss National Library (1802). ........................................................................................ 177 25. Opening stanza of “Der junge Graf,” from G. J. Kuhn and Johann Rudolf Wyss, eds., Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern, 3rd ed., Bern (1818), 72. ............................................................................................................ 182 26. The Kehrli family around the keyboard. Haller, “Le régent Kehrli et sa famille,” lithograph, Musée Historique Lausanne, (n.d). ..................................................... 185 27. [s.n.] Geissler, Le Giessbach et la chorale familiale sur l’alpe, colored etching, Bibliothèque nationale suisse, Cabinet des estampes (1822). ............................... 186 28. “Wedding Party and Tourists on the Rigikulm,” woodcut around 1860 after a humoristic drawing by H. Jenny, non-paginated insert in Lunn, The Swiss and Their Mountains (1963). ........................................................................................ 209 xv Figure Page 29. The frontispiece to Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: Being Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, London, London (1862). ........................................................ 235 30. The opening bars to the Oberhasler Kühreihen, from Sigismund von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik and Text, Bern (1805), 1. ...................... 247 31. The closing bars to the Oberhasler Kühreihen, from Johann Rudolf Wyss’s Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern, Bern (1826), 2. ............ 248 32. A typical example of a yodel from Alfred Tobler’s Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell, Leipzig and Zürich (1890), 44. ...................... 257 33. Heinrich Szadrowsky’s “stereotypical yodeling figure” (Jodler stereotype Figur), in “Nationaler Gesang bei den Albenbewohnern,” in Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club, volume 1 (1864), 520. ....................................................................... 260 34. Szadrowsky’s example of the rising pitch in the echoes of a yodel, in “Nationaler Gesang bei den Albenbewohnern,” in Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club, volume 1 (1864), 520. ........................................................................................... 260 35. Poster for the Federal Games, August 17–18, 1902, lithograph by A. Eglin. Bibliothèque nationale suisse, Bern (1902). .......................................................... 270 xvi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In 1710, a physician at the University of Basel named Theodor Zwinger included a musical score of a “Swiss song, the Kühe-Reyen” in an explanation of the recently discovered disease “nostalgia.” Zwinger explained that it was forbidden to whistle or pipe a Kühreihen in the French army because it would cause the hired Swiss mercenaries to recall the mountains of their homeland so strongly that they might desert or die. Figure 1, below, shows the first spread of Zwinger’s Kühreihen.1 Figure 1: “Cantilena Helvetica der Kühe-Reyen,” in Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum, Basle (1710), page 102–103. 1 Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa non minus quàm Utilia Scienti (Basle, 1710), http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10087097-4. 1 The Kühreihen was a real folk practice associated with herding cattle in the Swiss Alps. The name “Kühreihen” or, in French, “ranz des vaches” translates to “line of cows,” describing the line made by a herd of cattle as they were herded across the meadow, over a pass, or towards a barn.2 Today the song only survives as a simple herding call “Viehlöckler,” or occasionally “Chuärehäli.” 3 The earliest surviving Kühreihen score, a two-voice work printed by Georg Rhau in Wittemberg in 1545 references cows in its title: “Der Appenzeller Kureien Lobelobe:” “Lobelobe” comes from a Swiss term of endearment for cattle, “Lobe,” sometimes “Loobe” or “Loobeli.”4 The opening to the upper voice of the Rhau is given below in Figure 2. Figure 2: The upper voice to “Der Appenzeller Kureien Lobelobe,” in Georg Rhau, Bicinia gallica, Wittemburg (1545), page 84. 2 Max Peter Baumann, “Kuhreihen,” in Die Musik in Geschichte Und Gegenwart (Kassell: Bärenreiter, 1994), 812–13. 3 See Baumann, 813. For an example of a recording of a Chuärehäli, see Natur Pur. Schrägers & Gräders us äm Muotatal. Kulturwerk.ch GmbH, 2017. See also Pierre Meylan, Max Peter Baumann, and Chris Walton, “Switzerland,” in Oxford Music Online, January 20, 2001, https://doi- org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27221. 4 Georg Rhau, “Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica, Tomus 2. Secundus tomus biciniorum quae et ipsa sunt gallica, latina, germanica: ex praestantissimis symphonistis collecta, et in germania typis nunquam excusa: additae sunt quaedam, ut vocant, fugae, plenae artis et suavitatis” (Wittemberg, 1545). The song is on pages 84a-84b in the partbook for the vox superious, and pages 83-84 in the partbook for the vox inferius. A complete modern transcription of this piece, with both voices represented together, can be found in Alfred Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart. (Leipzig und Zürich: Gebrüder Hug, 1890), endpages 4–6. 2 In French-Swiss regions, the word “Lobe” is typically spelled “Lyoba,” and there is even a family of tunes associated with the word “Lyoba,” in Western Switzerland, the most famous of which is a song called “Les Armaillis” (more on this in Chapter III). European aristocrats became fascinated with the Kühreihen legend after Zwinger included it in his Dissertatio Medica, and the song remained a point of interest until the end of the nineteenth century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau repeated the story the ranz des vaches in 1768, in the entry on “musique” in his Dictionnaire de musique, and like Zwinger, included a score for the curious reader (see Appendix B).5 Early nineteenth- century folklorists took cues from Johann Gottfried von Herder and curated collections of Kühreihen in central Switzerland.6 Art music composers became familiar with versions of Zwinger and Rousseau’s melodies and included them in their own compositions: these include Gioachino Rossini’s overture to Guillaume Tell, and Franz Liszt’s “Le mal du pays” from the first year of his Années de pèlerinage, among others. In each of these instances, the collectors or composers used the Kühreihen/ranz des vaches to depict an ideal world that they believed could be found in the Alps. Rousseau said the power of the ranz des vaches came from the attachment of Swiss mountain people to their difficult ways of life, which they were losing with the spread of urban civilization.7 The folklorists advanced their collections of Kühreihen as the sound of a national, pastoral icon following the tumult of an occupation by France. Rossini and Liszt used the melodies in 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique, vol. 9, Collection Complète Des Oeuvres (Genève, 1780), 443–444. 6 Baumann, “Kuhreihen.” See also Meylan, Baumann, and Walton, “Switzerland.” 7 Daniel Fabre, “Que reste-t-il...? Quatre figures de la nostalgie chantée,” L’Homme 215/216, no. Connaît- on la chanson? (July 2015): 23–24. Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique, 9:443–444. 3 reference to idealized republican politics and the mountain sublime, respectively, but which were both sourced from the same aristocratic European vision of life in the Alps. In the 1860’s, some Swiss folklorists expressed doubts about the Swiss Alpine origins of the Kühreihen, including a musician and member of the Swiss Alpine Club named Heinrich Szadrowsky. Szadrowsky believed there were only two Kühreihen that might plausibly be Swiss: the first of these was the Appenzeller Kühreihen because it was featured in the earliest surviving manuscript (the Rhau), and the second was the French- Swiss ranz des vaches called “Les Armaillis,” because it was actively sung in Western Switzerland.8 However, aside from these two songs, neither he nor other members of the Swiss Alpine Club (upon his inquiry) had ever actually encountered a Kühreihen in its supposed natural habitat: on the Alps.9 Szadrowsky wrote that he was willing to give some credence to Zwinger’s old story about the French army banning the Kühreihen, but as a sort of embellished metaphor for how the Swiss folk song had been repressed by the upper classes. Szadrowsky’s doubts touch on larger ambiguities regarding class and provenance in the works on Alpine song; more than a hundred years later, the ethnomusicologist Max Peter Baumann has also acknowledged these complexities.10 After Zwinger’s time, how much of the song was actually sung by living Älpler––the people who actually lived in the mountains––and how much was the music co-opted by the upper class? What was the 8 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 335. 9 Ibid., 335, 339. 10 These comments are scattered throughout his work. See: Max Peter Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels (Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag, 1976). Baumann, “Kuhreihen.” Meylan, Baumann, and Walton, “Switzerland.” 4 appeal of the song for the wider European upper and middle class? Do any of the Kühreihen that survive in print represent a living folk practice? While the genre of the Kühreihen was not wholly fictionalized, it was enriched by multifaced cultural myths, created largely by the lowland-dwelling upper classes about the Alps and the Älpler. The Kühreihen existed within a wider context of different types of Alpine song, which were often in their own ways understood and used to encourage mountainous qualities in the singer or listener. As cultural understandings of the Alps changed, and the mountains came to represent the physical dimension of Swiss heritage and virtues, the archetype of singing Älpler began to symbolize the essence of Swissness and timelessness, and song was seen by Swiss and aristocrats across Europe as the sonic manifestation of that connection between Älpler and Alp. This dissertation takes the Kühreihen as a point of departure for a broader look at the rich cultural discourse that contextualizes surviving evidence of Alpine song between 1700–1900. I focus on this period for three reasons. First, it contains the beginning and the end of the legend of the Kühreihen, which arose within the milieu of Enlightenment scientists and met its end with late nineteenth-century modernism. Second, it was a critical period for the development of Switzerland as we currently know it. Third, it contains many of the cultural origins of the Swiss yodel; I generally avoid using the word “yodel” until Chapter V, but the various historical events and social shifts during this time contributed to the yodel’s status as the stereotypical Alpine song by the twentieth century. It is unusual for a dissertation to tackle such a large swath of time. Because of the very limited Anglophone sources on Swiss and Alpine music, I have opted, perhaps optimistically, for breadth rather than depth, with the idea that this might offer a general 5 basis for Anglophone musicologists. Swiss music enthusiasts will quickly point out that I largely ignore the Alphorn, except for some treatment in Chapter IV. I have made this choice for the sake of relative brevity; readers who are interested in the alphorn should turn to Charlotte Vignau.11 The title, “Mountain Geist,” refers to the feeling of connection that one might have with the mountains. Geist has no good translation into English––it can mean “spirit,” “feeling,” and occasionally “ghost.” It can also connote mind and wit. Over the course of this dissertation, I use sound and song to explore the notion of inexplicable mountain affinity, or the sonic mountain Geist, starting with the life-spirits in the nervous system (anima or Leben-Geister) in the eighteenth century, and ending with the deep feeling a yodeler had for the mountains at the end of the nineteenth. The meaning and use of Alpine song mutated along with the understanding of Switzerland and epistemologies of the human body, but there was always some element of Alpine feeling. The story of mountain Geist is one narrative for how sound and song connected bodies to landscapes. A Brief History of Switzerland Like many countries in Europe today, Switzerland did not become a country until the mid-nineteenth century. The Old Swiss Eidgenossenschaft (Oath Confederation) that existed until the end of the eighteenth century was a collection of loosely affiliated independent republics with ––on good days––varying degrees of amicability. These individual areas are called cantons; modern readers can reasonably think of cantons as being like states or provinces in a country, but cantons are different because they have 11 Charlotte Vignau, Modernity, Complex Societies, and the Alphorn (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013). 6 several degrees of magnitude more independence from the federal government than many states. The cantons were and remain largely divided along linguistic and religious lines; the linguistic boundaries can serve as an example of the various divisions within Switzerland. Switzerland has four national languages. Central and Eastern Switzerland speak various dialects of German, and the Western edge speaks French variants. A section of the South border speaks Italian, and a few enclaves on the Eastern sides speak the little-known language Romansch. Figure 3 below shows the linguistic divisions within Switzerland and the modern cantonal borders. Figure 3: Tschubby and Lesqual, Linguistic Map of Switzerland in 2010, n.d., Creative Commons Lisence 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Switzerland_Linguistic_EN.png. This linguistic distribution has remained essentially stable since the seventeenth century. Tensions between cantons often created significant stress, and there was very 7 little that united the entire cantonal ensemble. As other areas in Europe began to coalesce around their linguistic, religious, and ethnic identity, Switzerland, as we now know it, lacked a clear unifying element. Oliver Zimmer and Ulrich Im Hof have both argued that Swiss nationalists focused on their Alpine landscape with a unique intensity compared to other nations in Europe.12 While the road to Swiss nationhood was certainly much more complicated than identifying a central national symbol, the Alps played a very important role. The road to the modern-day Swiss state began after the French occupied portions of the region in various guises between 1798 and 1815.13 In 1815 the Congress of Vienna certified Swiss independence and neutrality, thus initiating a period of relative stability. The modern Swiss state took shape following a short civil war in 1847 called the Sonderbund, which motivated the Swiss to organize more substantially at a federal level. Readers who are unacquainted with Swiss geography and history might find the timeline and historical maps contained in Appendix A to be useful for reference. The consensus that the essence of Switzerland and Swissness was in the Alps developed in the period from the last years of the old Eidgenossenschaft to the end of the nineteenth century. This connection is now so obvious that readers today might find it to be a moot point: when tourists of the twenty-first century visit Switzerland, they typically 12 Ulrich Im Hof, Mythos Schweiz (Zürich: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1991). Oliver Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 4 (October 1998): 637–65. 13 Most English-language musicologists will very likely encounter much of the historical material in this dissertation for the first time. This does not appear to be limited to musicology: English-language histories of Switzerland are remarkably few compared to other European countries. There is Luck (1985), Clive H. Church and Randolf C. Head’s Concise History of Switzerland (2013), and some more focused studies, such as Oliver Zimmer’s Contested Nation (2003). 8 take photos of themselves on Alpine hiking trails, or squishing the far-off Matterhorn between thumb and forefinger, or eating chocolates in the shape of the Matterhorn, and so forth. These experiences can obscure the fact that Switzerland has more than mountains––there are magnificent cities, glittering lakes, and expansive open areas––so the centrality of the Alps in its national identity was never inevitable. Prior to the Enlightenment, the mountains were generally thought of as a horrible place, overflowing with ugliness and irrational dangers. These dangers were more than just avalanches and rockfall; many scientists, including those discussed in Chapter II, believed that the Alps were home to fearsome beasts like cat-faced dragons. Figure 4 above depicts an encounter with one of these monsters, a Stollenwurm, reported around 1660. Figure 4: Image of an encounter with an Alpine dragon reported around 1660. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Ouresiphoítes helveticus, sive Itinera per Helvetiæ alpinas regiones facta..., Petrus Vander (1725), illustration to page 395. 9 Over the course of the eighteenth century, this “mountain gloom” as Marjory Hope Nicholson put it, mutated into “mountain glory.”14 Enlightenment scientists and poets developed a cult-like enthusiasm for the mountains, and influential Swiss writers and groups like Albrecht von Haller and the Helvetic Society began espousing the timelessness, majesty, and beauty of the Alps. Early nineteenth-century Romanticism contributed to the crescendo of mountain glory, and antimodernists at the end of the century looked to the Alps for inspiration. Musicologists will likely be familiar with Kaspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” from around 1818. This painting typifies the sense of wonder, otherworldliness, and glory eventually attributed to the Swiss Alps. Figure 5: Kaspar David Friedrich, “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer,” Kunsthalle Hamburg (1818). 14 Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1959). 10 By the end of the nineteenth century there was a general consensus that the unified national identity of Switzerland did not develop in spite of the challenging, varied landscape, but because of it. Oliver Zimmer and Ulrich Im Hof both treat this process extensively in their work.15 Groups like the Helvetic Society and other European aristocrats started to superimpose the meaning of the mountains onto the rural Swiss, and much of the dialogue about Swissness, Alpine-ness, and sound played out in discussions of the human body. The basic premise was that if someone lived at higher altitudes, and closer to the peaks, they were more able to manifest the idyllic potential of the mountains within their physical and spiritual bodies. Thus the bodies of the Älpler––people who lived in the Alps––became freighted with this largely upper-class epistemology. Starting with Zwinger’s Dissertatio medica, discussions of Älpler often included descriptions of them singing. Eighteenth-century physicians like Zwinger proposed that song could manifest the mountains within the body through the nervous system. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a Swiss federalist group called the Helvetic Society (Helvetische Gesellschaft) attempted to cultivate Alpine values in a person and their physique through song projects. Over the next century, people both inside and outside of Switzerland believed that Älpler could sing to and with the mountains, and sometimes, if everything was just right, it was almost as if the mountains sang back. Hence, the use of the ranz des vaches by Rossini and others was one symptom of a much larger phenomenon where sound and song could signify a bond between bodies and mountains. 15 Im Hof, Mythos Schweiz. Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation.” 11 This study of Swiss music considers what it meant to sing Alpine song or cultivate Swissness in a body from the last century of the Eidgenossenschaft through the end of the nineteenth century. It is not so much about what the country of Switzerland was––although that’s certainly relevant––but about what Swissness or Alpine-ness meant to different populations. Similarly, while this project certainly engages with studies of nationalism, it is not fundamentally about nationalism––it is about what it means to belong somewhere, in this case, the mountains, what it meant to embody the moral attributes culturally assigned to a certain geography. At different points, the song related to different parts of the body, from the nervous system to physical fitness and beauty. In many cases, Alpine music focused on male bodies and groups of men: men serving in the mercenary service, men singing about brotherhood, men climbing mountains, men yodeling to their mountains. Much of what played out in Switzerland was similar to that of other places in Europe; for instance, Switzerland, like Germany, emphasized the notion of a common Swiss blood that was based on behavior rather than actual familial relations, and it suffered the same anxiety about modernism as much of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. However, a key difference between Switzerland and the rest of Europe is the centrality of its landscape. Swiss music represents an opportunity to explore the relationship between sound and geography and to apply current ideas in ecomusicology to historical research based in archival sources. My work brings historical musicology and new primary source work into conversation with two main ideas in ecomusicology: topophilia and moral geography. Topophilia describes the love one might have for a certain place, or an affective bond with one’s environment. Alpine song articulated this 12 bond in biological, historical, and emotional ways. Moral geography is an idea that hails from cultural geography, which submits that some people and practices belong in certain spaces or landscapes, but not in others. By way of example, David Ingram’s work on Cecil Sharp’s English folk song collections considers both topophilia and moral geography because the songs express a topophilic bond to the English landscape, while Sharp’s collecting habits indicate he believed that some vocal practices should remain within a specific landscape.16 Likewise, moral maps of Alpine song necessarily reference the presence of specific bodies––Älpler or lowlander, male or female––in certain valleys or on particular mountains. This study, by deliberately centering the landscape within a musical-historical project, uses Swiss Alpine music to begin asking bigger questions about how spaces can inform and influence sonic meaning and practice. The Ranz des Vaches The earliest scores for the ranz des vaches are untexted, and sources indicate the melodies could have been sung or played on an instrument. It is possible that the Rhau was sung to the syllables “Lobelobe” or played on instruments. Zwinger writes that the song could be whistled, or played on a pipe, and Giovanni Battista Viotti, who traveled around the Alps in 1792, reports hearing one doubled between a woman’s voice and an alphorn, and his transcription of the melody does not include any text.17 Texted ranz des 16 David Ingram, “Ecocriticism and Traditional English Folk Music,” in Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature, ed. Aaron S. Allen and Kevin Dawe (New York: Routledge, 2016), 221–32. 17 “Whenever the Commanders of the Soldiers had seen that many were roused by this reason toward a desire of needing to recollect their Homeland, and also that from this place, others died having obtained a burning Fever, they were compelled to prohibit by severe law that no esteemed person undertake to sing that Old song, which they tended to call with their native language den Kühe-Reyen, either by whistling with his Mouth, or by blowing a Pipe.” “Cumque Tribuni Militum vidissent, plures hâc ratione ad repetendæ Patriæ desiderium stimulari, aliquos etiam impetratâ hinc Febri ardente mortuos esse, severâ 13 vaches only survive starting from the last decades of the eighteenth century, and many of these were likely new text set to the pre-existing melodies.18 These texted ranz des vaches quickly proliferated especially after the turn of the nineteenth century, and soon outnumbered the untexted melodies. In broad strokes, there are two overlapping musical forms of ranz des vaches that come down to us in score. The first are those published in Swiss folkloric collections, particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century. The most important collections among these are often called the Kuhn-Wyss collections, after the main editors.19 These ranz des vaches are strophic, and for one voice. In later editions the singing voice may be accompanied by a keyboard or accordion. The second type of ranz des vaches are those that are borrowed or affected in art music. These are often shorter and performed on an instrument with pastoral associations like a flute or a clarinet, rather than by a vocalist. These pieces often reference known ranz des vaches: for instance, Liszt’s ranz des vaches lege prohibere coacti sunt, ne quis amplus Cantilenam istam, quam vernaculâ linguâ den Kühe- Reyen nuncupare consueverunt, sive Ore sibilando, sive Fistulam inflando canere sustineret.” Translation by Taylor Tyrell. Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa non minus quàm Utilia Scienti, 101–102.. See Appendix B. G. B. Viotti, “Note de Viotti sur les Ranz des vaches,” La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique 6 (1798): 533–34.In the early twentieth century, some people hypothesized that the Kühreihen was once a dance, but that suggestion has been roundly rejected. See Baumann, “Kuhreihen,” 811. 18 Baumann, “Kuhreihen.” Meylan, Baumann, and Walton, “Switzerland.” 19 Sigismund von Wagner, Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text (Bern: Ludwig Albrecht Haller, 1805); Johann Rudolf Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, 2nd ed. (Bern: J.J. Burgdorfer, 1812), http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-50794; G. J. Kuhn and Johann Rudolf Wyss, eds., Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern. Theils nach ihren Bekannten, theils nach neuen Melodien in notenschrift gebracht und mit Clavier-Begleitung versehen, 3rd ed. (Bern: [J. J. Burgdorfer], 1818). George’s Tarenne’s Recherches sur les ranz des vaches, while technically French, closely replicates the contents of the Kuhn-Wyss collections and can be reasonably categorized along with the Kuhn-Wyss collections. George Tarenne, Recherches sur les ranz des vaches ou sur les chansons pastorales des bergers de la Suisse, avec musique (Paris: F. Louis, 1813). 14 from his “Le mal du pays” has the same opening as Zwinger’s Kühreihen but departs from the model after a few bars. Ranz des vaches are often structured in an A and a B section, which operate like a verse-refrain form. The A section is largely syllabic, and when texted, features new text upon repetition. These texts frequently address the cows, but are also generally pastoral, comic, and lighthearted. The B section is often quicker, less syllabic, more gymnastic, and feature a repeating figure that recalls a modern yodel. The changes between the various sections were often marked by tempo fluctuations; writers typically emphasized that these fluctuations were done solely according to the feeling of the singer, among the mountains.20 One of the most famous ranz des vaches within German-speaking Switzerland was from Appenzell, and while it is one of the longer examples of the genre, it exemplifies the standard melodic and structural elements. The A and B sections are marked in Figure 6, below. Figure 6: Measures 1–20 of Der Kühreihen der Appenzell, in von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805), 17. 20 For instance, see Viotti, “Note de Viotti sur les Ranz des vaches.” This is discussed in further depth in Chapters II and IV. 15 In the Appenzell ranz des vaches, the A section lasts until the first fermata, on the word “Loba,” which is the same word for “cow” as in Rhau’s 1545 score. This particular B section is more than twice as long as other ranz des vaches and is made so partially by featuring two different repetition figures: the first is the descending thirds at “Allsamma,” and the second is the rapid triplet scales. Readers can see this same structure and further examples of repetitive figures in the Zwinger score and the select ranz des vaches included in Appendix B. However, ranz des vaches are not always in an AB form; many from the folkloric collections only have the equivalent of the A section. The theatrical use of echoes in many instrumental Kühreihen also evidence how the song tradition was embellished by non-Älpler. There are certainly some spaces in which one can generate an echo in the Alps: echoes can be conjured up by strategically stationed alphorns, as explored in Chapter IV, and some Älpler know particular limestone areas that resonate particularly well, as in Chapter V. However, these spaces are more the exception than the rule, because there is often nothing to echo against while on the wide- open Alp. Nonetheless, the echo plays a central role in many of the art music examples of the ranz des vaches, which suggests that the melody was supposed to evoke the feelings of the landscape. For example, Liszt repeated the opening figure from Zwinger’s Kühreihen an octave lower, as if it were echoing in the distance. In the overture to Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, below, he used triplet repeating figures typical of a B section as a reference to the ranz des vaches, and he states the figure first in the English horn, and then again in the flute (Figure 7): 16 Figure 7: English horn figure in measures 176–180 of Gioachino Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Overture (1829). Transposed to concert pitch. Just as Zwinger wrote that the Kühreihen could cause Swiss mercenaries to strongly recall images of their mountains, these art music examples aurally recreate the idea of mountainous, Swiss spaces. Literature Review Switzerland is bounded by Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Liechtenstein. We have a deep musicological literature for the first four of these countries and they often reference Switzerland in their own music, like the canonical composers discussed above. The vast majority of relevant material is, perhaps unsurprisingly, written by Swiss people, but there is still a remarkable lack of scholarship circulating in English-language musicology. Much Swiss scholarship on the subject tends to take a folkloric and ethnomusicological approach. The ethnomusicologist Max Peter Baumann has laid the groundwork for the study of Swiss folk song since the late 1970’s. His research addresses a range of Swiss folk traditions, including yodeling and alphorn playing. Guy Métraux’s 1984 Les Ranz des Vaches is a celebration of Swiss folk life, and his appendix is an fabulous source for relevant musicological inquiry.21 Ulrich Im Hof and François de Capitani have done important research about music in the archives of eighteenth-century 21 Guy S. Métraux and Anne Philipona, Le Ranz des Vaches: Du chant des bergeres à l’hymne patriotique (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 2019). 17 aristocratic communities, and Im Hof has written about the use of some music and the development of Swiss national identity.22 In 2019, several authors collaborated on a book that is centered on the relationship between the yodel and the alphorn.23 While these Swiss publications have been largely neglected in English-language studies, they yield invaluable insights about the depth and breadth of Swiss musical traditions. Currently, there appears to be a growing interest in European scholarship on the ranz des vaches, if not Alpine song more broadly. The most recent and relevant musicological work is Mathieu Schneider’s 2016 L’utopie suisse.24 In 2019, Métraux’s text was reissued in coffee table book format, and expanded with new work by Anne Philipona, who focuses on some of the contemporary folkloric practices around the ranz des vaches that I consider at length in Chapter III. Similarly, some Swiss folkloric singers in groups with names like Natur Pur are attempting to re-create the old Alpine style by studying recently rediscovered ethnomusicological recordings. These retrospective sounds are also now appearing in Swiss pop music as introductions, choruses, and background harmonies.25 Still, musicological work about Switzerland remains surprisingly lacunose. Many scholars consider the ranz des vaches because of its relationship to art music, and as a 22 Ulrich Im Hof and François de Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Bern: Frauenfeld Stuttgart Huber, 1983); Im Hof, Mythos Schweiz. 23 Raymond Ammermann, Andrea Kammermann, and Yannick Wey, Alpenstimmung: Musikalische Beziehung zwischen Alphorn und Jodel: Fakt oder Ideologie? (Zürich: Chrons, 2019). 24 Mathiew Schneider, L’utopie suisse dans la musique romantique (Paris: Hermann, 2016). 25 For a some recordings of these “old-style” sounds, readers should turn to "Jüüzli”—Yodel of the Moutatal, CD, Musée de l’Homme, 1979. And Natur Pur, Schrägers & Gräders us äm Muotatal (Kulturwerk.ch GmbH, 2017). For examples of these types of yodels being used in pop music, I recommend listening to any of the albums by the Swiss group called “Heimweh.” 18 general rule historical treatment of the song is largely focused on deriving the meaning behind melodies in standard classical repertoire. A recent example of this is Schneider’s text mentioned above, which is by far the most thorough musicological treatment of the ranz des vaches to date. Schneider focuses on the Swiss tours of four well-known Romantic composers: Mendelssohn, Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms. Using these composers’ own recollections and travel memorabilia, Schneider investigates the nature of their encounters with performative Swiss folk song, and how traveling in Switzerland informed later compositions. In this instance, Switzerland is more object than a subject. While there is to date no history of Swiss music in English, there are some English-language treatments of the ranz des vaches. These are largely in the same vein as that by Schneider, and as such, generally treat the ranz des vaches as a prelude to explaining certain melodic figures in German art music. The most thorough English- language work on the topic to date is a 1945 essay by A. Hyatt King. King’s approach is very much one of the first half of the twentieth century; his work focuses on appearances of the ranz des vaches in in Western classical music––primarily German––including operas, solo piano work, and symphonies. He speculates about the origin of certain ranz des vaches in these pieces; for instance, he suggests that Beethoven’s Six Variations Sur un Aire Suisse uses a ranz des vaches from the Rigi Kulm. Like Schneider, King’s article includes descriptions of various composers’ activities while in Switzerland. There are several English-language texts that treat the ranz des vaches as a preface for other topics, but do not spend significant time on it or its variations. The information in these sources largely corresponds with King’s work; everybody discusses the original medical texts about nostalgia and Swiss mercenaries. For instance, Susan 19 Youens contextualizes the use of the ranz des vaches as a musical topic in Lieder, and Timothy Wise mentions the ranz des vaches in the introduction to his book as a way to explain some of the associations Americans have with the sound of yodeling.26 Bart Plantenga has also done work on yodeling along the same lines as Wise.27 Literature like this is valuable for tracing the lines of influence and methods of appropriation during and after the nineteenth century, but there is at best just a nod to the attitudes of the Swiss themselves towards their landscape and musical practices. Other scholars have used the ranz des vaches as part of cultural histories of nostalgia projects, but the musical component has been largely incidental. These include Helmut Illbruck, who has a chapter of his book on nostalgia dedicated to the ranz des vaches.28 In this chapter, Illbruck situates the ranz des vaches within currents of intellectual and cultural history from the seventeenth through to the nineteenth century; he starts with Zwinger, traces the ranz des vaches through a few key examples of art music, and concludes with some ideas about how it came to achieve a folkloric status. He does not, however, engage with the actual music of the ranz des vaches, or its relationship to other genres of song. Thomas Dodman has recently done work of this same vein, although he focuses more on the medical history component.29 26 Susan Youens, Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song-Cycles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Timothy E. Wise, Yodeling and Meaning in American Music, American Made Music Series (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016). 27 Bart Plantenga, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling around the World (New York: Routledge, 2004); Bart Plantenga, Yodel in Hi-Fi (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). 28 Helmut Illbruck, Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease (Evanston, Illinois: Northeastern University Press, 2012). 29 Thomas Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). A similar book to Dodman’s, but French, is André Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie (Paris: Campagne première, 2006). 20 Amidst all this work, there is still room to explore the larger cultural, international, and class dynamics at play while at the same time as treating the music. Furthermore, much of the literature focuses on how the story played out outside of Switzerland, rather than inside. Lastly, while the ranz des vaches is certainly a useful entry point and red thread, it is not the whole story. Similarly, very few scholars have taken a serious look at the yodel or tried to explore how it related to other Alpine song or Swiss identity. Some exceptions are Timothy Wise and Bart Plantega, as mentioned before, who do engage with the yodel in popular music, especially Americana. However, their work focuses primarily on more recent music. To this body of literature, and to begin to paint a more thorough picture, I add several new categories of primary source materials, and expand on sources that often get only cursory attention. The new materials that I consider include musical snuff boxes (Chapter III) and a wide range of travel literature (Chapter III, IV, and V), including musical postcards called Liedkarten. I also treat musical sources that have been only cursorily mentioned by other scholars, such as vaudevilles and similar musical plays about Switzerland (Chapter II), different editions of Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Schweizerlieder (Chapter III), and various collections of folkloric ranz des vaches from the early nineteenth century (Chapter III and V). I also revisit familiar sources with a new critical lens, like the writings from the Swiss Alpine Club (Chapter V). The mountains, then as now, were understood as timeless, purifying, and supreme, all qualities that could be invoked in the human body through the use of song. My chapters, outlined in detail below, chart how Alpine singing blurred the distinctions between the Alps and the Älpler’s physical and spiritual bodies, while alternating 21 between international and Swiss perspectives. When song is used in this way, traditional melodies, like the ranz des vaches, almost always lose any pragmatic herding function. In Chapter II, eighteenth-century medical theories speculated that the ranz des vaches physically impacted a person’s nervous system, and through that, their soul. Songbooks in Chapter III show how groups of aristocrats promoted Alpine folksong as a way to cultivate common identity between the diverse parts of Switzerland, and how these ideals became even more important during the French occupation. In Chapter IV, English tourists visited Switzerland, hoping to hear the mountains adorned with ranz des vaches, but did not like the appearance of the singing Älpler. In Chapter V, late nineteenth- century scientists conflated masculinity, mountaineering, and yodeling. In all of these chapters, Alpine song outlines and occupies the ambiguous space between the ideal (the mountains) and the real (the body). Chapter Overview Chapter II is dedicated to the medical understanding of the ranz des vaches between 1710 and the early nineteenth century. This chapter first considers Theodor Zwinger’s Kühreihen within the wider medical and political context of the eighteenth century. In this, we can see that nostalgia and the ranz des vaches were part of a larger humanist discussion about the historically obligatory Swiss service in foreign militaries, and an idealized connection bodies could have with their difficult, rural lifestyles. I then go on to show how this genre, even as it was understood as a disease more than a piece of music, functioned within musical paradigms, and entered the popular European imagination. Starting in the 1780’s, aristocratic tourists began to seek out authentic Alpine 22 performances of the ranz des vaches, because it would allow their nervous system––via theories of sensibilité––to resonate with the Älpler’s nervous system, thereby attaining all of the moral accoutrements increasingly associated with the Alpine lifestyle. The nostalgic myth became so notorious that by the turn of the nineteenth century, popular French and English musical theatre featured scenes where a ranz des vaches would summon a displaced and ailing Älpler back to the mountains. The medical understanding of the ranz des vaches underscored the popular idea that Älpler bodies were exceptionally pure on a physiological and moral level because of the Alps, and thus could only survive in the Alps. Chapter III considers the political uses of Alpine song, including the ranz des vaches, in the period from 1760–1815. I begin by showing how the Helvetic Society (Helvetische Gesellschaft) produced the archetype of the singing Älpler as a Swiss national symbol. Through their Schweizerlieder project, the Society built up the archetype of the singing Älpler and the moral accoutrements of the Alpine lifestyle discussed in Chapter II. In these songs, we can also see how the Alps increasingly connoted patriotism, republicanism, and freedom. These Alpine connotations became particularly poignant when Napoleon occupied Switzerland starting in 1798. Part of the occupation collapsed in Central Switzerland in 1803, and the Kühreihen and the Älpler archetype were invoked to reestablish local governmental legitimacy. Western Switzerland remained under French occupation until 1813, and during this period, a ranz des vaches called “Les Armaillis” circulated amongst the Genevan aristocracy in musical snuff boxes, coded with pro-Swiss sentiment. When, after France had totally withdrawn from Switzerland, “Les Armaillis” was performed at the 1819 Fête des Vignerons, it not 23 only referenced all of the ideals that the Helvetic Society had put in motion with the Schweizerlieder project but was also equivalent to celebrating restored Swiss independence while expressing optimism for a future rooted in tradition and Alpine heritage. In Chapter II, I showed how aristocratic tourists went to the Alps to improve their sensibilité in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and that the ranz des vaches was a way for them to do that by using the singing Swiss body as a proxy. Chapter IV explores the voyeuristic use of sound in the Alps, specifically how sound was part of the English touristic experience of the Alps in the nineteenth century. Picking up on the English and Swiss sympathies from Chapter III, Chapter IV focuses on upper- and middle-class English tourists, who began traveling in Switzerland again after the Restoration (1815). The central portion of the chapter uses first-hand tourist accounts to map a sonic version of a tour route through the Alps. In many instances, it is possible to reasonably suggest what was sung, and so this chapter is also a map of song practice. As the tourist infrastructure developed higher and higher into the Alps, it brought tourists face to face with Alpine populations who lived in increasingly abject poverty. Simultaneously, the English began arriving with heightened sensitivity to the street music and poverty because of the increase of beggars and supplicants in London, and the threat that they represented to domestic middle-class aspirations. These anxieties were superimposed on the singing Swiss, occasionally to the point of requiring the Swiss government to step in and prohibit singing. At best, the singer of the ranz des vaches was percieved as a distraction from the Alps, and at worst, an attack on the mountains, Swiss morality, and sometimes the vocalization itself. In other words, tourists felt like the Swiss were no 24 longer singing in harmony with the Alps, and they no longer embodied their “true” form. The more the ranz des vaches was sung, the more it degraded, and the song began to refer to an increasingly distant moral past. Chapter V is dedicated to the nationalistic meaning of the yodel among Swiss mountaineers, scientists, and folklorists in the late nineteenth century. At this time, we find parallel constructions of the high Alps as a rarefied masculine space and yodeling as an embodied masculine connection to the Alps. After the mid-nineteenth century and commoditization of the Kühreihen, Swiss nationalists tried to purge the sonic degradation caused by tourists from the high Alps. This manifested in the division between the Kühreihen, which they viewed as effeminate, foreign, and domestic, and the yodel, which they considered to be masculine, wild, and primeval. Recalling material from both Chapters II and IV, members of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) understood the yodel as the product of the topography, hypothesizing that it was the spontaneous, organic interaction between a male Swiss body and the mountains of his homeland. This connection to the mountains––now solidly considered the source of Swiss national identity––meant that the to members of the SAC, the yodel was also the sound of Urschweiz––the originary source of Switzerland. Over time, the yodel became increasingly coded with masculinity and correlated with conservative politics, particularly in Canton Appenzell. By the end of the century, the yodeling topos had spilled into other elements of Swiss culture. Over the course of the dissertation, we see a slow inversion of the etiology explored in Chapter II. In Chapter II, the ranz des vaches acts upon the body––the song influences the nervous system, and thus the human body. In later chapters, the body acts upon the ideal of the Alpine song––Swiss people were expected to embody and perform 25 various elements of traditional Swissness so that they could sing authentic Alpine melodies. What remains remarkably constant, however, is an affective, profound sonic relation to place, which will be established very shortly in Chapter II. This study places primary source materials within their larger cultural and historical contexts to explore how sounding landscape can be invoked to legitimize cultural ideas of social morality. Specifically, we find that Alpine song acts like a sentinel species for larger cultural issues. Most of my sources are from the upper classes and lowlands; the input from Älpler themselves is astonishingly limited. This study thus becomes a cultural history of projections: the aristocratic ideal of the Älpler is expected to embody the low-lander’s ideal of the mountains. It is also, in a way, a history of voyeurism: this connection between Älpler and Alp is evidenced through song, a fascinatingly intangible but nonetheless sensible object that our aristocrats can use to get a glimpse of a rarefied world. It is necessary for this project to establish definitions for four main terms that will recur throughout the text: Älpler, Alp, Kühreihen, and ranz des vaches. The word “Älpler” refers to a person who grew up and lives specifically in Alpine regions. As a German word, the plural has the same spelling as the singular. The use of the singular “Alp” may feel strange to English speakers, but is appropriate in a Swiss setting. When used in the singular, “Alp” generally refers to a meadow just below a specific peak. Many grazing meadows are named after the peak that is above, i.e., “Schiltalp” is right below “Schilthorn,” and so on. Cattle are usually grazed on the “Alp,” which is typically above the tree line but lower than the bare rocks and ice. The phrase “Alpine pasture” is not redundant, however: cows graze in Alpine pastures in 26 the summer, when the weather is good, and are kept at lower elevations in the winter. When used in the plural, “Alps” refers to the peaks of the Swiss mountains. On very rare occasions, “Alp” can refer to a specific peak, but I have avoided this construction. If an Älpler was bonded to a specific Alp, it would be very limited and odd, unless it was, say, a volcano in the Pacific Northwest, which is obviously dominant over everything around it. In the context of Switzerland, that sort of phrase is nonsensical. Both “Kühreihen” and “ranz des vaches” refer to the same genre of herding song, literally translating to “row of cows,” in reference to how the cows form a line when their Älpler calls to them with the song. I have done my best to refer to the genre with the same language used as the majority of my sources in any given chapter. Some nineteenth-century writers often will use “ranz des vaches” to describe any kind of Swiss music, whether or not it is actually derived from a herding practice. 27 CHAPTER II THE RANZ DES VACHES IN 18TH-CENTURY PHYSIOLOGY “The subtle air.” In his 1688 thesis for the University of Basel, Johannes Hofer explained how he created the word “nostalgia” for a disease that he felt needed to be recognized by the medical establishment: Indeed, you will call it a combination of two things, of which one is Nóστoς, Return to the Homeland (Patria), and the other, Aλγος, signifies pain or sadness: so that from the power of the utterance, one is able to describe Nóσταλγια as the sadness of the spirit which springs from a burning desire to return to a native land.1 Contrasting with our modern English use of the word that suggests a benign wistfulness that is primarily the product of time, rather than distance, this nostalgia was the product of geographic displacement. Hofer’s nostalgia was a potentially fatal physical condition that one would have, as one scholar has written, “in the way one might have tuberculosis.”2 1 Johann Jakob Harder and Johann Hofer, Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe (University of Basel, 1688), 5. “Quidem duabus ex vocabis compositum, quorum alterum Nóστoς Reditum in Patriam, alterum Aλγος dolorem aut tristitiam significat: Ut adeò ex vi vocus Nóσταλγια designare posit tristem animum ex reditûs in patram ardenti desiderio oriundum.” Translation in consultation with Taylor Tyrell, personal correspondence. All other translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 1. There is quite a lot of literature on nostalgia, which cannot fit into a footnote, but it worth noting that nostalgia has been a topic of interest in a variety of spaces, and choice citations will have to do. For nostalgia and sociology and heritage studies, see David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4. For nostalgia and anthropology, see Olivia Angé and David Berliner, eds., Anthropology and Nostalgia (New York: Berghahn, 2014). For nostalgia and Victorians, see Tamara S. Wagner, Longing: Narratives of Nostalgia in the British Novel, 1740–1890 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004). For nostalgia and urbanity, see Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 28 A predecessor to nostalgia was a type of homesickness called Schweizerkrankheit, the “Swiss disease,” and the Swiss remained closely associated with the nostalgic condition through the first third of the nineteenth century.3 While Hofer framed nostalgia as a universally accessible ailment, his mentor, Theodor Zwinger, later re-wrote his dissertation and inserted an anecdote about a Swiss song called the “Kühe-reyen,” whose sounds would amplify the body’s nostalgic symptoms, with potentially lethal consequences. The Kühreihen remained closely linked with nostalgia even after it ceased to be considered a clinical condition. Literature on nostalgia has been largely spearheaded by scholars of literature and French history, and almost all of them mention the Kühreihen. The Kühreihen usually plays two characters in these texts: it is first a curiosity in the medical works on nostalgia from the early eighteenth century, the period when nostalgia was considered to be a disease. In the early nineteenth century, the Kühreihen reappeared as a fully transformed sentimental expression, now largely referred to with its French name, the ranz des vaches. Thomas Dodman, a historian who focuses on France, has contributed substantially to the early medical understanding of clinical nostalgia.4 For Dodman, the popularity of the ranz des vaches at the turn of the nineteenth century designates the moment when nostalgia mutated from disease into sentiment. Helmut Illbruck’s 2012 Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease contains an entire chapter on the ranz des vaches, in which Zwinger’s essay is followed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 3 This was also noted by Max Peter Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels (Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag, 1976), 127. 4 Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion. 29 discussion of the song in 1764, which in turn is mostly a preface to the various appropriations of the ranz des vaches into Western art music in the nineteenth century.5 Conventional view in scholarship on the ranz des vaches reports that Rousseau is responsible for the popularity of the herding call in the late eighteenth century. While this view may be true, this chapter seeks to understand what happened in the half century between Zwinger’s first discussion of nostalgia and the Kühreihen and Rousseau’s exposition on the ranz des vaches.6 As the Kühreihen changed from a disease of the nervous system to a self-improvement experience actively sought out by the European elite, Rousseau was only one writer among many on the topic of the song and its effects. The chapter begins by surveying the early literature on nostalgia and the way that the Kühreihen operated within these medical theories, which also recalled musical theories of the period. This section may seem like an unnecessary detour into medical history rather than musical history, but it is important because these medical theories transitioned alongside musical practice into ideas about sensibilité, and thus form an important part of 5 Illbruck, Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease. 6 This influence of Rousseau is accepted in both Swiss and Anglophone literature. For instance: Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 43–62. Guy S. Métraux and Anne Philipona, Le Ranz des vaches: du chant des bergers à l’hymne patriotique (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 2019), 55. The author for the entry on Rousseau in the Dictionnaire Historique de La Suisse writes that “it is thanks to Rousseau’s work that the Enlightenment discovered Switzerland,” and cites Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse as a text of particular importance. François Jacob, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Dictionnaire Historique de La Suisse, 2012, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/009547/2012-05-25/. Rousseau’s conception of the ranz des vaches was a clear reflection of his take on the pastoral, politics, and human culture, on which there is a substantial body of literature.. One significant text is Asher Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature and History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). While now slightly out of old- fashioned, Horowitz’s study centers on the role of socio-economic strata in Rousseau’s account of history, and discusses relevant texts, again prominently featuring Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. A similar, and more recent treatment is David Gauthier, Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The ranz des vaches, by indicating a past, also suggests it belongs to one of what Rousseau defined as an “older” culture, before the arrival at the “civilized” bourgeois. More of Rousseau’s influence will be explored in Chapter IV. 30 the history of the Kühreihen and aristocratic understandings about Alpine bodies. I close with a discussion of some theatrical performances of the ranz des vaches outside of Switzerland, to show that even though the ranz des vaches had largely been mediated through sensibilité for half a century, it remained connected with the nostalgic disease in popular European entertainment. The Kühreihen first appeared in Theodor Zwinger’s revision of Hofer’s dissertation on nostalgia; Hofer’s original text was itself a humanist statement about Swiss autonomy and morality, and both texts commented on the obligatory Swiss military service at the turn of the eighteenth century.7 The archetype of the nostalgic, dislocated Swiss alluded to the large number of Swiss mercenaries who were contracted out by foreign governments. This mercenary service was common practice in the late seventeenth century. While the Swiss soldiers were much more expensive, they allowed the civilian population to keep working productively and did not leave behind widows or orphans.8 This came at considerable cost to the personal and civilian life of Swiss 7 Specifically, Theodor Zwinger connected the ranz des vaches to clinical nostalgia in 1710, when he reprinted, edited, and antedated Hofer’s medical thesis in his larger work, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectorium. The section on nostalgia, titled “De Pothopatridalgia vom Heimwehe,” was largely a verbatim repeat of Hofer’s Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, oder Heimwehe from 1688. Hofer had written his Dissertatio at least partially under Zwinger’s guidance at the University of Basel, and Zwinger antedated his own later compilation to 1678, when Hofer would have been 9 years old. This has created some confusion about authorship; some scholars reference Zwinger’s treatise, while others reference Hofer’s. For instance, Helmut Illbruck refers only ever to Hofer. Although each author contributed specific elements, I consider the text a combined project, because both men were likely in dialogue about the initial 1688 Dissertatio, and because we rely on an anachronistic understanding of authorship in the context of early eighteenth-century text compilations, in which Zwinger is sometimes given as an archetypal example. Furthermore, the popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century etiology of clinical nostalgia and the ranz des vaches was more concerned with the general takeaways from the combined textual project than with specific authorship. 8 John Casparis, “The Swiss Mercenary System: Labor Emigration from the Semiperiphery,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 5, no. 4 (Spring 1982), 604; Guy Rowlands, “Foreign Service in the Age of Absolute Monarchy: Louis XIV and His Forces Étrangères,” War in History 17, no. 2 (April 2010), 149, https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344509356833. For a general overview of the history of the Swiss mercenary service, see John McCormack, One Million Mercenaries: Swiss Soldiers in the Armies of the World (Havertown: Pen and Sword, 1993). 31 countrymen, and resentment against the mercenary system began building, especially because mercenary work was no longer a viable way to make a living. Furthermore, as standing armies became more common in Europe, Swiss regiments were incorporated into other military units, thereby losing the individuality that characterized their participation in earlier campaigns, and their pride along with it. In this complex of human migration, it is possible to show that the Kühreihen was not just Swiss, or mountainous Swiss, but specifically may have been based on material from the canton of Bern or the Bernese-occupied territory of Vaud. After the turn of the century, the Kühreihen became discussed more often as an aesthetic musical and emotional experience, rather than as part of the nostalgic disease. This separation can be attributed in part to the scientific and poetic works of Albrecht von Haller; his work was as much a response to changing approaches to the science of anatomy as it was part of a bourgeoning interest in the Alps and touristic experiences of the Sublime.9 A long-term consequence of von Haller’s anatomical research was a popular re-conception of the Kühreihen as an equal-opportunity experience, with remarkable effects that were no longer the exclusive privilege of Swiss physiology or customs. He divided the components of the body into two categories: those that communicated with the soul, and those that did not. He called the former “sensible,” and his theory of sensibility eventually mutated into the idea of a moral sense that linked body and soul called “sensibilité.” This shift around the same time that the Kühreihen 9 See Friedrich Wolfgang Suppan Blume, “Alpenmusik,” in Die Musik in Geschichte Und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie Der Musik (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1954). Max Peter Baumann, “Kuhreihen,” in Die Musik in Geschichte Und Gegenwart (Kassell: Bärenreiter, 1994). Caroline Schaumann, “From Meadows to Mountaintops: Albrecht von Haller’s ‘Die Alpen,’” in Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Caroline Schaumann and Sean Ireton (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2012), 57–76. 32 began to be referred to more frequently by its French name, the ranz des vaches, although the German word remained in use.10 Nostalgia was only the first half of the story about the ranz des vaches and the body, as the song retained its powers by theories of sensibilité. Idealized, transformative experiences of hearing a ranz des vaches reflected various ideals that were projected onto the Alps. The song not only referenced the high mountains, but also the perceived sensible superiority afforded to Alpine inhabitants. Aristocrats conceived of this new type of “purity” as a direct reflection of the social structure and harsh environment of the mountains. Aristocratic tourists, seeking to transform themselves and enhance their sensibilité, traveled to the Alps, where they could absorb some of the moral and cognitive effects of this idealized lifestyle. By the late eighteenth century, the Kühreihen was not the only music understood to have privileged access to the nerves and nature. The glass harmonica became popular in the 1760’s, and, like the Kühreihen was seen as a manifestation of the Alps in the Älpler body, the glass harmonica was originally understood as a literal extension of the body of female musicians.11 By the 1780’s, the glass harmonica had morphed into a threat to women, particularly those with the characteristically modern, nervous temperament produced by sedentary, artificial, upper class lives.12 Another instrument that breached the gulf between the self and the outside world was the Aeolian harp, which 10 It remained in use mostly in central, German-speaking Switzerland. 11 Heather Hadlock, “Sonorous Bodies: Women and the Glass Harmonica,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 508. 12 James Kennaway, Bad Vibrations: The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), 40. 33 was understood to be played by nature herself.13 Jean Paul described the effect of the Aeolian harp on the human body and psyche in a way that recalls how the Kühreihen impacted a person’s memory and nervous system: “the fibers of our brains are the strings of an Aeolian harp, which under the breath of a long-forgotten hour begin again to sound.”14 However, the Kühreihen differed from these and similar instruments in a very important way: people from a specific place could be felled by its power. Whether in the listening experience of displaced soldiers, traveling aristocrats, or characters on the lyric stage, this chapter uses the Kühreihen/ranz des vaches to ask what it meant to be Swiss. Specifically, what did it mean to develop and nurture Swiss characteristics in a body? Even as the song lost its danger as a disease vector and was reformed as a desirable transformative experience, the Kühreihen always referenced the past, in one way or another. To be Swiss meant to go back. The Kühreihen was a bellwether for nostalgia’s shift from a geographic displacement to a displacement of both time and space, and it also set the tone for the uniquely physiological understanding of Alpine song that could persist over the next two centuries. Nostalgia Hofer’s original 1688 Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, oder Heimwehe, proposed the existence of a link between Swiss bodies and freedom of motion when he identified the 13 Alexander Rehding offers a fascinating discussion of the Aeolian harp within a musical analysis of the Anthropocene. See Alexander Rehding, “Music Theory’s Other Nature: Reflections on Gaia, Humans, and Music in the Anthropocene,” Nineteenth-Century Music 45, no. 1 (n.d.): 7–22. 14 Quoted in Carmel Raz, “The Expressive Organ within Us,” Nineteenth-Century Music 38, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 128. 34 new disease “nostalgia,” and described its etiology.15 Nostalgia was a disease principally the domain of “young people and adolescents sent to foreign regions,” and it presented via both behavioral and physical lethargy.16 Nostalgia could be observed in youths who “frequently wander about sad; if they scorn foreign manners; if they are seized by a distaste of strange conversations; if they incline by nature to melancholy...”17 It also manifested in the body in a myriad of potential forms, including disturbed sleep, weakness, “hunger, thirst, senses diminished, and cares or even palpitations of the heart, frequent sighs, also stupidity of the mind,” and so forth.18 Hofer suggested that nostalgia resulted from the combined condition of displacement from home with a lack of liberty to return, and all three of his case studies were of young Swiss people. In one, a young man from Bern was sent to study in Basel, and became nostalgic; in another, a young woman “slipped from a high place” and while unconscious, was taken to a hospital at lower altitudes to treat her injuries. Both of these cases regained their health only when they finally went home: the student eventually returned to Bern, and the injured young woman, after wailing at length “Ich will heim; Ich will heim” (“I want to go home!”) was returned to her parents and “within a few days 15This Dissertatio was not in fact Hofer’s final dissertation; at the University of Basel, students had to generate a smaller dissertation, akin to a master’s thesis, prior to starting their ultimate work. His actual Dissertation, in the modern sense of the word, was on a rare type of uterine fibroids (De dydrope uteri, April 27, 1689). André Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie (Paris: Campagne première, 2006), 25–26. 16 Carolyn Kiser Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 2, no. 6 (August 1934): 383. “From these words, it is not at all difficult to infer that the subjects of this state are principally young people and adolescents sent to foreign regions.” 17 Ibid., 386. 18 Ibid. 35 she got wholly well, entirely without the aid of medicine.”19 However, the patient in the third case study returned to health solely by receiving permission to return home, which, as André Bolzinger observes, indicates that the disease was not solely the product of displacement, but a lack of freedom to return home. In this case, a Swiss servant working in Paris became nostalgic, and begged his employer for leave to go visit his home. The merchant saw his suffering and accepted without argument. Within a few days, the servant had become well, and for the remainder of his life in Paris he was never nostalgic again. Bolzinger writes that the servant’s request was a test to verify that the servant retained some freedom and connection to his homeland; as soon as he had proof that he was free to leave, the disease disappeared.20 Nostalgia was thus also tied up with notions of personal agency. Even though all his case studies were Swiss, and Hofer’s nostalgia had been preceded by Schweizerkrankheit, he presented nostalgia as an equal-opportunity ailment and not exclusive to any specific population. Dodman suggests that by framing nostalgia as a more inclusive disease, not only did Hofer try to make his dissertation relevant to a wider audience, but that this goal was shared and encouraged by the liberal humanist academic environment at the University of Basel.21 Despite this, even as Hofer defended 19 Ibid., 383. 20 Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 27. 21 Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 19. For the academic environment and influence of Cartesian philosophy at the University of Basel, see Wolfgang Rother, “Paratus Sum Sententiam Mutare: The Influence of Cartesian Philosophy at Basle,” in History of Universities, ed. Mordechai Feingold, vol. 22:1, 2007, 71–97. A background text that readers might find helpful to situate the University of Basel in the larger Swiss Enlightenment is Samuel S. B. Taylor, “The Enlightenment in Switzerland,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 72–89. 36 his universalist position, he acknowledged that the disease was particularly prevalent among the Swiss: There are some of the Helvetian nation who [have] this disease and people assert it to be endemic especially to those citizens, who are subjects of the Republic of Bern, but this is an untruth. Although I should not deny, that in general more of them, than from the other mentioned districts of the [Helvetian] nation, suffer this ill. But I should believe that among the remaining populations of Europe there are [people] differently affected […].22 There was a historical basis for “the Helvetian nation” to be used as an example for people who traveled against their own volition, putting them at risk for nostalgia. Swiss men had historically been compelled to emigrate as part of the mercenary system, in which the Canton of Bern had featured prominently. The sheer number of Bernese troops abroad may have been the reason that Schweizerkrankheit was noted to have targeted Bernese in particular.23 Anxiety about the Swiss’ ability to maintain their neutrality had also been rising in the years prior to Hofer’s Dissertatio. Louis XIV and his expansionist agenda threatened the independence and coherence of Swiss mercenary units, as well as to Switzerland as a whole. He initiated military reforms that mixed Swiss with French regiments, weakening the camaraderie and community that had previously existed within the Swiss companies.24 Simultaneously, the Swiss, worried about their own ability to defend themselves against French expansionism, were increasingly wary of 22 Harder and Hofer, Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe, 10. “Sunt qui hunc morbum Nationi Helveticæ, inque ea inprimis Bernensis Reipublicæ Civibus & subditis Endemium esse perhibent; sed enim fallum hoc esse, partim exemplus superius allatum docuit, partim observationes aliorum commonstrant. Quamvis non negarim, plures omninò ex hoc, quam ex illo dictae Nationis pago incommodum illud pati. Sed & in reliquis Europæ Gentibus aliter affectos crediderim[.]” Translation based significantly on Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” 383. 23 Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 23–24. 24 Ibid., 37–38. 37 sending troops to France.25 In 1682–1683, Louis XIV struck a further blow to the already flagging relationship by sending Swiss troops to invade the United Provinces of the Netherlands, defying a condition of Bernese service in the French army to never be used against fellow Protestants. The traditional mercenary system was fraying, especially with France. Aside from falling on the same side of the Catholic and Protestant divide as the affronted Bernese troops, Hofer had a more personal reason to be sympathetic toward the Swiss and invested in their moral and spiritual wholeness, because the Swiss Corps had been largely responsible for protecting his hometown, Mulhouse, from the devastation of the Thirty Years War.26 Historically, Mulhouse, located in an independent, Protestant region, depended on Swiss protection to maintain its independence from Catholics to both the east and west––Hapsburgs and Bourbons, respectively––and to whom other Swiss mercenaries were simultaneously contracted out. Dodman points out that Hofer, while writing his Dissertatio, could have conceivably looked out his window to see Swiss soldiers marching off to defend his hometown against the French and that “Hofer invented nostalgia because he thought he could cure burly pikemen who broke down with homesickness when stationed abroad.”27 The image of Hofer gazing out of his window is certainly speculative, but the essence of it might very well be true. Zwinger’s edits to the dissertation spoke more directly to anxieties around the Swiss mercenary service and French expansionism, thus undercutting Hofer’s attempt to 25 Ibid., 38. 26 Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 22–23. 27 Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 17. 38 universalize nostalgia. In particular, Zwinger associated nostalgia with the Alpine Swiss by situating the disease within certain national, environmental, and military contexts. First, Zwinger nationalized nostalgia by renaming it “Pothopatridalgia.” He constructed the word to indicate the ache (algía) of the longing (pothos) for one’s homeland (patria).28 By comparison, Hofer’s disease was less associated with patriotic sentiment as much as it was about the obsession with returning.29 Second, Zwinger inserted a new section that associated nostalgia with the Swiss predilection towards high altitudes. While Hofer acknowledges the separation from the high Alpine environment was one part of the Swiss nostalgic experience (i.e., the young woman who “slipped from a high place” and was brought to a lower altitude to heal), altitude does not play a central role in his pathology. Zwinger’s altitude material came from Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, who, in his 1705 essay “Von dem Heimwehe,” five years prior to Zwinger’s revision, had connected the Swiss physical constitution to altitude and the refined quality of Alpine air that existed inside the body. Scheuchzer wrote that “we Swiss inhabit the highest summit of Europe, and therefore we breathe a pure, thin, and subtle air.” If a Swiss person traveled to foreign, low-lying countries, the heavier air would press down upon their body, which would be unbearable for “the inner air we brought with us.”30 Zwinger’s use of 28 Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa Non Minus Quàm Utilia Scienti (Basle, 1710), 89–90, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10087097-4. See appendix B. 29 This is discussed in Bolzinger and Dodman. Bolzinger puts it very eloquently when he writes that “The grief of having left the country and the desire to return to one’s place are largely amalgamed into a sense of fidelity for the native soil.” Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 39. Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 46. Hofer’s original and translation are cited above. 30 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, “Von dem heimwehe,” in Helvetiae Historia Naturalis oder Natur-Historie des Schweitzerlandes, Johann Jacob Scheuchzers Natur-Geschichte des Schweitzerlandes - samt seinen Reisen über die Schweizerische Gebürge (Zürich, 1746), 87–88. “Wir Schweizer bewohnen, wie oben erweisen den obersten Gipfel von Europa, athmen deßwegen in uns eine reine, dünne, subtile Luft...” “... 39 Scheuchzer’s theories offered an explanation for how the Swiss, otherwise such a bright, strong, and brave nation, to use Scheuchzer’s words, could be overwhelmed and “subjugated” by such a sickness.31 Susceptibility to nostalgia was therefore not necessarily a sign of weakness, but an exhibition of patriotism, made all the more compelling because it was involuntary.32 The Kühreihen was part of characteristically Alpine herding practices and took place in the same thin air that Scheuchzer foregrounded in his description of the fine inner air. This sort of cattle farming was, ironically, a product of the mercenary system with France. The majority of mercenary emigrants historically came from the Alpine regions, corresponding with a labor shortage in the Swiss highlands. Raising cattle required less manpower than agriculture, and by the fifteenth century, some cantons had switched so completely to cattle farming that they became entirely dependent on grain imports, as they could not produce enough of their own.33 It is unclear whether the mercenary recruitment led to the labor shortage, or whether the labor shortage drove men into mercenary service, but a variety of reasons from both inside and outside Switzerland compelled men to leave the Alps. For instance, France provided salt to the Alpine cantons only if they continued to “faithfully discharge the conditions of the alliance,” which die innere Luft, welche wir mit uns gebracht...” The full relevant excerpt and translation is included in Appendix B. 31 Ibid., 87. “.... daß die Schweizerische, sonsten so freye, starcke und tapfere Nation, sich von einer solchen Kranckheit überwinden und unterjochen lasse...“ See Appendix B for the full quote. 32 Scheuchzer issued an addendum to his Natur-Geschichte describing nostalgia in whales, arguing that beached whales were not cast ashore because of storms, but because they had traveled to waters where the pressure was different, and they in fact beached themselves out of Heimwehe. This is discussed in Illbruck, Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease, 75. 33 Casparis, “The Swiss Mercenary System: Labor Emigration from the Semiperiphery,” 616. 40 meant continually providing mercenaries.34 Consequently, the economies of high Alpine dairy production and the export of Swiss mercenaries to foreign militaries were fully intertwined for at least three hundred years before Zwinger. Zwinger’s insertion of the Kühreihen also directly linked the song to the military practice, which Hofer, at most, had only alluded to, preferring to keep his case studies to civilians.35 Zwinger writes that the Swiss officers had forbidden a certain song, called the “Kühe-Reyen,” from being sung in the camps, because the suffering it would cause the soldiers. Preoccupied soldiers would become so impatient to return to the mountains that they might desert or die.36 Soldiers who were particularly at risk of death or desertion were the ones who were already nostalgic. Playing the Kühreihen on a flute or even whistling it was considered an offense. He then gives a score of the Kühreihen for curious readers to judge for themselves (see Appendix B).37 Zwinger’s Kühreihen was effectively a sonic example of Schweizerkrankheit, but it had been pathologized, and thereby legitimized, as a disease with a specific etiology within the liberal humanist establishment, and focused on a specific portion of the Swiss population. Zwinger did not produce the Kühreihen ex nihilo, although this is the earliest example that I have found of this particular melody. There is limited information about the song genre prior to Zwinger, but a German songbook from 1545 contains a different 34 Ibid., 612. 35 Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 38. 36 Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa non minus quàm Utilia Scienti, 101–102. 37 Ibid., 102–105. 41 melody, also labeled as a “Kureien.”38 The story of the song’s prohibition in Swiss units cannot be corroborated by any surviving legal document, but it is certainly plausible that the singing of regional songs was discouraged if Swiss commanders believed it to be a form of dissidence. There is some possibility that Zwinger may have learned about the Kühreihen through a personal link to Swiss military recruitment. His brother, Johann Rudolf Zwinger, was a chaplain to Pierre Stuppa’s Swiss companies, which were composed of men whom Stuppa had illegally, and apparently quite perniciously, recruited to serve in the French army.39 The exact provenance of Zwinger’s tune is uncertain. The use of the German word “Küh-reyen” in the Latin-language treatise, rather than the French “ranz des vaches,” also suggests a link to Central or Western Switzerland. The Canton Bern, located in Central Switzerland, in particular represented a significant portion of Swiss soldiers abroad, and so is possibly the source of Zwinger’s melody. Mercenaries were one of the main Bernese exports in the eighteenth century, and at any given time, there were an average of one thousand Bernese troops in France.40 Military service even impacted the family unit: in the cantonal capital, having military equipment was condition for starting a family, and the rules of land inheritance made it so excess male 38 The full title of the piece is “Der Appenzeller Kureien Lobelobe.” Rhau, “Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica, Tomus 2. Secundus tomus biciniorum quae et ipsa sunt gallica, latina, germanica: ex praestantissimis symphonistis collecta, et in germania typis nunquam excusa: additae sunt quaedam, ut vocant, fugae, plenae artis et suavitatis.” 39 Harder and Hofer, Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe, 39. 40 Stefan Altorfer-Ong, “Exporting Mercenaries, Money, and Mennonites: A Swiss Diplomatic Mission to The Hague, 1710–1715,” in The Republican Alternative: The Netherlands and Switzerland Compared, ed. André Holenstein, Thomas Maissen, and Maarten Prak (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 239, 241, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mtmg.14. 42 children would not be able to find work at home, but were redirected into the mercenary service.41 However, as Max Peter Baumann has shown in his dissertation, Zwinger’s melodic form shares similar contours with slightly later tunes from Eastern Switzerland.42 Vaud might be a more plausible source, because of the melodic similarity with other tunes in this region. The Animal Spirits: The Kühreihen as Physiological Memory In the context of medical and musical theories contemporary to Zwinger, the Kühreihen was more than just a melody: it was a physical link between Swiss bodies and the Alps, much as Scheuchzer’s assertion that Alpine air had a physical impact on Swiss bodies. These physiological and musical theories were rooted in the same Galenic conceptions of the human body, a theoretical system based on the understanding that the body contained four different humors that needed to be kept in balance. Imbalanced humors produced disease, and various external stimuli, including music, were able to modulate the humors for better or for worse by externally modeling the internal forces. René Descartes described these internal forces as acting like “little threads or little tubes, which all come from the brain and which like the brain contain a certain very subtle air or wind, which is called the animal spirits.”43 This, of course, recalls 41 Ibid., 243. See also Casparis, “The Swiss Mercenary System: Labor Emigration from the Semiperiphery,” 617. 42 As explored in Max Peter Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels (Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag, 1976), 133–134. 43 “Nerfs...sont comme de petits filets ou comme de petits tuyaux qui viennent tous du verveau, et contiennent ainsi que lui un certain air ou vent trés subtil qu’on nomme les espirits animaux.” From René Descartes, “Les Passions de l’âme (1646–50),” in Les Classiques Français, ed. Julien Benda (Mulhause: Baden-Dufour, 1948), 138. Quoted in Elisabeth Le Guin, Boccherini’s Body: An Essay In Carnal Musicology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 183. 43 Scheuchzer’s “pure, thin, and subtle air.” Animal spirits were the subject of extensive discourse; there were ongoing disputes about how precisely they worked, what they looked like, whether they were fibers or tiny spheres, and even whether they were solid or liquid or a fine gas.44 Regardless of their form, the general consensus was that the animal spirits reacted to external stimuli much like our modern-day understanding of the nervous system and were responsible for carrying messages from the brain to the rest of the body. Most importantly for understanding the Kühreihen, animal spirits were shaped during childhood in one’s homeland, during which they became habituated to the location, habits, language, and food; Scheuchzer wrote that they become accustomed to the weight of the atmosphere, and Zwinger implied that they likewise become accustomed to the Kühreihen. Disordered animal spirits, separated from the environment to which they were uniquely calibrated, and prohibited in one way or another from returning home, produced nostalgia. 44 For a book-length exploration of discourse around the animal spirits, see C. U. M. Smith et al., The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). For Cartesian philosophy at Basel, see Wolfgang Rother, “Paratus Sum Sententiam Mutare: The Influence of Cartesian Philosophy at Basle,” in History of Universities, ed. Mordechai Feingold, vol. 22:1, 2007, 71–97. For Descartes and transition from “passion” to “emotion” in the seventeenth century, see Joan Dejean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). For an overview of Descartes “emotion” and the shift to sensibilité, which is where we’re headed in this chapter, see especially pages 79-87 in Dejan. Some useful texts for Descartes and his theories of sensation include: Alison Simmons, “Descartes on the Cognitive Structure of Sensory Experience,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2003): 549–79. Gary Hatfeld, “The Passions of the Soul and Descartes’s Machine Pychology,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 38 (2007): 1–35. --Ibid., “Descartes on Sensory Representation, Objective Reality, and Material Falsity,” in Descartes’ Meditations: A Critical Guide, ed. Karen Detlefsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 127–50. Theodor M. Brown, “The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry,” in The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, ed. W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London and New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985), 40–62. For a general text on mechanism and seventeenth-century science, including several entries on Descartes and his influence, see Sophie Roux, The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, ed. Dan Garber, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). See especially part two, which examines the subtleties and complexities of mechanical philosophy that we get hints of with the Kühreihen. 44 Hofer’s nostalgia was a humanist cousin of melancholia, and Hofer had in fact linked nostalgia and melancholy, although somewhat obliquely, as he introduced the disease. This is not immediately evident in much of English-language work on the Dissertatio; many scholars refer to Carolyn Anspach’s 1934 translation, which, in modern parlance, obscures the mechanistic and humoral basis of nostalgia. Hofer originally defined nostalgia as the “tristem animum” that comes “from the desire to return to one’s native land.” 45 Anspach translated “tristem animum” as “sad mood,” but “melancholy affect” would be a more accurate translation for the twenty-first century.46 “Tristis” can refer to a wide range of melancholic or sad feelings, but our modern understanding of the word “mood” references a phenomenon that is largely separate from the body and even irrational, whereas “animus” implies a rational feeling. To be clear about how we communicate the seventeenth-century mechanistic understanding of “mood,” “affect” is more mechanistic and congruous with the humanist-Galenic system. Even though musical affects were frequently cited as a cause of melancholia, Zwinger and later physicians largely dodged the problem of fully elucidating the casual relationship between the Kühreihen and nostalgia. The so-called Affektenlehre (Doctrine of the Affections), can shed light on how they might have explained the Kühreihen’s power upon the human body.47 While one of the most enduring characteristics of this theoretical system had to do with the disagreements among theorists, and I have not 45 Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” 381. Harder and Hofer, Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe, 5. 46 Gratias ago Marc Vanscheeuwijck for his help with this Latin translation. 47 The term “Doctrine of the Affections” is now quite obsolete, and the system is now referred to as the – less doctrinal – Affektenlehre. 45 encountered any musical theoretical material at the time that treated the Kühreihen specifically, there are still striking structural parallels between the calibration and behavior of Hofer-Zwinger’s animal spirits and the way musical theorists understood how music affected the passions and an individual’s physiology. In step with the development of humanism, between the mid seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, theorists increasingly emphasized how an individual’s specific physiology and subjective experience shaped their response to musical affects. One of the most significant texts from early in this period was Athansius Kirchers’s 1650 Musurgia universalis, which remained influential German musical theorists well into the eighteenth century. In his text, Kircher explained how every individual has a temperament corresponding to the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), and that this temperament was bound to their physiology.48 Later theorists, like Andreas Werckmeister, proposed that an individual’s physiological subjectivity and particular temperament would predispose them to respond differently to the same musical gesture or figure.49 In other words, a Swiss person could be temperamentally primed to respond strongly to the various figures in the Kühreihen, but the song would not necessarily provoke a nostalgic response in non-Swiss. In the 1730’s, the theorist Johann Mattheson stressed that the effects of a musical figure could also be the result of an individual subjective experience.50 This humanist line 48 Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, Sive Ars Magna Consoni et Dissoni (Rome: Ludovico Grigani, 1650). Discussed in Bartel, 106–110. 49 Andreas Werckmeister, Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse: A Well-Tempered Universe, trans. Dietrich Bartel, Contextual Bach Studies (Lanham: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2018). 50 Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 26–27. 46 of thought, as Dietrich Bartel has written, “prepar[ed] the way for the eighteenth-century Empfindsamkeit aesthetic.”51 In his Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), Mattheson theories explained the role of animal spirits, which he calls the Lebens-Geister (also sometimes translated as “life spirits”). He explained how a melodic structure could model a certain form that the Lebens-Geister would then imitate, thus generating changes in mood.52 A speculative analysis of affective figures in the Kühreihen can help us conjecture how theorists like Mattheson might have understood the relationship between the song and the nostalgic disease. A significant portion of the Affektenlehre was associated with text expression, and the Kühreihen did not have words, so an analysis must rely solely on the melodic contour and the stories of what happened to the Swiss. See Figure 8, below, for a partial transcription of Zwinger’s Kühreihen into modern notation. In the A section, the initial rising figure could be read as an anabasis, or ascensus, an ascending figure that expresses exalted images or affections, such as, in the case of the Swiss, a love of home, a thought which presumably would bring them joy.53 51 Ibid., 27. 52 For instance, joy is an expansion of the Lebens-Geister, which could be expressed, and thereby provoked, by writing wide melodic intervals. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, das ist gründliche Anzeige aller derjenigen Sachen, die einer wissen, können, and vollkommen inne haben muss, der einer Capelle mit ehren und nutzen vorstehen Will (Hamburg: Herold, 1739), 16. Part 1, chapter 3, section 56: “Da z. E die Freude durch Ausbreitung unserer Lebens-Geister empfinden wird, so folget vernünfftiger und natürlicher Weise, daß ich diesen Affect am besten durch weite und erweiterte Intervalle ausdrücken könne.” Johann Mattheson, Johann Mattheson’s Der Vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, ed. and trans. Ernest Charles Harriss, Studies in Musicology 21 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 104. “Since for example joy is an expansion of our soul, thus it follows reasonably and naturally that I could best express this affect by large and expanded intervals.” 53 At the descent to the F#, we might encounter pathopoeia, a typically chromatic figure that musically expresses the affections. However, this analysis of the pathopoeia, only works for dislocated, nostalgic Swiss, and not necessarily for Swiss singing at home. This is where it might be more useful to refer to the 47 Figure 8. The first fifteen bars of “Cantilena Helvetica der Kühe-Reyen,” in Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum, Basle (1710), page 102– 103. However, the most distinctive part of the Kühreihen in Zwinger’s score, and others, is the rapidly repeated notes in the B section. This kind of repetition corresponds with epizeuxis: in which a single word, note, or motif is repeated immediately and emphatically. The purpose of epizeuxis is to emphasize and enthuse the listener about the topic, and in this case, one might presume that the singing or audiating Swiss became obsessed with their mountains (as the nosologies say) just as the epizeuxis obsesses around a single small figure. This melodic obsession could have triggered nostalgia for Swiss people away from home. Regardless of the exact mechanism, the Kühreihen produced disordered animal spirits, and this disorder in turn produced nostalgia. Hofer declared that this drama played out in the “middle brain,” where he observed disordered animal spirits: 54 individual, subjective musical experience that increasingly became emphasized over the eighteenth century, while still retaining the physiological links. Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 179–183, 308. Ibid., 308. According to Joachim Burmeister, pathopoeia differs from figures of hypotosis because the former musically expresses affections, while the latter expresses text. Ibid., 359. 54 Hofer performed autopsies as part of his education, and when he writes that “...the deepest part of the brain is afflicted constantly from the infinite nerve fibers in which the spirits continually move about in waves,” one wonders if this is based on his own excursions into the human body. Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” 384. Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 23. Later physicians who also autopsied victims of nostalgia would also record finding unusual tissue inflammation 48 [nostalgia is] the quite continuous vibration of animal spirits through those fibers of the middle brain in which impressed traces of the Fatherland still cling.55 The middle brain was a locus deep in the brain where the animal spirits would communicate with the rest of the body. According to Descartes, whose work held great influence at the University of Basel, the finest of the animal spirits filtered from the heart and ascended to the organ we know today as the pineal gland, and what he, like Hofer, called “the middle brain.” The pineal gland appears in Figure 9 as a teardrop-like shape in the upper left corner. The lines leaving the pineal gland represent the motion of animal spirits that are shaped in response to ocular sensation, and then filter into other parts of the brain and the body.56 Figure 9: The pineal gland sends out animal spirits in response to external stimuli, in Descartes’s “Tractatus de Homine,” Frankfurt (1692), page 104. and ulcerations in the brain, as well as the lungs and intestinal tracts. Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, 1. 55 Anspach, 384. 56 René Descartes, “Tractatus de Homine,” in Renati Des Cartes Opera Philosophica (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Friderici Knochii, 1692), 104. 49 Herman Boerhaave, who was particularly active in the decades around 1700, believed that the animal spirits went to a deep part of the brain called the “common sensorium” (sensorio communi), whence all commands were sent out to the body, and for which purpose he found the pineal gland insufficiently capacious.57 Regardless, the animal spirits would flow from this command post into the rest of the brain and the nerves. Disordered animal spirits would trigger a disorder of the middle brain, and thus, a disorder of everything issuing from it. Nostalgic animal spirits would carry memories with them to the common sensorium, which would effectively disassociate from the immediate physical world and instead become a theatre of the past. Animal spirits had the unique ability to produce sense perceptions based entirely in dreams and the imagination, rather than something stimulated from the outside of the body. Nostalgics’ attempts to self-soothe with memories or familiar melodies only exacerbated the problem, hence Zwinger’s warning that the Kühreihen was especially risky for Swiss soldiers who were already nostalgic.58 This tension between the real and the imagined spoke to a spiritual conundrum that humanist scientists were attempting to unpack around this same time. Specifically, they were trying to understand the body as a sort of machine, but this generated some real 57 Hermann Boerhaave was arguably one of the most influential pedagogues of medicine in the early eighteenth century. He established a new methodological framework for medicine, shifting medical science from an alchemic approach to a philosophical, experimental discipline. One of the most extensive texts to date on Boerhaave’s work and pedagogy is John C. Powers, Inventing Chemistry: Hermann Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012). One thing that makes Powers’s work valuable is that he was able to study the difficult-to-access manuscripts of Boerhaave’s held in St. Petersburg. 58 D Sepper, “Animal Spirits,” in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. L. Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 28. “[When] the animal spirits are regenerated in niggardly supply and at the same time are devoured on account of the continuous quasi-ecstasy of the mind in the brain and by degrees partly the voluntary motions and partly the natural, grow quiet, langour of the whole arises, circulation of the blood loses vigor.” Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” 387. 50 concerns about the nature of the soul and free will. The issue was around what, precisely, generated movement. Some theorized that movement was one way for the soul to interact with the body, despite the apparent impossibility that an immaterial soul could enact motion on a material body.59 If motion was only the product of the animal spirits’ reactions to external stimuli, there would be no explanation for free will, or the soul. Science historians C. Smith (et al.), emphasize the problematically base and mechanical nature of Descartes’s animal spirits, writing: “Substitute animal spirits for water molecules and the two are, in principle, not greatly different.”60 There is little space for spiritual mystery. This is where the agency component of Hofer’s nostalgia steps in. Hofer’s nostalgia tried to untangle this challenging knot by proposing that while the animal spirits may be the source of motion in the body, they only function properly when the body retains its free will, and implicitly, its link to the soul.61 Protestants in places like Basel and Hofer’s native Mulhouse believed that the soul and the body were intertwined to the point that there was almost no difference between physical health and the salvation of the soul. For this reason, Bolzinger suggests that part of Hofer’s impetus for writing this Dissertatio was the spiritual preservation of Swiss soldiers.62 Furthermore, Hofer’s nostalgia indicated that there was a link between free will and the homeland, and 59 This is a remarkably complex issue. For further reading, refer to chapter 10 in Smith et al., The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology, 157–172. Also see Chapter 1 in Anne C. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998). 60 Smith et al., The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology, 104. 61 It is worth noting that the concept of “free will” had many twists and turns over time, and different philosophers considered it within different parameters and gave it different significances. 62 Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 21. 51 Zwinger’s Kühreihen established a sonic, and physical link, between a person and their homeland. This nostalgia required the presence of somebody to deny the potentially nostalgic patient the liberty of returning home; because nostalgia was the product of amoral actions against other people, Hofer and Zwinger were effectively condemning obligatory mercenary service, a large part of which was French expansionism. In sum, political notions like nationalism and freedom were mediated through morality and made their way into the study of anatomy. The Kühreihen became a sonic representation of the intermediary space not just between the past and present, or the here and there, but also between the body and the spirit, and between people. Sensibility: The Kühreihen as Moral Memory Around 1750, the understanding of the soul’s physiological link to the body shifted, and thus so did the Kühreihen. While the Kühreihen had previously only been known to affect Swiss people because of their particularly fine animal spirits, new physiological theories explained how it was possible for non-Swiss to feel the effects of the song. For both Älpler and foreigners, now, the Kühreihen became a gauge for morality and moral health because it acted as a conduit between the soul (and/or mountains), and the body. Älpler bodies (and thus, their morality) were considered particularly pristine because their soul and animal spirits were accustomed to a rarefied air and way of life, both of which became a topic of fascination for members of the European aristocratic class after midcentury. This is particularly evident in the works of Albrecht von Haller and Jean- Jacques Rousseau, in whose writings we spot the mutation of the Kühreihen from the nostalgic disease into an emotional experience. 52 Compared to many writers at the time, the scientist and poet Albrecht von Haller was unusually effusive about the Alps; he traveled in the mountains extensively and wrote about them profusely. He was familiar with Scheuchzer (and possibly studied with him as well), and is universally attributed with glorifying the Alps for the first time in a way that associated them with Antiquity as well as the Sublime. He also reprinted Hofer’s Dissertatio in a collection of medical theses––but he removed all of Zwinger’s insertions, including the Kühreihen.63 While the theories of nostalgia we examined above posited the animal spirits as moral agents that existed inside the nerves, von Haller attached moral significance to the nerves themselves, which he called “the satellites of the soul.”64 In his dissertation, “On the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals,” published in 1753, he divided the body into two parts (“irritable” and “sensible”). Herman Boerhaave, von Haller’s mentor, had hypothesized that all parts of the human body were sensible, and while this was “received almost universally all over Europe,” as von Haller himself wrote, his division inserted a moral component, and became well known in part––and ironically––because of his cruel and exhaustive experiments on live animals. “Sensible” parts of the body were identified when the animal reacted with signs of pain. Von Haller concluded that in humans, a sensible part of the body communicated with their soul:65 63 Johann Hofer and Albrecht von Haller, “Joan. Jac. Harderi et Joan. Hoferi, Dissertatio de Nostalgia,” in Disputationes ad Morborum Historiam et Curationem Facientes, Quas Collegit, Edidit et Recensuit Albertus Hallerus, vol. 1 (Lausanne: M. M. Bousquet, 1757), 181–90. 64 Original emphasis. M. A. von Haller, A Dissertation On The Sensible And Irritable Parts of Animals, trans. M. Tissot (London: J. Nourse, 1755), 67. 65 Ibid., 5. “When Dr. Boerhaave had established the doctrine of the nerves, being the basis of all our solids, he presently after a proceeded to affirm, but there was no part of the human body which was not 53 I call that a sensible part of the human body, which upon being touched transmits the impression of it to the soul; and in brutes, in whom the existence of a soul is not so clear, I called those parts sensible, the Irritation of which occasions evident signs of pain and disquiet in the animal...66 Much as the animal spirits could be agitated by external stimuli, according to von Haller’s theory, the sensible parts of the body (the nerves) could be impacted by a variety of external stimuli; since the nerves communicated with the soul, external stimuli incurred moral consequences. The introduction to the 1755 English-language translation of von Haller’s dissertation articulates the moral imperatives of sensible physiology by explaining how our world view and behavior is impacted by the varying conditions of our anatomical components, which in this case is the blood: Our ideas of beauty and goodness, of good and evil, or of vice and virtue, and our actions consequent upon these ideas, vary according [sic] as our blood circulates with more or less rapidity, or is more or less thick. It is therefore certain that our manner of living changes our manner of thinking...67 Manners of living and of thinking therefore could indicate or encourage moral growth or decay. Von Haller presented Alpine communities and mores as an ideal rooted in a deep connection to nature, and the Kühreihen became a signifier for that way of life. We can see this anatomical and pastoral idealist explanation in a careful reading of an oft-cited stanza in von Haller’s 1732 poem, “Die Alpen.” He composed the poem following travels sensible, or capable of some sort of motion, and this system, which I have elsewhere refuted, was received almost universally all over Europe.” 66 Von Haller, A Dissertation On The Sensible And Irritable Parts of Animals, 4. 67 Ibid., xix–xx. 54 in March 1729 with his friend Johannes Gessner, and it was massively successful among the intellectual elite. It is difficult to overstate the significance and impact of this poem: it was issued in ten different editions, each with commentary, revisions, and addenda. It was translated into French, English, Italian, and Latin. As Caroline Schaumann writes, von Haller became “famous as a poet even before he became recognized as a scholar and scientist.”68 This poem is often associated with the ranz des vaches and the popular idealization of the high Alps, but to my knowledge nobody has made the connection between his scientific work and the way he alludes his theories in his descriptions of the simple peasant song. A key stanza in “Die Alpen” describes a how young shepherd, equipped with a lyre like a figure from Antiquity, is a conduit for the music of “Natur und Liebe” (Nature and Love): Ein junger Schäfer stimmt indessen seine Leyer, Dazu er ganz entzückt ein neues Liedchen singt, Natur und Liebe gießt in ihn ein heimlich Feuer, Das in den Adern glimmt, und nie die Müh erzwingt; Die Kunst hat keinen Theil an seinen Hirten-Liedern, Im ungeschmückten Lied mahlt er den freyen Sinn. Meanwhile a young shepherd tunes his lyre so that he, wholly enraptured, may sing a new little song. Nature and Love pour into him a secret fire, glowing in his veins, never conquered by weariness; art plays no part in his shepherd-songs; in unadorned melody, he depicts his free heart.69 68 Caroline Schaumann, “From Meadows to Mountaintops: Albrecht von Haller’s ‘Die Alpen,’” in Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Caroline Schaumann and Sean Ireton (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2012), 57. 69 The translation is by Youens, Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song-Cycles, 157. 55 The stanza, one of many that feature a joyfully singing Swiss, depicts a young Swiss man fully physiologically in sync with the mountains. While von Haller never uses the words “ranz des vaches” or “Kühreihen,” he alludes to the understanding of the nervous system from the early eighteenth century: some external stimulus influences or physically impacts the animal spirits, which are located in the veins, and are expressed unadulteratedly through his vocal expression.70 In this case, the stimulus is the secret fire that Nature and Love pour into the young man; the fire goes into his veins, the location of the animal spirits; and the connection is so clean, he is able to express his “freyen Sinn.” In this context, the word “Sinn” could also refer to his senses (because the animal spirits were part of the senses), or even the essence of him. However, obsessions in the common sensorium triggered by the Kühreihen were less central to von Haller’s work, which suggests an apparent lack of interest about the connection between disease and the Kühreihen. This disinterest was partially because von Haller followed the example of his teacher Hermann Boerhaave, and took very little interest in anything that was not related to demonstrable external stimuli. Boerhaave had said that in the interior of the brain, “the Mind sees, and not the Eye...it is not the Business of a Physician to enquire what Vision is in the Mind, only he is to know what is in the Eye.”71 Von Haller also, while very clear about how irritability worked, dedicated minimal space to the mechanisms of sensibility, writing only that it occurred in the 70 This pathology is primary Boerhaave’s, but it is also what Smith et al have summed up as a general working theory in the early eighteenth century. Smith et al., The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology, 157–167. 71 Ibid., 166. For an overview of Boerhaave’s reasoning and school of thought, see Harold J. Cook, “Boerhaave and the Flight from Reason in Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 221–40. 56 sensorium commune, “where the soul is ‘present’ to the brain.” He also did not try to locate the sensorium commune, as other physicians had done; all he said was that it was made of “a very soft pulp, fibrous in composition and structurally continuous with the nerves.” This ambiguity extended to sensibility’s body-soul connection: the operations of the soul were free from the apparatuses of the body, but the soul also depended on sensibility, which was connected to the body. This puts us at a bit of an impasse, although one might suggest that just as the Kühreihen proved the existence of a connection between an Älpler and the Alps, sensibilité hypothesized a connection between body and soul.72 As such, von Haller’s explanation of nostalgia retained its sonic and moral implications, and the disease continued to be associated with the Swiss by account of their moral rectitude. Von Haller retained the sound element when he wrote that one of the first symptoms were auditory hallucinations of the voices of loved ones from one’s home while in conversation with other people.73 This recalls the idea during Zwinger’s time that the animal spirits could cause the sensorium commune to become a theatre of the past. Even though he did not mention the ranz des vaches in his own Encyclopédie article on nostalgia, the clear reference to the old etiology in “Die Alpen” suggests that the omission was the product of his scientific aesthetic, and not evidence that it had drifted into obscurity or popular doubt.74 Finally, while von Haller acknowledges that the 72 Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France, 29. 73 Quoted in Daniel Fabre, “Que reste-t-il...? Quatre figures de la nostalgie chantée,” L’Homme 215/216, no. Connaît-on la chanson? (July 2015): 26. 74 The first edition of the Encyclopedia did not contain an entry for nostalgia. There was instead a short explanation of “Hemve,” which framed homesickness as a tropical disease, with nothing to do with the Swiss or Hofer-Zwinger. Bolzinger suggests that the Encyclopedists were hostile to the religious nature of 57 Swiss are susceptible to nostalgia, for him, barometric pressure alone does not explain the cause of the nostalgia, and nor is the disease the exclusive purview of the Swiss. He cites an anecdote about Greenlanders who became afflicted by le mal du pays, despite the well-known heaviness of their native air. Concluding thus that the cause is not barometric, von Haller submits that the Swiss predisposition to nostalgia is socio-cultural, and the result of Arcadian lifestyles––akin to the bread and milk mentioned by Scheuchzer, rather than the air contained within the bread and milk. In von Haller’s theory, the morality of the Kühreihen is linked, rather than directly with the soul, with the superior morality of the high Alpine dwellers, which is, of course, the cause of their nostalgic predilections. A central topos of “Die Alpen” is the juxtaposition of the decadence and decay of the lowland citizens against the Arcadian moral rectitude and simplicity of the highlands. The Alpine ways were also associated with better health; von Haller often references the ideal Älpler physiology, particularly compared to the poor physical health of the city dwellers.75 This was a commentary on the increasing socioeconomic and power divisions between rural and urban Switzerland. According to von Haller, Alpine citizens had no governing forces besides their own moral compass, and they did not even have the word “ambition” in their language.76 This textbook instance of the Arcadian pastoral––something situated in a lost, Edenic past–– the Protestant nostalgic etiology. (Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 44.) By 1779, however, nostalgia was so well known that the Encyclopedists might have felt obliged to include an entry on the subject. Part of this can be attributed to Rousseau’s 1768 Dictionnaire de la Musique, in which he famously included a score of the ranz des vaches under the entry on “Musique.” 75 Albrecht von Haller Albrecht, The Alps: An English Translation, trans. Stanley Mason (Dübendorf: Walter Amsturz de Clivo Press, 1987), 47. Stanza 17 is a particularly clear example of this. 76 Schaumann, “From Meadows to Mountaintops: Albrecht von Haller’s ‘Die Alpen,’” 64. 58 prefigures a nineteenth-century understanding of nostalgia as a displacement of time, in addition to place. The Alps were like Antiquity because they were the locus of older ways, simpler people, and better morals, but unlike Antiquity, the Alps were still visibly present. The people of the highlands were considered morally superior because of their connection with the earth, which was forged by the difficult lifestyle in an inhospitable climate. By the later eighteenth century, challenging environments were increasingly associated with the predisposition to nostalgia. For instance, in Thomas Arnold’s 1782 Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Preventions of Insanity, Lunacy, and Madness, he explains that nostalgia is a connection to the native soil, and: ...is the offspring of an unpolished state of society, and not uncommonly the inhabitant of dreary and inhospitable climates, where the chief, and almost only blessings, are ignorance and liberty. It shuns the populous, wealthy, commercial city...77 While both nostalgia and the ranz des vaches are linked with pastoral settings, the song became progressively divorced from its original context within the nostalgic disease. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ranz des vaches is a variant of Zwinger’s, and he repeated the story of its prohibition in the army on account of its consequent suffering among Swiss troops, but he does so without specifically naming the disease “nostalgia” 77 Thomas Arnold, Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy, or Madness (London: T. Cadell, 1782), 265. He also writes that it is common among “the inhabitants of the ice and snow of Lapland, the bleak mountains of Switzerland, and the of the remote and less civilized districts of Germany, when torn by force, or detained by necessity, or misfortune...” Ibid., 268. 59 or reiterating any of the medical etiology from earlier sources.78 Daniel Fabre has speculated that Rousseau never actually used the word “nostalgia” at all in his writing.79 Like von Haller, Rousseau associated the Kühreihen with the past, although he uses the French term “ranz des vaches” which, after this point, will become the more common appellation. Rather than a piece of music that acts as music does, Rousseau believed the ranz des vaches was a memorative sign with a moral connotation. Specifically, the ranz des vaches betokened the idea of the pure and youthful condition of Swiss mountain people as conceived of by aristocrats like Rousseau, and the pain that the Swiss experienced upon of hearing it was the pain of lost innocence. In this way, Rousseau also rejected the physiological basis for the Swiss’ susceptibility to the song, but the melody remained associated with the old, idyllic Swiss ways of life. In a letter written to the Maréchal-Duc de Luxembourg in January 1763, Rousseau suggests that the historically harsh life of the Alps was the cause for the song’s power over the Swiss, but that as life has become easier, the song has lost its power: [...] there has never been, as far as I know, a “Hemvé” or a ranz des vaches that made a Frenchman weep or die of regret in a foreign country, and this disease has diminished significantly among the Swiss now that one may live more easily in that country.80 78 “This air [is] so dear to the Swiss that playing it among their troops was banned on pain of death, since it made those who heard it melt with tears, desert, or die, so much did it stir in them the passionate desire to see their country again.” Translated in Leo Treitler, ed., Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History, Revised Edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 142. 79 Fabre, “Que reste-t-il...? Quatre figures de la nostalgie chantée,” 23. 80 Quoted in Fabre, “Que reste-t-il...? Quatre figures de la nostalgie chantée,” 24. 60 Much like von Haller discerned moral quality along topographical lines, Rousseau differentiated moral degrees by a temporal divide: only those Swiss with the right set of pastoral memories––memories effortfully wrought from a simple life of hard work–– could feel the effects of the ranz des vaches. Rousseau’s ranz des vaches thus points more decisively towards the past: declining incidents of the nostalgic disease are symptomatic of a slow moral degradation of the highlands. By the last third of the eighteenth century, the ranz des vaches became effectively a free-standing sonic phenomenon, but by Rousseau’s own definition, it was not a musical one. Instead, it occupied an ambiguous place between music and rumination. In his Essai sur l’origine des langues, Rousseau put forth that music was an unmediated expression of some original thing, rather than a secondary or representational sign of that thing.81 Furthermore, he believed that music influenced bodily functions, much like the Affektenlehre; in his entry on “musique,” he wrote that music is known to act physically upon the body, citing the tarantella as an example, but that the tarantella was “too well known” to expound on at length.82 (The tarantella was a rustic dance that could reportedly cure the psychological disease “tarantism,” which overwhelmed people with the urge to dance vigorously, and was thought to be endemic to Southern Italy.)83 At first 81 Martha Feldman, “Music and the Order of the Passion,” in Representing the Passions: Histories, Bodies, Visions, ed. Richard Evan Meyer (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2003), 45. 82 Technically, he talks about “the story of the tarantula,” the spider, but does not reference it as a dance. “If our Music has little power over the affections of the soul, on the other hand it is capable of acting physically upon the body, as in the story of the Tarantula, which is too well known to speak about here.” “Si notre Musique a peu de pouvoir sur les affections de lʼame, en revanche elle est capable dʼagir physiquement sur les corps, témoin lʼhistoire de la Tarentule, trop connue pour en parler ici...” Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique, vol. 9, Collection complète des oeuvres (Genève, 1780), 440. 83 For a particularly delightful survey of the tarantella, see Jean Fogo Russell, “Tarantism,” Medical History 23 (1979): 404–25. 61 glance, Rousseau’s description of physical action of music upon the body fits within with our earlier understanding of the effect of the ranz des vaches on the animal spirits; the Affektenlehre figure was an unmediated manifestation of a Swiss’s early customs, habits, or native air, and this unmediated-ness was what made it so physiologically devastating. He explains the effect of the ranz des vaches, however, as a purely representational one, and thereby as fundamentally non-musical: It would be vain to search in this tune for the powerful accents capable of producing such astonishing effects. These effects, which have no place on foreigners, come only from habit, memories, a thousand circumstances which, retraced by this Air to those who hear it, and reminding them of their country, their former pleasures, their youth & all their ways to live, arouse in them a bitter doubt of having lost all that. Music then does not act precisely as Music, but as a memorial sign. This Air, although still the same, no longer produces the same effects that it previously did on the Swiss; because having lost the taste for their first simplicity, they no longer regret it when they are reminded of it. So true is it that it is not in their physical action that we must seek the greatest effects of Sounds on the human heart.84 In this description, presumably aimed primary towards his continental philosophes in France, Rousseau’s suggests the song has reached the end of its living trajectory: he finds the song and the Swiss, and actually any listener at all, to be lacking. The Swiss no longer favor their old ways of life, so the ranz des vaches no longer causes 84 Ibid., 9:443–444. “Ces effets, qui n’ont aucun lieu sur les étrangers, ne viennent que de l’habitude, des souvenirs, de mille circonstances qui, retracées par cet Air à ceux qui l’entendent, & leur rappellent leur pays, leurs anciens plaisirs, leur jeunesse & toutes leurs façons de vivre, excitent en eux une douleur amère d’avoir perdu tout cela. La Musique alors n’agit point précisément comme Musique, mais comme signe mémoratif. Cet Air, quoique toujours le même, ne produit plus aujourd’hui les mêmes effets quʼil produisit ci-devant sur les Suisses; parce qu’ayant perdu le goût de leur première simplicité́, ils ne la regrettent plus quand on la leur rappelle. Tant il est vrai que ce nʼest pas dans leur action physique quʼil faut chercher les plus grands effets des Sons sur le cœur humain.” The translation above is partially based on William Waring’s 1779 English translation, and the translation in Strunk. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Complete Dictionary of Music, trans. William Waring, 2nd ed. (London: J. Murray, 1779), 266–67. Treitler, Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History, Revised Edition, 142. 62 them to suffer nostalgia. Neither can the song impact foreigners, because they likewise do not have the requisite memories. What’s more, the song itself is not even music, because it does not contain any of the necessary musical components to have a physical impact on the listener. While Rousseau can be partially credited for the Enlightenment fascination with the ranz des vaches, between the time of his 1764 Dictonnaire and the turn of the nineteenth century, many believed the song had more musical power than Rousseau had given it credit for. The fictional title character in Étienne Pivert de Senancour’s Obermann (1804), disagreed with Rousseau’s suggestion that the music’s effects is only by memorative associations: The ranz des vaches does not simply recall memories, it paints them. I know Rousseau said the opposite, but I think he was wrong. This effect is not an imaginary place; it happened that two people, separately perusing the Picturesque Tableaux of Switzerland, both side, at the sight of the Grimsel: “There is where one should hear the ranz des vaches.” If [the ranz des vaches] is performed in a way that is more than only learned, if it is played by one who is a good envoy, the first sounds place us in the high valleys, near the bare, red-grey rocks, under the cold sky, under the fierce sun.85 Obermann (although fictional) believes that if the ranz des vaches is performed well enough, it could transport listeners, no matter who they are, to the high pass of the Grimsel in a way that memories themselves simply cannot.86 While many people did not 85 Étienne-Jean–Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour, Obermann (Paris: Charpentier Libraire- Éditeur, 1865), 146. “ Le Ranz des vaches ne rappelle pas seulement des souvenirs, il peint. Je sais que Rousseau a dit le contraire, mais je crois qu'il s'est trompé. Cet effet n'est point imaginaire; il est arrivé que deux personnes, parcourant séparément les planches des Tableaux pittoresques de la Suisse, ont dit toutes deux, à la vue du Grimsel: ‘Voilà où il faut entendre le Ranz des vaches.’ S'il est exprimé d'une manière plus juste que savante, si celui qui le joue le sent bien, les premiers sons nous placent dans les hautes vallées, près des rocs nus et d'un gris roussâtre, sous le ciel froid, sous le soleil ardent.” 86 Another critique of Rousseau’s ranz des vaches came from George Tarenne’s 1810 Recherches sur le Ranz des Vaches. Tarenne commented that Rousseau’s ranz des vaches was “retouched and perfected,” and 63 necessarily cite and disagree with Rousseau by name, many writers did in fact find the ranz des vaches to be both transformative and Musique. This interpretation was facilitated by a physiological framework that made it theoretically possible for non-Swiss bodies to experience the transformative effects of the ranz des vaches, never mind the fact that these were initially mostly attributable to the physiological conditioning of Alpine people. In this framework, an expansion of von Haller’s sensibility, now called sensibilité, one body could sympathetically resonate with another. It was only a matter of time before aristocrats began turning to the sounding Älpler body as a proxy for their own self-improvement. Sensibilité in Performance: The Ranz des Vaches as Active Remembering Like any innate faculty, some people were gifted (or cursed, depending) with more sensitive sensibilité than others. Echoing the earlier link between melancholy and nostalgia, people with a naturally melancholic temperament were particularly likely to be extra sensible and susceptible to external influences, for better or for worse. These “âmes sensibles” had especially subtle sensibilté sensory apparatus, which predisposed them to refined emotions and compassion.87 While this quality opened them up to broader vistas of potential pleasure, it also deepened the amount of suffering they could experience–– that while it has some similarities to a ranz des vaches, it “does not resemble any ranz from inside of Switzerland.” George Tarenne, Recherches sur les Ranz des vaches ou sur les chansons pastorales ses bergers de la Suisse, avec musique (Paris: F. Louis, 1813), 13. “L’air du Dictionnaire de musique de J. -J. Rousseau, est un air retouché ou perfectionné par cet auteur; il ne ressemble à aucun Ranz des Alpes de l’intérieur de la Suisse, quoiqu’un y reconnaisse de petites analogies avec quelques-uns d’entre eux.” 87 Stefano Castelvecchi, Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeoise Drama (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 129. 64 recalling also Hofer-Zwinger’s double-edged sword of having a Swiss body and childhood. Sensibilité was a sense that could be strengthened like a muscle, and as Elizabeth Le Guin writes, this notion of nervous refinement “inevitably parlayed itself into notions about the refinement of persons.”88 If feeling was the foundation of virtue, then sensibilité indicated class and quality. The experience of a sensible subject listening to a ranz des vaches became increasingly freighted as an aristocratic class signifier. Touching on the vaguely dual nature of sensibilité as both a physical and a spiritual sense, a successful ranz des vaches performance was both physiological and memorative, for both listener and performer. As a moral sense, sensibilité acted, as Susan Manning calls it, “a social cement,” which generated the potential for an innate bond between humans; this is how the ranz des vaches became a way to use a Swiss body as a proxy for sensible self-improvement.89 The ranz des vaches was a way to link one’s sensibilité to Switzerland; just as the sounds of the Kühreihen would suggest forms from the past to the animal spirits or Lebens- Geister, it could now suggest new forms for a person’s sensibilité to take, effecting a transformation of the listener, whether or not they were Swiss. 88 Elisabeth Le Guin, Boccherini’s Body: An Essay In Carnal Musicology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 185. Much like nostalgia, there is a deep literature on sensibilité. On the cultural development of sensibilité, see Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002). George S. Rousseau, “Nerves, Spirits, Fibers: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility,” in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. F. Brissenden and J. C. Eade, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) 137–157. A fascinating study of the development of emotion as a performative act during this time is William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Reddy argues that strategic emotionalism offered a counterpoint to the strict honor code of the ancien régime, and the notion of sentiment as a refuge continued into the nineteenth century. 89 Susan Manning, “Sensibility,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 83. 65 In 1792, the Italian violin virtuoso Giovanni Battista Viotti traveled through Switzerland and wrote about the transformation he experienced by hearing a ranz des vaches in the Alps. This particular ranz des vaches was performed by a woman’s voice, doubled by an alphorn. Viotti’s transcription is noteworthy because it one of the earliest ranz des vaches to be collected from the field, so to speak, and his later performances of it on the violin, particularly in Paris, contributed substantially to the importance of the ranz des vaches in popular European consciousness. Viotti’s use of the sensible aesthetic is not subtle. He tips us off to his privileged predisposition to sensibilité when he self-identifies as melancholic.90 When he hears the ranz des vaches, it strikes his whole existence: So I was there, on this stone, when suddenly my ear, or rather my whole existence, was struck by sounds, sometimes brisk, sometimes prolonged and sustained, which started from one mountain and fled to the other, without being repeated by the echoes. [...] as if struck as if by magic, I wake up suddenly, I come out of my lethargy, I shed a few tears, and I learn, or rather I engrave in my memory the Ranz des vaches.91 Viotti goes on to bemoan the impossibility of adequately notating the song. He believes that the one way a ranz des vaches can be truly performed and experienced is within the context of the mountainous space, because the distance between the mountains informs 90 G. B. Viotti, “Note de Viotti sur les Ranz des vaches,” La décade philosophique, littéraire et politique 6 (1798): 533. “Je me promenais seul, [...] et je portais dans moi cette mélancolie qui, tous les jours à cette même heure, concentre mon ame[sic] depuis que j’existe.” “I was walking alone [...] and I carried within myself that melancholy which, every day at this same time for my entire life, has pressed upon my soul.” 91 “J’étais donc là, sur cette pierre, lorsque tout-a-coup mon oreille, ou plutôt tout mon existence, fut frappée par des sons, tantôt précipités, tantôt prolongés et soûtenus[sic], qui partaient d’une montagne et s’enfuyaient à l’autre, sans être répétés par les échos.[...] [F]rappé comme par enchantement, je me réveille soudain, je sors de ma léthargie, je répands quelques larmes, et j’apprends, ou plutôt je grave dans ma mémoire le Rans[sic] des vaches, que je vous transmets ici.” Ibid., 534. 66 the rhythms.92 In lieu of seeing mountains, one must use one’s sensibilité to imagine them. To perform a ranz des vaches correctly, Viotti puts forward that one must avoid overthinking, and leave room instead for sentiment and feeling. It is sentiment that conjures up a Swiss experience in the imagination, much as the animal spirits produced sense perceptions in the common sensorium, and it is thus that sentiment actually completes the ranz des vaches. It is therefore the sentiment and the thought which should rather bring us to the truth of its execution, rather than the rhythm and a measured cadence. This ranz des vaches, would be distorted by rhythm: it would lose its simplicity. So, to make it in its real sense, and as I heard it, the imagination must transport you to where it was born, ...[and] bring together all its faculties to feel it in Switzerland.93 The embodied, memorative nature of a successful sensible musical experience testifies to its inherent physiological construction. 92 “I thought I should write it down without rhythm, that is to say, without measure. There are cases where the melody can be without gene, to be it, it only: the least measure would disturb its effect; this is so true, that these sounds extending into space, we can not determine the time it takes to get from one mountain to another.” “J’ai cru devoir le noter sans rythme, c’est-à-dire, sans mesure. Il est des cas où la mélodie veut être sans gêne, pour être elle, elle seule: la moindre mesure dérangerait son effet; cela est si vrai, que ces sons se prolongeant dans l’espace, on ne saurait déterminer le temps qu’il leur faut pour arriver d’une montagne à l’autre.” Ibid. 93 Ibid., 534. “C’est donc le sentiment et la pensée qui doivent plutôt nous porter à la vérité de son exécution, que le rythme et une cadence mesurée. Ce Rans des vaches, en mesure serait dénaturé: il perdrait de sa simplicité. Ainsi, pour le rendre dans son véritable sens, et tel que je l’ai entendu, il faut que l’imagination vous transporte là où il est né, et tout en l’exécutant à Paris, réunir toutes ses facultés pour le sentir en Suisse.” A similar description of the lack of regular meter is in Coxe (1790), who writes that “[The Ranz des vaches] has no regular rhythm, although its measure does not change; its tempo varies several times, and does not do so regularly: this oddity distinguishes it absolutely from all the old melodies which are known to us in Germany...” This is cited and discussed more in Fabre, “Que reste-t-il...? Quatre figures de la nostalgie chantée,” 34. 67 The ranz des vaches was thus an opportunity for anyone (of adequate intrinsic quality, naturally) to resonate with the singing Swiss, thereby transforming themselves, via both moral and physiological refinement. As a result, subsequent writing about the ranz des vaches showed more preoccupation with the wholeness of the performance than with the way it indicated the wholeness of the Swiss individual singing it. Whereas at the beginning of the century, writers were anxious about the latter because it was tied to national and spiritual stakes, later writers, like Viotti, became more concerned about the former because it reflected their own sensibilité. There were several incentives for aristocratic travelers to seek sensibilité- enhancing experiences in the Alps. First, as touched on by Rousseau and von Haller, the Alps were perceived as a location where democracy could flourish in its purest form (more on this in Chapter III). A Genevan scientist and groundbreaking early Alpinist named Horace-Bénédict de Saussure wrote about the moral peculiarity of the mountain people in his 1779 natural history of Geneva and its environs:94 [I]f one can hope to find somewhere in Europe Men civilized enough not to be ferocious and natural enough not to be corrupted, it is in the Alps that one must look for them [...] but those of the Alps, seeing only their equals, forget that there are more powerful men; their soul is ennobled and elevated; the services they render, the hospitality they exercise, have nothing servile or mercenary; one sees shining in them sparks of that noble pride which is the companion and guardian of all virtues.95 94 Saussure is frequently quoted in travelogues in Switzerland, and Im Hof suggests that the Helvetic Society encouraged people to read this text. Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:197. 95 Voyage dans les Alpes, partie pittoresque des ouvrages de Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, Précédés d’un Essai sur l’Histoire naturelle des environs de Genève, vol. 1 (Neuchâtel: Samuel Fauche, 1779), ix–x. “Le moral dans les Alpes, n’est pas moins intéressant que le physique. Car, quoique l’Homme soit au fond par- tout le même, par-tout le jouet des mêmes passions, produites par les mêmes besoins; cependant, si l’on peut espérer de trouver quelque part en Europe, des Hommes assez civilisés pour n’être pas féroces, & assez naturels pour n’être pas corrompus, c’est dans les Alpes qu’il faut les chercher [...] Mais ceux des Alpes, ne voyant que leurs égaux, oublient qu’il existe des hommes plus puissans; leur ame s’ennoblit & 68 According to Saussure, this pure equality, democracy, and integrity gave each man leave to rely entirely on his own judgement, thus permitting a unique clarity of thought, and ennobling his soul. Clarity of thought was especially important to physicians from the Parisian and Montpellier schools, who were encouraged to develop their sensibilité so that their diagnostic observations would be as precise as possible.96 We see a moral component even here: the physician was compelled to enhance their clarity of thought (that is, their sensibilité) so that they might help more patients.97 For some members of this school, the natural force of sensibilité could literally remake both individuals and society at large via certain aesthetic experiences.98 The ranz des vaches, as an embodied, sentimental experience, fit the bill nicely. Switzerland was not just a place to expand and purify one’s thought processes, it was also a place to approach the very edge of human understanding itself: the Sublime. Mountains, particularly the Alps, were increasingly associated with the Sublime in the latter part of the eighteenth century; their sheer size, and the various hazards of Alpinism ––avalanches, rock falls, storms, crevasses, to name a few––made them appear fearsome, s’élève; les service qu’ils rendent, l’hospitalité qu’ils exercent, n’ont rien de servile ni de mercenaire; on voit briller en eux des étincelles de cette noble fierté, compagne & gardienne de toutes les vertus.” Translation by Juliette Angoulvant, personal correspondence.” See Appendix B. 96 This is discussed in chapter 2, in Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France. 97 Quoted in Ibid., 40. “Thus the [medical] observer must, first and foremost, have sense organs that are free of any vice of conformation that might impede their full and complete use; his eyes must be clear- sighted, his sense of touch fine, his sense of smell good, etc.; his senses must be suited to receiving the impressions of the [disease] phenomena that are presented, however difficult they may be to perceive, and to transmitting them unaltered to the seat of feeling, reflection and memory ...” 98 Ibid., 41. 69 boundless, and fundamentally unattainable. Johann Gottfried Ebel, a Prussian physician and author of the first guidebook to Switzerland, describes the origin of the Kühreihen at the location where the pastoral ideal intersects with the horror of the mountains: [The Kühreihen] is as old as the shepherds themselves who first populated the valleys of Switzerland, and marched with their herds to the meadows between high mountains. Here, where the cattle found no other barriers than the abysses and steep rockfalls, scattered on all sides, as far as the Alpine plants greened and blossomed.99 Despite the Romance of this scene, Ebel is much more utilitarian than other writers about the origin of the Kühreihen, saying merely that “these Alpine songs are meant for nothing more than to call the cows.”100 Nonetheless, the song is best heard in this setting, where one is surrounded by the mountain Sublime: To judge this pastoral song, one must hear it in the mountains, in its true birthplace. It always gave me an indescribable pleasure; but it is impossible to express which Reitz[sic] has simple tones for the ear and for its feeling, and the harmonious bells in the high mountains, where pleasure is so pure and elastic, where nature is enthroned in its ornaments and grandeur, and a general deep silence prevails.101 99 Johann Gottfried Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell (Leipzig: Peter Philip Wolfischen Buchhandlung, 1798), https://www.e- rara.ch/7010112. “Dieser Gesang ist so alt wie die Hirten selbst, welche zuerst die Thäler der Schweitz bes völkerten, und mit ihren Heerden auf die Weidgänge zwischen den hohen Gebirgen zogen. Hier, wo das Vieh keine andere Schranken als Abgründe und steile Felfenwäne de fand, zerfireute es sich natürlich nach allen Selten, so weit die Alpkräuten grünten und blühten.” 100 Ibid., 154. “...diese Alpgesänge zu nichts anderers, als die Kühe zu versammeln, bestimmt.” 101 Ibid., 155. “Um diesen Pastoralgesang zu beurtheilen, muß man ihn in den Gebirgen, an seinem wahren Geburtsort hören. Er hat mir immer ein unbeschreibliches Vergnügen verusacht; es ist aber unmöglich, auszudrücken, welchen Reitz[sic] für das Ohr und fürs Gefühl dessen einfache Töne und die unter sich harmonischen Glocken in den hohen Gebirgen haben, wo die Lust so rein und elastisch ist, wo die Natur in ihrer Oriße[sic] und Erhabenheit thront, und eine allgemeine tiefe Stille herrscht.” 70 Ebel prints several Kühreihen and describes number seven as particularly nostalgic. The tune is essentially the same as Zwinger’s, and Ebel explains that it is well known because of the remarkable effect it has on Älpler when they sing it away from their home.102 (Ebel’s writing on the Kühreihen will feature rather more prominently in Chapter V.) Nonetheless, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Kühreihen became increasingly associated with the past, whether because writers saw it as a characteristic of an old and vanishing way of life, or because a true performance of it was necessarily memorative, and therefore also rooted in the past. For Ebel, as with Rousseau, the Kühreihen pointed towards a better, older Switzerland; In 1802, he lamented that rural lifestyles were changing, and that that because of this cultural deterioration, one would rarely hear the Kühreihen anywhere anymore.103 Home, Sweet Home! The Ranz des Vaches on the Foreign Stage After the turn of the nineteenth century, the link between the ranz des vaches and nostalgia was largely propagated outside of Switzerland. It appeared periodically as a 102 Ibid., 157. “Der Kuhreihen ist besonders durch seine Wirkung, welche er auf die von ihrem Vaterlande entfenten Gebirgs Schweitzer dußert, wenn sie ihn singen hören, allgemein merkwürdig geworden.” “The Kühreihen has become well known because of the effect it has on the mountain Swiss when they hear it sung, far from their homeland.” 103 Johann Gottfried Ebel, Schildering der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz vom Kanton Glarus (Leipzig: Peter Philip Wolfischen Buchhandlung, 1802), 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-22530. “... sind Lebensart und Sitten des Hirtensvolkes verschwunden. Kaum der vierte Theil der Einwohner beschäftiget sich jetzt mit Alpenwirthschaft. Statt dem fröhlichen Jauchzen und dem Gesang des Kuhreihen tönt überall das Schnurren des Rades und das Stoßen des Weberstuhls. Die Spiele und Feste der kraftvollen Älpler, wo sie sich im Ringen, Laufen, Steinstoßen übten, sind fast gänzlich in Abnahme, und wer sich noch auf seine Stärte und gymnastische Geschicklichkeit etwas zu gute thun will, wird für groß und dumm gehalten.” “...the way of life and the customs of the shepherds have disappeared. Hardy a fourth of the population is now occupied with Alpine farming. Instead of the happy juuzing and singing of the Kühreihen, one hears the purring of the weaving wheel and the sound of the weaver’s chair everywhere. The games and festivals of the mighty Älpler, in which they practiced wrestling, running, and Steinstossen, are almost wholly disappeared, and whoever wants to exercise his strength or practice gymnastic skills is considered big and stupid.” 71 topic of interest in conversation handbooks; it was discussed in turn of the century nosologies (although not so much in the French military’s medical writing on nostalgia), and in musical productions on Swiss topics.104 Musicologists are aware of the early nineteenth-century popular use of the ranz des vaches, but because popular use survives primarily in elusive and largely ephemeral formats, it has been challenging to collect and analyze. This section takes a look at one popular theatrical application of the ranz des vaches. Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizer-familie was produced in Vienna in 1809; in 1826 and 1827 it was adapted into a three act version for performance in Paris, and in 1828 it was reproduced again in London under the name, “Home Sweet Home! Or The Swiss Family.”105 Like Hofer’s case studies, the main character is young and delirious with 104 Conversation handbooks include : “Nostalgie,” in Nouveau dictionnaire de la conversation, ou répertoire universel, vol. 19, Société de Littérateurs, de Savants et d’Artistes (Brussels: Auguste Wahlen, 1843), 164–165. Nosologies include some of the following: William Falconer (1796): Falconer does not name the ranz des vaches, but his description of some Swiss music with incredible powers is unmistakable: “A particular musical composition is in great vogue in Swisserland, supposed to be expressive of the happiness of the people. If this be repeated among the Swiss in any foreign country, it tends strongly to recal [sic] their affection for their native soil, and their desire of returning, and to induce the disease consequent on the disappointment of their wishes. The effects of this piece of music are so powerful, that it is forbidden to be repeated in the French camps and military stations, on pain of death. Perhaps this is the only endemic disorder, of which we have any knowledge, that can scarcely be called without justice a national misfortune.” William Falconer, A Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions upon Disorders of the Body: Being the Essay to Which the Fothergillian Medal Was Adjudged., 3rd ed. (London: C. Dilly, 1796), 158–159. There is one exception to the comment about French military writing: a dissertation by C. Castelnau, which repeats much of the same material about the ranz des vaches as Rousseau does. Bolzinger suspects that Castelnau was not actually active in the military or didn’t serve in the field, and so he just rattled off commonly known ideas. Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie, 71–72. C Castelnau, Considérations sur la nostalgie; Présentés et soutenues à l’École de Médecine de Paris, Le 29 Août 1806 (Paris: de l’imprimerie de Didot Jeune, Imprimeur de l’École de Médecine, 1806). 105 Joseph Weigl, Home, Sweet Home, or The Swiss Family: An Opera, in Two Acts, trans. Charles A. Somserset (London: J. Duncombe, 1828). Weigl’s production was an adaptation of a vaudeville called Pauvre Jacques that had essentially the same plot but not necessarily a climactic ranz des vaches. At the point in Weigl’s production where the ranz des vaches appears, the libretto of Pauvre Jacques indicates that we hear “Jacques’s song,” which very well could have been a ranz des vaches, but the score does not survive. Serwin, René Chazet, and Charles-Augustin de Basson-Pierre, Pauvre Jacques, comédie en trois actes et en prose, mêlée de vaudevilles (Paris: Chez Madame Cavanagh, 1807). Joseph Weigl, Emmeline, ou la Famille Suisse: Opéra-Comique en trois Actes, trans. Crémont (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, 1827). As Hector Berlioz describes the Paris production, “This work had little success; it seemed to the musicians to 72 homesickness.106 At the climax of the show, which begins with a pantomime, a ranz des vaches (played by a clarinet out in the theatre) rouses the nostalgic young heroine from her languor:107 be bland and colorless, and the bad comics jokes that it was a pastoral written with milk.” “Cet ouvrage eut peu de succès; il paru aux musiciens fade et incolore, et les mauvais plaisants prétendirent que c’était une pastorale écrite avec du lait.” Berlioz is quoted in Métraux, who is also the one who pointed out the existence of Emmeline. Métraux and Philipona, Le Ranz des vaches: du chant des bergers à l’hymne patriotique, 123. 106 A count was visiting the Swiss Alps, but while hiking by himself on the high mountains, tumbled with an avalanche into a crevasse, where he was found – and consequently, saved – by an old Swiss mountaineer. As repayment, the count brought the mountaineer and his whole family to live with him on his estate. The mountaineer’s daughter, Emmeline, became incredibly homesick for Switzerland, and delirious. To appease her, the Count attempts to recreate a tiny Swiss village on his estate, which temporarily relieves Emmaline’s homesickness, but only because she is deluded into thinking that she is back home. Towards the end of the play, unknown to her, her old beau, Henry Freeberg, has traveled to the estate and waits in an adjacent (if fabricated) cottage. As Emmaline dashes about the stage, coming in and out of reality, she hears the ranz des vaches. The ranz des vaches recurs, and she and Henry sing a duet about the perfection of their home, and the consequent impossibility of truly leaving. They are subsequently wed. The rather heavy-handed surnaming of Henry Freeburg is an Anglicization of the original Viennese production’s “Jacob Friburg,” a reference to Fribourg Switzerland, but the English spelling suggests a more direct translation of “Free-mountain,” which could have easily been an alternative title for Chapter III of this dissertation. 107 Weigl, Emmeline, ou la Famille Suisse: Opéra-Comique en trois Actes, 137. The translation of this text is: “Emmeline listens with surprise and astonishment followed by the liveliest joy. She drops the watering can, listening, leaning over to the side where the sounds she heard come from. ... The Count, Richard, and Gertrude appear in the back of the theater....Emmeline expresses the surprise, the hope, the joy with which her heart is moved when she hears this melody which is familiar to her... She thinks she has made a mistake and wants to resume her activities when the melody starts again; she gets up, and quickly stops at the side of Jacques’s hut, afraid to move forward, one of her hands against her heart, the other on her forehead and sits almost powerlessly on a bench with her back leaning against Jacques’s hut.” 73 Figure 10: Ranz des vaches from Joseph Weigl’s Emmeline, Ou la famille Suisse: Opéra- comique en trois actes, Paris (1827), page 137. Although the text in the French score does not name the ranz des vaches, nor make any mention of nostalgia, the English libretto gives a much more explicit description of what it describes as an “interesting pantomime:” ... the celebrated Swiss Shepherd’s call, Rance [sic] des Vaches, in German, Die Kuhreihen, is heard played on a clarinet in Henry’s cottage. ...[Emmelina] is as one petrified ... she bends her head towards the spot from which the music proceeds, her countenance betraying that painfully pleasing sensation of the soul, called in German, Heimweh.108 Meanwhile, the clarinet line is a variation on the original partition printed by Zwinger. Emmelina’s character also recalls the title characters in Giovanni Paisiello’s title characters in Nina (1786), and Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), who both also pantomime to a faraway melody that exists in their imaginations; this is a 108 Weigl, Home, Sweet Home, or The Swiss Family: An Opera, in Two Acts, 23. 74 sensible heroine trope, but in Emmalina’s instance, the scene is rendered Swiss by the ranz des vaches.109 This use of the ranz des vaches recalls theories from both the first and second halves of the preceding century. The score’s description of the ranz des vaches as a “painfully pleasing sensation of the soul” hearkens back to the spiritual nature of nostalgia’s initial etiology. However, the song has lost its danger: now it is merely uncomfortable for a displaced Swiss. Moreover, the fact that it brings Emmelina back to reality, rather than farther away from it, means that the ranz des vaches is more of a cure than a threat; its effect is more sensible than truly nostalgic. This 1828 London production of “Home, Sweet Home, or the Swiss Family” might easily be confused with another 1828 London musical titled “Home! Sweet Home! Or, the Ranz des Vaches.”110 In the latter, with music by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, and libretto by Isaac Pocock, the title song is associated with the mountain sublime and a Swiss soldier’s yearning for home. At the start of Act II, after the villagers are summoned onstage by the call of the ranz des vaches, our forthrightly named hero Edward Malaise, 109 For a further discussion of the sensibilité of Paisiello’s heroines, see Castelvecchi, Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeoise Drama. 110 I. Pocock and Henry R. Bishop, Home, Sweet Home!, Or, the Ranz Des Vaches : An Operatic Entertainment, in Two Acts, Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (London: Proprietors by S. R. Kirby, 1829). This production was described in the Musical Quarterly Magazine as having minimal interest, except that “Mrs. Vestris sang the ranz des vaches admirably.” The unnamed reviewer also takes issue with the ranz des vaches as a whole, writing: “[T]he walls of our theatres must now resound with the Ranz des Vaches, because a few Swiss wanderers have introduced it into the Metropolis, and Mr. Bishop has been called upon to waste his fine talents principally founded on a call for cattle. Yet so long it is since we have seen any compositions of Mr. Bishop’s that we gladly seize even the present paltry opportunity ... otherwise “Home, sweet home” might for us sink at once into the oblivion which we fear awaits it.” “Home, Sweet Home, or the Ranz Des Vaches, an Operatic Drama, in Two Acts; the Poetry by J. Pocock, Esq. the Music Composed, Adapted, and Arranged for the Voice and Piano Forte by H. R. Bishop.,” The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review X (1828): 387–388. This review was referenced in Métraux and Philipona, Le Ranz des vaches: du chant des bergers à l’hymne patriotique, 123. 75 describes his nostalgic (well) malaise, which he suffered while serving in Paris. He describes that he had: ...a desire to revisit the place of my nativity; to hear again the echo of the Ranz des Vaches, renewed all my regrets; my waking thoughts, my nightly dreams, were of my country. I panted for the mountain breeze, to cool my fevered brain...111 Like Hofer’s nostalgics, Edward suffered from a fever and delirium. His interlocutor offered the condolence: “Such feelings are common to all our countrymen.”112 Whereas the ranz des vaches appeared only once (albeit significantly) in “The Swiss Family,” it is a much stronger topos in “Or, the Ranz des Vaches.” Aside from drawing Mr. Malaise homewards, it is associated with the Sublime, inasmuch as the mountains are depicted as fearsome and overwhelming. The first scene opens on Mont Blanc, with glaciers, mountains, and villages all visible, and the opening number that accompanies this setting describes the ranz des vaches echoing high in the tempestuous mountains: The sun has been long on old Mont Blanc, Proclaiming a lovely morning; ... Hark! Hark! ‘tis the Ranz des Vaches, In the mountain-pass resounding; As thunder follows the lightning flash, From rock to rock rebounding!113 111 Pocock and Bishop, Home, Sweet Home!, Or, the Ranz Des Vaches : An Operatic Entertainment, in Two Acts, Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 22. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 1. 76 According to an anonymous reviewer in the Musical Quarterly Magazine, this song is “a very pretty round for three trebles, formed on a Ranz des Vaches––its extreme simplicity renders it very characteristic.”114 The notion of the ranz des vaches as a fundamentally echoing, mountainous song is reiterated towards the end of the production, in a duet and semi-chorus. Mr. Malaise recalls how he sung the ranz des vaches as a child in pure unison with the mountains:115 Voices: Hark! hark! ‘tis the Ranz des Vaches! Hark! hark! ‘tis the merry Ranz des Vaches! Edward: How oft to that wild note I’ve sung On some lone rock, in childhood, seated, Whilst hill and dale responsive rung, And echo still the note repeated ... Voices: Hark! hark! &c. Not only did Mr. Malaise grow up singing the ranz des vaches in a wild mountain setting, perhaps more significantly, the landscape resonated the music back at him. Once again, the ranz des vaches occupies an intermediary space between two parts of the same whole: the young Swiss man and his mountains (this same song also includes a yodel, which foreshadows content in Chapter VI). Throughout the eighteenth century, the Kühreihen articulated the transitional space between landscapes and the invisible elements of human experience. This use and understanding of the Kühreihen in the scientific and popular dialogue were facilitated by the fact that it was sonic, thus neither visible nor deniable. Initially, the song was a 114 The cranky reviewer does note that the next song is “infinitely superior.” “Home, Sweet Home, or the Ranz Des Vaches, an Operatic Drama, in Two Acts; the Poetry by J. Pocock, Esq. the Music Composed, Adapted, and Arranged for the Voice and Piano Forte by H. R. Bishop.,” 388. 115 Pocock and Bishop, Home, Sweet Home!, Or, the Ranz Des Vaches : An Operatic Entertainment, in Two Acts, Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 23. 77 physical link between Swiss bodies and their presumably Alpine home, but as Swiss writers and roaming aristocrats began to view the Alps as a site of rarefied morality, it linked increasingly with a sense of something better. This obscure, mutable space also contained the elusive notion of “freedom.” The way writers discussed the Kühreihen continued to point to what freedom might have actually meant, at least in terms of the way various anxieties were staged in the context of the Swiss body. At the beginning of the century, the ideal of freedom was about Swiss autonomy, inasmuch as it related to the mercenary service, and inevitably, France. This freedom is also about the ability to go home (go back), which, given that the Kühreihen was an Alpine practice and that the soldiers largely hailed from Alpine regions, points towards the Alps as the location of freedom. After mid-century, freedom was less about the Swiss soldiers, and more concerned with the mountains and Alpine communities, where freedom was the consequence of being synched with the landscape. At this point, freedom also began to refer to democratic styles of governance practiced in the Alps; for some progressive Swiss elites, “freedom” was republican double-speak for egalitarianism. This is explored at more length in the following chapter. The scores given throughout the century were all a variation on Zwinger’s 1710 partition; just as the melody varies slightly between scores but remains largely intact, so too does the link between the Kühreihen and sympathetic resonance. What changes over the course of the century is not the Kühreihen, but who is resonating with what: the Swiss man with the Alps, or the tourist with the Älpler. The Kühreihen represented an archetypal, ideal Swiss body and style of government, which, as many national epitomes often do, necessarily calibrated the national moral compass to point backwards in time. 78 In Chapter III, I go into more detail about how Alpine song became a reference to specific Swiss politics, and how in this context, the Älpler became the patriotic Swiss archetype. An aristocratic society called the Helvetic Society wrote collections of Schweizerlieder starting in 1767 to cultivate Alpine and therefore patriotic feelings across the disparate Swiss cantons. During the French occupation, various populations in Switzerland used Alpine song and the Kühreihen as expressions of patriotic Swissness, and a connection to their nation. 79 CHAPTER III SINGING ALPINE POLITICS, 1767–1815 “Majestic nature / Creates noble passion!” On August 5 and 6, 1819, seven hundred people gathered in Vevey, on the north shore of Lake Geneva, for the first Fête des Vignerons since 1797.1 Now designated a site of UNESCO Intangible Heritage, the festival was (and still is) put on by the Brotherhood of Winegrowers, and it featured parades and music, among other spectacles. The program booklet for the 1819 Fête described that the people were eager to celebrate after twenty- odd years of revolution, war and misery.2 The period in question had begun in 1798, when Napoleon annexed Switzerland, and ended in 1815 when the Congress of Vienna secured Swiss independence and the Restoration of Switzerland began. Historians and folklorists of the Fêtes almost always note that the 1819 celebration was important because it was the first one to feature the ranz des vaches that has become emblematic for the entire genre: a folksong called “Les Armaillis.” Six Vachers (“Armaillers”) accompanied four cows in the parade and sang. “Les Armaillis,” the regional Patois word for “cow farmer,” tells a comic story about a cow farmer from a mountainous region in Gruyères called the Colombettes. The opening lines set the scene: “The farmer, of the Colombettes, he gets up in the morning, 1 Different sources report different numbers. It is possible that only 700 tickets to the actual show were sold, but the general attendance was larger. In 1835, William Beattie reports that sixteen thousand people were in attendance. William Beattie, Switzerland, vol. 2 (London: Virtue, 1836), 149, https://www.e- rara.ch/zut/content/zoom/2224857. 2 Description de la Fête des vignerons: célébrée à Vevey, le 5 aoust 1819 (Vevey: Chez Lœrtscher et Fils, 1819), 3–8. 80 ha ah, ha ah,” and he sings out “Lioba! Lioba!” a word that is meant to endearingly call to his cows:3 Figure 11: Opening phrase to “Les Armaillis,” from Le Conservateur suisse (1813), non- paginated insert between pages 424–425. (See Appendix B.) There are two refrains featuring a typical ranz des vaches run of repeated descending intervals in which the farmer, Pierre, calls out to the cows, and they come to him for milking. In couplets between these cow-calls, the song describes an incident in which Pierre’s cows get stuck in some mud. Pierre seeks out a priest and requests a mass 3 Bridel explicates this in his “Note sur les Ranz des Vaches” as part of a larger Patois lexicon. 81 to intercede on behalf of the stuck cows. The priest refuses to perform the mass, and instead demands that Pierre give him some of his fattiest cheese. Pierre replies that we would happily do so if the priest sends his maid to pick it up. The priest rejects this proposal because his maid is so pretty that Pierre shall surely detain her. Pierre counters that he would do no such thing, because then he would have to go to confession, presumably to this particular priest. The priest, deciding he no longer requires the cheese in exchange for his services, liberates the cows with an Ave Maria, and bids the young farmer visit him often. The text of “Les Armaillis” does not, at first glance, appear to be particularly patriotic or even political. However, since the end of the eighteenth century, the ranz des vaches and the Älpler archetype, of which Pierre is an example, had been used as part of Swiss nationalist discourse around issues of governmental autonomy, particularly imbued with notions of freedom and equality. The Älpler was a traditional man who made a simple and unambitious life on the Alps while remaining fiercely committed to the preservation of his freedom, family, and heritage. In this case, the character of the singing Älpler was the living descendent of heroic rural patriots who lived according to these “Alpine values.” The original Älpler in Swiss mythology was William Tell who reportedly in the early fourteenth century killed the local representative of the tyrannic Habsburgs, thus heroically restoring freedom and liberty to Switzerland and his Alpine community. Like Tell, the Älpler archetype was always happy to take up arms in defense of his traditional ways of life, which were directly tested during the French occupation. Pierre was the bucolic modern analogue to William Tell, and singing “Les Armaillis” at 82 the restoration of the Fête was equivalent to celebrating restored Swiss independence while expressing optimism for a future rooted in tradition and Alpine heritage. There is very little research on the intersections of politics and music during the French occupation; there is a substantial gap between scholars who have looked at Alpine music before the French occupation, and those who looked at it afterwards. Alpine song during this period, including the ranz des vaches, shows how the Alps became synonymous with Swissness and the Älpler with Swiss patriotism––equivalencies that became so entrenched they seem obvious today. Some historians, such as Mark Lerner and Oliver Zimmer, have considered the whole period from the mid-eighteenth-century to the 1848 revolutions as a single, if tumultuous, historical period that is the genesis for the modern Swiss state.4 Lerner bases most of his research on pamphlets and other ephemeral traces of political discourse; the story of Alpine song and Swissness fits neatly within his framework, partially because Alpine song emerged as a politically freighted genre at the beginning of this period. Just as pamphlets illuminate the ambiguous space articulated by the various nebulous ideas of republicanism, liberty, and freedom, Alpine song illuminates Switzerland’s particular relationship with its history, internal divisions, and styles of governance, and provides a valuable through-line in a time otherwise characterized by constant disruption. This chapter begins the work of giving a history of patriotic Alpine song from the 1760’s–1815, to show how “Les Armaillis” was the 4 Marc H. Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, vol. LIV, Studies in Central European Histories (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). Oliver Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory, and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 83 product of several decades of patriotic song in complex and shifting national contexts. A timeline is included in Appendix A, which might be handy for reference. The genre of Alpine national folksong in Switzerland began in the last third of the eighteenth century in the Helvetic Society (Helvetische Gesellschaft), a group of left- leaning Swiss aristocrats who sought to cultivate a unified Swiss national identity by way of writing a universal Swiss history. The Old Swiss Eidgenossenschaft (Oath Confederation) that existed at that time was a collection of independent republics that were diverse to the point of having nearly no common ground on which to build a national identity. The Helvetic Society is often associated with being the first patriotic group in Switzerland to correlate national identity and virtues with the Alps, and much of their universal history centered on the Alps and idealized Alpine lifestyles. As part of their historical project, the Society compiled songbooks of newly composed educational and moralizing songs about Swiss history, heritage, and daily life. In the nine editions of these Schweizerlieder, published between 1767 and 1798, the Society developed the archetype of the Älpler (Pierre) as an emblem of the Swiss national connection to the Alps, “Alpine values” and the lineage of ancient Alpine heroes, like William Tell. They imbued Aelper with a set of specific republican politics by associating the archetype with idealized rural styles of direct democracy that were endemic to Alpine regions. Part one of this chapter explores the Schweizerlieder tradition within the Helvetic Society, including the ideological origins of the song practice, and how the Alpine themes in group singing and song-based re-enactments of historical moments equated Swissness with Alpineness. The vast majority of the Schweizerlieder were based on aristocratic fantasies of rural, Alpine lifestyles, but towards the end of the century, some 84 members became more interested in using real folksong to express these Alpine values and to cultivate traditional Swiss heritage. One member, Philippe-Sirice Bridel, began searching for a ranz des vaches that had not been polluted by the French. This search resulted in the song “Les Armaillis,” which, based on how it was used, successfully integrated vernacular Alpine practice with the Society’s Alpine ideals. Part two of this chapter traces the lingering effects of the Helvetic Society’s ideals in Alpine song both at home and abroad, after 1798 when Napoleon conquered Switzerland, and the Society dissolved. Napoleon attempted to impose a top-down government, which was antithetical to the rural democratic practices that the Society had once lauded. Alpine song and Älpler became clear indexes for regional autonomy, tradition, and patriotism, and could be used to invoke ideas about freedom even beyond Swiss borders. Within Switzerland, Alpine song and Älpler were expressions of regional and national pride could thus be invoked as a form of resistance against the French. In the period following the civil war, local festivals were organized in attempts to soothe tensions between cantons in German-speaking central Switzerland. These festivals, much like the later Fête, gave the ranz des vaches musical pride of place. Two collections of cow-herding songs published in German-speaking areas of central Switzerland in 1805 and 1812 show how the ranz des vaches explored ideas about Swissness and was used to legitimize different regional identities. Over this period, Alpine song became more exclusively “Älpler” song, thus paving the way for Pierre’s implications in the 1819 Fête. This process was facilitated by the circulation of the song among aristocracy in Geneva, which remained under French control from 1798–1813. 85 The final portion of this chapter considers two musical snuff boxes that play “Les Armaillis,” to show how the song was coded with anti-French and pro-Swiss nationalist sympathies. Pierre and his muddy cows come from a long line of Alpine song that had been coded with ideals of self-rule, nationalism, and patriotism. As the modern Swiss state began to emerge, Alpine song and the ranz des vaches became a way to patriotically signify a connection between body and homeland in a way that recalled Heimweh (Chapter II). The end of this period was the beginning of a split between the ranz des vaches and yodeling. The ranz des vaches became associated with tourist music (which will be discussed in greater length in Chapter IV), and the masculine Älpler component continued on in the form of yodeling (Chapter V). Part 1: The Schweizerlieder Tradition in the Helvetic Society First-time attendees at the annual meetings of the Helvetic Society (the Helvetische Gesellschaft) were often astonished at the collective display of patriotic enthusiasm in the evenings, when members began singing selections from their books of Schweizerlieder. One attendee, Karl Gottlob Küttner, wrote of a meeting in the mid 1770’s that although there were a few copies Schweizerlieder songbooks lying around, the attendees “know most of these songs by heart,” and that no matter their age, “everybody joins in,” and “everybody sings.”5 The melodies were characteristically simple, prompting Küttner to criticize them for initially seeming “too sluggish and psalm-like,” but after a time, the 5 Quoted in Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:202. “Man hat einige Exemplare daliegen: Viele können die mehrsten dieser Lieder auswendig; ein Jeder stimmt ein, Männer von fünfzig und sechzig Jahren, alles singt.” “There are a few copies lying around; many know the songs by heart; everybody joins in, men fifty and sixty years old, everybody sings.” 86 Schweizerlieder won him over, because “simplicity always asserts its rights; I think that the uncomplicated quality is well suited to these Swiss songs, and that some of the music has something jovial about it[...]”6 Indeed, many of the songs on more serious topics used solemn, psalm-like open noteheads, while the lighter songs were often written with brisk 8th- and 16th- note motion. By the early 1780’s, the meetings and their singing grew increasingly akin to a bacchanal. A new French member of the predominantly German society, Hérault de Séchelles, was struck by the outpouring of nationalistic devotion one evening at the 1782 meeting in Olten: New wines were brought in, and suddenly, by an almost miraculous understanding, all of my Swiss company started singing the morning song again. Imagine the jolt that the roof received from two hundred drunken voices, shocked by the dreadful maw, and particularly stressing the last syllables of the verse with all the harshness to which the German language is already so disposed on its own. This music, these cries, these songs of fraternity, this image of the fatherland, these high-pitched sounds of the highest notes, and their harmonies in thirds have such a prodigious effect on Swiss organs that they no longer possess themselves...7 6 It is unclear if this quote is from 1775 or 1776. Quoted in Ibid. “Die Melodien sind so einfach, dass sie mir im ersten Augenblick zu schleppend un zu psalmenmässig vorkamen. Doch behauptet die Einfalt immer ihre Rechte; ich fand, dass der kunstlose Ton sich sehr wohl zu diesen Schweizerliedern schicke, und dass die Musik von einigen etwas Jovialisches hat...” “The melodies are so simple that at first they seemed too sluggish and too psalm-like. Yet simplicity always asserts its rights; I found that the artless tone is very well suited to these Swiss songs, and that some of the music has something jovial about it...” 7 Emily Korzeniewski very kindly helped with this translation. Quoted in Ibid., 1:203. "On rapporta de nouveaux vins, et soudain, par un accord presque miraculeux, voilà tous mes Suisses qui se remettent à chanter la chanson du matin. Figurez-vous l'ébranlement que reçut le grenier de deux cents voix ivres, donnant des coups de gueule affreux, et appuyant surtout sur les dernières syllabes du vers avec toute la rudesse à laquelle la langue allemande est déjà si disposée par elle-même. Cette musique, ces cris, ces chants de fraternité, cette image de la patrie, ces sons aigus des plus hautes notes, et leurs accords à la tierce font un si prodigieux effet sur les organes suisses qu'ils ne se possèdent plus..." "The morning song” possibly refers to the song “An die Sonne,” first printed in 1787, and composed by F. G. Maxewski. The subtitle explains that it is to be sung by a traveler waking up in the Alps, “Morgensang eines Wandrers nach der Schweiz.” Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als ein zweiter Theil zu Hrn. Lavaters Schweizerliedern, 135. 87 To be sure, an increase in alcohol consumption (much to the consternation of some older members) contributed to the increasingly zealous singing. However, the energy that the Society members sang with, witnessed by Séchelles, had been gathering momentum for more than a decade by that point; this annual group singing created a sense of belonging, purpose, and brotherhood. The “images of the fatherland” were often images of the Alps, and the men frequently called one another “brother,” emphasizing their shared cultural lineage. The brothers of the Society were a group of federalist aristocrats who, during the last third of the eighteenth century, gathered with the purpose of cultivating common identity and harmony––Eintracht––between the often-fractious cantons of the Old Eidgenossenschaft, by way of building a national history. The Society initially met as a group of historians; Swiss Eintracht required a common Swiss history, but one that still acknowledged various regional, linguistic, and religious differences within the Eidgenossenschaft. It is in this, the embrace of the gulf between communities, where the Swiss national project differs markedly from others in Europe, although much of the Society’s verbiage was similar to concurrent movements happening across Europe, including Germany, Austria, and France. The Schweizerlieder song tradition had begun in the late 1760’s when a new group of enthusiastic young leftists joined the Society with an intensified investment in the Eintracht project. This “Schinznach Group,” so named because from 1766 to 1780 the annual meetings occurred in Schinznach, explained that their sole purpose was to establish friendship, love, connection, and harmony among the Confederates.8 While they 8 Ibid., 1:54–55. 88 were still interested in working on the historical component of the Society, they directed their historical efforts more explicitly towards cultivating the ethos of Swiss brotherhood, specifically, developing an inspirational historical narrative that could encompass all of Switzerland and encourage a sense of kinship and shared heritage between various otherwise disparate populations. A common song tradition on shared historical and heroic topics was seen as another way to foster a universal sentiment of Swissness. At the 1766 meeting, the president Martin Planta suggested to the society that they should compose some songs “to awaken the virtuous and generous sentiments among the rural people, to vividly present the best deeds of our fathers, in simple tones accompanied by light music or typical melodies.”9 Planta specified that songs were to be musically and topically accessible to all Swiss people, regardless of religion, gender, or class, which would allow them to impact even the most remote, illiterate corners of Switzerland. Planta expressed hope that one might eventually hear these songs “among the tailors, day laborers, farmers, and craftsmen,” who would sing “about the praiseworthy deeds of our ancestors.”10 One enterprising member, Johann Kaspar Lavater, without being asked directly, composed twenty-four “Swiss songs” (Schweizerlieder) in response to Planta’s request. Lavater, who is remembered primarily for his role in pioneering the study of physiognomy, was also a fiercely liberal member of the Society, a la Rousseau’s Social Contract, and Lavater had previous experience composing music for his congregation as 9 Quoted in Ibid., 1:199. “Zur Erweckung tugendhafter und grossmüthiger Gesinnungen bey dem Landvolk, die besten Thaten unserer Väter in einfaltigen Liedern lebhaft vorzustellen, die mit einer leichten Musik oder ihren gewohnten Melodien begleitet wären.” 10 Ibid. “...Unter den Schnittern, Taglöhnern, Acker- und Handwerksleuten die rühmlichen Thaten unserer Vorältern besingen hören und bey vielen den Geist der Nachahmung aufwachen sehen.” 89 a Zwinglian pastor.11 Lavater distributed his book of songs to Society members a couple months before the meeting in May of 1767, so that by the time all the members arrived at Schinznach, they had taken a look at the songs. The frontispiece to this book is shown in Figure 12. Figure 12: Frontispiece to the first edition of Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Schweizerlieder, Bern (1767). 11 There are intriguing parallels between the reception of Rousseau’s political writings and the initial Schweizerlieder, which will have to be explored in another iteration of this study. Lavater and another member of the Helvetic Society, Johann Heinrich Füsili both visited Rousseau in Môtiers in the early 1760’s, around the same time that the Helvetic Society was established. François Jacob, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Dictionnaire Historique de La Suisse, 2012, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/009547/2012-05- 25/. For a detailed study of the reception of Rousseau’s Heloise and an account of his banishment because of his politics and texts, see chapters 11 and 12 in Maurice Cranston, The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754–1762 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). For an initial discussion of political backlash against the Schweizerlieder, see Bettina Volz-Tobler, “Reformierte patriotische Dichtung: Johann Caspar Lavaters ‘Schweizerlieder,’” Historische Horizonte, 2002, 187. For more on the Social Contract see David Lay Williams, Rousseau’s “Social Contract”: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 90 Unfortunately, the “light and lyrical melodies” that Planta requested were not printed in the 1767 edition; scholars assume the texts were parodies, sung to known melodies. Lavater not only used the songs to tell stories from Swiss history, but he also included substantial historical narratives that prefaced most of the songs. The first section of the Schweizerlieder was a set of twelve “Historical songs,” describing the “praiseworthy deeds” of the ancestors from the so called “Heroic” age of Switzerland. Most of these historical songs were about battles, and a smaller number focused on legendary Swiss heroes. Lavater organized these songs chronologically, beginning with the story of Albrecht of Zürich from 1298 and ending with the Battle of Nancy in 1477. The second section was a set of twelve “Patriotic Songs” that espoused what the Society identified as specifically Swiss values. All of the historical songs and a few of the patriotic songs are preceded by an explanatory foreword, some of which are the same length or longer than the songs themselves. For the historical songs in particular, the prefaces provided background information and a fuller version of the story than appeared in the lyrics. The Schweizerlieder were not only a book of music, but a means for distributing a non-trivial history compendium as well. By combining a history of national heroes with models of morals and behaviors for contemporary patriots, particularly in the twelve patriotic songs, Lavater effectively provided the reader and singer with guidelines for following in the footsteps of Swiss heroes. These songs could be both heroic, as in the clearly analogous battle songs that, for instance, proclaimed the singers’ willingness to die for his country, and comparatively 91 secular, as in the patriotic drinking songs.12 These patriotic songs frequently referenced content from the historical songs, thus situating the patriotic expression in its larger context of Swiss history. In sum, while Lavater’s Schweizerlieder collection was certainly a musical document, it can also be seen as a sizeable history text that demanded re-enactment and participation through the medium of song.13 Over the next thirty years, as communal singing became a mainstay of the annual meetings, members contributed to the contents of the Schweizerlieder collections. Many of the long-term additions to the Schweizerlieder can be traced back to the epilogue Lavater attached to the 1767 publication, in which he suggested topics for new songs that would be suitable for the Society’s goals: “Historical,” “Patriotic,” “moral,” and “Songs for Country People.” In this last category, between “Shepherd songs” (Hirtenlied) and “Today’s song,” (Heuteslied) Lavater requested that someone compose an “Alp song, or better, a Kühreihen.”14 Society members almost immediately began composing songs in these topics, and in later editions of the Schweizerlieder, Lavater’s historical prose was dramatically thinned to make space for the rapid addition of new music.15 12 These are nos. 4 and 5: Republikanisches Trinklied für Bürger von Zürich, Lied der demokratischen Kantone auf ihre jährliche Landsgemeinde. “Republican Drinking Song for the Citizens of Zürich,” and “The Song for the Democratic Cantons for their annual Landsgemeinde.” 13 As an adjacent project to the Schweizerlieder, the Gesellschaft also wrote historical and educational cantatas, which have yet to be the subject of any musicological study. 14 Johann Caspar Lavater, Schweizerlieder (Bern: Ludwig Walthard, 1767), n.p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-10870. “Alplied oder verbesserer Kühreihen.” This same request would be repated in the 1775 edition as well: Johann Caspar Lavater, Schweizerlieder von J. C. Lavater. Vierte verbesserte und Vermehrte Aüflag (Zürich: David Bürkli, 1775), 335, http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara- 82157. 15 Im Hof and Capitani give an invaluable table of these topics and these songs in their tome. Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:241–249. Some of Lavater’s recommended topics were expanded upon in educational cantatas for schoolchildren. A few of these scenes can be found in the final section of Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als 92 Various society members also contributed musical notation. In 1769, Johann Heinrich Schmidlin, a friend of Lavater, composed new melodies for the Schweizerlieder. The songs were issued in four voice parts, with basso continuo and inner voices added in 1775 by Johann Heinrich Egli from Zürich.16 All were all strophic, mostly syllabic, and very singable. Over time, with a couple notable exceptions, these new compositions largely crowded out Lavater’s original material.17 Nonetheless, Society members viewed Lavater as the father of the Schweizerlieder project, as shown in the frontispiece to the 1786 edition of Schweizerlieder. Figure 13: Frontispiece to the 1786 edition of Schweizerlieder, Bern (1786). ein zweiter Theil zu Hrn. Lavaters Schweizerliedern (Zürich: David Bürkli, 1787), http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-34918. 16 Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:202. 17 Ibid., 1:203. 93 In this image, a man––dressed like William Tell––shows his son a statue of Lavater, which is marked with a lyre and the letter “L.” Despite the massive success of the song tradition within the Society and Planta’s original hope for the Schweizerlieder to inform and instruct all the people of Switzerland, the songs were rarely, if ever, heard or performed outside of the Society.18 Nonetheless, over the years there were several––perhaps hyperbolic––assertions otherwise. One Society member named Johann Georg Zimmerman recounted that during his travels around Switzerland, he had heard the songs sung by enthusiastic children, women with sparkling eyes, and fathers and sons who had made a pilgrimage to William Tell’s chapel, specifically to sing Lavater’s “Tell” song. Zimmermann added that he himself sang the Schweizerlieder while out among the Alps: “I heard the rocks echoing as often as I sang these songs, according to my own, self-invented, heartfelt melody, on the famous fields and hills, where the great deeds of our ancestors happened ...”19 Alpine Values Lavater’s original songs, and those that followed, focused on two key values that the Society identified as universally Swiss: Freyheit (freedom) and Eintracht (harmony). Given the linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity in Switzerland, harmony was a much more practical goal than unity. Both Freyheit and Eintract begat the other: all Swiss men 18 Max Peter Baumann, “Volkslied und Volksgesang,” in Volksmusik in der Schweiz, ed. Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser (Zürich: Schwabe Verlag, 1985), 105. 19 “Die Felse hörte ich widerhallen, so oft ich diese Lieder, nach meiner eigenen, selbsterfundenen, herzlichen Melodie, auf den berühmten Feldern und Hügeln sang, wo die grossen Thaten unserer Ahnen geschahen...” Quoted in Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:204. 94 found harmony with one another through their common commitment to the ideal of freedom. Since the French revolution, “freedom” has become almost a cliché of patriotism across nations, but it had a much more specific meaning in the Swiss context: specifically, Freyheit described the preservation against “tyranny,” usually by referencing preservation against foreign occupation or obligation (such as mercenary service). A closer examination shows that Freyheit also alluded to the preservation of rural (read: Alpine) practices against the influence of urban cultural and economic pressures. Since the Helvetic Society saw the Alps as the seat of Swiss virtues, the Alps themselves eventually became the national symbol for these ideals. The Society derived their Freyheit ideal in large part from a system of hyper- localized democratic practices endemic to rural and Alpine regions, called the Landsgemeinde, or cantonal assembly. Many communities, particularly in inner and Eastern Switzerland had self-regulated according to the Landsgemeinde throughout the eighteenth century.20 The Landsgemeinde was a direct democracy of eligible male citizens who would meet outside and vote on various issues by raising their hands. Thus largely exempt from lordly authority, areas that practiced the Landsgemeinde managed their own affairs, sharing property and organizing their own labor and crop rotation. In these regions, liberty was synonymous with the freedom to self-govern without service to some external authority.21 This self-government frequently created tensions between rural 20 Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, LIV:16–17. 21 Ibid. Sometimes their isolation from the rest of the world was overstated, and scholars dispute how truly democratic or independent the Landsgemeinde actually were, but it is not in my interest to pursue that question here. What’s important is that they were portrayed as fiercely democratic and largely understood as such, particularly in inner Switzerland. 95 governments and the urban centers that often tried to meddle in their affairs. For instance, Society members largely believed that the cities Zürich and Bern acted too aggressively toward their rural subjects.22 Thus, references to Freyheit, as well as its foil, “tyranny,” also indicated respect for rural independence. The “Song for the Democratic Canton for its yearly Landsgemeine [sic]” repeatedly invokes notions of freedom, equating it with the open air as well as a man’s patriotic duty to assemble: Auf! Freyes Volk! versammle dich! Up! Free people! Assemble yourselves! Und tretet, Brüder, brüderlich And step, Brother, in a brotherly way Ins friedliche Getümmel! Into the joyful crowd! Der Jüngling und der alte Mann, The young man, and the old man, Wer kommen soll und kommen kann, Who can and should come, Komm unter freyen himmel! Come under the open sky! Figure 14: Score to the “Song for the democratic canton for their yearly Landsgemeinde,” in Schweizerlieder, Bern (1775), page 56. 22 Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:225. 96 The seriousness of the topic is underscored by the psalm-like white notes and could have easily been one of the solemn songs Küttner initially complained about. The preservation of these traditional assemblies and their consequent Freyheit is often attributed in part to the power of the mountains, just as local Landgemeinde rule preserved regional, rural autonomy over distant, urban pressures. In the “Battle of Morgarten,” Alpine soldiers have neither armor nor shields, but freedom gives them the necessary courage to fight: No armor and no shield protected The breast of the sons of the Alps! When freedom [Freyheit] heats blood and arm, Heroic courage protects his breast!23 This song is a typical example of how Swiss soldiers, who fight for the preservation of freedom, are regularly linked with the mountains. In the “Battle of Räffels,” a regional leader, the Glarner Landsgemeind, speaks bravely of defending Switzerland in his “mountain cradle.”24 In the “Battle of St. Jakob of Basel,” the soldiers’ triumph is compared to the mountain heights (“Sie trutzten gleich den Alpenhöhn”), and so on.25 The call to fight for traditional values is akin to the call for male attendance at the yearly Landsgemeinde. 23 “Kein Panzer und kein Schild beschüzt / Der Alpensöhne Brust! / Wenn Freyheit Blut und Arm erhizt, / Dekt Heldenmuth die Brust!” Lavater, Schweizerlieder, 46. 24 Ibid., 81. “So sprach in seiner Berge Schooß [sic] / Der Glarner Landsgemeind, / Und sie, der Freyheit treu, / beschloß Zu streiten mit dem Fiend.” 25 Ibid., 89. 97 Just as the Alps empowered men to fight for Swiss Freyheit, they also appear as agents for Swiss Eintracht (Harmony). In the song “The Swiss Band,” the Alps are described as a witness, like God, for the founding of Switzerland, which is based on an act of Eintracht.26 The song tells the story of the “Oath of the Rütli” when, according to legend, representatives from the three founding cantons of Switzerland (Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden) gathered in the Rütli meadow to pledge allegiance to one another. The Alps are described as a witness: The silent rocky landscape Saw them as they knelt, In heaven, God heard their oath And saw their courage. 27 This is another song that is written in a solemn style, and the 1788 edition gives a further explanation for the significance of the mountains in this stanza: “the nearby rocks were as if witnesses of their oath and of their prayer before God.”28 Like Freyheit, the notion of Eintracht was informed by the idealized rural Landsgemeinde. For the Society, true harmony required an egalitarian social structure, and the Landsgemeinde was, at least on the surface, a wholly egalitarian practice in which every vote was equal. The Schweizerlieder often referred to these self-contained, 26 This is discussed also in Dariusz Komorowski, “Rütli: National Foundation Myth from an Individual Perspective. Herman Burger’s Novel Die Künstliche Mutter,” in Crossing Frontiers, ed. Barbara Burns and Joy Charnley (Amsterdam and New York: Brill, 2010), 30. Also, many of the frontispieces to the various editions of the Schweizerlieder feature the Rütlischwur. 27 “Die stille felsige Nature / Sah sie auf ihrem Knie, / Im Himmel hörte Gott den Schwur, /Und blickte Muth auf sie.” Lavater, Schweizerlieder, 36. 28 “Um sie her war alles still; und die nahen Felsen waren gleichsam Zeugen ihres Eidschwures und ihres Gebethes vor Gott.” Johann Caspar Lavater, Schweizerlieder von Johann Caspar Lavater. Neue, vollständige Auflage, besonders für Schulen (Zürich: David Bürkli, 1788), http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara- 85692. 98 supposedly egalitarian practices with the word “republican.” For instance, the “Republican Drinking Song” (“Republikanish Trinklied”) explains that rich or poor, large or small, high or low status, all men who gather in good Eintracht are brothers by virtue of their love for the fatherland: We are here in good Eintracht, We citizens, friends, brothers! We drink from a cup And sing Swiss songs! We drink to good health, in free peace, Good health and pleasure, too! Live, dear brothers, live! We are poor, we are rich, Large and small, Are Brüder, are all equal, The noble, and the commoner! And bind a sacred bond to everyone! We live only for the fatherland! Let the fatherland live!29 29 Lavater, Schweizerlieder, 134–135. “In guter Eintracht sind wir hier, / Wir Bürger, Freunde, Brüder! /Aus einem Becher trinken wir, /Und singen Schweizerlieder! /Wir bringen* uns, in freyer Ruh, /Gesundheit und Vergnügen zu! /Lebt, liebe Brüder! Lebet! /Wir seyen arm, wir seyen reich, /Der Grosse wie der Kleine, / Sind Brüder, sind sich alle gleich, / Der Edle, der Gemeine! / Und bindet allein heilig Band! /Wir leben nur fürs Vaterland! / Das Vaterland soll leben.” I translate “wir bringen” as “we drink to good health” because the original Schweizerlieder includes a citation for the phrase “wir bringen” that describes it as “diss ist der eigentliche schweizerische Ausdruk beym Gesundheit trinken,” or “this is the actual Swiss expression for drinking to good health.” Ibid., 133. Volz Tobler also discusses this song. Bettina Volz-Tobler, “Reformierte patriotische Dichtung: Johann Caspar Lavaters ‘Schweizerlieder,’” Historische Horizonte, 2002, 26–27. 99 Figure 15: Score for the “Republican Drinking Song,” in Schweizerlieder, Bern (1775), page 54. Many of the ways that the Society invoked their egalitarian ideas used the same standard patriotic language that was common to Germany, Austria, and France. For instance, the Society invoked the egalitarian ideal among their membership by using the neutral term “Brüder,” meaning “brother.”30 Similarly, the egalitarianism among brothers was underscored by the trope of “Swiss blood.” For the Society, to be Swiss meant to live according to the values of Eintracht and Freyheit, and as long as a man did so, he had Swiss blood. This notion of a cultural bloodline underscored by words like “blood,” 30 Songwriters used it typically in a way that deliberately avoided class distinctions, instead invoking the notion that all Christian Swiss men were equal in the eyes of the Lord. Lavater used the word “Brüder” frequently in his forward to the 1767 Schweizerlieder. The Praise-song of Helvetic Eintracht addressed socioeconomic differences head on: “Brothers! He wants us all!/ every virtue of every station.” “Brüder! Er will wol uns allen! / Jede Tugend jedes Stands” Johann Caspar Lavater, Schweizerlieder von J. C. Lavater. Vierte verbesserte und Vermehrte Aüflag (Zürich: David Bürkli, 1775), 184, http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e- rara-82157. So long as a man loves God and behaves morally, “whatever he wants to call himself / He is a Brüder and a Christian!” “Mag, wie er nur will, sich nennen; /Brüder ist er, und ein Christ!” Ibid., 185. This same use of “brother” can also be seen in the earlier example of “Song for the Democratic Canton for its yearly Landsgemeine” Volz-Tobler has a particularly substantial discussion of the use of the word “brother.” Volz-Tobler, “Reformierte patriotische Dichtung: Johann Caspar Lavaters ‘Schweizerlieder,’” 186; Ulrich Gäbler, “Die Schweizer – en ‘auserwähltes Volk’?,” Zwingliana Reformiertes Erbe 19, no. 1 (1992): 150. 100 “brother,” and “fatherland” was also geared toward mending one of the more significant sources of tension within the old Eidgenossenschaft (Oath Confederation), like elsewhere in Europe: the division between Catholic and Protestant (sometimes called “Reformed”) cantons. This idea for “ecumenical patriotism” ––a type of patriotism that could include all Christian denominations––dated back to the founding of the Society. 31 Hypothetically, songs that professed ecumenical patriotic sentiment could unite the citizens of the Catholic and Reformed cantons as both Swiss and Christians. This can be seen, for instance, in the song “The Swiss Man,” in which dedication to Freyheit was the primary prerequisite for Swissness: Who, you Swiss man? Who has Swiss blood? He who with earnestness and joyful courage Does good to the Vaterland, Rests peacefully in its cradle, Does not fear his enemies; Pure Swiss blood flows in him. Whoever hates falsehood and malicious deceit, And like snakes flees every quarrel; And happily enjoys what God gives him, Gladly sheds his healthy blood If his death is another life, He is a Swiss and a Christian! 32 One of the more remarkable ways the Society celebrated their cultural “blood” heritage was in the so-called “Blood Ritual.” At the 1782 meeting in Olten, someone put 31 The desire for ecumenical patriotism dated back to the founding of the Gesellschaft. Gäbler, “Die Schweizer – en ‘auserwähltes Volk’?,” 147. 32 “Wer, Schweizer! Wer hat Schweizerblut! / Der, der mit Ernst und frohem Muth / Dem Vaterlande Gutes thut,/ In seinem Schoße friedlich ruht, / Nicht fürchtet seiner Feinde Wuht;/ In dem fließt reines Schweizerblut. // Wer Falschheit haßt, und arge List, / Und Schlangen gleich fliegt jeden Zwist; / Und, was ihm Gott gibt, froh genießt, / Gern sein gesundes Blut vergießt, / Wenn sein Tod anderer Leben ist, / Der ist ein Schweizer und ein Christ!” Lavater, Schweizerlieder, 123. 101 a statue of Tell up on a table, and people began spontaneously singing “Lavater’s Tell song,” presumably “Wilhelm Tell” from the Historical Songs. This tune was then followed by other historical songs, and in recognition of the number of Swiss casualties in historic battles, the members passed around a glass of wine. Everyone took a symbolic sip of “Swiss blood” in honor of the fallen soldiers who had given their lives for Freyheit. This became an annual event. A cantor would sing (unclear what) and a mug full of “Swiss wine” or “Swiss blood” was passed around the room and emptied, not unlike some Masonic rituals33 One element that seems to have remained constant during the subsequent enactments of the “Blood Ritual” was group singing, in which they retold historical events and glorified the figure of Tell.34 Alpine Heroes and Älpler Since Swissness was the product of values and behavior, the songs about heroes in the Schweizerlieder were as much about to be virtuous as how to be Swiss. In particular, William Tell was the ultimate example of a Christian, patriotic fighter for liberty. Later, Niklaus von der Flüe was added as a Catholic counterpart. Both heroes were Alpine, because the Society believed the Alps could pull forth a Swiss man’s full potential for virtue and heroism. The initial heroic archetype for the Alpine hero was William Tell. An Älpler and a commoner, Tell is elevated by his willingness to fight for Swiss freedom against their 33 Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:206–207. 34 Ibid., 1:210. 102 illegitimate Hapsburg rulers. One day, in a petty power fit, the regional representative of the Hapsburgs, named Gessler, commanded Tell to shoot an arrow at an apple balanced on his son’s head. One thing leads to another, and Tell is taken into captivity, but valiantly escapes into the mountains. Tell situates himself in a narrow mountain pass that Gessler will have to travel, and when Gessler passes, Tell kills him. The last stanza of the Wilhelm Tell Lied in the 1767 edition of the Schweizerlieder celebrates this restoration of Freyheit: The freedom of the fatherland Blossoms after the fall of Gessler, And soon its splendor spreads And shines everywhere.35 The legend of Tell foregrounded the idea of freedom and rural autonomy, and thus it worked easily within the Society to provide a model of ideal Swiss heroic behavior. The one problem with Tell was that he was Protestant. This not only failed to help with the Society’s long-term ecumenical objective, it was also a reminder of the disproportionately large percentage of Protestants in their membership––it seemed impossible to foster ecumenical patriotism on a national level if they could not do so in their own organization. 36 In a partial attempt to remedy the Protestant tilt, starting in the 1775 edition of the Schweizerlieder, Lavater included a new song about the medieval Catholic saint, Niklaus von der Flüe (fulfilling one of his own requests from 1767). 35 “Die Freyheit seines Vaterlands / Steht auf mit Geßlers Fall, / Und bald verbreitet sich ihr Glanz, / Bald strahlt sie überall.” Lavater, Schweizerlieder, 28. 36 Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:103. 103 Like Tell, Niklaus was celebrated as a peacemaker, if not a fighter; according to legend, he mediated a particularly tense episode of cantonal conflict in 1481, and not only prevented civil war, but also strengthened ties between cantons. This included the admission of Catholic cantons Solothurn and Fribourg to the Confederation, much as the Society aimed for a larger Catholic membership. Whereas Tell is often associated with the preservation of Freyheit, Niklaus can be linked more with the general cultivation of Helvetic Eintracht, the other Alpine value. The relationship between Swiss heroes and rural Alpine values is underscored by how the stories of both Tell and Niklaus include Alpine elements. First, both stories involve mountains to different degrees. The Tell legend ends when he hides in a mountain pass and kills Gessler; this not only signifies that Tell is both more capable in the mountains than Gessler, but it also signals the native Swiss connection to the power of the mountains. The Alps offer him refuge, and by extension, the salvation of Switzerland. The song “Tells Geburts-Ort” describes the Alpine essence of Tell’s character and how the Alps formed him into the hero he would later become. The song makes several references to the mountains and the mountain activities that made him strong. For instance, the fifth stanza describes how his heroic spirit rose from the rockfalls, and the final stanza describes how the chamois hunt made him strong.37 The Alpine elements in Niklaus’s story are more implicit; he was brought up in an Alpine village, and went into isolation nearby, but the song does not mention this. However, his history emphasizes how he facilitated Eintracht by smoothing relations between rural and 37 “Wo sich des Felsenstrom ergießt /Erhub sich früh sein Helden-Geist” and “Das Ruder und die Gemsenjagt/Hat seine Glieder stark gemacht!” Johannes Schmidlin and Johann Caspar Lavater, Schweizerlieder mit Melodien (Zürich, 1786), 84–85. 104 urban Swiss communities (recalling the call for equality discussed above), corresponding with the division between high and lowland. Both heroes also behave according to Alpine values. Both Tell and Niklaus are “simple” men who put their country first and the values of Freyheit and Eintracht before their own self-preservation. Furthermore, as a hermit, Niklaus embraced an ascetic, isolated lifestyle which was a rejection of the luxury and corruption of cities, much as the Landsgemeinde preserved themselves from the influences of urban centers. The Society developed the connection between the Swiss environment and the qualities of Swissness in their second edition of the Schweizerlieder, which came out in 1775. This edition is expanded with five new songs in a new section, added to the original twenty-four historical and patriotic songs. In one new song, unambiguously titled “The Nature in Switzerland,” Lavater describes how a deep link draws the Swiss heart to the mountains (not totally unlike Heimweh).38 The reason for this yearning, besides the scenery itself, is alluded to in the several stanzas near the end of the text, which describe how the mountains and their majesty make the people noble, passionate, and capable of great deeds: Majestic nature Creates noble passion! Not only desire for great deeds, But deeds of heroic power. [...]39 38 How my heart stretches in love / On this mountain high! / How it longs upwards from the valley, / To look down into the valley!” “Wie sich mein Herz in Liebe dehnt / Auf dieser Berge Höh’n! / Wie’s von dem Thal empor sich fehnt / Ins Thal hinabzusehn!” Johannes Schmidlin, ed., Schweizerlieder mit Melodieen (Zürich: David Bürgkli, 1775), 76–77, http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-23497. 39 “Die majestätische Natur / Würkt edle Leidenschaft! / Nicht Wunsch nach grossen Thaten nur, / Zu Thaten Helden-Kraft. // Die Welt, die Helden einst gezeugt, / Wo Fuß der Helden stand, / Die Weld, der Helden sich gebeugt, / Die Helden überwand, –– // Cut stanza: The world that heroes once gave rise to, / 105 The little mountain-lined world, Full of great deeds, How that world calls out to every man That he can and should be a hero, a hero!40 Often reiterated in these texts is the theme that Swiss men are free by the grace and power of nature. “The Nature in Switzerland” goes on to explains that God and nature make Swiss people free and hard-working; specifically, nature “breathes the sense of Freyheit into [his] eyes, mouth, and breast!”41 This language also recalls the summons to open-air patriotic duty in the song for the annual Landsgemeinde. Assuming the Alps conjured up the best of a Swiss man, the Älpler was, by definition, the most virtuous and heroic living Swiss. Two songs about generically named “Älpler” first included back-to-back in the 1787 edition, portray the Älpler as the archetype of the pastoral-heroic, and as an Alpine patriot. Both songs are titled “Der Älpler,” and were written in response to Lavater’s request twenty years earlier for the “Alplied, or better, a Kühreihen.”42 The first “Der Älpler” is by J. L. Am Bühl and is Where the heroes stood, / The world to which the heroes yielded, / The heroes overcame. Lavater, Schweizerlieder von J. C. Lavater. Vierte Verbesserte Und Vermehrte Aüflag, 341. 40 “Die majestätische Natur / Würkt edle Leidenschaft! / Nicht Wunsch nach grossen Thaten nur, / Zu Thaten Helden-Kraft. // Die Welt, die Helden einst gezeugt, / Wo Fuß der Helden stand, / Die Weld, der Helden sich gebeugt, / Die Helden überwand, –– // Die kleine Bergbegränzte Welt,/ Von grossen Thaten voll, / Wie ruft sie jedem, daß er Held, / Held werden kann und soll!” Lavater, Schweizerlieder von J. C. Lavater. Vierte Verbesserte Und Vermehrte Aüflag, 341. 41 “Natur –– Du athmest Freiheitsinn/In Aug und Mund und Brust!” Schmidlin, Schweizerlieder mit Melodieen, 76–77. 42 See Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:246. 106 standard pastoral fare.43 The Älpler, the lyric persona, sings happily from a rocky cliff, in “the dawn throne.” He is in many ways the example of the ideal, peaceful Swiss life lived in Freyheit. This “happy son of the Alps” describes how he lives in harmony with the various natural features of the Alps (spruce forests, rocky hills, clear waterfalls, and so on).44 The second “Der Älpler,” by L. Meister, recalls more militant themes of Alpine Freyheit, and alludes to the character of William Tell.45 The last two stanzas describe the altars of freedom that God built on the mountains where tyrants are disdained and freedom is constantly protected and revitalized.46 While Tell’s name is not used, the heroic parallels are undeniable for those familiar with the song text. Meister’s Älpler song links the Älpler archetype and the singing Society members with the common, heroic Alpine inheritance. One of the defining qualities of the Älpler, however, is his staunch disinterest in ever leaving the mountains. If the mountains conjure up the full heroic and patriotic potential of a man, whether it be Tell, Niklaus, or a member of the Society, it would be actively detrimental for him to leave the mountains. The songs written for the Society’s 43 Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als ein zweiter Theil zu Hrn. Lavaters Schweizerliedern, 145–148. 44 Ibid., 145. “Auf Himmel hohen Felse rüken, / Der Morgenröthe Thron, / Sing ich dem Himmel mein Entzüken, / Ich froher Alpen Sohn.” 45 Ibid., 148–150. 46 Ibid., 150. “Auch nie entwenden Friedensheere / Der Freyheit wenige Altäre, / Vom Schöpfer selbst auf dieser Höh erbaut! / Tyrannen bebt, wohin ihr immer schaut / Könnt’ ihr am Fluß, im Thal, auf Höhen / Gespenster der Tyrannen sehen! / Fluch jennen Trümmern schnöder Tyrannen, / Heil jedem Denkmal alter Schweizertreu! // Hier ist, wo immer neu belebt / Der Freyheit Athmen mich umschwebet! / [...]” 107 “Swiss Journey” in the 1775 edition of the Schweizerleider evidence how the Alps were understood as an agent of national heritage and values that could manifest in strong physical and moral bodies as well as heroic and patriotic acts. The Swiss Journey Members of the Helvetic Society worried about foreign influence on the youth of Switzerland and the apparent ambivalence Swiss youth showed towards their Alpine heritage. This was partially in response to increasing numbers of travelers coming to Switzerland, including the English Grand Tour, and the disconnect between foreign interest in the Alps and the apparent lackluster interest the young Swiss men showed in the mountains. At the 1769 meeting, the society proposed that an effort be made to replace the typical “Tour d’Europe” with the “Schweizerreisen,” or “Swiss journey.” 47 This sentiment was summed up in the presidential speech by Hanz Rudolf Schinz the year prior; the Swiss journey would redirect the youth away from the “big capitals filled with every plague of vice,” and instead redirect them to the “far more useful and pleasant [...] charming areas of our Alpine terrain.”48 This Alpine travel would benefit the Swiss youth both by bringing him into contact with characteristically Swiss practices and 47 This is discussed in Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:172–176. The proposal was titled: “Vorschlag, Die Reisen Eydgenössischer Jünglinge mit Nutzen auf ihr Vaterland einzuschränken. An die Helvetische Gesellschaft in Schinznach A. 1769.” It was be part of the Gesellschaft’s larger interest in revising the educational system of the country. 48 “Weit nützlichere und angenehmere Besuchung der reizenden Reviere unsers Alpen-Geländes und die Ausspähung des Guten und Schönen in denverschiedenen Verfassungen unserer eignen Völkerschaft denselben vorgezogen und geübt” werden.” Quoted in Ibid., 1:130. The Swiss journey was partially encouraged by the increasing foreign interest in traveling in Switzerland, particularly following the publications of Scheuchzer, Haller, Gessner, and Saussures (as discussed in Chapter II). Ibid., 1:174. In 1795, Bridel published on the same topic, and strongly suggested the young men visit historical sites and witness the various “great natural phenomena” of the country. He also makes note of the physical benefit of these travels. Ibid., 1:174–5. 108 values, and by restoring his physical fortitude to something more akin to their heroic forefathers. Society members composed songs to direct the young men in Alpine travel that were first included in the 1775 edition of the Schweizerlieder. The song “Parting song for a Schweizer who goes on a Journey” was an example of a song that young men should sing for their friends if they displayed an interest in traveling outside of Switzerland.49 The friends should warn the errant young man to not let curiosity for other places and ways of living lead him astray. They mock the would-be traveler for admiring hats and fancy hair, and explain how, when he returns, he will act like a king, show disdain toward his friends, and generally have transformed into a ponce. He should travel, “as one should travel, in Schweizeralpenland!” breaking bread with shepherds and visiting inspirational landmarks rather than the fleeting titillations and superficial entertainments of foreign lands. 50 Should the young man still prefer foreign dalliances over his fatherland, he will no longer be Swiss (“Ha! / Der will kein Schweizer seyn!”), because if “your country [is] not enough for you? Then you are not worthy of it.”51 49 The forward to the song in the 1788 edition ends with the exhortation: “Swiss youth! Sing songs of this kind to all your friends who solemnly bid you farewell when they are about to begin their journeys! [...] I have seen a few youths who would most likely not be much better, at least much calmer in their hearts, if they had never seen Paris.” “Schweizerjünglinge! Singt dergleichen Lieder allen euren Freunden zu, die feyrlich von euch Abschied nehmen, wenn sie ihre Reisen anzutretten im Begrisse sind [...] Ich habe noch wenige Jünglinge gesehn, die nicht höchtwahrscheinlich viel besser, wenigstens in ihrem Herzen viel ruhiger wären, wenn sie Paris nie gesehn hätten.” Lavater, Schweizerlieder von Johann Caspar Lavater. Neue, vollständige Auflage, besonders für Schulen, 132–133. The author of this song is not notated –– possibly it is Lavater. 50 Ibid., 135. “Nimm, Brüder! Unser Lebewohl, / Und schlage Hand in Hand, / Und reise, wie man reisen soll, / Im Schweizeralpenland! / Fühl auf der Berge stolzen Haupt / Der tiefen Thäler Glück; / Die Freyheit, die kein Reid uns raubt; / Und Freude sey dein Blick.” 51 Ibid. “Ist dir dein Vaterland nicht gnug; [sic] / So bist du sein nicht werth.” 109 Other new songs included for the Schweizerreisen often described locations a young man might visit on his journey, with texts that exhorted the loveliness of specific places, and addressed the routines of traveling and celebrate Alpine values. These songs appear to have been meant to be sung from their titular mountain tops. Some of the songs of places include “Der Rheinfall bey Schaffhausen,” “The Birthplace of Tell,” and two songs about the Zürichsee. One of these, “An die Sonne” ––to be sung by a traveler waking up in the Alps, explicated by the subtitle “Morgensang eines Wandrers nach der Schweiz.”52 (This song could also have been what Séchelles described as “the morning song” in Olten in 1782.) Songs of republican inspiration included pieces like “Mountain Travel Song,” and “On the Journey Across the Gotthard Pass,” among others. The song texts also included relevant historical content that called upon the young man to take up the heroic mantle of his heroic forefathers. By way of example, one of his stops might include the Rigi, which tourists were starting to become interested in as a historical and pilgrimage site. Unlike a tourist, the young Swiss man would visit the Rigi to connect to his Swiss heritage. The song, “Vom Rigiberg, auf die demokratischen Cantonen” is essentially a sermon about freedom and liberty, and which calls upon the young man to prepare to lay down his life for the Swiss value of Freyheit.53 Presumably, the song is to be sung at the summit of the Rigiberg, a mountain massif in Central 52 The composer is F. G. Maxewski. Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als ein zweiter Theil zu Hrn. Lavaters Schweizerliedern, 135. 53 Only the first two of the twenty-one stanzas mention the actual mountain; those two stanzas mostly build up the Rigi as a pulpit for the later sermon about Freyheit. After equating the mountains with Freyheit, the rest of the song calls on Swiss men to act according to democratic values, by being faithful to God, and being willing to lay his life down for freedom, and so forth. In exchange, God will protect pious peasants against taxes, against the frivolous fees of greedy state systems, and the corruption of cosmopolitanism (as above, in the Reiselieder). This song actually also references Mother Earth, who provides for the Swiss in a way like God does. This is, however, a bit of an outlier. 110 Switzerland. The Rigi was historically understood as the center of the confederacy, located between the three original cantons at the Rütlischwir (Cantons Unterwald, Uri, and Schwyz).54 Significantly, for both tourists and the Swiss historians, one can gaze out across multiple mountain ranges from the top of the Rigi, and see not only the expansive scenery, but also different regions of the confederation. The song ends with a call to action, as usual, recalling the blood of heroic forefathers. Presumably, the power of singing this song at the center of the confederacy would inspire the young traveler to live according to Swiss principles. Finally, Society members believed that Alpine travel would offer both physical and moral benefits for the young men who appeared to no longer be as hardy as their forefathers. Konrad Pfeffel was unhappy that some young men who had visited him were effeminate, could no longer march a mile, or tolerate the cold.55 The restoration of Swiss (male) physicality, for the Society, was akin to preserving Switzerland from the same moral decay that had hastened the fall of Ancient Greece, the last great example of democracy.56 Songs about traveling in the Alps typically included a description of the vigorous effort and bravery required to climb to the top of a mountain. The Bergreise- 54 Erwin Horat, “Rigi,” in Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS), 2012, https://hls-dhs- dss.ch/fr/articles/007449/2012-01-04. 55 This is also expressed by Niklaus Emanuel Tscharner, who gave a presidential speech on the subject of historic pastoral-heroes who had grown up in good air. It was generally asserted that by visiting the Alps, and coming into contact with the old ways of being, these young Swiss men could be redeemed. Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:168. 56 Ibid., 1:181–2. 111 Lied opens with a summons, akin to a call of action: “Up, courageous! The height is to be climbed! (“Auf muthig! Die Höh’ ist ersteigen!”)57 The image of the male body was becoming more important starting in the late eighteenth century, and the Schweizerreise certainly reflected this. Lavater himself wrote in his 1781 Essai sur la Physiognomy that it was possible to “recognize the hidden character of a human being through his outward appearance,” and so the “soft” look of young Swiss men signified a general degradation. It was generally assumed by the end of the century that the most morally upright people had been the Greeks, and as such, it was agreed upon that at the end of the eighteenth century, the ideal body type must have been the Greeks. Particularly if the Swiss thought of themselves as the only remaining heirs to the Greek democratic system, notions about Greek democracy and physicality would have necessarily been transposed onto performative national physicality as well. In the 1798 edition of Schweizerlieder, Appenzell was celebrated as being even better than Rome and Greece.58 Furthermore, Greek values were often described as Christian, much akin to the Älpler and the Christian soldier. As the national body, and model of ideal Swiss democracy, the Älpler would have needed to be the strongest, and most beautiful.59 This concern with Greece and physicality also points to the nascent ideas around 57 Similarly, the song “Auf einer Gesandschafts-Reise über den Gotthard,” by F. Münch, also describes the urge to climb to overwhelming, potentially paradise-like heights. Climbing high into the mountains, describes the mountains, the supernatural quality (in one stanza, “Welch Feenland” – what a fairy land!” Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als ein zweiter Theil zu Hrn. Lavaters Schweizerliedern, 170–173. 58 See “An das gute Volk des Cantons Appenzell.” In Bürkli, Schweizerlieder von verschiedenen Verfassern, als ein zweiter Theil zu Lavaters Schweizerliedern (1798), 44. 59 This interest in Greek physique and masculinity is all discussed throughout Georg L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, Studies in the History of Sexuality (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 25, 28–29, 48. 112 idealized Greek masculinity and later nineteenth-century nationalism, which will be discussed in Chapter V. The Swiss journey songs were undergirded by largely the same values and goals that had inspired the beginning of the Schweizerlieder project in 1767, but the songs show how much history that the Helvetic Society had compiled since its establishment. Originally, the Society idealized an abstract version of the folk, but by the time of the Schweizerreise, they became more invested in directly affecting Alpine people. Philippe-Sirice Bridel and the Search for “Les Armaillis” By the end of the 1770’s, the Helvetic Society was well-established in central and inner Switzerland, and wanted to recruit members from the Western, French-speaking regions of the Eidgenossenschaft. Philippe-Sirice Bridel, a Vaudois who was often warmly referred to as “the Doyen Bridel,” was one of the first French-Swiss to join the society when he was invited to the 1783 meeting in Olten, and he quickly became one of the more active and influential members of the Society. 60 He was a dedicated advocate for Lavater’s Schweizerlieder, and wanted to come up with a similar body of song for French Switzerland, which could reflect the Helvetian-patriotic themes and history for the people in the West.61 Compared to many members of the Society, Bridel had a pronounced 60 He contributed something to every meeting, and along with some others, published descriptions and ideas of the Society which made their intellectual and poetic activities more public than they were before. Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:71. 61 Ibid., 1:109. Bridel wrote : German-speaking Switzerland owes a lot in this regard to the Société Helvétique since it is in its midst that Lavater has taken the design to make his beautiful and useful national songs - what do we also have for the Swiss-French, some good citizen who wanted to work to replace the stupid or silly songs which sully the mouth of the People, songs suitable to preserve the memory of the ancient exploits of our Fathers, to retrace the image of their ancient virtues, to consecrate the love of the laws, respect for manners, the praises of agriculture, the ties of brotherhood and the sense of public felicity, which this happy country enjoys!” “La Suisse Allemande doit beaucoup à cet égard à la Société Helvétique, 113 interest in the common man and the vernacular. He tried to bridge the gap between the learned, aristocratic membership of the Society with actual Swiss people, and he tried to spread word of the Society in French-speaking Switzerland, emphasizing the notion that one did not need to be a man of letters to join.62 As Society members in the 1780’s and 1790’s contributed more and more original songs to the annual meetings, Bridel tried his hand at composing some French-language songs in imitation of Lavater.63 Like the rest of the Society, he was concerned about the presence of foreign influence in Swiss songs, but rather composing entirely new pieces on Alpine themes, as most of the Society did, Bridel actively collected Alpine folksongs. This is where we encounter Pierre, the Älpler who would later be featured in the 1819 Fêt, who would take on the associations of the Älpler that the Society had constructed in their Schweizerlieder. Pierre’s subsequent rise to prominence over the next few decades reflected the political specifics of French-speaking Switzerland before, during, and after the occupation by France. Compelled simultaneously by an interest in the French Swiss vernacular and the desire to contribute to Lavater’s body of songs, Bridel began searching in the early 1790’s for an authentic ranz des vaches.64 This would also satisfy one of the yet- puisque c’est dans son sein que Lavater a pris le dessein de faire ses belles et utiles chansons nationales – que n’avons-nous aussi pour la Suisse-Française, quelque bon citoyen qui voulut travailler à substituer aux chansons bêtes ou sottisières qui souillent la bouche du Peuple, des chant propres à conserver le souvenir des anciens exploits de nos Pères, à retracer l’image de leurs antiques vertus, à consacrer l’amour des lois, le respect pour les moeurs, les louanges de l’agriculture, les nœuds de la confraternité et le sentiment de la fécilité publique, dont jouit cet heureux pays!” 62 Ibid., 1:221. 63 Ibid., 1:109. L. Vulliemin, Le Doyen Bridel: essai biographique (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1855), 213. 64 This is also discussed briefly in Vulliemin, Le Doyen Bridel: essai biographique, 212. 114 unfulfilled requests from Lavater’s 1767 Schweizerlieder, in which he asked for the addition of a “Kühreihen.” Bridel took issue with the existing ranz des vaches; he complained that the melody of Rousseau’s ranz des vaches had been retouched so much that it clearly was not music of real Switzerland.65 In a letter in January 1790, Bridel wrote to Pierre-Léon Pettolaz, from Charmey, asking him to carry out a little research on “some characteristic songs of your country which are not French. I would especially like an authentic copy of the famous Ranz des Vaches, for which I have the music, but not the real lyrics."66 Bridel enclosed a melody with his missive. While the melody he wrote is not readily accessible to researchers, however, it is very likely that the song that Bridel sent to Pettolaz was Frenchman Jean-Benjamin de Laborde’s ranz des vaches, from his four-volume Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne in 1780 (see Figure 16, below). Laborde’s melody has a very similar contour to “Les Armaillis,” which Bridel eventually published in 1813. Laborde’s melody was probably based on a popular tune or family of tunes; this melody seems to have proliferated especially in French-speaking Switzerland, with many variations eventually being collected in the early nineteenth century, including “Les Armaillis.” In the comments to his 1813 publication of the song, Bridel observed––much in the vein of his letter to Pettolaz twenty-three years prior––that Laborde had published “this ranz des 65 He was impressed, however, that Grétry had still used it to good effect in his overture to Guillaume Tell. P. S. Bridel, “Note sur le Ranz des Vaches,” Le Conservateur Suisse 1 (1813): 431. 66 Quoted in Métraux and Philipona, Le Ranz des Vaches: Du chant des bergeres à l’hymne patriotique, 37. 115 vaches” but that “in place of the Patois words, [Laborde] inserted French words, which are insipid, rather than natural.”67 Figure 16: The first line to Jean-Benjamin Laborde’s ranz des vaches in Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, vol. 2, Paris (1780), page 106. There were two reasons for Swiss leftists at the end of the century like Bridel to feel incredulous about Laborde’s ranz des vaches. The first was that Laborde was French (and perhaps worse, a member of the ancien régime, later put to the guillotine in 1794). The second was that the song text was obviously artificial: the words are a formal French representation of the nostalgic legend, in which the persona asks when he will see again the things that he loves, for he is far away, and so on:68 67 Bridel, “Note sur le Ranz des Vaches,” 431. “Laborde l’a insérté dans le second tome de son Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne; mais à la place des paroles patoises, il y a cousu des paroles françoises, qui sont plattes au lieu d’étre simples.” 68 Laborde also provides his reader with the standard explanation for the ranz des vaches: “The famous Swiss air is called the rans des vaches. It is claimed that in the past tears came to the eyes of the Swiss when they heard it out of their country; and that many even kill them. We tried to put words more or less in the genre of the Air.” “Le fameaux air suisse appellé le rans des vaches. On prétend qu'autrefois les larmes venoient aux yeux des Suisses quands ils l’entendoient hors de leur Pays; et que même plusiers en font morts. On à essayé d'y mettre des paroles dans le genre de l'Air à peu-pres.” M. (Jean-Benjamin) de Laborde, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, vol. 2 (Paris: P. D. Pierres, 1780), 106. 116 When will I see again all the objects of my love? Our clear streams, our slopes, our hamlets, our mountains, And the ornament of our countryside, the lovely Isabelle, In the shadow of an abalone shell? When will I dance again to the sound of a pipe? When will I see again all the objects of my love? My father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my lambs, my flocks, my Shepherdess, When will I see again all the objects of my love? 69 Laborde’s text is a clear poetic excursion of the topic of hemvé/Heimweh, discussed in Chapter II. The artificiality would not have been an issue for the Schinznach group, whose own song texts were often a wholly fanciful representation of the folk. However, for the later generation of members like Bridel, this sort of false representation of the folk was becoming rather gauche, or at least, it was much less palatable when done by foreigners than when done by respectable, patriotic Swiss men like Lavater. Pettolaz neither recognized the melody enclosed by Bridel, nor had he ever heard of the ranz des vaches, which he misspelled as “Rangols Veches,” because he could not decipher Bridel’s handwriting. Nonetheless, Pettolaz sympathized with Bridel’s objective, and expressed characteristic derision of French influences (similar to the general themes of the Swiss Journey), commiserating that the people in his region “prefer French songs that are often scandalous or Bacchic, and always frivolous, to those [songs] 69 “ Quand révérai-je en un jour tous les objets de mon amour? / Nos clairs ruisseaux, nos coteaux, nos Hameaux, nos montagnes,/ Et l’ornement de nos campagnes la si gentille Isabeau / a l’ombre d’un ormeau / Quand danserai-je au son d’un chalumeau / Quand révérai-je en un jour tous les objets de mon amour ?/ Mon père, ma mère, mon frère, ma sœur, mes agneaux, mes troupeaux, ma Bergère / Quand revérai-je en un jour tous les objets de mon amour? ”Ibid., 2:106–107. 117 that can bring us back to the spirit, genius, and old simplicity of our fathers.” 70 Like Bridel, Pettolaz attributes the poor-quality songs to French influence and the mercenary service, writing, “with all my heart, I would like to see [this influence] restricted.”71 After some back-and-forth, Pettolaz sent Bridel some text to “ouna vilie ritoua,” an old refrain, noting that it was considered an old and unimportant song. It is unclear if Pettolaz ever passed along the rest of the text, so I cannot confidently say where Bridel’s text came from. Bridel had originally planned to publish the products of his inquiry in the Étrennes helvétiennes in 1790 or 1791, a periodical funded by the Society because it partially fulfilled the Society’s historical objective. For reasons that are currently unclear, he waited until 1813, the year of Napoleon’s exodus to the Isle of Elba, to publish “Les Armaillis.” He did so in the reissued Étrennes helvétiennes, which he retitled Le conservateur suisse; this new journal largely continued the historical project started before the occupation. Much as we will see “Les Armaillis” circulating in occupied Geneva in the tabatières, Bridel had circulated his version of “Les Armaillis” among other musical folklorists prior to publishing it in Le conservateur suisse. “Les Armaillis” was published in three texts between 1812 and 1813. Two of these were in folksong collections, in which both editors acknowledged Bridel’s 70 Métraux and Philipona, Le Ranz des Vaches: Du chant des bergeres à l’hymne patriotique, 129. “On préfère chez nous des chansons françaises souvent scandaleuses ou bachiques et toujours frivoles à celles qui nous retraceraient l’espirit, le génie et l’antique simplicité de nos pères. ” 71 Ibid. “C’est encore là un effet de nos liaisons avec la France, liaisons que je désirerais de tout mon cœur de voir restreindre. » 118 contribution and spoke of him with quite a bit of warmth.72 The third publication was Bridel’s own entry in his Le conservateur suisse. Each of the three versions have a slightly different text, ranging from formal French to highly idiomatic Swiss Patois. It is possible that Bridel was compelled to finally print this song because he wanted to accurately represent the Swiss Patois, rather than just an interest in folksong. Of all these versions of “Les Armaillis,” Bridel’s text is the most idiomatically Swiss Patois, and it actually precedes several pages of a Patois dictionary.73 Bridel not only uses Patois terminology, but also changes the spelling to accurately reflect the speech practices of the Gruyères region. This can be seen in the opening text, for which the translation is “The cowherder of the Colombettes, he gets up early in the morning.” One collection, the Sammlungen von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volkslieder, used Patois words for the opening “Les Armaillis dé Colombetta, / De bon matin sé son lévâ. » Bridel’s version, by comparison, uses a much more phonetic spelling: “Lé zarmailli dei Columbetté, / Dé bon matin sé san léha.” Bridel also included an academic commentary on the results of his inquiry, and reprinted several elements from the original ranz des vaches myth discussed in Chapter II; it would be fair to read his article as a compendium of these earlier sources.74 72 One was the 1812 Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, and the other was George Tarenne’s Recherches sur les ranz des vaches, both of which Bridel referenced in his forward. Bridel, “Note sur le Ranz des Vaches,” 433–434. Tarenne acknowledged Bridel’s help specifically with the text for his version of “Les Armaillis.” Tarenne, Recherches sur les ranz des vaches ou sur les chansons pastorales des bergers de la Suisse, avec musique, 19–20. 73 As a matter of fact, Bridel is mostly remembered for his Glossaire du patrios de la Suisse romande that was published posthumously in 1866. 74 Bridel paraphrased Zwinger and repeats Viotti’s anecdote about the sensible experience of hearing a ranz des vaches in the mountains, reiterating many of these sentiments in his own word. He wrote: “The physical and moral influence [of the ranz des vaches] has long been known: the more a Swiss is faithful to the simple taste of nature, the higher his dwelling, the more solitary and wild the more the scenes and events of the landscapes which are familiar to him are severe and fantastic, the more sensitive he is to the 119 The Helvetic Society may have dissolved in 1798 at the start of the French occupation, but the discourse they had initiated within aristocratic, nationalist circles continued through the occupation, both at home and abroad. When Bridel eventually did publish “Les Armaillis,” we can see how the last days of the Society mutated into the larger European folkloric movement at the turn of the nineteenth century, and how this “old and unimportant song” became so significant. His relationship to the national project of the Helvetic Society and the network of aristocratic federalists is perhaps why his ranz des vaches, and not Rousseau’s or Tarenne’s or Zwinger’s, which shortly thereafter began their drift into academic obscurity, became a popularly known rallying cry for occupied Geneva. Even though Pierre himself does not speak directly about freedom or show any militant aspects like the Christian soldiers of the Schweizerlieder, the fact that he was a simple Älpler was code enough. Part 2: Revolution and Republic The first rumbles of the social and governmental upheavals that would define the period 1798–1815 began abroad with the French Revolution. By this point, the association between Swissness and egalitarianism was well enough established that in some instances, there was deliberate obfuscation between the traditional Swiss notions of music of the Ranz des vaches; it is therefore unsurprising that if he is absent from his homeland, he cannot hear it without shedding tears...” “Son influence physique et morale sur nos montagnards est dès longtemps connue: plus un Suisse est fidèle aux simples goûts de la nature, plus son habitation est élevée, solitaire et sauvage, plus les scènes et les accidents des paysages qui lui sont familiers sont sévères et fantastiques, plus il est sensible à la musique du Ranz des vaches: il n’est donc point étonnant que s’il est absent de sa patrie, il ne puisse l’entendre sans verser des larmes [...]” This, of course, also brings to mind Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s theory of altitude explored in Chapter II, and it also anticipates material in Chapter V. Bridel, “Note sur le Ranz des Vaches,” 434–435. Also reprinted in Kuhn and Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer- Kühreihen und Volksliedern. Theils nach ihren Bekannten, theils nach neuen Melodien in notenschrift gebracht und mit Clavier-Begleitung versehen, xiii. 120 freedom and equality with the new French revolutionary uses of the terms.75 The ranz des vaches and the legend of Tell became acceptable topics on the French revolutionary stage; for instance, André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry and the librettist Michel-Jean Sedaine chose William Tell as a “democratic” topic for a 1791 production to “ease the popular memory of Queen Marie-Antoinette’s approbation for their former works.”76 Swiss attitudes towards the French Revolution varied widely, including within the membership of the Society, and often shifted over time. Many of those who initially supported the Revolution became significantly less enthusiastic during the Reign of Terror, while members of the Swiss Ancien Régime often began to express more Revolutionary sympathies when the Terror arrived at their own doorstep, as it did in Geneva in the mid 1790’s. Part two of this chapter explores the use and mutations of Swiss ideals in Alpine song over the period 1798–1815. The ideals developed in the Society around regional republican practices and appreciation for traditional Alpine identity became code for resistance against the French. As the Älpler archetype continued gaining ground partially through Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 play Wilhelm Tell, the Helvetic Society’s equation of Swissness with Alpineness solidified into the equivalence of Swiss national song with Älpler’s song, which is evident in two collections of Alpine song that came out in 1805 and then again in 1812. 75 Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, LIV:119. 76 Albert Gier, “Guillaume Tell in French Opera: From Grétry to Rossini,” in World and Music Studies: Essays in Honor of Stephen Paul Scher on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage, ed. Walter Bernhart, Suzanne Aspden, and Suzanne Lodato, vol. 4 (Amsterdam: Brill Rodopi, 2002), 231. 121 William Tell during the Helvetic Republic (1798–1803) and the Stecklikrieg (1802) In March 1798, along with the Low Countries, Milan, and the Kingdom of Naples, Napoleon christened the Swiss Confederation the “Helvetic Republic,” a sister republic of France.77 Napoleon attempted to unify all the discrete cantons so he could move goods through the neutral territory and also to make use of the substantial amount of gold tucked away in Bern and Zürich. The Helvetic Republic was essentially the first time in several hundred years that the loosely affiliated parts of Switzerland actually came together under a single governmental umbrella, but many places did so unwillingly. The top-down style of government of the Republic was received with a remarkable aversion and provoked a backlash in the form of a more aggressive regional expression.78 The first article of the new constitution proclaimed: “The Helvetic Republic is one and indivisible.” This indivisibility precluded the regional autonomy that many Swiss had prized so highly. To add insult to injury, the cantons were stripped entirely of their power (although a shadow of the cantonal system was maintained for purely administrative convenience). In response, many regional communities stubbornly refused to acknowledge the French government, or its imposed constitution, on the basis that everything about it was antithetical to the traditional regional governmental practice of Switzerland. Inner Switzerland particularly resisted the French occupation because it changed their radical democratic practices from direct to representational, which, in their 77 Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory, and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891, 80. 78 J. Murray Luck, History of Switzerland (Palo Alto: The Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship Inc., 1985), 305. 122 eyes, was basically the difference between true and false democracy.79 They also saw the French constitution as a threat to their connection with the freedom of their fathers, values, and ancestral ways of life.80 Various Landsgemeinde dug in their heels and became synonymous with the old and thereby “free” Switzerland, and communities that previously did not practice local direct democracy began to do so in a show of solidarity with other rural groups against the French.81 The Helvetic Society’s Eintracht objective was thus achieved, although by a remarkably indirect route. In 1802, members of the former Landsgemeinde cantons in Inner Switzerland instigated a civil war against the Helvetic Republic, called the Stecklikrieg, so named because the fighters used wooden clubs (Stäkli) as weapons. The Stecklikrieg catalyzed renewed discussions about Freyheit and Swiss identity, now located particularly in Central Switzerland, partially because of the intensity of the Landsgemeinde practice there, and partially because Canton Bern was a leader in the revolt.82 Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 play, Wilhelm Tell, was inspired by the Stecklikrieg and informed by material from the Helvetic Society as well as the associations around Alpine song. It is easy to infer a connection between Tell expelling despotic Hapsburgs from his Alpine sanctuary with the Landsgemeinde expelling the French (or at least persistently defying the French government). Much as it is difficult to overstate the significance of 79 Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, LIV:123. 80 See Ibid., LIV:122–130. 81 Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory, and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891, 84–85. 82 The French takeover in 1798 had been particularly punishing for Bern, both in terms of ego and finances, because it was divided into four new cantons (Bern, Aargau, Léman, and the Oberland). For this reason, among others, they were eager to reclaim some of their earlier power. Ibid., 85. 123 von Haller’s “Die Alpen,” the impact of Schiller’s play was felt across Europe and especially strongly in Switzerland. To date, the Swiss National Museum in Zürich prominently features an original 1804 print of Wilhelm Tell alongside a score to Rossini’s 1829 Guillaume Tell as items of significant national literature (never mind that neither Schiller nor Rossini were Swiss).83 Instead of basing his work on a trip to Switzerland, Schiller’s Tell relies on literary material from the Society’s historical project and used the Kühreihen to invoke the association between Älpler and Freyheit. Schiller’s two main reference texts were Aegidius Tschudi’s Chronicon Helveticum (c1550), which was circulated in Society circles, as well as Johannes von Müller’s History of the Swiss Confederation, which Müller wrote as part of the Society’s historical work.84 A Kühreihen appears three times in the play.85 Unfortunately, no musical score survives, but the libretto to the play indicates when it was heard, and thus implicitly, what it meant. The first Kühreihen is heard at the very beginning of the show in the peaceful era prior to the Habsburgs arrival. Three characters––a fisher boy, a herdsman, and a chamois hunter––all sing variations on the “melody of the Kuhreihen.[sic]” In this scene, the set shows the whole landscape of Switzerland, from lakes, to meadows, and then high glaciers. Each of the three characters are in their own biomes: the fisher boy sings from his boat, the herdsman stands on the mountains, and the chamois hunter (“appearing at the top of a cliff”) sings of the 83 When I was last there in 2019, they were in the same case, in the middle of the room, at the end of the “History of Switzerland” exhibit. 84 Im Hof and Capitani, Die Helvetische Gesellschaft: Spätaufklärung und Vorrevolution in der Schweiz, 1:179. Müller’s text is actually in five volumes, written between 1786 and 1806, and so the later work was completed after the Gesellschaft had dissolved. 85 Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell (Tübingen: J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandung, 1804). 124 sublimity of the high mountains. It is not just a peaceful Switzerland, but a topographically diverse one.86 A Kühreihen occurs again in the penultimate scene of the play, in which Tell advises a disguised Duke of Austria to go to the Gotthard––one of the higher accessible places in the Alps at the time––where the mountains will purify him of his tyrannical sins, much like the Society constructed the mountains as the fortress of freedom that banishes tyranny. These directions are accompanied by a Kühreihen in the distance.87 Unspunnenfest and the First Songbooks Even as Schiller wrote this play, Canton Bern tried to take over Aargau and Vaud, an act of aggression that compelled Napoleon to again intervene in Swiss affairs, thus beginning the “Act of Mediation,” which lasted until 1813. Under the Act of Mediation, Napoleon nominally restored the cantonal system, but many areas, particularly in inner Switzerland, still resented the original occupation and despised the French government representatives. Simultaneously, the inter-cantonal tensions from the Old Eidgenossenschaft continued. The mayors of Bern and Interlaken organized the Unspunnenfest, an Alpine folk festival, as an attempt to foster peace between the continuously querulous cantons.88 To 86 This is a potential reference to the three different economic regions of Switzerland; the historian John Casparis has argued that each biome was characterized by a distinctive rural agricultural or trade practice that made those economies interconnected with the other biomes. Casparis, “The Swiss Mercenary System: Labor Emigration from the Semiperiphery,” 601–602. 87 TELL. “Forevermore you climb the heights / of the Gotthard, where the timeless lakes are / which are filled by the rivers of heaven themselves.” “So immer stiegend kommt ihr auf die Höhen / Des Gotthardts, wo die ewigen Seen sind, / Die von des Himmels Strömen selbst sich füllen.” Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, 238– 239. 88 Unspunnenfest is also sometimes called the Hirtenfest (shepherds’ festival) or Alphirtenfest (Alpine shepherds’ festival). 125 promote common ground, they grounded the festival in old Swiss practices, particularly traditional music and sporting events. Alpine song saturated the festival, appearing in parades of Älpler singing Kühreihens, yodeling and alphorn-playing competitions, all in addition to the songs written for various events––particular sports, dinners, and so on. 89 Figure 17, below, shows a scene from the second Unspunnefest, held three years later in 1808. Figure 17 : Lithograph of the Unspunnenfest, from Catherine Santschi La mémoire des Suisses, Genève (1991), page 41. (PD-1996) 89 Many of these are described in Johann Rudolf Wyss’s description of the event, written in 1816. For instance: “The approaching procession was greeted with a Kühreihen and that loud Juutzing of the mountain shepherds which is known by the name of the “Zaurens,” and long sustained in ascending and descending chest tones booming through the echo of the valleys.” “Der anlangende Zug ward mit einem Kuhreigen [sic] und jenem lauten Jauchzen der Berghirten empfangen, das unter dem Namen des haurens bekannt ist, und lang aushaltend in aufsteigenden und absteigenden Brusttönen rein durch das Echo der Thäler dröhnt.” Johann Rudolf Wyss, Hand-Atlas für Reisende in das Berner Oberland (Bern: J. J. Burgdorfer, 1816), 384–5. The word “Zauren” is the Appenzellische term that encompasses many kinds of Jodeling as well as the ranz des vaches. See Chapter V for more. 126 While the Unspunnenfest was unsuccessful at easing tensions because it was more symbolic than practical, it had long-term cultural ramifications; several Swiss traditional clubs attribute their origins to the Unspunnenfest. This is also the source of the first published collection of Kühreihen, which was printed as part of the larger project of cultivating a folk-spirit within Switzerland. Similar to the Helvetic Society’s Swiss Journey project, the music at the Unspunnenfest celebrated the Alps, Swiss heritage, and Swiss physicality, even when the songs were not explicitly Alpine. One of the songs, between toasts at dinner, celebrated the restoration of medieval sporting events at Unspunnen: “Wake up the tones of the happy past, honor the games of ancient times!”90 The “games of ancient times” refer to specific sports associated with heroic medieval Switzerland (the same period as was celebrated in the Historische Schweizerlider): stone-throwing and wrestling, which represented the restoration of traditional Alpine physicality.91 Just as the Helvetic Society prescribed Alpine tours as a way to cultivate the hale and hearty physiques of yore in the weak and effeminate bodies of modern Swiss boys, writers about the Unspunnenfest lauded the displays of traditional Swiss male physical strength alongside the traditional vocalizations. (The restoration of traditional male Swiss physicality alongside traditional sound is explored in more detail in Chapter V.) The first published collection of Kühreihen was created by the patrician and arts patron Sigismund von Wagner included eight traditional, regional songs that would mark 90 “Wecket die Töne froher Vergangenheit, ehret die Spiele uralter Zeit!" Ibid., 387. 91 Stone-throwing, or Steinstossen, was reportedly popular in the fifteenth century Old Swiss Confederacy and wrestling (Schwingen, or in Swiss German, Hosenlupf) was reportedly a kind of wrestling practiced particularly in Inner Switzerland since the seventeenth century. 127 the occasion of the Unspunnenfest and accurately represent folk traditions. The songs he printed had been collected at the end of the eighteenth century by a scholar from Langnau, G. S. Studer.92 Studer had reportedly been compelled to go into the Alps after having read von Haller’s “Die Alpen,” and being influenced by work from Herder and Ossian. Paul Geiger has argued that the songs that Studer had collected were probably significantly “improved” by both Studer and later von Wagner, particularly by the addition of rhymes and by softening the coarse tone of some of the text.93 In von Wagner’s explanation, the folk music available in the songbooks at the song shops had degenerated and become distorted to the point that meaning, verse, and rhyme were all absent, so he tried to restore these components “without abandoning the natural, rural sense, and spirit of the songs.”94 Each of the eight songs are attributed to a particular place; five “Kühreihen,” two “Küherlieder,” (cow-herding songs), and one “Lied.” The eight songs are texted in German and notated for solo voice on a single staff. Regardless of the “authenticity” of these songs, they were printed at the Unspunnenfest to encourage 92 This is discussed in Paul Geiger, Ph.D. Dissertation, “Volksliedinteresse Und Volksliedforschung in Der Schweiz: Vom Anfang Des 18.Jahrhunderts Bis Zum Jahre 1830.” (University of Basel, 1911). Unfortunately, because of research during COVID-19, I have not been able to obtain any additional material regarding Studer et al., and I look forward do digging more in the future. 93 Ibid., 58–64. 94 von Wagner, Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text, n.p. “Since the printed Kühreihen and Küher-Lieder that can be found in the songbooks of the song shopkeepers have clearly degenerated and become distorted from their original text – often so much – that neither sense nor verse nor rhyme remain; therefore, in this new collection, efforts have been made – as well as the editor could – to restore both the understanding and the verse and rhyme of the words, without abandoning the simple rural sense and spirit of the songs.” “Da die gedruckten Küher-Reihen und Küher-Lieder die man in den Liederbüchlein der Lieder-krämer findet, offenbar von ihrem Urtext ausgeartet und entstellt sind, – oft so sehr – daß weder Sinn noch Vers noch Reim überbleibt; so hat man in dieser neuen Sammlung getrachtet, – so gut dem Berfasser möglich war, – sowohl den Verstand als den Vers und Reim der Worte wieder herzustellen, ohne jedoch den ländlichen einfachen Sinn und Geist der Lieder zu verleßen.” 128 folk-feelings among attendees and became the basis for Swiss Alpine folk song collections for the next few decades. The 1805 edition would be expanded in 1812, and these two publications have echoes of the Helvetic Society’s Eintracht project, but now filtered through the recent political events and an increased interest in authentic Alpine representation. In these songbooks, all of the songs are sung by the persona of the Älpler, who not only embodies traditional Swissness but also accommodates a diversity of regional expressions which were particularly resonant following the Landgemeinde revolt. On the frontispiece to the 1805 collection, we can see the Älpler, posing with an alphorn, which could sometimes also be used to play a Kühreihen. Figure 18: Frontispiece to Sigismund von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805). All of the songs in Sigismund von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text, come from German-speaking Inner and Eastern Switzerland, areas that 129 had been particularly resistant to and thus especially pummeled or embarrassed by the occupation.95 Central Switzerland was represented by one song from Entlebuch, three songs from the Emmenthal, and the Kühreihen der Oberhasler. The Emmenthal is located to the north of Interlaken, within the area of Canton Bern during and after the Republic. Oberhasli is to the southeast, in the region that the French had rather arbitrarily designated the “Canton Oberland.” Following the collapse of the Helvetic Republic, Bern had not-particularly-smoothly reincorporated the Canton Oberland; representing both of these regions in one volume suggests the extension of an olive branch. Indeed, this particular collection of Alpine songs may have been partially intended to address tensions that were especially pressing on the minds of the Bernese and Interlaken mayors. Capitulation to the French in 1798 was particularly embarrassing and destructive for areas in East Switzerland, which are represented in this songbook by songs from Appenzell and Siebetal. The French, likely as a punitive measure, had responded to the region’s unenthusiastic capitulation by dissolving the traditional boundaries and structures of nine democratic cantons into three new ones without any historical tradition, now named Waldsäaten, Linth, and Sentis.96 The simplification into three regions dramatically reduced the political and electoral power of the inner Swiss, which predictably only encouraged more resistance.97 Following the Stecklikrieg and the 95 von Wagner, Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text. The text to the songs was also distributed without scores in Sigismund von Wagner, Sammlung aller Lieder, Gedichte und andern Schriften auf das schweizerische Alpen- Hirten-Fest zu Unspunnen im Kanton Bern: Schweizer-Kühreihen und Schweizer- Küherlieder (Bern: Ludwig Albrecht Haller, 1805), http://dx.doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-50791. 96 Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, LIV:129–130. 97 Ibid. 130 collapse of the Republic, all of these regions reverted to some form of their earlier governance, either the hyper-local democracy with the Landsgemeinde (as in the Appenzell), or a milder version of the earlier patrician-aristocratic styles from before the Revolution (as in Bern).98 Every song is attributed to specific places by their title, dialect, and specific references within the song. The dialects of mountain Switzerland are highly idiomatic; the difficult trek from one town to another naturally produces a plethora of localized words, syntaxes, and phonemes. The first words to the Kühreihen der Siebenthal is a characteristic example of the dialectical representation; the text opens with the text “I am a cheerful mountain man, hey yeah it’s good, yeah it’s good.” The Swiss German spelling is: “I bi ne Bergma wohlgemuth...” This contrasts with High German, which would be more along the lines of: “Ich bin ein Bergmann wohlgemuth...” Figure 19: First line to the Kühreihen der Siebenthal in von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer- Kühreihen mit Musik und Text, Bern (1805), page 7. The Älpler in “Lied der Emmenthaler” identifies himself partially by naming many different mountains of the Emmenthaler, including the Steimöse, Hauene, and 98 Lerner, A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750–1848, LIV:129–130. 131 Rämisgume.99 The Älpler in the “Kühreihen der Siebenthal” does this particularly insistently. 100 Compared to the Kühreihen, the Küherlieder are less about the cows–– although they certainly are mentioned––and more about the Alpine setting, which lends itself to increased specificity. For instance, the instructions for the “Küherlied der Oberländer” is “to be sung by a cowherder at the highest point of his voyage, where he overlooks the whole of the Oberland.”101 The Oberländer cowboy identifies one specific location after the next, usually at the beginning of each stanza, not only placing the singer and listener firmly in the Oberland, but also glorifying the mountains as a central component of his identity. The 1805 songbook was very well received and subsequently reissued and expanded in 1812, retitled Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Alten Volkslieder, edited by Johann Rudolf Wyss, a Bernese philosophy professor and folklorist (whose father, Johann David Wyss, penned The Swiss Family Robinson that same year). 99 These names are explained in the next edition: “The most beautiful mountains (Alps) are named, the Steimöse, Hauene, Rämisgume, Lochsyte, Bumbach ie. ie.” “Die scönsten Berge (Alpen) sind genannt, die Steimöse [etc.].” Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, iv. 100 “Im Siebethal, im Siebethal, im Siebethal, im Siebethal! Siebethal, Siebethal, Siebethal, Siebethal. Da sy die zwo schönsten Alpen im Siebethal!” In the text-only print of this from 1805, it is – contrasting with all of the other song texts – printed without any line breaks, which gives one the sense of the Siebetal Älpler being a bit unhinged. von Wagner, Sammlung aller Lieder, Gedichte und andern Schriften auf das schweizerische Alpen- Hirten-Fest zu Unspunnen im Kanton Bern: Schweizer-Kühreihen und Schweizer- Küherlieder, 30. 101 “Zu singen von einem Küher auf der Spitze des Reisen, von o aus er das ganze Oberland überseiht.” Ibid., 20. 132 Figure 20: Frontispiece to Johann Rudolf Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, Bern (1812). The first eight pieces are from the 1805 collection and are printed in the same order. Numbers 9–18 are folksongs in various German dialects, and are all presented on at least two staves, suitable for keyboard or other accompaniment. In the preface to the 1812 edition, Wyss explicitly elaborated on the connection between folk song and freedom: Were [the song of a people] repressed by the iron scepter of despotism, it would languish in poverty and misery––the song would cry, or––fall silent. When our fatherland enjoyed the golden fruits of peace in undisturbed tranquility, there were the people of love, jesting, and joy. Since the war and 133 some unrest moved over our horizon like grim thunderclouds, the singers fell silent or they sang war songs and the like.102 Folk song here is equated with free Switzerland, much as the way the ranz des vaches was used in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and as Alpine song was used in the Schweizerlieder. Although the Helvetic Society is never mentioned, the forward to the 1812 collection articulates many of the same goals as the Society’s Schweizerlieder. The goals include increasing the morality of the people by giving them good folksongs and preserving songs against foreign influences and fading traditions. In much the same vein as other European folklorists at the time, Wyss explained that the act of singing these folksongs can make the people more moral because sung poetry captivates one’s memory and plants ideas more readily.103 Whereas the Society’s Schweizerlieder were largely geared towards the cultivation and creation of common heritage, Wyss, like von Wagner and Bridel, was more concerned with the preservation of good folklore. He wrote that “it is not just for a lark that we choose and collect what people sing or have sung,” but it is because “Our folk song is no longer what it used to be, and, unless other circumstances occur, it will soon cease to be what it is today.”104 This is much the same as the growing interest in 102 “Wäre es [der Gesang eines Volkes] gedrückt von dem eisernen Zepter des Despotismus, läge es in Armuth und Elend, –– sein Lied würde klagen, oder –– verstummen. Als unser Vaterland in ungestörter Ruhe die goldenen Früchte des Friedens genoß, da san das Volk von Liebe, Scherz und Freude. Seitdem auber Krieg un Mancherlen Unruhe gleich trüben Gewitterwolken über unsern Horizont hingezogen sind, verstummten die Sänger oder sie sangen Kriegslider u. d. gl.” Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, 10. 103 Ibid. 104 “Unser Volksgesang nämlich ist nicht mehr was er ehedem war, und wird, wenn nicht andere Umstände eintreten, bald auch das nicht mehr senn, was er jetzt noch ist.” Ibid., ii. 134 folksong that was happening simultaneously in France and Germany. Wyss shared the Helvetic Society’s concern about foreign influence on Swiss song; he attributed the “corruption” and “disfiguration” of Swiss folksongs to the influence of foreigners, much like Bridel and Pettolaz lamented the French influence, and the Society worried about young men preferring foreign lands and ways and losing the connection to their Alpine heritage. 105 Wyss described this loss of tradition as: “The stale old housebread was discarded, and foreign food came to the table.” 106 Later editions of Wyss’s songbook, however, show significant influence from foreigners, which is discussed in Chapter V. This edition contained several new Kühreihen, including two different versions of the “Les Armaillis” melody. The first is the “Ran de [sic] Vaches des Ormonts,” which has the same text as Bridel’s version, if not the same dialectical intensity. The second is Laborde’s melody with the text that Bridel had described as “insipid, rather than natural.”107 Over the next ten years, folklorists collected variants of the “Les Armaillis” melody from areas on the north side of Lake Geneva. Later songbooks often contained multiple versions of the same melody within the text. The most common provenances are to Ormonds, in Canton Vaud, and Gruyères, in Fribourg. Laborde’s song from 1780 may 105 “It is a shame that this native song wants to die out in the fatherland. It is a shame that the Schweizer is now less attached to his mountains, less deeply moved by the unaffected voice of the fatherland that before, when the Kühreihen awakened in him a deadly yearning for the fatherland.” “Schade darum daß dieser so ganz heimische Gesang im lieben Vaterlande aussterben will! Schade wenn der Schweizer jetzt weniger innig an seinen Bergen hängen, weniger tief von der kunstlosen Stimme des Vaterlandes ergriffen werden sollte als ehedem, wo der Kuhreihen ihm eine tödtliche Sehnsucht nach dem Vaterlande erweckte.” Ibid., iv. 106 “Das altbackene Hausbrod ward verworfen, und fremde Koft kam auf die Tafel.” Ibid., ii. 107 Bridel, “Note sur le Ranz des Vaches,” 431. “Laborde l’a insérté dans le second tome de son Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne; mais à la place des paroles patoises, il y a cousu des paroles françoises, qui sont plattes au lieu d’étre simples.” 135 very well have been a retexted and elevated version of a popular tune. This proliferation of “Les Armaillis” reflected how the regional variants of ranz des vaches and the singing Älpler had become understood as an expression of tradition and patriotism, particularly following the Stecklikrieg. These songbooks, at least in their early iterations, represented an attempt to collect and preserve a diversity of Swiss heritage, thus underscoring the legitimacy of regional expression and tradition. Part 3: “Les Armaillis” in Genevan Tabatières Unlike all of the songs included in the 1805 collection, “Les Armaillis” was French- Swiss, and the story of “Les Armaillis,” starting after Bridel’s Society-inspired quest in 1790 through its use at the 1819 Fête des Vignerons, tells the story of French-Switzerland under occupation. There are no printed versions of the song from during the occupation, but the song was played in musical snuffboxes made in Geneva during the French occupation. These tabatières evidence an ideological thread from the Helvetic Society through to the end of the occupation in 1815. A study of two tabatières can illuminate how the melody was used to signify freedom, independence, and local authority while Geneva was under French control. The following section is a kind of object biography of two tabatières, musical snuff boxes made in Geneva during the occupation, both of which feature “Les Armaillis.” Music box scholars have long taken for granted the prevalence of “Les Armaillis” (which they typically just call “the ranz des vaches”) in early tabatières. This section attempts to offer one explanation for why the song is so prevalent in these early 136 boxes. Unfortunately, due to the nature of music boxes, I have only been able to find recordings and detailed information for two of them. To date, music boxes have been largely ignored by musicologists. Many museums have tabatières in their holdings, but the mechanisms by and large do not work, which for now makes it difficult to address musicologically. These tabatières warrant a substantial investigation because they are a fundamentally different kind of musical object than the Kühreihen collections; they are much more personal, and work within the context of specific relationships. The first tabatière, which I will refer to as tabatière A, dates from the period 1810–1814 and was a gift of recognition between a British and a Genevese person. The second tabatière was given as a gift in 1815 from Genevans to a Vaudois named Sonnenberg, so it is typically called Sonnenberg’s tabatière. In each tabatière, the use of the tune has a slightly different signification because of the context between the givers and recipients. These objects reveal that Genevans identified themselves with Switzerland, but, in keeping with Eintracht, they retained their own identity while still celebrating common Alpine values. To start by complicating an already subtle situation, Geneva had historically been allied with the Swiss Confederacy, but it was not a part of Switzerland. The region had been an independent Republic from the sixteenth century until 1798, when the French occupation designated it the “Département du Léman.” The French occupation, which had ostensibly ended in Switzerland in 1803, and then again in 1813, continued essentially uninterrupted in Geneva until Napoleon’s exile. Resentment about the occupation grew steadily, and many citizens of Geneva felt that the later Act of 137 Mediation was a coup.108 There is very little that brings people together quite like having a common enemy, and in the early nineteenth century, the Genevans and the Swiss had found one in Napoleon. Just before the French occupied Geneva, Genevan clock makers began manufacturing “singing mechanisms,” which were musical mechanisms built into clocks and pocket watches. By the 1810s, these lavish adornments also found in a wide variety of deluxe hand-held objects, like coffee cups, toothpick cases, perfume holders, and necklaces. One of the most common places to find a musical mechanism was inside fantastically expensive snuff boxes, the tabatières. Because they were meant to fit in a pocket, tabatières were quite small, typically around three inches long, by two inches wide, and one inch deep. In addition to the delicate musical component, they were often richly adorned with exquisitely tiny allegorical paintings, portraits, or embedded with mother of pearl, horn, or other precious materials. Members of the aristocracy frequently gifted lavish snuff boxes as tokens of esteem or alliance, and many were musical. 109 Snuff boxes were valued as gifts and conversation starters, and it is easy to imagine two gentlemen taking snuff together and starting a polite conversation about the music.110 108 By 1810, one of the French prefects in residence in Geneva noted in his official documents that even civilians who had no reason to regret the occupation were hoping to see Geneva become an independent republic again. Alexandre Jullien, ed., Histoire de Genève, de 1798 a 1931, vol. 2, Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Genève (Genève, 1951), 26. 109 This is typically a male practice. There are similar musical mechanisms that are built into objects more typically associated with feminine social activity (perfume holders, necklaces etc.), but these materials have been difficult to access, partially because they are less well preserved than the tabatières, which are themselves very infrequently well-preserved. Working with “feminine” musical mechanisms would be a wonderful line of inquiry for the curious researcher. 110 A London tobaccanist wrote in 1846 that, “in nine cases out of ten, when some mark of respect or esteem is to be presented, either from one individual or a body of individuals, to another, a snuff-box of gold or silver is the implement chosen for presentation.” George T. Fisher, Snuff & Snuff-Takers (London: 138 The mechanisms were made out of a rotating cylinder that was covered in tiny nubs. As the cylinder turned, the nubs would pluck metal tongues of different lengths, which each produced a distinct pitch. Tabatières were frequently “programmed” with two songs; one could shift the cylinder laterally with a small lever located on the outside of the box, so that the metal tongues lined up with a different set of nubs, which would produce a different song. The pairing of tunes can tell us a lot about the political sympathies of the aristocrats who gifted or recieved the tabatières. In both of the boxes I am discussing, each of the tunes references a different political entity. In tabatière A, the Genevans are represented by “Les Armaillis,” and the British are represented by “Rule Brittania.” In Sonnenberg’s tabatière, the Genevans are again represented by “Les Armaillis,” while the Swiss Confederacy is represented by a song called “Les Enfants de Tell.” All together, these music boxes evidence the presence of anti-French international sympathies. Tabatière A was made between 1810 and 1814 and was likely given as a diplomatic gift from a Genevan to an Englishman during the French occupation of Geneva.111 Its measurements are 8.1 x 5.1 x 2.1 cm, and it is pictured below in Figure 21: Joseph Baker, Cigar Merchant, 1846), 57–58. This same author praises snuff and snuff-boxes as fantastic conversation starters. Ibid., 30–31. 111 This tabatière was sold at auction in 2018 to an unknown private collector, but the auction house that sold it (Auctionhouse Breker Köln) was kind enough to provide me with a recording and some images. I am also grateful for correspondence with Niko Weigman on the topic of this particular tabatiere. 139 Figure 21: Top of tabatière A showing the initials "LB" and the text "Souvenir d'amitié et de reconnoissance," shared with kind permission of the Music Box Society of Great Britain. Because so much of the following argument is dependent on this date, it is worth explaining how it has been dated. Music box aficionados Luuk Goldhorn and Niko Weigman have dated the tabatière around 1810 based on the style of the mechanism and stamp of the goldsmith, Henri Nessier, on the exterior of the box. Henri Nessier is known to have used that stamp in the period 1808–1814, but the mechanism, called a “stacked comb,” did not become commonplace until 1810.112 Thus the tabatière could have been made anywhere between 1810–1814. The gift of this tabatière occurred within the lengthy relationship between Geneva and Britain that was built on deep political sympathies. Geneva was home to a lively community of English ex-patriots, and during the period of the Helvetic Republic, they 112 Luuk Goldhoorn and Niko Wiegman, “A Rare and Remarkable Musical Snuff Box,” The Music Box: An International Journal of Mechanical Music 27, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 131. 140 were both allied against the French. 113 In the years leading up to 1806, the thriving community of English ex-pats in Geneva had been forced to return to England, and a large number of Genevans also sought asylum in London. Early in the first French occupation, Genevese refugees abroad had tried to negotiate with diplomats in England and Germany to interfere on their behalf. In 1802, fifty Genevans residing in London signed a petition requested that the Cabinet of St. James intervene during negotiations during the Treaty of Amiens. The English were sympathetic, but Napoleon flatly refused to discuss the matter of Genevan independence.114 As time went on, in response to the French Empire’s increasingly massive sprawl at this time, Genevan Anglophiles became progressively invested in the idea of a specifically “British” future for Europe, rather than a French one. They believed that the British Empire had the capacity to establish a peace that would permit the survival of small states, including their own republic, which otherwise would lack the necessary economic or physical resources to defend themselves against larger states, like France.115 England, in turn, idealized Geneva as a bastion of freedom and liberty (much as the French had done during their Revolution). The English also often presumed a link between Protestantism and political liberty, a religious basis that the Calvinist Genevans shared with the English, once again in contrast to the French.116 Thus the English saw the 113 Expats in Geneva established an Anglophile literary journal, the Bibliothèque Brittanique, of which Napoleon became increasingly suspicious. The expat community is mentioned briefly in Mavis Coulson, Southwards to Geneva: 200 Years of English Travellers (Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1988). 114 Jullien, Histoire de Genève, de 1798 a 1931, 2:25. 115 Richard Whatmore, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 264–267. 116 Ibid., xi–xiii. 141 French occupation of Switzerland as a profound moral affront, if not an outright existential threat. However, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decrees on November 21, 1806, establishing the Continental System, or the so-called “blockade.” The Continental System, while not always strictly enforced, had two particularly relevant consequences. The first was that it ostensibly prevented communication or trade with England. The second was that it resulted in significant financial hardship in both Switzerland and Geneva, which only added to the Swiss resentment about the occupation. Everything to Britain was cut off, including “all commerce and correspondence ... letters or packets, addressed to either England or an Englishman, or written in the English language, will not pass through the post-office, and will be seized.”117 Materials could be passed through neutral or protected intermediaries; it is possible that the tabatière traveled through one of these channels, the gift of an increasingly unhappy (but still financially stable) Genevan.118 The blockade ended in April 1814; it is possible that the tabatière was manufactured in the months after the end of the blockade, but the relationship it endorses would still likely have been built during the preceding years. The exterior of the box underscores the musical pairing. One may switch between pieces by using a lever that points to a letter “A” on one end, and an “S” on the other, corresponding with Anglais and Suisse. The engraving on the outside of the box 117 “The British Isles are declared in a state of blockade. ... All commerce and correspondence with the British Isles is prohibited. In consequence, letters or packets, addressed to either England or an Englishman, or written in the English language, will not pass through the post-office, and will be seized.” Quoted in Iain P Watts, “Philosophical Intelligence: Letters, Print, and Experiment during Napoleon’s Continental Blockade.,” Isis 106, no. 4 (December 2015): 750. 118 As explained in footnote number 2 in Ibid. 142 unambiguously describes the relationship between the boxes, with the text: “Souvenir d’amitie et de reconnoisance”—souvenir of friendship and recognition. Also on the exterior are the initials “LB,” although specifically who “LB” is remains unknown.119 Even though the blockade was not always enforced, a particular material affront to the French is the fact that the tabatière is made out of 18 karat gold. Precious metals, like gold and silver, were monitored by the Napoleonic government and thereby somewhat difficult to obtain. Therefore, assuming the tabatière is indeed from around 1810, the dedication and materials indicate that diplomatic and political activities were occurring despite the Continental System. It is probable that Nessier’s willingness to stamp the box means that at least the exterior was approved somehow by the Napoleonic censors, even though the musical pieces were distinctly anti-Napoleon.120 In many ways, this tabatière raises more questions than it answers. While tabatiere A is not a text document, the songs do carry texts that reference the British and Genevan/Swiss landscapes. During this time, the English began to feel 119 One might reasonably wonder if Bridel had anything to do with this tabatière (particularly the “B” in the elusive initials), but there is no definitive answer at this stage. Bridel was certainly located in the right geographic area, and while he did not live in Geneva, he lived nearby. He had family in Geneva and would have run in the same circles as some of the Genevan dissidents who sought asylum in England. Bridel abhorred the French presence in Switzerland, which tracks with the political sentiments coded in the tabatière. I would not be surprised if Bridel knew the person who commissioned the tabatière. 120 There is a distinct possibility also that the musical mechanism was not made in Geneva, but instead in one of the other areas on the north side of Lake Geneva. The Continental blockade (in addition to the governmental control of precious metals) had forced a lot of the music box manufactures into poverty, and much of the manufacturing moved to the areas of Ste-Croix and the Jura––areas to which “Les Armaillis” is typically attributed. However, Henri Nessier, the inscription on the box, was located in Geneva. Also, the music box maker would have had to know “Rule Britannia,” which to me seems less likely if they are tucked away in a rural valley. This also raises some interesting questions about how the music box manufacturers worked. We have very little remaining information about how they actually wrote and arranged their music, except the vague oral knowledge that the manufacturers were the ones that did all of the musical arranging, including creating accompaniment parts to well-known tunes, etc. Some information can be found in Jean-Claude Piguet, The Music Box Makers: The History of the Music Box in Sainte-Croix, trans. Rebecca Galeazzi (New York: Music Box Society International, 2004). 143 increasingly that the Alps did for Switzerland what the literal insularity of England did for Britain, and just as the Swiss tune, “Les Armaillis, ” opens with text describing the mountains, the British tune, “Rule Britannia” opens with text about the sea. While William Wordsworth’s poem “Thoughts of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland” was inspired by the Stecklikrieg, the kinship between English and Swiss national landscapes is still evident in the opening lines: Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One is of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty!121 The two voices that Wordsworth identifies––one of the mountains, and one of the sea–– are clear references to Switzerland, and Britain, respectively. “Rule Britannia” had recently also become known as a cry against the French. Composed in the eighteenth century, the text is largely a denouncement of tyranny (much as in Wordsworth’s poem) illustrated by the refrain: “Rule, Britannia! rule the waves! / Britons will never be slaves.” In the first decade of the century, it became fashionable for British loyalists to retext “Rule Britannia” with political commentary in response to Napoleon’s plans to conquer England.122 Since the tabatière was presumably made after 121 William Wordsworth, “Thoughts of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland,” in The Poems, Volume One, ed. John O. Hayden (London, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 725. The rest of the text reads: “There came a Tyrant, with holy glee / Thou fought’st against him; but has vainly striven; /Though from thy Alpine holds at length art driven. / Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. /Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft: / Then cleave, O cleave to that which is still left; / For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be / That Mountain floods should thunder as before, / And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore, / And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!” 122 Mark Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797–1815 (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 173–175. 144 the War of the Third Coalition 1803–1806, when England posed the most immediate threat to French domination, one of the meanings coded into the tune pairing may have been one of hope––if the Britons had avoided falling to the French, perhaps the Genevans too could reclaim their independence. Goldhoorn and Weigman have noted that “Rule Britannia” is exceptionally rare in boxes of this vintage and it is possible that this is the only tabatière from this period with this tune.123 In this, not only did the manufacturer make a potentially unique setting of an English national song, they also chose an English national song that had become popularly linked with specifically anti-French sentiments. Sonnenberg’s tabatière is much more well known, in part because in 2002 it was stolen from the jewelry room of the Genevan Art and History Museum as part of a particularly spectacular burglary.124 The measurements for the tabatière are 9.3 x 6.2 x 2.7 cm.125 It was returned to the Museum in 2018. Sonnenberg’s tabatière has been the subject of a two art-historical articles, one from 1954 and the next from 1979, but it has never been written about by a musicologist.126 Compared to the mostly circumstantial 123 “...[the] Ranz des Vaches is the most common tune on early snuff boxes, but as far as [we] know Rule Britannia is very rare on them, maybe the first time on this one, and it might be unique.” Goldhoorn and Wiegman, “A Rare and Remarkable Musical Snuff Box,” 132. 124 I am grateful to the head archivist, Estelle Fallet, for her help with this research. Estelle Fallet, “Retrouvailles avec la tabatière Sonnenberg. Une pièce maîtresse de retour dans les collections du MAH,” Le blog du plus grand musée encyclopédique suisse (blog), November 22, 2018, https://blog.mahgeneve.ch/retrouvailles-avec-la-tabatiere-sonnenberg/. 125 “Tabatière à Musique,” Musée d’art d’histoire Collection En Ligne, accessed 2/22/22., https://collections.geneve.ch/mah/oeuvre/tabatiere-musique/ad-3690. 126 This tabatière appears in a historical anecdote at the Centennial Celebration of Genevan independence: “Variétés: les Fêtes du Centenaire Genevois,” Bibliothèque Universelle et Revue Suisse LXXV, no. 224 (Août 1914): 372. It was also mentioned by Henri Naef in a Genevan newspaper article in 1954, was the subject of a very thorough art-historical article in 1979. They treat the musical mechanism a bit, as well as the tunes, but the article is primarily focused on the detailed enamel work on the front, and the historical chronology. José-A Godoy, Richard Rod, and Fabienne-Xavière Sturm, “Un tabatière de J.-L. Richter illustrée d’une vue de Genève en 1815,” Genève: revue d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie 27 (1979): 249. 145 evidence for who gave and received tabatière A, we know many more specifics about this one. It was a thank-you gift from a group of well-to-do Genevan women, given on October 18, 1815, to a Colonel from Lausanne, Louis de Sonnenberg, who was credited with saving Geneva from yet another French invasion.127 This box tells us that “Les Armaillis” was considered a patriotic song among members of the Genevan aristocracy in the period when Geneva was negotiating the terms of its relationship with the newly restored Swiss Confederation. The period of relative stasis that began in 1813 with Napoleon’s exile came to an end in 1815 when he escaped from the Isle of Elba. Genevans became anxious about French reprisals and began to prepare for another military conflict. Instead of waiting for this military support to come from the federal level, where there were still lengthy negotiations occurring about the design of the new government, Geneva hired the relatively inexperienced colonel from Lausanne, Colonel Louis de Sonnenberg, who helped fortify the city and assemble the troops.128 When the French did attack Switzerland, it was directed instead at the northern city of Basle.129 By all accounts, the citizens of Geneva absolutely adored Sonnenberg, and credited him with dissuading the French invasion. They threw him a farewell parade on October 18th of that year, and, in almost complete secrecy, tucked this tabatière away in 127 Godoy, Rod, and Sturm, “Un tabatière de J.-L. Richter illustrée d’une vue de Genève en 1815,” 248. 128 Geneva and Switzerland could not agree on the inter-cantonal military obligations of their new federal state. In September of 1814, the Genevans had voted to join the Swiss Confederation, but after six months, at the time of Napoleon’s escape, they were still ironing out the details of their relationship with the other cantons. Specifically, the question concerned inter-cantonal military obligations. Instead of entering into what the Genevans felt was a contract of slavery with Canton Bern, they recruited the inexperienced Louis de Sonnenberg from Lucerne. 129 Tensions died down when Napoleon abdicated on June 22nd 1815. 146 dessin entraîne une absence d'expression que Grâce à cette dernière couche transparente l'on ne saurait que déplorer. Car Richter dans et brillante, achevée par un polissage, le relief tous les visages de ses petits personnages, paraît plus accentué et l'harmonie générale desréussit avec une maîtrise étonnante à indiquer teintes fondues plus avivée. ce qu'ils éprouvent: aussi bien la tendresse La tabatière de Louis de Sonnenberg fait d'un couple de bergers, la frayeur sous l'orage, depuis cette année partie des collections du his lleugbgoangheeu, randud chhiads sae uler.t..ter and a poem withinM tuhseé etabdeatil'èhroerl,o lgikerei emeattrydeoslh'ékmaa dilolelrlise.13d0e Non pas que Troll dénature par moins de Genève. Sa présence complète fort à propos génie la qualité générale de l'émail et sa vision l'œuvre de Jean-Louis Richter dont le musée Theà lel'tœteirl rneua.dT: o“uTtehse cGesennueavnacnes lasde ieresp wèrhenot eànthpuossisaèsdteicdaéljlày dsehatrrèes tbheea ufxeeelxinemgsp leths.atL 'envi- la loupe. Mais on peut cependant estimer, dans ronnement historique de cet objet, la qualité le cas présent, c'est Richter avec le rendu esthétique de son travail d'orfèvrerie et de Mondsuiecuierl dete dSuon qnueenberaglp ehsatrse ,arqouui sdeodn nien eàvlaery pheeinatrutr,e offer him thipaysage sur émail, less dmeouxdeasirts pdleedmgeus oiqfu e peinture sa plénitude et son charme. typiquement helvétiques, tout contribue à recognTiotuioten,la asnudrf abceegp heiinmte teos tarceccoeupvt.e”rt 1e31fi nale- faire de son acquisition un événement impor- ment d'un émail translucide appelé «fondant» tant dans la vie des collections publiques dont Richter est un des premiers utilisateurs. genevoises. Figure 22: The top of Sonnenberg’s tabatière (1815), property of the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève. Shared with kind permission. 259 These ladies were from the (quite) well-to-do middle class of the Low Streets district..132 The tabatière is beautifully made, including strategic soldering that prevents 130 The full text to the poem can be found in Godoy, Rod, and Sturm, “Un tabatière de J.-L. Richter illustrée d’une vue de Genève en 1815,” 249. 131 “Les dames genevoises (sic) qui partagent avec enthousiasme les sentiments que Monsieur de Sonnenberg a fait naître dans tous les cœurs, lui présentent ce modeste gage de reconnaissance qu'elles le conjurent d'accepter.” Cited in Ibid. 132 Ibid., 149–150. These ladies must have been quite well-to-do. In today’s money, depending on how you calculate it, this tabatière cost the Ladies of the Low Streets upwards of twenty-five thousand US dollars. 147 the box from vibrating when the mechanism plays. On the top, there is an exquisitely small painting that depicts two riders, gazing at the city of Geneva with the iconic snowfields of Mont Blanc rising behind it. The engraved text below the scene, “Vous l’avez préservée” translates to, “you saved it.” In the image, Sonnenberg looks like he has not just saved the city of Geneva, but the Alps themselves. The tabatière’s two melodies elaborate on what it was that the Ladies of the Low Streets believed Sonnenberg had saved. One melody, as mentioned is “Les Armaillis.” The other melody is a Swiss patriotic song called “Children of Tell, Be welcome” (“Enfants de Tell, Soyez Bienvenus”). “Enfants de Tell” had been composed by Jean-François Champonnière for another Swiss parade, in May 1814, to celebrate an earlier military victory against the French, as well as the pending new union of Geneva with Switzerland.133 Champonnière had been an outspoken opponent of the occupation, and reportedly, during the French occupation, he had flirted with political recriminations when he composed provocative songs “that often caused the prefect to send for him and caution him.” 134 In one telling of the story of “Enfants de Tell,” the Swiss Confederate forces set foot on Genevan soil, and following a While the other public gifts to Sonnenberg (a sword, belt, and a plate) came to a total of 2,040 Francs, the tabatière cost the ladies of the low streets about six times as much (60 Louis, or 12,000 Francs). Sixteen years after it was stolen, in 2018, it resurfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in London where it was identified and returned home. When it was returned to the Genevan Art and History Museum, its worth was estimated at 400,000 CHF. “Le Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève récupère une pièce majeure,” La Liberté, November 20, 2018, https://www.laliberte.ch/news-agence/detail/le-musee-d-art-et-d-histoire-de-geneve-recupere- une-piece-majeure/464576. 133 Recollections of this moment sometimes deliberately blur the difference between Genevans and Swiss. For instance. See J. Duvillard, “Petit-Senn, Conférence,” in Bulletin de l’Institut National Genevois, vol. XXVI (Genève: Georg, Libraire de l’Institut Genevois, 1884), 319–44. Pg 325 134 Francis Gribble, Lake Geneva and Its Literary Landmarks (Westminster and New York: Archibald Constable & Co, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1901), 330. 148 moment of silence, the Genevese began shouting “Long live the Swiss!” and the Confederate forces (Fribourg and Solothurn) responded “Long live Geneva, long live the new canton!”135 Genevese and Confederate forces paraded through the streets of Geneva, and “Children of Tell” was sung later that evening at a banquet for the officers and magistrates.136 From the Genevois perspective, the Swiss are the Children of Tell, arriving to help restore their sovereignty, much as Tell restored Swiss Freyheit hundreds of years prior. The text of the song begins: Children of Tell, be welcome! What pleasure it is to see your banners! Fifteen years of oppression had slaughtered us, One moment ends our miseries. All of our misfortunes, all of our setbacks Are removed by your presence; Hope follows All the evils we suffered, Our good days will be returned to us; Children of Tell, be welcome! 137 Like “Les Armaillis” and “Rule Britannia,” “Enfants de Tell” was associated with patriotic sentiments about freedom and liberty across Switzerland. Champonnière had many ideological parallels to the Helvetic Society. Of course, calling the Swiss “the children of Tell” recalls the notion of heroic cultural heritage 135 Jullien, Histoire de Genève, de 1798 a 1931, 2:47. “Vivent les Suisses” and “Vive Genève, vive le nouveau canton.” 136 Ibid. The song was referenced again at the 100 year anniversary celebration of Genevan independence in 1914. “Variétés: les Fêtes du Centenaire Genevois,” 372. 137 Duvillard, “Petit-Senn, Conférence,” 325. “ Enfants de Tell! Soyez les bienvenus ! / Quel plaisir de voir vos bannières ! / Quinze ans d’oppression nous avaient abattus, / Un instant finit nos misères. / Tous nos malheurs, tous nos revers / S’effacent par votre présence ; / Aux maux que nous avons soufferts / On voit succéder l’espérance ; / Nos beaux jours nous seront rendus ! / Enfants de Tell, soyez les bienvenus ! » 149 developed between the brothers of the Society. Champonnière was also an outspoken supporter of the push for universal Swissness that the Society had advocated for prior to the occupation. He is quoted as once saying: I am neither a Zurich man, nor a Berne man, nor a Canton Vaud man, but a Switzer. I am neither a Catholic, nor a Reformer, but a Christian. I am neither democrat, nor autocrat, nor ochlocrat, but a patriot in the ancient sense of the word.138 This use of the song in Sonnenberg’s tabatière would have pleased Champonnière, because the gift occurred when Switzerland, and all its disparate parts, would finally be on the road towards sovereignty and self-rule. Conclusion Much of the energy behind the 1819 Fête was, as discussed earlier, a catharsis after twenty-odd years of revolution, war and misery. Pierre does not say a word about freedom, or even Switzerland, but the very fact that he was an Älpler in a regional celebration put him in the heroic lineage of Tell and the Schweizerlieder. The specific tune had become more significant during the occupation; it was a ranz des vaches, which (as in Chapter II) already articulated a patriotic sentiment that was pre-loaded with anti- Gallicism. This association was strengthened by the Kühreihen collections issued during and after the Unspunnenfest. In these collections, as well, the archetype of the Älpler was used to embody multiple regional expressions of Alpine-ness, and therefore Swissness. In this way, the post-occupation Älpler eventually became the very embodiment of the 138 Gribble, Lake Geneva and Its Literary Landmarks. 150 Helvetic Society’s Eintracht ideal. “Les Armaillis” became such an important piece of music for French-speaking Switzerland that it is one of the most commonly printed songs on Liedkarten, or musical postcards, starting at the end of the nineteenth century (see Appendix C). The development of “Les Armaillis” from the milieu of the Helvetic Society all the way through to the 1819 Fête des Vignerons is emblematic of how Alpine song developed as a patriotic, universally Swiss genre during that time. The Restoration of Switzerland in 1815––the gathering and reconciliation of the Children of Tell––marked the end to a period defined by occupation, resistance, and infighting. The relative state stability after 1815 (although there would be another brief civil war in 1847) allowed space for further ideological mutations in Alpine song, even as the music became less concerned with independence than with preserving tradition in the face of modernization. 151 CHAPTER IV SONIC TOURISM IN THE BERNER OBERLAND “An aerial concert warbling among the crags...” Introduction Figure 23: Staubbach Falls and the Lauterbrunnen Valley as painted by Albert Bierstadt (c. 1865) The Staubbach waterfall is located just outside the town of Lauterbrunnen, in a valley of the Berner Oberland in central Switzerland. The falls are famous for largely evaporating into mist over the course of their nearly thousand-foot drop from the source above. Standing underneath the Staubbauch can give one a sense of vertigo; the disappearing waterfall makes the viewer acutely aware of the size and steepness of the mountain walls and the even larger peaks beyond them. Many writers portray the ephemerality of the 152 falls in otherworldly terms, like a thing between forms. Lord Byron described it in 1816 as “neither mist nor water, but something between both.”139 A later writer mixed metaphors to a similar effect: “It is beautiful as an avalanche of innocent lightning. Its beauty is perfect.”140 Tourists, particularly English, began visiting the Staubbach and the central Alps in greater and greater numbers following the Napoleonic wars, and groups of Swiss women and children began gathering at scenic locations like the base of the Staubbach to sing for tourists. Tourists regularly associated the strangeness of the women’s voices with the uncanniness of the waterfall, and often described the voices as belonging to the falls. When William Wordsworth visited the Staubbach in 1820 and heard the women singing, he noted that “this wild and savage air was utterly unlike any sounds I had ever heard [...] and on what occasion they were sung I could not guess, only they seemed to belong in some way or other to the waterfall; and reminded me of religious services chanted to streams and fountains in Pagan times.”141 Other travelers to this same spot testified to very similar experiences where eerie song and sound enhanced a touristic experience of the otherworldly landscape. One year after Wordsworth, Robert Southey went to the Staubbach and penned what would be the most frequently cited and reprinted English description of the ranz des vaches for the rest of the century, and which describes the vocalization as if it were impossible: “surely the wildest chorus that ever was heard by 139 Lord Byron, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life, ed. Thomas Moore, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1855), 14. 140 E. K. Washington, Echoes of Europe; or, Word Pictures of Travel (Philadelphia: James Challen & Son, 1860), 95. 141 Quoted in Robert Southey, The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Complete in One Volume (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850), 502–505. 153 human ears––a song, not of articulate sounds, but in which the voice was used as a mere instrument of music, more flexible than any which art could produce,––sweet, powerful, and thrilling beyond description.”142 This uncanny sonic adornment was not just limited to the voice: In 1836, James Fenimore Cooper noted in his travelogue that an alphorn player had joined the women at the base of the Staubbach. Like Wordsworth’s depiction of mysterious musical services from “Pagan times,” Cooper recalled the sound of the alphorn in the sacred space of the landscape in religious terms: “... like the pealings of some mighty organ, stealing over and entrancing the soul, as they roll through the chapels of some vast cathedral, and strike downwards in all their grandeur from its fretted roof.”143 The horn and the singing both operated as sonic ornaments to the sacred disorienting space of the landscape, and the young boy who blew the horn was “well entitled to a few sous” for his efforts. In nineteenth-century Switzerland, sound was part of the touristic aesthetic of the Alps. Along with the imposing mountains, the “roaring avalanches” and “thundering” glacial rivers, writers often included, “the mountain song, echoed and re-echoed... all 142 “While we were at the waterfall, some half score peasants, chiefly women and girls, assembled just out of reach of the spray, and set up – surely the wildest chorus [etc].” Ibid., 504–505. Unlike many writers who published their travelogues, this particular description comes from one of his personal journals, and was not printed until it was included as a gloss on his 1825 poem, “A Tale of Paraguay.” Robert Southey, A Tale of Paraguay (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825), 188–189. He acknowledged in this footnote that his writing about the singing women in South America was shaped in large part from how he remembered at the Staubbach, and “an extract from a journal written in Switzerland will be the best comment upon the description in these stanzas, which indeed were probably suggested by my recollections of the Staubach [sic].”142 This resonates with the hypothesis by Bernhard C. Schär who argues that “the tropics” were often shaped by perceptions of Switzerland. Bernhard C. Schär, “On the Tropical Origins of the Alps: Science and the Colonial Imagination of Switzerland, 1700–1900,” in Colonial Switzerland: Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins, ed. Patricia Purtschert and Harald Fischer-Tiné, Cambridge Imperial & Post-Colonial Studies (Cambridge: Palgrave McMillan, 2015), 29–49. 143 Cooper also contextualized his experience within substantial quotes from Southey and (William) Wordsworth, including the whole of the latter’s relevant sonnet. James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland [1836], ed. Kenneth W. Staggs and James P. Elliot (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 258–259. 154 combining to attract the admirer of nature, and to raise his thoughts from the objects he surveys, to that Almighty Supreme who formed this scene of wonder and of beauty.” 144 Samuel Miller Waring, in 1819, explained how the ranz des vaches worked together with the scenery for maximum effect: When the herdsman, unseen, like an invisible genius, sings it among secluded and imposing scenery, when the murmur of a neighbouring torrent, producing a continued bass, combines finely with the notes of the alp-horn, when the echoes prolong the sounds among the mountains, and when the cattle, from some sweet pasture, join at intervals the chime of their bells; the traveller whose eye and ear are thus ravished at once, will carry away with him a delightful recollection, to be awakened by the same notes in a distant land— an emotion not to be enjoyed by one who has never visited Switzerland...145 This chapter explores how English travelers in the nineteenth century viewed Swiss music-making as part of their Alpine experience, and instances in which they felt the music did or did not belong in the mountains. At the core of this inquiry there is a tension between tourists’ aesthetic expectations and the needs and desires of the locals. This tension plays out via a feedback loop that Jonathan Urry calls the “cycle of the tourist gaze,” wherein something that tourists want or expect to see is, by virtue of the economic incentives of tourism, provided to them. Specifically, the English expected to encounter a ranz des vaches or the echoing alphorn in the scenery, and the Swiss delivered. Prior to the influx of tourists, the Alps in the Oberland had been defined by poverty and isolation. Many of these Swiss seized on the new opportunities presented by 144 P. D. Hardy, Travels in Switzerland. Compiled from the Most Recent Authorities (London: Cecilia-St., 1830), 5. 145 Samuel Miller Waring, The Traveller’s Fire-Side: A Series of Papers on Switzerland, the Alps, &c. Containing Information and Descriptions, Original, and Selected from French and Swiss Authors (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 47, Paternoster-Row, 1819), 161–2. 155 the tourist industry, and a large number of them, including the women at the Staubbach, specifically started making music for tourists.146 In the case of English tourists in the Alps, the tourist gaze went hand-in-hand with a tourist ear.147 All of the language about the strangeness and incomprehensibility at the Staubbach and elsewhere in the Alps belonged to the aesthetic of the sublime. I propose that the Swiss musicians performed a sonic component of the sublime experience for tourists. While the sublime has taken many forms over the centuries, for English tourists around 1800, it was, in very broad strokes, an aesthetic experience provoked by size, immeasurability, and unfamiliarity. Robert Clewis has pithily defined the sublime as an aesthetic experience of “mysterious profundity,” something that takes us to the borderlands of reason and comprehension, to a place nearly outside of the world, or perhaps even divine. 148 Then, as often now, mountains were thought of as something outside of the normal world, whether it was a literal interim space between France and Italy, or the thin air of the high elevations, or the unpretentious native people who evaded the trappings of modern civilization. The suddenness, irregularity, and danger of the Alps 146Particularly during the summer (tourist) seasons, many Swiss made their living from the tourist industry. We do not have a lot of records of these Swiss, but there are occasional anecdotes noted by travelers. “During the drive from Lauterbrunnen to Interlachen I heard a good deal from our driver respecting his position and relations, both public and private, of all of which he spoke without any backwardness or reserve. He himself lived in the hotel, but his wife had a house in the village. He received a fixed sum in wages during the winter, but was left in summer to depend on the Trinkgeld he obtained from travellers.” John Forbes, M. D. F. R. S., A Physician’s Holiday or a Month in Switzerland in the Summer of 1848 (London: John Murray, 1849), 259. 147 Another scholar who has worked with the tourist ear in the context of the concert hall is Christian Thorau, “‘What Ought to Be Heard’: Touristic Listening and the Guided Ear,” in The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Christian Thorau and Hansjakob Ziemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 207–30. 148 Robert R Clewis, ed., The Sublime Reader (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 4. 156 can easily evoke feelings of the sublime, and Switzerland, in the heart of Europe, was where the English traveled to find it starting at the end of the eighteenth century.149 Sound enhanced the aesthetic experience of the mountains, whether by bringing the listener closer to the sublime or simply pleasingly ornamenting the landscape with curious sounds. Sonic tourism was an excellent means to experience the sublime: the sublime is simultaneously fearful and pleasurable, and the pleasurable aesthetic experience is only truly possible when witnessing the dangers from a safe distance.150 While many different kinds of media can be used to collapse the emotional distance between viewer and horror without putting the viewer in physical harm’s way, sound can performed or appreciated within eyesight of the mountains themselves.151 For instance, it is horrifying to witness a close up avalanche; however, hearing and seeing one from far away allows the viewer to appreciate it in a more aesthetic way. The sound makes it real, but the distance makes it endurable. This chapter takes a microhistorical approach, pulling from a wealth of travel literature, including travelogues and guidebooks, to explore how the Swiss and the English used sound in the mountains as part of their travel experience. I focus on the English because they were far and away the largest group of tourists.152 English tourism 149 On the sublime in mountains, see for instance: Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2. The mountains were not always so appealing. Perhaps the best text on this aesthetic shift to date is Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. 150 Clewis, The Sublime Reader, 1. 151 Ibid., 2. 152 For instance, Marianne Colston wrote in 1822 that “In Brigue the hotel was full to overflowing with English travellers, and much difficulty was experienced in finding lodgings for the night.” Marianne Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1. (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1822), 476. In another example, an American wrote just after 157 in Switzerland started with the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century and paused during the French occupation, during which the English ideal of Switzerland intensified so that after the Congress of Vienna, Switzerland was an intensely popular destination for English travelers. I also occasionally draw from some American aristocratic tourists who made their way to the Alps at the same time, because they engaged with the English literary milieu.153 Travelogues are particularly valuable for this work because entries are typically dated, which means that for musicologists, we can use these sources to come up with a fairly detailed map of musical encounters and how tourists felt about them. Some writers were more inclined to write about music than others, but we can identify themes and trends in the attitudes towards the Swiss performers. The glaring omission in this chapter is the utter lack of Swiss sources; I have not found any surviving sources from the Swiss performers, but this is unsurprising given the deep poverty in the population. Some of the only Swiss comments on the subject come from the upper echelons, including the epithet “beggars horn” for the alphorn. Further archival research on this topic awaits. The first portion of this chapter gives an overview of the various literary sources that set the cycle of the tourist gaze and ear in motion in different genres that could be read both at home and abroad. The expectations for the visual and sonic mountain sublime were initiated by texts written by and for aristocrats at the end of the eighteenth the turn of the twentith century in Interlaken that “We are so surrounded by English tourists that we will have a fine accent before we reach London.” The same author wrote a few days later in Grindelwald: “I am losing all my veneration for the English accent.” John U. Higinbotham, Three Weeks in Europe: The Vacation of a Busy Man (Chicago: The Reilley & Britton Co., 1904), 181, 189. 153 For example, J. F. Cooper’s Gleanings in Europe, written during his continental travels during 1828, shows the close link between American and English literature on Switzerland. His travelogue is a veritable patchwork of pre-existing literature on the subject: his various quotations include Southey, Latrobe, Lord Byron, Albrecht von Haller, various Swiss mountaineers, and whole sonnets by Wordsworth. Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland [1836]. 158 century. Eventually, the trip became more accessible to the English middle class, and over the course of the nineteenth century, the cycle of English-language literature about Switzerland rapidly gained momentum.154 The second part of the chapter offers a survey and analysis of some of the musical performances that aligned with the experience of the mountains desired by the English, and some descriptions of music they may have performed. The final section of this chapter considers instances in which the English felt sound was a barrier to the touristic experience. As tourism increased, so too did the music making, and the farther tourists went into the sublime mountains, the more they encountered the rural poor. Over time, the English began to criticize the singing Swiss for defiling their mountains and dishonoring their cultural heritage by using music, which they now thought of as “merely forms of begging in disguise.”155 The English response to these songs also changed because of their own changing values and the discourse around street music that was happening back in England. Unwanted and “impure” sound in public places was folded into the concept of moral corruption and class anxiety. Because Swiss morality was supposedly embodied in the Alps, the wrong music in the Alpine setting eventually indicated Swiss moral delinquency (a bitter turn away from their exquisite heritage). As the number of tourists increased, and the Alps were no longer the exclusive purview of the English elite, the unworldly became too worldly, and the supposedly untrodden remote spaces were too obviously excessively trodden. For English travelers, 154 The feedback loop of the expectations for the visual and sonic mountain sublime that had been set in motion prior to the Napoleonic wars has been addressed in a general sense by Andres Beattie, The Alps: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 155 Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Fourteenth Edition (Leipsig and London: Karl Baedeker and Dulau and Co., 1891), 175. 159 the sonic abuse of the mountains not only indicated the corruption of Swiss identity, but their own complicity in that corruption. I argue that a large part of this came out of class anxieties. In his book about the moral panic around street music, titled Victorian Soundscapes, John Picker traces how the Romantic’s conception of sound as a sublime experience mutated into “a quantifiable and marketable object or thing, a sonic commodity in the form of a printed work, a performance...for that most conspicuous legacy of Victorianism, the modern middle-class consumer.”156 This is the exact phenomenon that played out in the Alps, but among the sublime mountains, which acted as a constant reminder of the disparity between the real and imagined Switzerland. Over time, English tourists began expressing a preference for silence in the hills, rather than confront the cognitive dissonance that was revealed by sound. “Objects of Notice”: Mountain Sound and Song in English Travel Literature The experience of the English tourist in Switzerland was a collision of fiction and history: the tourist aesthetic expected the Swiss reality to model the English fantasy. In this fantasy––often unspoken––the English looked down on the Swiss for their essential pastoral simplicity, but also loved them for it, because that was what they wanted to see. For tourists, the effectiveness of Swiss music was always an extension of how much the performing body belonged in the setting, and how it corresponded with English notions of authentic Swissness. 156 John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 10. 160 This particular amalgam of fiction and history dates to the later eighteenth century, when the Grand Tour was still the exclusive purview of the elite. During this time, members of the intellectual elite read and wrote nonfictional historical and scientific compendia which spoke authoritatively on various natural and cultural phenomena in Switzerland, including the mountain sublime and Zwinger’s myth about the ranz des vaches. For the English, “ranz des vaches” became a catch-all term for Swiss music, which on the one hand could be a traditional herding song sung or played on the alphorn, and on the other, a paean of mountain homecoming––the sound of a joyous return to simple ways of life. Works of fiction set in the Alps contributed to the constructs of mountain sublimity and Älpler purity. After the Napoleonic wars, tourism increased and writers became more focused on recording their individual aesthetic experiences. This developing genre of the travelogue often included poetry by writers like William Wordsworth; these poems were printed and reprinted and predisposed subsequent travelers to seek out similar emotional experiences in specific locations, such as at the Staubbach. Thus, not only did travelers often have a literal itinerary––take a walking path to this vista, hire a porter to get to that town––but also an emotional itinerary as well. There was a wide-ranging trope in English fiction where characters felt the mountain sublimity as they gazed upon or passed over the Alps, but the earliest and most influential text for shaping the English Alpine experience was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 Julie, or the New Heloïse.157 While Älpler music does not appear in this epistolary 157 For instance: Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, vol. 1, 4 vols. (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1794)., which was later satirized by Jane Austin. Another excellent example is when Victor Frankenstein describes how gazing on the Alps from Geneva soothed his heart. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, vol. 1 161 novel, the text contextualized the English understanding of Swiss people and behavior, and created a simultaneously emotional and aesthetic imperative for visiting the Alps. Readers who have read Chapter II might recall that Rousseau believed the ranz des vaches was a lost cause on modern Swiss, because they had largely abandoned their traditional lifestyles, and were thus no longer attached to the forces that originally inclined them towards the song. In The New Heloïse, the protagonists are drawn by their hearts back towards Alpine simplicity. The plot of the text centers around two lovers who escape into the mountains, and Rousseau’s narrative clearly associated pure and virtuous souls with the mountain wilderness. The New Heloïse was a complete sensation among the English public, to the point where the earlier tourists in Switzerland used it as a travel guide; Lord Byron noted that “I have traversed all Rousseau’s ground, with the Heloise before me,” and later guidebooks even cited the book as the source of discussion for Swiss character and behavior.158 The archetype of the simple Swiss complemented and validated that of the learned English aristocrat. In the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, passage over the Alps was seen as a test of personal spirit and was later cited as evidence of a gentleman’s worthy character.159 This dynamic was supported through the circulation of several learned tomes (London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1818), 16. Presumably this description from Geneva was influenced by Shelley’s own visit there around 1815. 158Byron actually emphasized this in a to Mr. Murray, or the guidebook company, June 27, 1816: “My route through Flanders, and by the Rhine, to Switzerland, was all I expected, and more. I have traversed all Rousseau’s ground, with the Heloise before me; and am struck, to a degree that I cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions and the beauty of their reality. George Gordon Byron Byron and Thomas Moore, Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron (London: John Murray, 1839), 308. Another example of a guidebook reference Heloïse is Francis Coghlan, Hand-Book for European Tourists through Belgium, Holland, the Rhine, Germany, Switzerland, and France, 2nd ed. (London: H. Hughes, 1847), 23. 159 This is the subject of Sarah Goldsmith, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour (London: University of London Press, 2020). 162 on the subject of Switzerland. Oftentimes these texts were historical tracts bordering on ethnography, and other times they were affected correspondence and travelogues written in a characteristically elevated style.160 The two most important texts came out in the decade preceding the French occupation: the historian William Coxe’s epistolary Narrative of Travels in Switzerland (1789), and Johann Gottfried Ebel’s German- language Account of the Mountain Peoples of Switzerland (1798). These texts spoke authoritatively about Alpine culture, mountains, and the ranz des vaches, so tourists could become experts on the subject even before they set foot in the Alps, or even as they remained entirely within the comfort of their own homes. The Englishman William Coxe traveled with and tutored members of the nobility in the last third of the eighteenth century and consequently wrote voluminously on Switzerland. His various texts, particularly Narrative of Travels in Switzerland, contained some of the first substantial English-language reports of Switzerland and the ranz des vaches. Coxe was a member of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, which was (and still is) an ostensibly non-partisan group dedicated to scientific advancement, and which may have given his text more clout among the aristocracy.161 160 The printed sets of letters between members of the aristocracy were not private correspondence, but rather a staged and public display for the aristocracy writ large. 161 In the preface to the 1797 reprint of Narrative of Travels in Switzerland, the editor placed Coxe within the highest echelon of educated writers on Switzerland, writing that “among the various scientific travelers that this country has produced, few rank higher in the public estimation than Mr. Coxe. He who reads for amusement and he who reads for information; the man of leisure, the man of business, and the politician, will all be in some degree gratified by an attentive perusal of his works.” William Coxe A. M. F. R. S. R. S. A., Narrative of Travels in Switzerland (London: [n.p.], 1797), 1. 163 It was partially through Coxe that the Hofer-Zwinger hypothesis, discussed in Chapter II, made its way into the English language and literature on the Alps.162 In an entry dated October 3, 1786, Coxe described hearing the “Renz [sic] des vaches,” and pontificated on pathological nostalgia in a language that strongly suggests he read Zwinger’s text, including describing the nostalgic process as the “vibration of animal spirits through those fibers of the middle brain.”163 While the ranz des vaches was certainly Swiss, Coxe did not indicate that its powers were exclusive to the Swiss. He gave two explanations for the power of the ranz des vaches: first, the simplicity of the song made it powerful, because simplicity could render the strongest memorative impact on anyone, including the Swiss.164 The second reason was that people who inhabit mountainous countries were particularly susceptible to the effects of this music; perhaps taking a cue from Zwinger’s inclusion of Scheuchzer, Coxe extended this logic to all mountainous countries, including Scotland and Biscay. However, whereas Scheuchzer had theorized that the universal susceptibility for nostalgia among highlanders was 162 The specific texts in which Coxe discussed the ranz des vaches were his Travels in Switzerland: In a Series of Letters (1789), and Narratives of Travels in Switzerland (1797); the latter is an abridged version of the former. 163 “Hofer and Zwinger describe the nostalgic process as the vibration of animal spirits through those fibers of the middle brain in which impressed traces of ideas of the Fatherland still cling...these traces are actually impressed more vigorously by frequent contemplations of the Fatherland, and from an image of it.” Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” 384. 164 “After dinner, some musicians of the country performed the Renz [sic] des vaches; that inspiring air, which was forbidden to be played among the Swiss troops in the French service, as it awakened such tender recollections in the soldiers, of their native country, as often produced a settled melancholy, or occasioned desertion. ...There is nothing peculiarly striking in the tune; but, as it is composed of the most simple notes, the powerful effect if it’s Melody upon the Swiss soldiers, in a foreign land, is less surprising. Nothing indeed revives so lively a remembrance of former scenes, as a piece of favorite music which we were a custom to here amid our earliest and dearest connections: upon such an occasion, a long train of associated ideas arise in the mind, and melt it into tenderness.” William Coxe, Travels in Switzerland and in the Country of the Grisons, in a Series of Letters to William Melroth, Esq. From William Coxe ... With an Historical Sketch and Notes on the Late Revolution, vol. 2 (London: A. Strahan, 1801), 116–117, https://archive.org/details/b29330919_0002/. 164 because of their acclimatization to the thin air at high altitudes, Coxe hypothesized that it was their lifestyle, rather than the air, “because their habits of life are essentially different from the customs and manners of other parts.”165 The notion that the mountains encouraged a distinctively pure way of living was essentially the conceit of Rousseau’s Heloïse as well, and so we see that the English aristocracy had a clear idea that mountainous landscapes corresponded with nominally wholesome ways of being. While Coxe certainly expressed some pleasure at hearing a ranz des vaches, his Prussian contemporary Johann Gottfried Ebel characterized it in slightly more Romantic terms, and emphasized the need to be among the mountains for the full effect. Ebel became besotted with traveling in Switzerland in the late eighteenth century, and produced the two volume text Account of the Mountain Peoples of Switzerland. Ebel’s text is notable because he included musical scores for seven Kühreihen, and an account of their performance techniques (which will be discussed in more depth in Chapter V). While introducing these Kühreihen, Ebel made a point of emphasizing that the notation was deeply inadequate in large part because the effects of the song only fully resonate when heard in the Alps, “where the air is so pure and elastic, where nature is enthroned in its ornaments and grandeur, and a general deep silence prevails.”166 Ebel emphasized that the song could only be fully appreciated in the theatre of the Alps was certainly congruent with the discourse of sensibilité discussed in Chapter II. However, it also 165 Ibid., 2:117. This same material was also printed in a slightly abridged version in 1797: Coxe, Narrative of Travels in Switzerland, 98–99. 166 “... wo die Luft so rein und elastisch ist, wo die Natur in ihrer Oriße und Erhabenheit thront, und eine allgemeine tiefe Stille herrscht. Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 155–156. 165 hearkened towards the aesthetic of the sublime when he described the origin of the Kühreihen at the intersection of the pastoral idyll with mountain awe: [The Kühreihen] is as old as the shepherds themselves who first populated the valleys of Switzerland, and marched with their herds to the meadows between high mountains. Here, where the cattle found no other barriers than the abysses and steep rockfalls, scattered on all sides, as far as the Alpine plants greened and blossomed.167 Ebel’s writing typifies the period of overlap between sensibilité and the sublime. English travelers leading right up to the occupation often wrote things like: “Nothing can well be imagined more grand and sublime than the scenery of the valley of Lauterbrunn[sic],”168 and, “I am going to contemplate that interesting country, of which I have never heard without emotion!––I am going to gaze upon the images of nature...I am going to repose my wearied spirit on those sublime objects...”169 During the French occupation of Switzerland, which lasted roughly from 1798– 1815 (see Appendix A for a timeline), the flow of English aristocrats to the Alps was essentially halted, but the consensus about Switzerland as a sublime location was perhaps only strengthened as a result of the occupation. As discussed in Chapter III, the English 167 “Dieser Gesang ist so alt wie die Hirten selbst, welche zuerst die Thäler der Schweitz bes völkerten, und mit ihren Heerden auf die Weidgänge zwischen den hohen Gebirgen zogen. Hier, wo das Vieh keine andere Schranken als Abgründe und steile Felsenwände de fand, zerfireute es sich natürlich nach allen Selten, so weit die Alpkräuten grünten und blühten.” Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell. 168 Henry Matthews, The Diary of an Invalid, Being the Journal of a Tour in Pursuit of Health in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France in the Years 1817-1818-1819. (London: John Murray, 1820), 18, https://archive.org/details/diaryofinvalidb00matt. 169 Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland; or A View of the Present State of the Governments and Manners of Those Cantons: With Comparative Sketches of the Present State of Paris, 1762-1827 (Dublin: P. Wogan, J. Moore, W. Porter, and B. Fitzpatrick, 1798), 4–5, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=_lwOAAAAQAAJ&hl=en_US&pg=GBS.PP1. 166 considered the occupation to be a moral affront; curious readers would have turned to Coxe and Ebel during this period, which remained the most up-to-date media on Switzerland. The next substantial body of English literature dedicated to Switzerland came out in a remarkable crescendo of travelogues after 1815. When the French occupation ended, Switzerland reopened to travelers and many of them had clearly prepared for their trip by reading Ebel and Coxe. Sometimes travelers also mention the story of Tell, but they give far more credence to Ebel, Coxe, and Rousseau. Many of these writers published accounts of their journeys in travelogues. Whereas the initial, relatively more “objective” writers like Ebel and Coxe wrote about the ranz des vaches as an observable cultural phenomenon, early travelogues often emphasized the individual Romantic experience of the music, and often linked the music to specific locations. These texts, which were excerpted and included in the later genre of the guidebook, picked up where Ebel had left off, and continued raising the aesthetic stakes of the Alps and ranz des vaches. The Romantic poems of poets like William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, and Lord Byron were repeated quite frequently in travelers’ personal accounts and guidebook’s sections dedicated to specific scenes and experiences, even through to the end of the century. One of the most influential early travelogues was a collection of poetry by William Wordsworth, mentioned earlier. Like the Robert Southey quote above, Wordsworth was one of the most often-reprinted poets on the subject of Swiss tourist scenes. After first reading Ebel and then visiting Switzerland in 1820, Wordsworth wrote 167 a collection of poems called Memorials of a Tour on the Continent.170 The poems are set out like entries in a travelogue, generally with a poem dedicated to each significant tourist site. Three of the poems set in Switzerland describe the sound or effect of music in the Alps. 171 These poems, unlike the more “objective” earlier texts, emphasized the aesthetic and experiential stakes. In Memorials, all of the poems about Alpine song describe how the sound synthesized seamlessly with the landscape, and the combined aesthetic impact of this synthesis on Wordsworth. For instance, “On Hearing the Ranz des Vaches at the Top of the Pass of Saint Gothard,” Wordsworth recounted the Hofer- Zwinger hypothesis, but linked it to a very specific tourist destination, and described how the music up there made him nostalgic for home.172 Wordsworth’s poems like “On Hearing the Ranz des Vaches...” both set expectations for the scenes and resonated sufficiently with the English in the first half of the nineteenth century to continue justifying their repetition, particularly in guidebooks. The first true “guide books,” in the modern sense, were a remarkably hybridized genre that combined the encyclopedic works of writers like Ebel and Coxe with the 170 William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. William Knight, vol. 1 (London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1896), 35–76. In his published epistle to a fellow at Cambridge, Wordsworth explains that for sixteen particular verses, he is “indebted to M. Raymond’s interesting observations annexed to his translation of Coxe’s Tour in Switzerland.” Ibid., 1:57. 171 These are “On Approaching the Staub-bach, Lauterbrunnen,” “Scene on the Lake of Brienz,” and “On Hearing the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ on the Top of the Pass of St. Gothard.” William Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820, Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822). 172 I listen,—but no faculty of mine / Avails those modulations to detect, / Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect / With tenderest passion; leaving him to pine / (So fame reports) and die,—his sweet- breathed kine / Remembering, and green Alpine pastures decked / With vernal flowers. Yet may we not reject / The tale as fabulous.—Here while I recline, / Mindful how others by this simple strain / Are moved, for me,—upon this mountain named /Of God himself from dread pre-eminence,— / Aspiring thoughts, by memory reclaimed, / Yield to the music’s touching influence; / And joys of distant home my heart enchain. Ibid., 26. 168 accounts of individual aristocrats, like Southey, and the emotive works of Wordsworth and other poets. There are editions of Ebel’s writing that were likely pirated, and which he formally disavowed; a late nineteenth-century reviewer of Swiss guide-books observed that a clear indication of the growth of Swiss travel is when Ebel began complaining about pirate publishers.173 Ebel’s section on the Kühreihen was usually reduced to a footnote, but his sentiment was rephrased and restated in more updated terms. Unlike the eighteenth-century Grand Tourists, travelers after the Napoleonic wars were generally on a tighter budget and timeframe than the expansive and expensive trips of the previous century. This precipitated a change in travel literature: new texts were increasingly geared towards time and budget-conscious travelers who wanted to know what precisely to expect and where. Guidebooks were much shorter, with less narrative than travelogues, and they outlined what a traveler could expect at any given moment and place, including lodging, road conditions, and sights to see. This abundance of literature rapidly accelerated the development of English fantasies about Switzerland, thus eventually sending the tourist gaze and ear into fast- forward. The effect of publishing a travelogue or guidebook predisposed increasing numbers of tourists to having specific experiences on their travels, and this extended as much to the ranz des vaches as it did to inns and other services. Especially when the guidebooks included excerpts from poetic travel guides, people began looking to replicate certain emotional experiences as well. As the travel guides mutated over time in response 173 William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge, Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide-Books (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889), 101. 169 to larger cultural changes, we can see how shifts in the Victorian Zeitgeist and tourist culture impacted writing about the ranz des vaches and sound in the Alps. One early guidebook that typifies the hybrid nature of this genre is [s.n.] Galignani’s 1823 Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland. The subtitle boasted that it was Compiled from the Much Esteemed works of Ebel and Coxe, with Valuable Additions for the Observations of Recent Travellers. Galignani claims to be more portable than the Ebel and Coxe, but the book still clocks in at more than 600 pages.174 This text is truly more compiled than written; in addition to extracting material from Ebel and Coxe, as stated in the title, Galignani also reproduced a substantial amount of poetic and philosophical material, including some of Wordsworth’s travel poetry, and other sentimental authors who wrote on the sublimity of the Alps.175 Galignani’s description of Swiss character and the ranz des vaches is likewise representative of the genre. The account of the ranz des vaches is taken verbatim from an 1816 travel guide “By Henry Coxe,” a pseudonym for the less well-known––and thus less marketable surname––for one John Millard. 176 In a section labeled “Swiss Characters, 174 He directs readers who might find his 600 pages insufficient to Ebel: “But for those travelers who might want yet more information, or “who are fond of Natural History, and in particular of Mineralogy and Geology,” Galignani recommends Ebels’s eight volume, French-language Manuel du Voyageur en Suisse, which “contain[s] every thing than any stranger can wish to know respecting Switzerland.” Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland, Compiled from the Much Esteemed Works of Ebel and Coxe, with Valuable Additions from the Observations of Recent Travellers, Seven (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1823), x. 175 The sentimentalist is Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmerman. This same section of Galignani, including Wordsworth’s poem, are reprinted verbatim in: Coghlan, Hand-Book for European Tourists through Belgium, Holland, the Rhine, Germany, Switzerland, and France, 279. Francis Coghlan, Guide through Switzerland and Chamounix (London: A. H. Baily & Company, [n.d.]), 228. Henry Coxe, Esq (pseud. John Millard), The Traveller’s Guide in Switzerland; Being a Complete Picture of That Interesting Country (London: Sherwod, Neely, and Jones, 1816), 150. 176 Coxe, Esq (pseud. John Millard), The Traveller’s Guide in Switzerland; Being a Complete Picture of That Interesting Country. 170 Manners, Etc.,” Galigani/Millard/Coxe cited the New Heloïse as an authoritative source on Swiss character, and immediately subjoined that to a description of the French ban on the ranz des vaches. The author(s) attributed this to the connection to the landscape and concomitant lifestyle: “This unconquerable passion seems to arise in part from a moral sensibility to the enchanting ease and frankness of the native manners, and in part from the picturesque, and wildly romantic features of their country.”177 (See Appendix D.) This connection to the land, according to the author(s) can overpower “even the most intelligent Swiss.” The John Murray company based in London dominated the English guidebook industry until the 1860’s. The first edition of A Hand-book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, published in 1838, is a complete mélange of pre- existing literature, including Ebel, “Coxe”/Galignani, and Wordsworth’s Memorials. Like the Galignani, Murray positioned himself as a modern alternative to Ebel, characteristically updating obsolete material and adjusting the contents and size of the work for modern English travelers (now down to a mere 517 pages).178 177 Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland, Compiled from the Much Esteemed Works of Ebel and Coxe, with Valuable Additions from the Observations of Recent Travellers, xii–xiii. 178 “For a very long time Switzerland was the only country in Europe which possessed a Guide-book, worthy of the name. The excellent work of Ebel, here alluded to, indeed deserves the highest praise; and it is upon the foundation of the materials collected by him that every succeeding work of the same kind, on that country, has been laid. It is, however, voluminous, extending to four volumes: its arrangement and bulk fit it more for the library than the pocket, or even the travelling-carriage; and the abridged French translation is unskillfully made, inconvenient to consult, and full of gross errors. In addition to this, the original work was written more than forty years ago, and was not corrected at the time of the author’s death. In consequence of this, and owing to the great changes which have been made in every part of Switzerland since its publication, a portion of the information is necessarily antiquated.” John Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses (London: John Wiley & Son, 1838), v. 171 Despite these changes and reductions, the first edition of Murray’s Hand-book dedicated two whole pages to the ranz des vaches, synthesizing the existing literature with tourists’ opportunities to encounter the song. Murray’s guidebook is perhaps the single most impactful way that the Hofer-Zwinger hypothesis entered the common knowledge of middle-class travelers. Much of the material on the ranz des vaches is similar to Galignani’s: for instance, Murray describes the pathological nostalgia triggered by the ranz des vaches in French troops, and he reports that (like Ebel and Galignani) the ranz des vaches was a class of melody rather than a single tune.179 Murray also hinted at the prevalence of Swiss musicians by the time of publication when he explained that travelers in the Alps would have “frequent opportunities” to hear both “the music of the horn and the songs of the cow-herds and dairy maids.” The explanation of the song included Robert Southey’s “wildest chorus” description from above.180 He also indicated the presence of echoing alphorns, which were “very melodious when caught up and prolonged by the mountain echoes.”181 (See Appendix D.) By the 1860’s, the Baedeker travel guide company, based in Leipzig, became dominant among the English-language guidebooks to Switzerland.182 Baedeker’s rise to 179 Ibid., xxxvi. 180 Ibid., lxi. 181 Ibid., lx–lxi. 182 It is relatively well known that the two firms of Murray and Baedeker collaborated in the production their European guidebooks, sending one another updated information about various parts of travel, like train timetables or the cost of porters. Until 1863 the two firms existed in harmony, and although they rather freely reprinted sections of one another’s guides, they collegially avoided encroaching on the other’s market by keeping to specific languages and specific regions. In fact, the Baedeker shop in Leipzig sold more Swiss Murrays than on any other English-language travel guide to any country, a nod to the popularity of the Alps as a conspicuously English destination. In 1863, Baedeker issued its first English- language guide to Switzerland, and the once-cordial relationship between the two firms came to an end. 172 prominence corresponded with English weariness with the sonic mendicancy, so we can use the 1863 Baedeker as a clear bellwether for English disillusionment with Swiss song (although the process had certainly been building up gradually to this point). Not only did Baedeker hardly mention the ranz des vaches, but did so only within a single lengthy paragraph primarily dedicated to an epidemic of begging in the Oberland (see Appendix D).183 Swiss damsels next make their appearance on the scene and the fast-ebbing patience of the traveller has another inroad made upon it by the national melodies with which he is indulged by these ruthless songsters — but there is still a crowning agony in store for him— there is the Alpine horn and the ranz des vaches — the associations they raise in his mind are sadly disturbed by his present experience. Surely that cannot be the air which, heard in distant climes, sets the stout heart of the mountaineer throbbing to return to his chalet and his herds! As performed under existing circumstances it is rather calculated to hasten the traveller's step out of a country in which the quiet enjoyment of Nature’s glorious works is rendered by these odious intrusions almost an impossibility. 184 The ranz des vaches, less than a century earlier, had once enhanced the scenery of the mountains, but according to the Baedeker, the song now obstructed the aesthetic impact of the mountains. This was in large part because the English felt that the sounds were being directed towards them, rather than the mountains. 183 Baedeker’s reduction of space about the ranz des vaches may also have been part of an attempt to slim down the length of the volume; Baedeker had levied the same complaint about the Murray’s length as Murray had levied against the Ebel. “The books contain much...that takes up unnecessary space....it now seems to me that it would be greatly to the advantage of those who use your books, if you could find the time and enthusiasm, amongst your other numerous tasks, to cut as much as possible with a critical and unmerciful pen. This is perhaps not such a necessity for your countrymen as for Germans; in England, one is glad to pay an appropriate price for a good book, while in Germany...everything has to be as cheap as possible.” Quoted in: W. B. C. Lister and Michael Wild, “The Baedeker-Murray Correspondence,” in Baedekeriana: An Anthology, ed. Michael Wild (The Red Scar Press, 2010), 55. 184 Karl Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers (London and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1863), 124–125. 173 The proliferation of tourists was accompanied by an increase of texts, and by the end of the nineteenth century, the English language market had been fully saturated with a wealth of writing on travel in Switzerland and the ranz des vaches, just as the Alps themselves had become fully saturated with the English. As the various literary records solidified into the genres of the travelogue and travel guide after the turn of the nineteenth century, the ranz des vaches became more closely connected to the mountain sublime and an expression of Swissness. The ranz des vaches soured so much because once it had actually been sweet. The next portion of this chapter examines case studies in which tourists appreciated the sound in the setting. In many instances, this use of song corresponded, or even enhanced the tourist and service power dynamic. “They sing their duties” The English took pleasure in vocal performances that complemented their touristic experience of the Alps, and they were happy to compensate performers for music that was part of an exhibition of honest labor. In some instances, Swiss music even helped the English go farther into the mountains, both literally and emotionally, and on occasion, the opportunity to hear music made some spots or routes into destinations themselves. Some of these musical performers literally transported the English as they sang, including porters who carried tourists over rough roads and mountain passes, and women who sang as they rowed boats full of tourists. Other performers welcomed tourists into their traditional home in a scenic location or sang for them in boarding houses. Some Swiss men also used the alphorn to connect the tourist with the landscape, strategically 174 stationing themselves in a place where they could generate an echo off the mountain walls and thus invoke the sublime. In all of these instances, the Swiss were expected to unselfconsciously embody and perform their tradition, and to sing out of apparent love of the mountains and the joy of the sounds themselves. The singing that the tourists heard, especially before 1850, was very likely akin to what we think of today as a yodel: rapid alternations between head and chest voice. In ensembles, there was possibly one person who held a drone, or some with slow-moving chord structures, while others soloed on top. The strangeness in the sound very well might have been in the so-called alphorn-fa, a 4" somewhere between natural and sharp, as well as a neutrally tuned mi, between flat and natural. These alternate tunings, along with the registral alternations are also likely many people in the early days of travel described the ranz des vaches as “wild” and “shrieking.” This is discussed in more depth in Chapter V, and readers who are interested in hearing something like these sounds in action should refer to work by Hugo Zemp and recordings by the contemporary Swiss ensemble Naturpur.185 In two instances, music was used as part of Alpine transport––that is, actually accompanying the tourist’s Alpine journey. The first practice, of singing porters, dates from at least 1791; these men carried tourists and their belongings over mountainous terrain while singing a ranz des vaches. The singing porters actually make up some of the earliest records of ranz des vaches sung in the presence of tourists (I suspect, like several 185 Hugo Zemp, A Swiss Yodelling Series: “Jüüzli of the Muotatal, VHS, Documentary Educational Resources (Watertown, MA, 1986); Hugo Zemp, Study Guide: A Swiss Yodelling Series: “Jüüzli” of the Muotatal and Swiss Yodelling 30 Years Later (Watertown, 2007), http://www.der.org/resources/study- guides/swiss-yodelling-guide.pdf. Natur Pur, Schrägers & Gräders us äm Muotatal. 175 of the instances in this chapter a more accurate title for the vocalization would be a yodel, jüüz, or Zauren). The second were women who sang as they rowed boats of tourists across the Lake of Brienz, likely starting after the Napoleonic wars. In both of these instances, the English could immediately apprehend the virtues of hard work, and the music complemented the aesthetic experience of the landscape, particularly in the sense of being moved and connected more closely to the Alps. In the case of the singing porters, what likely started as a work song was later endorsed specifically as an antidote for the English fear of heights. The porters’ singing dulled the terror of the mountain sublime and thus allowed the Englishman to have a more aesthetic experience. While the guidebooks do not specify where these singing porters worked, travelogues can help us locate two places where the porters were employed: the Grosse Scheidegg (“Great Sheideck”) and the Gemmi pass.186 Figure 24 shows teams of horses carrying people over the Gemmi; there are men on foot around the animal teams who are presumably the porters. 186 Many travelers frequently cited Wordsworth’s “Echoes upon the Gemmi” as a description of a sublime mountain scene. However, Henry Crabb Robinson, who accompanied Wordsworth on this trip, later recollects the scene in much less reverential tones. “...what I well recollect, and Wordsworth has made the subject of a sonnet, [is] the continued barking of a dog irritated by the echo of his own voice...It is said that a dog has been known to contract and illness by the continued labor of barking at his own echo.” Original emphasis. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-At-Law, F. S. A., ed. Thomas Sadler, vol. 1 (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co, 1869), 447. 176 Figure 24: Teams of travelers with porters passing over the Gotthard, as painted by Johann Gottfried Jentzsch, “Grand roûte au Mont St. Gotthard, en Suisse,” Swiss National Library (1802). Descriptions of the singing porters from the Grosse Scheidegg indicate that the singing likely took the form as some sort of call and response, as porters alternated singing from the front and the rear of the caravan. In his travelogue from 1791, Frederick Leopold Stolberg described four porters, who sang lightheartedly as they carried his wife (who was not enjoying herself) over the Grosse Scheidegg. He emphasized the contrast between the hearty cheerfulness of the porters and the anxious, fatigued state of his own party: On the morning of the 16th, at break of day, with cheerful good-will, we took our pikestaves, and proceeded over the Scheideck. My wife was borne on a litter by four men; who, carrying two and two, relieved each other....I cannot describe to you the strength and cheerfulness of the Swiss guides. They sing their duties, bearing my wife up steep heights; which 177 we, breathless and half exhausted, could scarcely climb with the help of our pikestaves....187 The scene in Stolberg’s anecdote was quite typical for tourists after the Napoleonic wars as well. There were usually four to eight porters to a chaise, who would relieve each other in pairs, and they took turns singing along with their carrying. A similar report from Louis Simond in 1818 described how the porters answered each other from either end of the group, and remarked on how merry the porters were. Simond, like many, described the ranz des vaches as “wild” and “shrieking:” Our guides shrieked the wild lament of the ‘Rans des Vaches’ answering each other from one end of the cavern to the other, and one of them, not satisfied with the fatigue of the march, danced along from exuberance of spirits, in that manner we reached the sharp edge of the Scheideck...188 Similarly, an 1833 travelogue by Basil Hall described passing over the Gemmi with one or other of the porters singing the whole time, much as Stolberg and Simond noted, and “keeping time to the ‘Ranz des Vaches...” 189 The porters were so jubilant in their duties that guidebooks began to recommend cheery Swiss music to embolden nervous tourists as they braved the particularly high or precipitous routes. Guidebooks also periodically advised hiring the porters just to have a 187 Frederic Leopold Count Stolberg, Travels through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Sicily., trans. Thomas Holcroft, Second Edition, vol. 1 (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), 185–189. 188 “...close, or at least, appearing close, to the foot of the Wetterhorn.” Louis Simond, Switzerland; Or, A Journal of a Tour and Residence in That Country in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819: Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and Modern Helvetia, vol. 1 (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1822), 225. 189 “...keeping time to the ‘Ranz des Vaches,’ which one of other of the bearers sung all the way from the top to the bottom of the pass.” Basil Hall, Edward Moxon, and Bradbury & Evans, Patchwork, vol. 1 (London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1841), 144. 178 local translator.190 The 1823 Galignani Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland recommended hiring porters to ease the anxiety of heights, in a section titled “Conveyances for invalids and timid persons.” The writer mentioned the singing porters of the higher passes and suggested that the travelers riding on the chaises-à-porteurs simply turn their back to the drop-offs when necessary, “and let the lively songs of the porters...inspire him with confidence.”191 This same passage was repeated more or less verbatim in an 1835 Traveller’s Guide Through Switzerland, and which suggests that the best method is to avoid looking down, “whilst the merry songs of your porters will encourage and entertain you.”192 The porters’ singing was rarely a source of complaints. There are several possible reasons for this. First, the porters were clearly laboring as they sung: the songs were not a way of making money in and of themselves. Secondly, the singing clearly helped allay the English tourists’ anxiety around heights. Finally, the porters were hearty Swiss men whose work of carrying tourists was an exhibit both of a rustic, pastoral strength, and a deep comfort and proficiency among the high mountains. The music not only 190 Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland, Compiled from the Much Esteemed Works of Ebel and Coxe, with Valuable Additions from the Observations of Recent Travellers, 28. 191 “Females, timid persons, or invalids, who cannot ride on mules and horses, or undergo the fatigue of walking, may cross some of the highest mountains, with perfect security, in chaises-à-porteurs, or chairs, carried by men. Eight porters must be hired, who relieve each other on the road. Not the least danger is to be apprehended, these people being sure footed beyond conception. The descent of some of these mountains is uncommonly steep, and the path bordered by precipices on each side; but if the traveller takes the percussion of sitting with his back towards any particular abyss, and the worst part of the road, he may escape much of its horrors; and the lively songs` of the porters will scarcely fail to inspire him with confidence.” Ibid., xxvii. 192 “The best method is to sit with your back turned towards the valley; he will then pass without any accident, whilst the merry songs of your porters will encourage and entertain you.” This is very likely a pirated text or a text printed inappropriately with Ebel’s name. Johann Gottfried Ebel, The Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland : Containing Descriptive Itineraries, Modes of Travelling, Value of Money, Description of the Alps, Etc. ... : Together with an Atlas / Compiled from the Works of Ebel ... [et Al.], 3rd ed. (London: M. A. Leigh and Son, 1835), https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-69337. 179 accompanied the work, it also fit the feeling of landscape. Speaking of the ranz des vaches on the Gemmi, Hall wrote: This was the first time I had heard this strange musical howl—so to call it—in which, along with not a little that is barbarous, there certainly mingles something plaintive, the whole being so wild that it forms a fit accompaniment to Alpine scenery.193 Singing a ranz des vaches while doing this skilled, hard labor in the mountains, was a true display of what the English wanted the Swiss to be, even sans vaches. It was further compelling because it allowed the English to occupy spaces that otherwise may have been inaccessible By mid-century, tourists had stopped hiring porters and these characters disappear from our sources. By this point, the routes were much more packed down and easy to follow, and horses or mules became cheaper than porters, so the increasingly budget- conscious travelers chose to trust their own route-finding abilities. The 1850’s also marked the beginning of a new approach to Alpinism, and I suspect these guides were hired instead by English mountaineers who wanted to test their mettle on the peaks, rather than the passes. I also suspect that the tradition of these singing porters became part of the yodeling mountain guides in the Golden Age of Alpinism, which is discussed in Chapter V. Meanwhile, on the Lake of Brienz, Schiffermädchen rowed boats full of tourists between the towns of Brienz and Interlaken. Most tourists traveled between these two cities over the water because it was easier and faster than land, and, like the porters, the 193 Hall, Moxon, and Bradbury & Evans, Patchwork, 1:145. 180 Schiffermädchen were recommended for their singing. While the English often did a double-take when they saw women taking up the oars, they were quite charmed by the music, and enjoyed the experience of being simultaneously transported and serenaded.194 The earliest mention of the singing Schiffermädchen I have found is from Louis Simond in 1818 (who was quoted just above). However, it is evident that the women had been singing for some time before then, because Simond wrote that he had heard so much about the Schiffermädchen that he made a point to go hear them even when inclement weather made rowing across the lake untenable. He availed himself of the women’s singing on land, and he wrote that they stood “in a circle, struck up at once a beautiful German air, of which we did not understand the words.”195 Simond’s ambiguous description of the music is typical of English travelogues, but we can infer at least one tune from the collections of Swiss folk songs edited by Gottlieb Jakob Kuhn and Johann Rudoph Wyss, which came out in 1818 and 1826. Wyss noted that the Schiffermädchen of Brienzersee sang a folksong that was of dubious Swiss origins, but the editors chose to print it despite it its ambiguous provenance because it had 194 As seen in one entry from September 25, 1816: “[we] Embarked on the lake of Brientz, rowed by the women in a long boat; presently we were put to shore, and another woman jumped in. It seems it is the custom here for the boats to be manned by women; for of the five men and three women in our bark, all the women took an oar, and but one man.” Byron, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life, 2:16. 195 “July 17, 1818. —to the Lake of Brientz, intending to take a boat there for Interlaken; but the wind was high and contrary, the dashing of the water prognosticated a long and disagreeable passage, and we determined to proceed by land along the shore. The women, who have the exclusive privilege of manning the boats on this lake, assembled at the inn; we declined their nautical services, but wishing not to be disappointed of their singing, of which we had heard much, we proposed music instead of rowing. Four of them, standing in a circle, struck up at once a beautiful German air, of which we did not understand the words.” Simond, Switzerland; Or, A Journal of a Tour and Residence in That Country in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819: Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and Modern Helvetia, 1:190–191. Simond’s travelogue was reprinted (apparently without attribution) in John Carney, “A Swiss Tour.––No. V.,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part II, 1828, 53–59. 181 been heard by so many people, including travelers.196 The song is a comic love song, titled “Der junge Graf,” and it is sung from the perspective of an eligible young lady, who considers boat of young aristocrats from her vantage point on a nearby mountain, which could conceivably be any of the mountains that surround the Lake of Brienz. The first stanza describes looking down at a lake from a high mountain. See Figure 25, below: (“I stood on the high mountains / Looked down into a deep valley / There I saw a little ship / With three Counts in it.)197 Figure 25: Opening stanza of “Der junge Graf,” from G. J. Kuhn and Johann Rudolf Wyss, eds., Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern, 3rd ed., Bern (1818), page 72. 196 Kuhn and Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern. Theils nach ihren Bekannten, theils nach neuen Melodien in notenschrift gebracht und mit Clavier-Begleitung versehen, xviii. 197 “Ich stunde auf hohem Berge, / Sah nieder in’s tiefe Thal / Ein Schifflein sah ich fahren/ Darin drey Grafen war’n.” Ibid., 72. 182 Particularly as the boat was full of young and mostly male aristocrats, the fantasy that an available young lady stood on the Alps, considering them from afar, no doubt added to the sense of pleasurable mountain intrigue. However, in a comic turn, she rejects them all to become a nun instead. When William Wordsworth took the boat ride in the early 1820’s, he made the singing women the subject of one of his more banal and lesser-repeated poems, “Scene on the Lake of Brienz” (see Appendix D).198 In this poem, he described the song as simple, but moving, and the women like angels, but rustic. This actually articulates a rich aesthetic crux, wherein Swiss people were expected to be otherworldly, but unaware of it. The singing Schiffermädchen could have potentially reached an audience of thousands; unfortunately, English travel literature does not mention them particularly frequently, which means that they were either a passing phenomenon in the first third of the century or that they simply were not interesting enough to write about.199 It is still unclear why mentions of the women drop off when they do but the historical context offers two potential explanations for their eventual disappearance. First, perhaps the women found other employment as the relative numbers of males grew after the end of mercenary recruitment, or as the tourism economy developed. Secondly, increasing numbers of tourists began to travel by steamboats as they became available in the second 198 Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820, 19. 199 Midcentury records indicate that upwards of 18,000 tourists could pass through Brienz in a single year, and most of that would have been during the summer. The tourist population in a single season could be between ten and eighteen times that of the two main towns. Anne-Marie Dubler, “Brienz (BE),” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz HLS (blog), January 25, 2006, https://hls-dhs- dss.ch/de/articles/000328/2006-01-25/. Comparatively, in 1850, the recorded census of Brienz was 1,789, and Interlaken was 1,054. Anne-Marie Dubler, Interlaken (Gemeinde), Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), 2007, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000336/2007-11-01/. A few thousand tourists thus likely had the opportunity to hear the Schiffermädchen any given year. 183 half of the century, which might have gradually made the Schiffermädchen obsolete. However, the Brienzersee was one of the last lakes in Switzerland to get a steamboat, around 1863, and perhaps one of the reasons for its relative lateness was the tradition of the boats manned by women.200 The songs of both the porters and Schiffermädchen mediated and enhanced English tourists’ experiences of the Alps. This was facilitated by the amiable presentation of the singers, and their apparently authentic joy in hard work in the service of the tourists. To be fair, neither the porters nor the Schiffermädchen appear to have survived into the second half of the century, and perhaps they never had the opportunity to be resented as much as musicians in the time of Baedeker’s lament about the “ruthless songsters.” Nonetheless, we can infer that the English responded to the authenticity and morality by looking at instances that did not require active transport. Perhaps some of the most beloved music making in the Alps occurred about a league, or thirty minutes rowing, from Brienz (where the Schiffermädchen were), at a waterfall called the Giessbach. Much like they did for the Schiffermädchen, tourists made a point of stopping to pay a visit to the Kehlri family, who lived near the falls. The Kehlri’s welcomed tourists into their chalet, where the visitors could sign a guestbook filled with other English names, and, as “Carne, Esq.” wrote, “any stranger may command a melodious display just beside the cataract.”201 Like the women at the Staubbach, and the porters, the Kehlris seemed to belong to their immediate landscape, and they cheerfully performed a musical service as tourists took in the scenery. For 200 Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers, 109. 201 Esq Carne, A Tour Through Switzerland and Italy, Second Edition (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), 129. 184 Victorians, who placed a lot of emphasis on restraint and perceived moral behavior, the domesticity of the Kehlri family appealed to Victorian values; accounts of the Giessbach and the Kehlri family are always as much about the setting and music as it was the laudable familial harmony. Figure 26: The Kehrli family around the keyboard. Haller, “Le régent Kehrli et sa famille,” lithograph, Musée Historique Lausanne, (n.d). With kind permission of the Musée Historique Lausanne. A display of the domestic music scene was marketed in souvenir objects available for purchase in Brienz. Carne, Esq., mentioned a colored plate for sale depicting “the old man seated at a piano, and each member, with mouth wide open, joining in the song.”202 The image that Carne mentions was likely very similar to the monochrome lithograph Le 202 Ibid. 185 Régent Kehrli et Sa Famille Au Giessbach de Brienz, which depicts Kehrli and his five children at a keyboard (Figure 26, above). The Musée historique de Lausanne dates this image between 1780 and 1830; based on my research, I would narrow those potential dates down to 1818 and 1830.203 Figure 27. [s.n.] Geissler, Le Giessbach et la chorale familiale sur l’alpe, colored etching, Bibliothèque nationale suisse, Cabinet des estampes (1822). 203 This range comes from the dates of travelogues that mention the family. Certainly, the family might have been depicted in a period preceding English tourists, but we can assume that Kehrli’s children, once grown, left the chalet for their own lives. 186 An 1822 etching by [s.n.] Geissler, titled Le Giessbach et la chorale familiale sur l’Alpe, (Figure 27, above) depicts the family standing in front of the Giessbachfalles, playing an alphorn for a tourist who leans on his cane.204 The subtitle is also where we learn the names of the children, given in the order that they stand from left to right. It reads: “Vater, Johann Kehrli. Kinder: 2, Bäbi. 3, Ansi. 4. Gritli. 5. Köbi. 6. Heinz.”205 These are some of the only names we have for the singing Swiss during the 1800’s. Marianne Colston visited in 1820 and is one of the most meticulous writers on the subject of music at the Giessbach; in fact, Colston’s travelogue contains one of the most complete descriptions of a musical program that I have found from tourists anywhere in the Oberland (see Appendix D). Various portions of this program are corroborated by other travelogues, which dedicate less space to the Kehlris. Colston described the scenic setting, the family of singers and the simple hospitality they provided, including welcoming the tourists into their home and pouring glasses of Kirschwasser. She described the father of the family as “a worthy old Swiss peasant, who was formerly a school master at Brienze” who had raised “four fine, healthy looking children, whom he seemed to bring up in habits of order, industry, and as far as we could see, of morality and religion.”206 204 Geissler, Le Giessbach et la chorale familiale sur l’Alpe, 1822, Eau-forte coloriée, 31.8 x 24.4 cm, 1822, Cabinet des estampes, Bibliothèque nationale suisse. 205 In the Adolphe Adam’s 1827 vaudeville titled “Le Mal du pays ou La Batelière de Brienz,” there is one quintetto with five singers—two females, three males, just like the children in the Kehrli family. Most of the names are different than the childrens’, except “Gritly.” If pressed, one could also suppose a link between the vaudeville’s “Auguste” and Geissler’s “Ansi.” This is wholly speculative but certainly conceivable. Adolphe Adam, Le Mal du pays ou La Batelière de Brienz. Opéra-vaudeville en un acte. (Paris: Chez Maurice Schlesigner, 1827), http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42808095k. 206 Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1., 587–588. 187 The program Colston described went as follows: first, the children sang “God save the King,” in German, as the retired schoolmaster played the piano. Next came the ranz des vaches, although Colston did not specify which one. The ranz des vaches may have come from Henry Bishop’s 1839 play, Home, Sweet Home! Or, the Ranz des Vaches, for which we do not have the music.207 I suspect this because Basil Hall visited the Giessbach in 1833 and wrote that he later heard the same tunes performed back in England by “Mme. Stockhausen,” where the effect was largely lost and the sounds out of place, and gave no idea “of what this wild song is when heard among its native mountains.”208 Mme. Stockhausen was likely one Margarethe Stockhausen, who was one of the main performers associated with the ranz des vaches and Bishop’s play in England. The ranz des vaches might also have been one of Mme. Stockhausen’s contributions to a collection of keyboard ditties on Swiss tunes from 1838, called “Les délices de la Suisse.”209 In either event, Colston must have heard the tune before, because she appraised that “the youngest child, a boy of five years old, played the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ very correctly.”210 207 Pocock and Bishop, Home, Sweet Home!, Or, the Ranz Des Vaches : An Operatic Entertainment, in Two Acts, Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. 208 I have heard many Ranz des Vaches since, but never to such advantage as at the falls of the Giesbach, where they were sung by a whole family in a style so wonderful that I should advise anyone who may be in the neighborhood to make a little diversion from their street course to hear the singers ... I also remember hearing, long afterwards, the same airs the song by the charming Mme. Stockhausen, and addressed grounds of the London suburban villa...[etc].” Hall, Moxon, and Bradbury & Evans, Patchwork, 1:144– 145. 209 Ernst Knop, Les délices de la Suisse ou Choix de ranz des vaches (Kühreihen) et autres chants, chantés par Mme Stockhausen, arrangé pour Piano seul, sans paroles par Fréd Hegar (Basel: Knop, 1838), https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-29479. 210 Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1., 587–588. 188 Finally, as the travelers walked down and away from the chalet, the children stood at the door and sang “God save the King” once more, but this time wordlessly, in the style of the ranz des vaches. This probably describes the open vowels used to alternate between head and chest voice in a yodel-like figure. The fact that family played the English national anthem in various styles underscores the strong English presence at the chalet. Colston, again, gave an approving description of the melodious departure, and mentions she was happy to pay the “trifle” for the concert at the Giessbach.211 This practice of seeing travelers off with music spanned three generations of the Kehrli family. The departure scene is also described in the 1838 Murray travel guide, 14 years after Colston, and which also tells us that the schoolmaster has begun to train his grandchildren, and that music played while the travelers depart “is very sweet.” 212 Colston and other writers described that the power of the ranz des vaches at the Giessbach came from the Swiss connection with the land and their pastoral heritage. She wrote that the effects of the ranz des vaches were due “wholly to the force of association, and strong attachment to their land of beauty and sublimity, and their early pastoral habits.”213 Similarly, in his entry on the Giessbach, Basil Hall also made an explicit connection between the effect of the ranz des vaches and the scenery in his enthusiastic 211 Ibid., 387. 212 “The cottage opposite the Falls is inhabited by the schoolmaster of Brienz, whose family and himself are celebrated as the best choristers of native airs in Switzerland. He is now a patriarch of 61, and most of his children are married; but he is training his grand-children to the same profession of songsters. The concert, accompanied by the Alpine horn, with which travellers are saluted on their departure, is very sweet.” Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 128. 213 Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1., 587–588. 189 entry on the Kehlri family.214 For the English tourists, the Kehlri family were exactly what they wanted the Swiss to be, and the approving appraisal of the ranz des vaches naturally followed. Johann Kehrli died in 1854, and the Baedeker travel guide credits him with putting the Giessbachfalles on the map.215 In the case of the Giessbach and the Schiffermädchen, sound and music actually made specific places into tourist attractions. Similarly, while travelers did not necessarily go out of their way to hear the porters, the singing porters still facilitated an exciting and fundamentally joyful connection to the mountains. In all of these instances, the Swiss people who adorned the scenery with sound did so in a way that made the tourists feel like they were doing it as much for the joy of song as it was for the pleasing artifice. Perhaps because of the clear success of the musicians at the Giessbach and Brienz, as tourism traffic increased, groups of Swiss women began to sing in the evening at travelers’ boarding houses, probably after a full day of working in the fields. The women typically gathered around the dinner tables, and would sing late into the night. Concerts started first in Brienz and Interlaken and by the 1830’s spread to Grindelwald, 214 “I have heard many Ranz des Vaches since [the porters], but never to such advantage as at the falls of the Giesbach, where they were sung by a whole family in a style so wonderful that I should advise anyone who may be in the neighborhood to make a little diversion from their street course to hear the singers, whose numbers, I dare say, will never be allowed to diminish.” Hall, Moxon, and Bradbury & Evans, Patchwork, 1:144–145. 215 “The Giessbach, formerly inaccessible, became known in the year [1818] when a schoolmaster of the name of Kehrli (d. 1854) constructed a path, for the use of which he exacted a small toll from visitors. His heirs sold their right in 1854, and it is now the property of the Steamboat Co. of the Lakes of Brienz and Thun. Since the construction of the hotel, the Giessbach has become one of the most agreeable and popular places of resort in Switzerland. It was visited by upwards of 18000 persons in 1857.” Karl Baedeker, Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Second Edition (London and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1864), 144. The 1863 edition says that the Giessbach became known in 1848, but this date is corrected to 1818 by the 1869 edition. This corresponds with the earliest sources that I have found that mention the family. 190 along with the expanding number of boarding houses. By way of example, in 1828, Interlaken had two boarding houses, and by 1838, there were more than a dozen.216 (If tourists did not want to walk between Breinz and Interlaken, they could choose between singing Schiffermädchen or the porters.) 217 Guidebooks occasionally made mention of this opportunity to enjoy local music, and travelers sometimes engaged in pleasurable conversations with the singers. However, unlike the instances discussed earlier, travelers did not necessarily seek out the boarding houses on account of the singing, and the reception of the singers is typically ambivalent. Accounts of these concerts were almost always embedded in a description of the scenery, and the singing was typically described in terms that evoked either the simplistic, pure rural, or––on the other side of the “natural” coin––as wild, rustic, and exotic. In 1820, Henry Matthews wrote that “a party of female choirsters offered their services to enliven our evening by singing their national airs.” According to him, the singing had such a pure character that further instruction or education, that is, learnedness, would do nothing to better it. 218 Carne, Esq., described a similar evening of 216 Carney, “A Swiss Tour.––No. V.,” 54. Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 99. 217 There is one exceptional description of a singing porter on this route. “...Ogre he was called. ...The Ogre did everything ill but howl, and certainly he was the best howler we heard in the land. Suddenly, with a yard––à propos to nothing at all–– without any preparatory ahem! he would open his mouth and deliver a complicated yell, which might have been heard a league off. This we were pleased to all the call the Ranz des Vaches, or cow row. It was really a full grown “jodel,” the common Alpine, I hardly know what word to use, but suppose we say “strain.” Chaillu would have shot Jahn, and brought his skin home. The Ogre howled throughout the day, at uncertain intervals; but in the evening, when he got along with other guides in the tap-room, over kirsch-water...his howl was paramount and continuous. You heard it at dinner; it went on while you sat outside and smoked your cigar afterwards, and when you had wound up your watch and got into bed...often the last sound which accompanied the passage to sleep was a gust of the Ogre’s howl.” Harry M. A. Jones, The Regular Swiss Round, in Three Trips (London: A. Strahan, 1865), 25–26, https://archive.org/details/regularswissrou01jonegoog. 218 Matthews, The Diary of an Invalid, Being the Journal of a Tour in Pursuit of Health in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France in the Years 1817-1818-1819., 278–279. At Brienz, a party of female choristers offered their services to enliven our evening, by singing their national airs. Many of these were delightfully 191 music in rather less idyllic tones, emphasizing the wilder side of natural Swiss singing. He wrote that the “shrieking” women were so loud that his party retreated outside to the garden, where they admired the lake, the sound of the Giessbachfalls from afar, and the rather more muted ensemble.219 These evening ensembles were typically viewed in direct connection to the land and the English understanding of the Swiss heritage. Just as the Murray clarified that the ranz des vaches was a class of melodies, and not just a single tune, travelers to various towns sometimes saw the evening performances as an opportunity to hear the local ranz des vaches. In some instances, Swiss singers proudly informed the listeners that there were in fact different ranz des vaches in every town. Fenimore Cooper, in 1836, wrote about a dialogue his party had in Grindelwald with some singing women who made the same correction. His party had asked to hear the ranz des vaches “as a matter of course” up until now, without understanding that there were local versions. (The author noted that he liked the Grindelwald ranz des vaches less than some of the others he heard on his travels.)220 simple and plaintive, and they "warbled their wood-notes wild" so sweetly, that perhaps science and instruction could have added nothing to improve the harmony. 219 Carne, A Tour Through Switzerland and Italy, 130. “... we returned to the village of Brienz, and to our tranquil apartment, that looked far over the shores. During supper, a company of female singers, said to be the best in the country, came into the adjoining apartment, and commenced a kind of shrieking lament, — not in the plaintive voice of sorrow, for it rang shrilly and wildly through the whole house. They were six in number, and each took her part in the air with infinite rapidity and in excellent time. We adjourned to the garden in front of the hotel, and, it being a fine moonlight night, the singing sounded much softer than from within. They gave a variety of songs during more than an hour, and would have continued till midnight, if permitted. The lake had a lovely appearance in the clear light, and the rush of the distant cataract on the other shore was distinctly heard.” 220 Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland [1836], 59. Here we had a specimen of mountain music, a choir of Grindelwald damsels frequenting the inn for the entertainment of travellers. They sung in German—mountain German too, and in good time, if not with good taste. The notes were wild, the throats powerful, the chords not bad, and the words detestable, without alluding to their meaning, however, for of what we knew nothing. We asked for the Ranz des Vaches, as a matter of course, and now learned, for the first time, that they are nearly as many songs and airs which go by that name, as they are valleys in 192 Unlike the porters, Schiffermädchen, and the Kehlri family, the Swiss women who sang in the evenings likely also had work outside of the tourist industry. Dorothy Wordsworth wrote about a group of three women, returning from work in the pastures, who approached her table and sang. She also describes the way in which each of the voice parts successively entered one at a time, and inevitably situates the music within the larger scenic context. While we were waiting at the door, a company of females came up, returning from harvest labours .... They gathered round, eyeing us steadily; and presently a girl began to sing — another joined — a third — a fourth — and then a fifth, their arms gracefully laid over each other’s shoulders. Large black or straw hats shaded their heads, undecked with ribbands, — and their attire was grey: — the air they sang was plaintive and wild, — without sweetness, yet not harsh. The groupe collected round that lonely house on the river’s edge would have made a pretty picture. 221 Similarly, guidebooks often mentioned the singing in the same breath as the scenery. The 1838 Murray describes the look and situation of Grindelwald, and like many of the travelogues, includes a description of the local population, ranz des vaches performances, and landscape all in the same paragraph. 222 Switzerland. Grindelwald has its own Ranz des Vaches, and with that we were favored. I like it less than some of the others since heard.” 221 Dorothy Wordsworth, The Continental Journals, ed. Helen Boden (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995), 114. Marianne Colston also describes the successive vocal entrances, although in rather more ambiguous terms. Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1., 391. 222 “The village of Grindelwald, consisting of picturesque wooden cottages, widely scattered over the valley, lies at a height of 3250 feet above the sea, from which cause, and from its vicinity to the glaciers, the climate of the valley, is cold, and unstable even in summer. Its inhabitants are chiefly employed in rearing cattle...the younger females pick up a few batz by singing Ranz des Vaches at the inns...” Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 107–108. 193 I have found very little specific information about what exactly the women sang. One entry, by Martha Armory in 1833 is slightly more specific than most; she writes that the women at her boarding house in Grindelwald sang at least three different tunes: the yodel, the ranz des vaches, and the “Chamois Song” and that it was “delightful to hear these simple ballads ... in scenes so congenial.”223 The “yodel” may have referred to a genre called the Jodellied, which is discussed in Chapter V; the “Chamois Song” could be a reference to a multitude of different songs about hunting mountain goats. As tourists left their lodgings and went higher up into the mountains, they often encountered a man or boy waiting with an alphorn (and less frequently a cannon), advantageously situated to echo against the distant mountain walls. The alphorns corresponded with locations where tourists would go to see and hear avalanches, which are one of the more horrifying and dangerous aspects of the mountain sublime. This occurred in various places, including over the Grosse Scheidegg, near the Wengenalp, and near the Lauchbühlhütte, between Grindelwald and Meiringen. Guidebooks recommended both of these routes especially because of the likelihood of hearing an avalanche. Whether the Swiss men and boys stationed themselves in these spaces to deliberately appeal to the tourists’ aesthetic expectations or if they simply located themselves where the tourists were going to be, the effect could be quite pleasing and it had the consequence of bringing the tourists closer to the mountain sublime––but safely. The Wengenalp is a hilly route between Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, and one of the main reasons to take it was that it brought the travelers alongside the sheer 223 Martha Babcock Armory, Wedding Journey of Charles and Martha Babcock Amory, Letters of Mrs. Amory to Her Mother Mrs. Gardiner Greene, 2nd Volume: Switzerland, Holland and Germany, 1833-1834. 2nd Volume: Switzerland, Holland and Germany. (Boston: Privately Printed, 1922), 44. 194 mountain walls, including the infamous north face of the Eiger. From the Wengenalp, especially during the summer, one could see, and significantly, also hear the avalanches. Byron quoted Manfred while standing on the Wengenalp: “Ye Avalanches, whom a breath draws down / In mountainous o’erwhelming, come and crush me!”224 The 1838 Murray strongly suggested that if at all possible, one must travel over the Wengenalp rather than go around, because of the visual and aural vicinity to the mountains and avalanches, because of the “proximity to these sublime objects” and “from the summit of the Wengern Alp that the avalanches are seen and heard in greatest perfection.” 225 Similarly, writers recommended the road from Grindelwald to Meiringen because of its nearness to the mountains and the relative likelihood of seeing and hearing an avalanche from a safe distance, particularly on the Wetterhorn. The Baedeker boasted that on any given summer day avalanches could be seen falling from four different sides of the mountain.226 These alphorn players literally played off the mountains with echoes, thereby articulating that clear link between Swiss sound and Swiss scenery that the travelers wanted to experience. Andrew Peabody, in 1868, described the situation of the horn and attractive effect of the echo: 224 William Dick, Byron & His Poetry (London: Harrap, 1918), 104–105. 225 Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 104. “In fine weather there is not a more interesting or exciting journey among the Alps than that over the Wengern Alp, or Lesser Scheideck. Independent of the view of the Jungfrau, and other giants of the Bernese chain (unrivalled, owing to its proximity to these sublime objects), it is from the summit of the Wengern Alp that the avalanches are seen and heard in greatest perfection, and no one should abandon the expedition without an effort.” 226 This shows up in Baedekers throughout the century, but for the sake of a citation, here’s one: Karl Baedeker, Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Four Edition (Coblenz: Karl Baedeker, 1869), 122. 195 On this route and on several others, I enjoyed most richly the mountain echoes from the Alpine horn, — an instrument as long as the man, longer than the boy, who plays it, from which a single strong, sweet note is caught by and sent back from scores of the Alps, first nearer, then more distant, till at length it dies away in the faintest whisper of melody.227 Peabody’s travelogue entry suggests that there were a variety of places where the alphorn players would station themselves. This vague terminology is typical of many travelogues, which makes it difficult to pin down where precisely these instruments were; however, the most enduring alphorn-echo was at the Wetterhorn, near the Lauchbühlhütte, on the route between Grindelwald and Meiringen.228 The first English- language Baedeker, in 1852, described the effect of hearing the echo up in the mountains, urged the tourist to stop and listen. Upon the slope in front of the Wetterhorn is usually stationed one who blows the alpine horn, a rude tube of wood, 6 or 8 ft. long. The traveller should on no account omit to stop and listen. A few seconds after the horn has ceased, the few and simple notes of the instrument are caught up and repeated by the echoes of the vast cliff of the Wetterhorn, and return to the ear refined and softened, yet perfectly distinct, as it were an aerial concert warbling among the crags.229 227 Andrew P. Peabody, Reminiscences of European Travel (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1868), 114– 115. 228 The Wetterhorn is particularly significant because its first (known) successful summit was by the Englishman Edward Whymper in 1854, which set off a period of exploration known as the Golden Age of Alpinism. It isn’t until the 1883 edition of the Baedeker that we learn specifically where this horn player is stationed. Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers., Tenth Edition (Leipsig: Karl Baedeker, 1883), 174. 229 Karl Baedeker, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont., Fifth Edition (London: John Murray, 1852), 78. 196 From 1869–1895, the Baedekers continued to apprise the alphorn echo at the Wetterhorn as “not unpleasing.”230 Towards the end of the century, when travelers were less likely to tolerate sonic mendicancy––especially that which prominently featured poor people––the alphorn echoes turned out to be a relatively durable act. 231 It is possible that the image of the poor body was mediated by the presence of the alphorn itself. The alphorn was associated with particularly remote and untouched locations; Murray had said that in areas that had remained untouched by modernity, the alphorn had been used as a substitute for the Vesper bell.232 The novelty was also facilitated by the exotic appearance of the instrument, which both looked and sounded unusual. The alphorn was often portrayed with distancing, vaguely exoticizing terminology, and most writers focused on its size. In 1860, the traveler E. K. Washington referred to it as horn of the Tyrolese, and in 1863, 230 Baedeker, Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, 122. The first one is from 1869: “In spring, avalanches descend from the Wetterhorn in four different directions; the snow frequently extends to the path, and does not entirely melt during the whole summer. The Alpine horn (an instrument 6–8 feet in length, of bark or wood) is generally sounded from the opposite slope as travellers are passing. Its simple notes, re-echoed a few seconds later from the precipices of the Wetterhorn, produce not an unpleasing effect.” 231 In 1891, Samuel Manning, in a bitter anecdote about the beggars in the Oberland, described how horn players situated themselves at spots well-suited to generate echoes, and how these echoes, despite everything else, were singularly beautiful. Samuel Manning, Swiss Pictures, Drawn with Pen and Pencil. With Illustrations by Mr. Whymper, and Others, A New and Enlarged Edition (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1891), 126. 232 The original statement came from: Moritz Anton Cappeller, Pilati Montis Historia in Pago Lucernensi Helvetiae Siti (Basileae: typis & sumtibus Ioh. Rodophi Im-Hof et filii, 1767), 11, https://www.e- rara.ch/doi/10.3931/e-rara-22520. Cappeller described how, at night, the more orthodox believers among the shepherds would sing out a prayer. The text of the prayer begins with “nonsense” syllables that recall later yodel-like passages included in the Jodellieder (ch4) and which end with the word “Lobe,” which has more than passing similarity with the word “Lioba” in “Les Armaillis”: “Ho-ho-ho-eo-ho-ho-oe-ho-ho./ Ho-Lobe-ho-Lobe, nemmet all tritt in Gottes namen Lobe: / ho-Lobe nemmet all tritt in unsern Lieben Frauen namen Lobe:/ Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Christus, Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria.” 197 Jemima Morell disparaged it as a “bark-bound hookah.” 233 Like the porters and Schiffermädchen used song to make tourists feel closer to the mountains, the echo of the alphorn could collapse the emotional distance between the traveler and the sublime.234 All this music worked because it enhanced the tourists’ desired aesthetic experience in the Alps. The sound of the alphorn or the singers always was an ornament to the landscape, and which seemed innocent and pastoral enough to preserve the power relationship between the English and the Swiss. However, when either tourists or Swiss musicians became too numerous, the English could no longer maintain the illusion of a pastoral fantasy. “There Is Somewhat Too Much of the Jodeling in the Alps” The farther the English went into the hills, the more they encountered the rural poor, and tourists were forced to confront a tension between the beauty of nature and the ugliness of poverty. Many people who lived in the remote Oberland suffered significantly from the complications of iodine deficiency, and sometimes the visual 233 E. K. Washington, E. K., Echoes of Europe; or, Word pictures of travel. Philadelphia: James Challen & Son (1860), 114-15. Jemima Morrell, Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal: The First Conducted Tour of Switzerland. The History of Tourism: Thomas Cook and the Origins of Leisure Travel, Volume 2, reprinted from the 1963 edition. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, (1998), 84. 234 There is tentative evidence that to propose that within nineteenth-century theories of air, the ranz des vaches was one way for humans to effectively have physical contact with mountain heights that were otherwise beyond their reach. This is based in theories proposed in Margareta Ingrid Christian’s 2012 dissertation at Princeton University, titled Horror Vacui: A cultural history of air around 1900. Her research shows that eighteenth-century experimental philosophy proposed the existence of “imponderable fluids” which could act as a medium that would manifest an action at a distance. In other words, within Christian’s theory, singing a ranz des vaches into the alpine air or playing an echo with an alphorn would be equivalent to a literal interaction with the mountain heights, and perhaps all of its associated sublimities. This, however, requires work that is currently beyond the scope of this dissertation. Margareta Ingrid Christian, Ph.D. Dissertation, Horror Vacui: A Cultural History of Air Around 1900 (Princeton, Department of German, 2012). 198 aspect of the Swiss themselves interrupted the English reverie. For the Victorian middle class, particularly after 1830, poverty signified a lack of interest or ability to engage in legitimate work, and thus it indicated moral delinquency. Implicitly, poverty was not a part of Swiss heritage, and perhaps if the Swiss had behaved correctly by living in accordance with their simple, pastoral traditions, they would not find themselves in this current situation. This moral corruption precluded almost any effective use of sound to adorn the scenery. The intrusion of supplicant noises into the Victorian middle-class reverie was also a problem back in London, where people began considering unwanted street noise as a moral affront and public health crisis because it permeated the walls of otherwise respectable houses. In the Alps, English tourists felt the singing Swiss interrupted the otherwise pleasant scenery. Furthermore, the number of barefoot, singing Swiss children was an uncomfortable parallel to the profusion of street urchins back home. Governmental forces were engaged to address these noise-makers both in London and in Switzerland, as if to legislate the musicians back to moral, quiet behavior. However simple it would have been to blame the Swiss’ poverty on their sonic abuse of the mountains and abandonment of tradition, the tourists were also unhappy about the profusion of their own compatriots in the Alps. The increase of tourists was clearly related to the number of musicians, and many irreverent English tourists were also acting too loudly in the mountains. This increase in noise went hand-in-hand with concerns about the creeping modernization in the Alps; tourists could not help but notice that they had brought the complexities of modern city life to a place that had once been so pristine. This section of the chapter explores how Victorians felt the sound of the ranz 199 des vaches no longer invoked the pure connection between Älpler and Alp, but the disparity between then and now, between the pure rural and the ugliness of modern life. The women at the Staubbach were some of the first to become the subjects of notable ire because the appearance of their destitution was at odds with the mountain sublime, and the sound of their voices only enhanced this cognitive dissonance. Henry Matthews, who visited the Staubbach in 1818, was charmed by the scene and distant sounds of song until he saw the bodies from which the sounds emanated: While we sat ... admiring the rainbows produced by the morning sun in the falling spray, we were surprised by the sound of music, which seemed to be a duet of two hautboys; and the echoes of the surrounding rocks produced the most pleasing effect. But here again the evil genius of reality appeared to dispel the illusion; — for the enchantment was at once dissolved, on discovering the cause of this music in the persons of two dirty old women. 235 Two years later, William Wordsworth acknowledged the tension between the glorious scenery, his remove from the normal world, and the abject poverty the closing lines of his poem “On approaching the Staub-bach, Lauterbrunnen:” Tracks let me follow far from human kind Which these illusive greetings may not reach; Where only Nature tunes her voice to teach Careless pursuits, and raptures unconfined. No Mermaid warbles (to allay the wind That drives some vessel towards a dangerous beach) More thrilling melodies no cavern'd Witch Chanting a love-spell, ever entertwined Notes shrill and wild with art more musical : Alas! that from the lips of abject Want And Idleness in tatters mendicant They should proceed — enjoyment to enthral, And with regret and useless pity haunt 235 Matthews, The Diary of an Invalid, Being the Journal of a Tour in Pursuit of Health in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France in the Years 1817-1818-1819., 275. 200 This bold, this pure, this sky-born Waterfall! 236 Wordsworth’s tone is relatively more tolerant of the women than most later writers. However, time passed, many English found that the unwelcome sight of the women precluded any proper enjoyment of the landscape. English complaints started in earnest when musicians became too persistent. Travelers wrote increasingly of being “accosted,” “ambushed,” and “ambuscaded” by singers, mostly barefoot children, “some display[ing] marmots, — some sing — others offer crystals, &c…—for all of which services the tourist is expected to pay something.”237 For the English, the joyous Swiss music, including the ranz des vaches, was reduced to just another peddled good and a technique for harassment by unsavory characters rather than an articulation of the idealized pure, hard-working pastoral Swiss ways of old. The 1863 edition of the Baedeker extended the complaint about the women at the Staubbach as a warning to travelers to the Oberland writ large. Tourists are instructed to avoid gazing too long at any one sight, such as waterfalls, lest they find themselves at the receiving end of an unwanted musical performance. Patience and small coin are indispensable in the Bernese Oberland. Contributions are levied upon the traveller's purse under every possible pretence. ... His admiration must not be engrossed by a cascade ever so beautiful, or by a glacier ever so imposing and magnificent... mendicancy is reduced to a system and a trade... Swiss damsels next make their appearance on the scene and the fast ebbing patience of the traveller has 236 Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820, 17. 237 Lover of the Picturesque, Notes of a Ramble through France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and Belgium; and of a Visit to Scenes of “The Lady of The Lake.” (London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., 1836), 279–280. “Here, as in other parts of the country, travelers are beset by children, who offer them plates of strawberries or fragments of quartz; the latter answering, as Albert Smith says, two purposes, as when the purchase is declined, they can be used for pelting.” Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland [1836], 258–259. 201 another inroad made upon it by the national melodies with which he is indulged by these ruthless songsters—238 Especially by the late 1830’s, it was not just specific scenic locations like waterfalls that were fair game for unwanted performances of the ranz des vaches, but also the roads to and from them. This was particularly obvious on the Wegenalp, where tourists often felt like they were being sounded against, rather than the mountains. Musical mendicants on the Wengenalp apparently displayed utter irreverence for the mountains and were increasingly perceived as being at fault for their own destitution by actively insulting their heritage. English writers often commented on how the Swiss use of music was an abuse to Swiss mountains and heritage. This was the central conceit of a conversation that the prominent English aristocrat Charles Joseph Latrobe had with the mother of some singing, supplicant children on the Wengenalp, in which he writes that he and the mother shared the consensus that begging was not a truly Swiss expression.239 Latrobe was powerful enough that his travelogue was partially excerpted and reprinted in the 1838 Murray (see Appendix D).240 In another instance, an Englishman suggested that these flagrantly inauthentic performances of the ranz des vaches were harmful and confusing to the poor cattle. Harry 238 Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers, 124–125. 239 “[I told them] that begging was not originally a Swiss trade...Perhaps they did not understand me; but the mother did, and came forward from the cottage door... She said that she was a Swiss born, and did not like to see her children beg; but the bad custom had crept in no one knew how.” Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Alpenstock; or, Sketches of Swiss Scenery and Manners (Fleet Street, London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1829), 43. 240 Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 104. 202 Jones suggested that the “genuine voice of truth” belongs to a herder, while nowadays the Alps are populated by those whose only, and ignoble, occupation is that of noisemaking, and which ultimately only confuses the cows: In the course of our walk, we passed several very irritable echoes. These were provoked by men with huge cow-horns, ... I should imagine, though, that this unprofessional use of the horn, which is used to call the cattle home, must cause great confusion in the minds of the cows. I fear they are often at a loss to distinguish the summons of their own master––the genuine voice of truth–– from the selfish trumpetings of the gentlemen who, like many elsewhere and with more pretensions, get their living simply by making a noise in the world. 241 The English were not only upset because of the damage to their experience in the mountains, but also to their fanciful understanding Swiss heritage. Because the English believed that the essential predetermined nature of the Swiss was their honesty, simplicity, and hard work, these demonstrations of amoral behavior––singing the ranz des vaches for money rather than unselfconscious pastoral joy or naïve ways of life–– suggested that something about them is no longer quite as Swiss as it could be. To be fair, the English frustration with this increase of music may also have come from the sheer numbers and tenacity of the musicians. The singing and horn playing was so relentless that even for the more initially charitable travelers, this charm seemed to wear off during their stay in the Oberland. A writer who spoke warmly of singing girls as he approached Lauterbrunnen became much less enchanted with the children by the time he had ascended to the Wengenalp shortly after.242 Similarly, the Baedeker’s 241 Jones, The Regular Swiss Round, in Three Trips, 69. 242 Lover of the Picturesque, Notes of a Ramble through France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and Belgium; and of a Visit to Scenes of “The Lady of The Lake.,” 279–280. See the difference between pages 275 and 279-80. “On approaching Lauterbrunnen, “two little girls ran into the road to offer their pretty 203 characteristically acerbic comments about these musicians only grew more caustic over time. In the 1863 edition, the Baedeker included the description of an alphorn player on the descent from the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen, as one of several “[trials] to the temperature of the traveller.” Six years later, the entry was revised to describe this same alphorn as “an instrument of torture” that is just one of the “assaults made upon [the defenseless traveler’s] purse in rapid succession.”243 The doggedness of these singers was pervasive enough to be satirized by Mark Twain, whose fictional tramp encountered upwards of seven yodeling shepherd boys in succession, each received with decreasing enthusiasm: eventually, the protagonist compensated the boys for their silence rather than their singing. The jodeling … continued, and was very pleasant and inspiring to hear. Now the jodeler appeared—a shepherd boy of sixteen—and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a franc to jodel some more. … he generously jodeled us out of sight. After about fifteen minutes we came across another shepherd boy who was jodeling, and gave him half a franc to keep it up. He also jodeled us out of sight. After that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes; we gave the first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny, contributed nothing to Nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers, at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. There is somewhat too much of the jodeling in the Alps.244 nosegays, and sing to the passing traveller. They have here a manner of warbling in the throat – a falsetto mode of singing which harmonizes well with these romantic scenes, and which seems almost unknown in England.” By pages 278-80, our Lover mentions that there are a surplus of mendicant children who sing (and throw rocks off the cliff to demonstrate its height.[!!!]) 243 “As the traveler advances, assaults are made upon his purse in rapid succession; the Alpine horn, converted into an instrument of torture, is brought to bear on the defenseless stranger...” Baedeker, Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, 116. 244 Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad; Illustrated. (Hartford: American Publishing Company. Chatto & Windus, London, 1880), 289–290. 204 Although Twain gives no specific location for his overabundance of fictional yodelers, he very well might have been riffing on the scene at the Wegenalp, where other writers occasionally noted that they would rather pay for silence. Andrew Peabody contrasted the pleasant echoes of the horn––“the only good Swiss music I heard”––with the “guttural yelping” of Swiss national singing. This perhaps describes how Swiss yodelers will often push their chest register quite high before flipping into head voice. Swiss Like Twain’s yodellers, he suggests that it is better to compensate these people for their silence than their music.245 However, it is unfair to blame the Swiss entirely. The places with the most musical beggars were (perhaps unsurprisingly) also the places with the most tourists, and the English tended to be much less receptive to the musicians when locations were crowded with their compatriots. By way of example, the response to the alphorn in particular often changed based on how many other tourists were present. Even though the alphorn player was clearly lying in wait, tourists could still often retain a relative sense of superiority due to the nature of mountain walking paths in the Berner Oberland. These paths are such that even when there are many other tourists on the Alp, there is a sense of exclusivity. Even today, there are a surprising number of moments for one to experience moments of joyful, wild solitude. However, when tourists became more concentrated, writers became ambivalent or grumpy about the alphorn. 245 “This was the only good Swiss music I heard. The national singing is a guttural yelping, to my ear very offensive. The people, however, seem proud of it, and it is one of their favorite forms of mendicancy, — those who will not purchase their songs being ready, perhaps, to pay double for their silence.” Peabody, Reminiscences of European Travel, 114–115. “ 205 The best example of this occurred at the Rigi Kulm, a massif that was the subject of a Schweizerreise song discussed in Chapter III. The Rigi massif was a standard overnight stop between Zurich and Lucerne. The main activity there, in addition to the adventure of ascending it by foot, or later, by rail, was beholding the entire chain of the Bernese Alps during sunset and sunrise. At dusk and a half hour before sunrise, a local man would blow an alphorn to alert tourists to the imminent change of light. There are several instances in which the alphorn player even went inside the Hotel Rigi to play, which was a very effective strategy for waking sleeping tourists. Guidebooks only really ever describe the horn call as a “reveille,” but Johannes Brahms did sketch down an alphorn tune that he heard on the Rigi during his visit on September 12, 1868. He later incorporated this theme into the French horn in final movement of his first symphony, and the tune is now known colloquially as “High on the Mountain.”246 This melody––whether delivered indoors or outdoors––was a necessary prerequisite for tourists who wanted to experience the glorious sunrise when the mountains would be revealed in all their splendor. The 1863 Baedeker described the sunrise in uncharacteristically poetic language that bordered on the spiritual. Everyone at the hotel is united, “ready with one accord to prostrate themselves before the great source of light and life in which they see the fitting emblem of all good,” and indeed, “there are few whose thoughts do not turn in silent adoration towards that mighty hand which created ‘the great light which rules the day’, and whose first beams are now- being so anxiously expected.”247 246 Plantenga, Yodel in Hi-Fi, 88. 247 These subtle and imperceptible shifts of light erupted into splendor – one might imagine accompanying Baedeker’s rendering of the scene with “And there was light!” from Haydn’s Creation: “A faint streak in 206 While the sound of the alphorn necessarily cued travelers to have a highly aesthetic mountain experience at the Rigi, its irreverent, utilitarian, and sometimes intrusive performance among throngs of tourists clashed with travelers’ anticipated reverence of the scene. Tourists and guidebooks complained about the alphorn player partially because they simply did not enjoy being woken up so loudly in the morning, regardless of the payoff. For instance, the 1838 Murray guidebook somewhat grumpily recounted “the strange sounds of a long wooden horn, which is played until every particle of sleep is dispelled from the household,” but which summon the tourists to “[hasten] out with shivering limbs and half-open eyes to gaze at the glorious prospect of a sunrise from the Righi [sic].”248 In 1860, one traveler writes of “the horn of the Tyrolean, which is sounded till every rag, and shred, and tatter of sleep is torn from the eyelids of the guests.” 249 Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are many fewer complaints about the horn player at sunset.250 the E., which pales by degrees the brightness of the stars, is the precursor of the birth of day. This insensibly changes to a band of gold in the extreme horizon; each lofty peak is in succession tinged with a roseate blush; the shadows ... until at length, the sun suddenly bursts from behind the mountains, in all his majesty, flooding the whole of the superb landscape with light and warmth. Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers, 80–81. 248 John Murray, A Hand-book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses. London: John Murray & Son, (1838), 48-49. “…whether the inmate have slept or not, he, together with the whole household, is roused about an hour before sunrise, by the strange sounds of a long wooden horn, which is played until every particle of sleep is dispelled from the household. Then commences a general stir and commotion, and everybody hastens out with shivering limbs and half-open eyes to gaze at the glorious prospect of a sunrise from the Righi.” 249 Washington, Echoes of Europe; or, Word Pictures of Travel, 115. 250 The Baedeker does register a complaint in the 1881 edition, describing the horn player as “somewhat [trying] the temper by blowing the ‘retreat’ of the orb of the day.” Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Ninth Edition (Leipsig: Karl Baedeker, 1881). The original phrasing is “somewhat tries the temper...” 207 Tourists also grumbled about how the alphorn player clearly expected compensation for this unceremonious awakening. E.K. Washington recollected that, “The Tyrolese winds his horn, and collects francs, semi-francs, and sous therefore.”251 Mark Twain satirized the scene in his 1880 A Tramp Abroad, describing how the horn player demanded payment for services not effectively rendered: “We had encountered the horn- blower... and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed.”252 In many ways, the touristic reverie was interrupted more by throngs of irreverent tourists than simply by the Swiss. A woodcut from around 1860 focuses on the tourists, rather than the scenery. Titled “the Wedding Party and Tourists on the Rigikulm,” the image depicts a jumble of religious and irreverent sentiment (Figure 28, below).253 The more worshipful tourists are signified by a prominent sextant, the shape of which recalls a crucifix, as if they are religious pilgrims seeking the source of cosmic light, and the tourists just to the lower left of it are in witnessing postures that might be appropriate for a quasi-religious experience. Along the bottom, however, where the image is also literally darker, tourists are depicted in a rather less reverential light: one tourist dangles off the edge of the Kulm, while a goat nibbles on another’s coat. We can even see a gentleman in a large top hat and spectacles in the middle of the crowd, consulting a guidebook. Given the date of the woodcut, the guidebook could have been the Murray. The Rigi Kulm 251 Washington, Echoes of Europe; or, Word Pictures of Travel, 115. 252 Twain, A Tramp Abroad; Illustrated., 300. 253 Sir Arnold Lunn. The Swiss and Their Mountains: a Study of the Influence of Mountains on Man. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd (1963), plate 21. Lunn does not give any artist’s name, and the publisher who now owns the text, HarperCollinsUK, has no additional information about the image. 208 alphorn is shown in the upper right, and a man holds out his hat, presumably asking for payment for the player. Figure 28. “Wedding Party and Tourists on the Rigikulm,” woodcut around 1860 after a humoristic drawing by H. Jenny, non-paginated insert in Lunn, The Swiss and Their Mountains (1963). In this scene, it is not the “blasts that would raise the dead” that undermine the sanctity of the mountains––it is the tourists. 209 Despite the confusion of sentiment at the scene, the diurnal blasts of the alphorn at the Rigi Kulm were––along with the alphorn player at the Wetterhorn––one of the most durable spectacles in the nineteenth century Swiss Tour. The spectacle was so enduring that through the end of the century, the Baedekers hardly changed their paragraph on the Rigi Kulm: “Half an hour before sun-rise, the Alpine horn sounds the reveille. All is again noise, bustle and confusion.”254 Like any good essential tourist experience, the alphorn was even noted in the event of its absence: the tourist Harry Jones recollects that one morning in 1865, he “got up and walked out very early. The house was quite still. I expected to have heard the cow-horn, which is blown, according to Murray, on these occasions, but I went out silently into the grey morning […]”255 English travelers began arriving in Switzerland increasingly predisposed to preferring silence for their personal reflection and cultivation. The middle-class right to quietude was a core tenant of the discourse around street music happening simultaneously in London. Victorians considered it poor form to publicly conduct business on the street, and street musicians did just that while also sonically penetrating the walls of Victorian homes, and thus disrupting the notional boundary between classes.256 During the 1840s, 254 For instance : Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol: A Handbook for Travelers, Second Edition, revised and augmented (London: Williams and Norgate, 1864), 74. Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy Savoy and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Third Edition (London and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1867), 64. Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Eleventh Edition (Leipsig: Karl Baedeker, 1885), 82. Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Fifteenth Edition (Leipsig: Karl Baedeker, 1893), 89. And so on. 255 Harry M. A. Jones, The Regular Swiss Round, in Three Trips. London (1865), 33. 256 I.e.: From Street Life in London, 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith. "...the inhabitants of Church Lane were nearly all what I may term “street folks” – living, buying, selling, transacting all their business in the open street. It was a celebrated resort for tramps and costers of every description." 210 the Times began regularly printing complaints about street music. As Picker puts it, street musicians were problematic because they “put not just one but two principal components of [middle class Victorian] class identities––labor and leisure––at risk.”257 Street noise could even put one’s health at risk: one letter writer in 1864 penned of London street noises that “The objection to street noises is not a matter of taste. It involves the progress of honest labour, and the avoidance of great mental affliction.”258 The public intellectual Charles Babbage famously built a sound-proof study in the middle of London, where he could happily work without the pestilence and distraction of outside sounds. In 1864 Parliament attempted to legislate quietude on the streets of London with “An Act for the better Regulation of Street Music within the Metropolitan Police District.” The 1864 legislation against sound was partially an attempt to legislate against the intrusion of poverty into the middle-class domestic sanctuary. Unwanted song in Switzerland likewise represented an intrusion of Swiss poverty into the intellectual, middle-class Victorian fantasy of the Alps. For instance, the 1863 Baedeker wrote of singing in Oberland that, “the quiet enjoyment of Nature’s glorious works is rendered by these odious intrusions almost an impossibility.” Victorian concerns about honest labor as an exhibition of worthiness and morality were inherently tied into concerns about nationality, in both London and Switzerland. Street noises in London were associated with immigrants: performers were typically described by their nationalities––the “Frenchman,” the “lazy Irishman,” the “harmlessly insane Italian lad,” 257 Picker, Victorian Soundscapes, 53. 258 Michael Bass, Street Music in the Metropolis (London: John Murray, 1864), 7. 211 ––and it was often suggested that a solution to the problem of the noise was to send them back to their country of origin.259 There also appears to have been a significant increase of begging children in the Alps, including those whom Latrobe encountered, which would have amplified the English frustration because some of the most offensive street music in London was performed by children. This likely predisposed the English to responding to the Swiss children in the same way they responded to the infuriating “urchins” in London. In an 1852 newspaper editorial, Charles Manby Smith divided street noise nuisances into several types, two of which are generally children from Alpine regions, specifically Swiss, Tyrolean, or Savoyard. The first, “the monkey-organist,” is usually a “youth” from Switzerland or the Tyrol. The second type, “the hurdy-gurdy player,” sounds quite a bit like how travelers in the Oberland, described the supplicant, and poorly singing children, trying every trick in the book to get attention, and generally without much skill.260 The English anxiety about class differences and authenticity was part of their generalized apprehension about modernization and urbanization, fears that did not belong in a touristic journey to the Alps. The mountains, which had initially been a place to seek the mountain sublime, became nominally a place of refuge from the uncomfortable 259 While these particular epithets are from Smith, they are pretty typical descriptors from the time. Charles Manby Smith, “Music-Grinders of the Metropolis,” Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, March 27, 1852, 17 edition. See also, Picker, Victorian Soundscapes, 49. 260 Smith, “Music-Grinders of the Metropolis,” 98. “[...although this genius is] essentially a most horrid grinder, he, too, is in some sort a performer. ...little hopping, skipping, jumping, reeling Savoyard or Swiss urchins, who dance and sing, and grind and play, doing, like Caesar, four things at once, and whom you expect every moment to see rolling on the pavement, but who continue, like so many kittens, to pitch on their feet at last, nonwithstanding all their antics...the boys for the most part do not play any regular tune, having but few keys to their instruments, not even a complete octave.” There is a second category of the hurdy-gurdy player, “men with sallow complexions, large dark eyes, and silver ear-rings...” Ibid., 200–201. 212 reality of modern cities. Scholar Jenni Calder described the ugliness of life in London that the Victorians wanted to escape: Society itself was ugly. The ... urban world was not nice to look upon. There was dirt, there was noise, there was human excrement, there was starvation, there was crime, there was violence, all on the surface, all very close to the senses of all who ventured beyond their front doors ... To have an interior environment that enabled such things to be forgotten was a priority of middle class aspiration.261 This is likely a significant reason why there is a clear relationship between visually appealing singers and a well-received ranz des vaches, such the Giessbach family, or a pair of pretty girls playing the hammer dulcimer.262 When the 1877 Baedeker lamented the unwanted song at the Staubbach, it made sure to clarify that the singing Swiss damsels are “neither young nor pretty.”263 The English wanted the singing Swiss bodies to provide an aesthetic escape from their own anxieties. Calder’s text is about the development of the Victorian home, but the “interior environment” of which she speaks is synonymous with the idealized quiet environment of the Alps. As such, we can see how the desired personal romantic experience of the mountains elided with the Victorians’ ideals of moral, middle class interiority. Much as Parliament was brought to bear on the street noises in London, “the attention of government” was often invoked to legislate against the Swiss musicians. In the 1852 261 Jenni Calder, The Victorian Home (London: Batsford, 1977), 15. Originally quoted by Picker, Victorian Soundscapes, 44. 262 There is one conspicuous instance of music making on the Wengenalp that was actually not a subject of distain. There are entries about two “damsels” from 1836–1860, who situate themselves on the alp just outside of Grindelwald and play for passing tourists. See Appendix D. 263 Karl Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, Seventh Edition (Leipsig: Karl Baedeker, 1877), 103. 213 Baedeker wrote that complaints about singing women at the Staubbach had become so widespread that “The Staubbach has of late been infested by an impudent gang of begging girls. Complaints have been made to the police of them.”264 The 1864 Baedeker suggested that the police were trying to legislate the Swiss back in time, to their “natural” state: The fact is, the simplicity and morality of the aboriginal character in these once lonely regions is sadly marred and corrupted by modern invasion. These abuses, however, to which reference has been made, have become so crying that they will effect their own cure; the attention of Government has been directed to them, and principally with travellers themselves. Strawberries and flowers would soon wither were there no purchasers. The chamois and the marmot would speedily pine away when no longer supported by the misapplied bounty for the stranger; under like conditions the beggars would disappear for healthier employment: the echoes would only resound the challenge of the lusty pedestrian; the Alpine songstress would become a myth, and the Ranz des vaches be reinstated in the position from which it has been so rudely ejected.265 The “attention of Government,” seems to have been inadequate in dealing with this problem, because versions of this phrase are reprinted through at least 1891.266 What the English seem to have wanted was for the Swiss government to legislate people into performing a myth of pre-industrial and pre-tourist behavior. The English also held their own population at fault for the sonic pollution of the Alps, and London intellectuals in particular exhibited nostalgia for the academic heritage of tourists in Switzerland. It was likely that this impression came in large part from the 264 Baedeker, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont., 72. [1852] 265 Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol: A Handbook for Travelers, 114. 266 Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, 1891, 135. 214 early texts about the Alps, such as Ebel and Coxe. The London Alpine Club opined for how the early years of travel in Switzerland were dominated by clergymen and academics. ...in those days if you met a man in the Alps it was ten to one that he was a University man, eight to one (say) that he was a Cambridge man, and about even betting that he was a fellow of his college.267 With the democratization of tourism came the excess of irreverent English noise in the Alps. In 1864, the English writer John Ruskin felt the increased interest in mountaineering, as historian David Robertson writes, produced “a horde of wantons disrupting the vision of the high mountains as sublime and inaccessible.”268 Ruskin reprimanded his own countrymen for sonically polluting “the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently” with “shrieks of delight ... gunpowder blasts ... convulsive hiccough[s] of self-satisfaction.”269 This reprimand recalls Latrobe’s chiding the Swiss children for betraying the ways of their forefathers. According to Ruskin, one way to restore the true academic heritage of tourism in the Alps was to restore proper behavior and intellectual quietude on the part of the English tourists, not just the Swiss supplicants. 267 Originally from the Alpine Journal, XVIII (1896–97). Quoted in: David Robertson, “Mid-Victorians Amongst the Alps,” ed. U. C. Knoepflmacher and G. B. Tennyson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 120. 268 Ibid., 113. 269 “The Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide down again, with “shrieks of delight.” When you are past shrieking, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction.” Quoted in Ibid. 215 It also appears that aristocratic English intellectuals shared a common knowledge about the natural soundscape of the Alps. This can be seen in the lectures of the prominent Irish physicist John Tyndall, who attempted to explain the theory of sound waves in a series of public lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.270 Tyndall’s lectures show that there was a persistent scientific interest in mountain sound throughout the nineteenth century. This interest did not preclude Romanticism: for the English, part of the overwhelming Romance was the parallels between divine and earthy systems. Tyndall’s early lectures start with “common knowledge” examples, and then over the course of the text he moves into more obscure territory. For the common knowledge examples, Tyndall frequently referenced the sound behavior of familiar instruments like the piano, but also the behavior of sound in well-known places, including the Alps. In his section, “On the subject of resonance in caves and rocky enclosures,” Tyndall has his readers recall “the deafening sound produced by the fall of the ‘Reuss at the Devil’s Bridge.”271 Two of the three locations that Tyndall cites in his discussion of echoes are in the Alps, and include the Wetterhorn, where an alphorn player could be stationed.272 On the “blending of sound waves,” Tyndall talked about how hills block the sound of cow bells and Alpine waterfalls.273 His lengthy discussion on the “Effect of a non- homogenous atmosphere” takes place at the Mer de Glace of Chamouni, where he even 270 The lectures are reprinted in John Tyndall, Sound. A Course of Eight Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1867). 271 Ibid., 211. 272 Ibid., 17. 273 Ibid., 22. 216 uses the sound of a cannon as a way of exploring the travel of sound in airs of different densities.274 On the subject of the limits of the human ear, he compared what he could hear at the Wengenalp against what his friend could hear upon the Fee Alp.275 The examples go on. It is telling that the soundscape of the Alps––mostly entirely without people––was assumed to be common knowledge among the audience. In all of this, there is a constant implication that the best and most authentic traveler is the one who seeks to quietly observe and enjoy the scenery, and sound, which had once enhanced the scenic experience, now cheapened it. The Moral Collapse of the Ranz des Vaches Edits to the English-language Baedekers can show how the acknowledged moral collapse of the ranz des vaches corresponded with the increasing English self-awareness about their sonic and therefore moral impact in the Alps. The 1852 edition of a collaborative Murray and Baedeker guide to Switzerland talked about the ranz des vaches for two entire pages, with the same material and general goodwill as from the early travelers and guidebooks.276 This section essentially reprinted Murray’s “the traveller among the Alps will have frequent opportunities of hearing both the music of the horn and the songs of the cow-herds and dairy maids,” even to the point of including Robert Southey’s 274 Ibid., 9–10. 275 Ibid., 73–74. 276 Baedeker, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont (1852), xli– xlii. 217 description of the ranz des vaches “wildest chorus ever heard by human ears (etc).”277 This changed significantly by the Baedeker’s 1863 edition (the year before Parliament in London began legislating against street music).278 Not only was there no lengthy exposition on the ranz des vaches in this edition, it was also now a source of irritation because it is an exhibition of dishonest labor by unpolished characters, and among all of the complaints, the “crowning agony” is the tension between the English’s expectations for the ranz des vaches and what they actually experienced.279 The ranz des vaches and the alphorn were perceived as the worst of the offenders because the Victorians saw what the supplicants did with them as a profound aberration from their presumably original, natural functions. Instead of being a genuine expression of essential connection between man and Nature, as the travelers had hoped, it instead “hastens the travellers steps” and made it impossible for the traveler to quietly contemplate the splendors of the natural world. The influx of travelers inevitably had a relatively urbanizing effect on the Swiss, and the anxiety around corrupting Swiss integrity was essentially an anxiety about the influences of modernism, and their own role in it. In fairness, the English had been worried about the state of Swiss morality for about as long as they had been in Switzerland. For instance, the British Ambassador made a trip to the Alps in 1714, and lamented that the primitive purity of the mountain-dwellers was declining, and expressed concern that the continued presence of foreigners would lead to the total corruption of the 277 Ibid., xli. 278 Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers (1863). 279 Ibid., 124–125. 218 Swiss.280 Similarly, the 1838 Murray attributed the large percentage of begging children in Grindelwald to “the influx of strangers into the valley, which has exercised an injurious influence upon its morals and ancient simplicity of manners.”281 Nearly fifty years later, the 1885 Baedeker made a similar lament, but it echoed with the whole of the tourism industry, not just in Switzerland, writing that the mendicancy is “a usual [drawback] of favorite public resorts.”282 According to the Baedecker’s in the last decades of the century, even though the Swiss remained, at their core, “industrious and persevering,” the increasing number of travelers had demoralized them, because of the great temptation of easy money from a traveler’s purse. The English had brought about the downfall of Alpine morality. Just as travelers caused this ill, so to did they realize that they were part of the solution, by simply not giving into these supplications. As early as 1867, Baedeker clarified: ...the remedy therefore lies principally with travellers themselves. Beggars would then soon betake themselves to healthier employment; the echoes would only resound the challenge of the lusty pedestrian; the Alpine songstress would become a myth, and the Ranz des Vaches case to be employed for any other than its natural use.283 280 Paul P. Bernard, Rush to the Alps: The Evolution of Vacationing in Switzerland, East European Monographs, XXXVII (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 9–10. 281 Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses, 108. 282 Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, 1885, 124. 283 Baedeker, Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy Savoy and the Tyrol. Handbook for Travellers, 99–100. This same phrase in various guises is reprinted in Baedekers through the end of the century. 219 Just like the ranz des vaches was associated with nostalgia, the English found themselves nostalgic for their own ideal Alps. In this quote, the ranz des vaches acts almost like a sentinel species, warning the English that their modernizing effects in the Alps have gotten out of hand. Ironically, the problem the “Alpine songstress” was solved by more modernism, rather than less. The 1893 Baedeker evidences that the problem of supplicants was eventually solved by increasing modernization in the form of the railway, rather than a return to the idyllic rural. This edition is the first one since 1863 (when Baedeker began printing in English) that doesn’t have a section about how travelers into the Oberland need a full supply of patience. This is perhaps in part because the whole book has been reformatted, but it also corresponds with the construction of railways in the region, which literally enclosed tourists from the sounds of the outside. A train connection between Interlaken, Grindelwald, and Lauterbrunnen opened on July 1, 1890, just in time for the tourist season. The Wegenalp railway opened in 1891 and was extended to Grindelwald in 1893. The sealed railcars also put a physical barrier between travelers and singers, but also, ironically, between the travelers and the landscapes as well. As Stephen O’Shea has written, “Romanticism could be said to have been born and to have died in the mountains.”284 The story of the English in Switzerland, and specifically their relationship with sound in the Berner Oberland, is one way to tell the story of how Romanticism developed in the Alps, and how it met its end amidst the complexities and disillusionments of the modernizing world. The aesthetic experience of 284 Stephen O’Shea, The Alps (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), 139. 220 “mysterious profundity” quieted over the nineteenth century; the wild shrieks of seemingly Pagan witches were gradually replaced by a silence of the wild sublime. 221 CHAPTER V ALTITUDINAL ASSOCIATIONS IN THE KURHREIHEN AND YODEL Mountain Geist The word “Jodel” has existed in popular culture since the end of the seventeenth century, but not to describe music; instead, it was typically used to refer to noise and bad behavior in public.1 It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the term appeared sporadically in association with music.2 Its meaning became more regular another fifty years later, when intellectuals began to use it to describe a textless and out-of-doors cry, akin to “shout,” “yell,” or even “holler,” but with the characteristic flipping between head and chest register that we associate today with yodeling. In the mid-nineteenth century some authors still believed that the yodel lacked the necessary refinement or artifice to qualify as music. This did not prevent them from grudgingly admitting that the sound of a yodeler was dazzling, often using very similar language to that of early accounts of Kühreihen. Eduard Hanslick, in his 1854 On the Beautiful in Music, admitted that a yodeler could be even more formidable to hear than a symphony by Beethoven, but the impact came from the mountainous scenery rather than from the yodeler’s design, or Geist.3 As discussed in Chapter I, Geist has no good 1 Ammermann, Kammermann, and Wey, Alpenstimmung: Musikalische Beziehung zwischen Alphorn und Jodel: Fakt oder Ideologie?, 20. 2 For instance, it was used in a 1796 comic opera by Emanuel Schikaneder, Der Tyroler Wastl. Cited in: Ibid. 3 “When we said that our aesthetic pleasure in a piece of music orients itself to its artistic value, that does not preclude that a simple horn call, a yodler [Jodler] in the mountains could sometimes evoke greater delight than the most splendid symphony. However, in that case, music joins the ranks of the naturally beautiful. The aural experience confronts us, not as this particular structure in tones, but rather as this particular type of natural effect, and can, in accord with the scenic character of the surroundings and 222 translation into English––it can mean “spirit,” “feeling,” and occasionally “ghost.” Mark Evan Bonds, in an attempt to render the idea of Geist in English, explains that “Geist is always a good thing to have,” because nothing has “intellectual or spiritual depth if it lacks Geist,” much like the concept of the Latin anima (the vital principal of life discussed in Chapter II).4 According to Hanslick’s theories, nature is full of sound (Klang) but only music uses organized sounds, or tones, (Ton), and Ton alone is imbued with Geist.5 For Hanslick, there was no true music in nature because, for instance, birdsong does not make use of tones. This absence of Geist indicated to Hanslick that the yodel was not music; the yodeler’s voice reflected the awe-inspiring power of the mountains, but merely by replicating nature, without artistic interpretation or intervention––in other words, without music. Ten years later, in 1864, a Swiss musician and member of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) named Heinrich Szadrowsky published a rejoinder to Hanslick’s criticism of the yodel, suggesting that Hanslick was not refined enough to sense the Geist inherent in the yodel. Hanslick was not alone in this fault; Szadrowsky explained in his essay, “The personal mood, surpass in power all aesthetic enjoyment.” Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, trans. Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 91. Note that the original German specifies a Beethoven symphony: “Wenn wir sagten, daß unser ästhetisches Wohlgefallen an einem Tonstück sich nach dessen künsterlischem Werth richte, so hinder dies nicht, daß ein einfacher Hornruf, ein Jodler im Gebirg uns zu größerem Entzücken aufrufen kann, als jede Beethoven’ische Symhponie. In diesem Fall tritt aber die Musik in die Reihe des Naturschönen. Nich asl dieses bestimmte Gebilde in Tönen, sondern als diese bestimmte Art von Naturwirkung in solchen kommt uns das Gehörte entgegen und kann übereinstimmend mit dem landschaftlichen Charakter der Umgebung und der persönlichen Stimmung jeden Kunstgenuß an Macht hinter sich zurücklaffen.” Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, ein Beitrag zur Revision der Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Leipzig: Rudolph Weigel, 1858), 91. 4 Mark Evan Bonds, Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 148. 5 Ibid. 223 Music and Sounding Instruments of Alpine Inhabitants,” that the Alps were full of Geist, but only a select few humans were sensitive enough to truly feel it, let alone to have the privilege of replicating it through their voices. Szadrowsky believed the yodel was the product of the Älpler’s affinity for the mountain Geist.6 (While Szadrowsky does not name Hanslick specifically, his attempt to dialogue with Hanslick is evidenced by the similar sentence structure that he uses when he says that Alpenmusik was the highest art for the people who lived in the Alps, just as a symphony by Beethoven is the highest kind of instrumental art for others).7 Hanslick’s assertions of the yodel’s artlessness and Szadrowsky’s belief in its exquisiteness were in fact compatible ideas at their core because both were based on the premise that the yodel was wild and untamed. For Hanslick, this wildness precluded artistry; for Swiss nationalists and mountaineers like Szadrowsky and other members of the SAC, its very artlessness proved the existence of a mountain Geist, which expressed itself through the voice of an Älpler. This notion bolstered the legitimacy of the Swiss national project in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which Alps were the icon for the unity of Swiss national identity, and which drew many early folklorists to the mountains. We encountered an earlier version of this in Chapter III, with Bridel and “Les Armaillis.” Geist, like the high mountains, was considered to only be available to refined men, and the yodel occupied the intersection of masculinity, Geist, and late nineteenth- century nationalism. 6 Heinrich Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club IV (1867): 351. 7 Ibid., 279. 224 Scholars and musicologists, particularly in Switzerland, have studied the yodel more or less continuously since Szadrowsky’s 1864 essay in the SAC Jahrbuch. In the last 50 years, the main focus has been on the folkloric practice of yodeling and the potential origins of this distinctive vocalization. Max Peter Baumann did a dissertation on the yodel in 1976 and remains a main authority on the topic.8 He focused on subcategories of the yodel, their folkloric significance, and different hypotheses for its genesis. These various origin theories have been reliably repeated and explored in subsequent texts; for instance, one of the more recent substantial forays into the yodel, Alpenstimmung, a multi-authored text published in 2019, is largely dedicated to unpacking the so-called “Instrumental Hypothesis” that the yodel came out of imitating the Alphorn.9 Several of the origin stories for the yodel that came out in the first half of the twentieth century foregrounded the relationship between a man living among or connecting to the mountains. One of the most prominent theories is the “Echo hypothesis,” that the yodel was inspired by hearing echoes off the mountain walls; this theory came from writers who will be addressed later in this chapter. In the 1930’s, Alfred Leonz Gassman speculated that the yodel arose from the yodeler’s desire to replicate the shape of the mountainous landscape using musical expression: the jagged rising and falling of the melodic line depicted the jagged mountain horizon. Just as mountains seem taller as one stands closer them, Gassman believed that the closer the 8 Max Peter Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels (Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag, 1976). 9 Ammermann, Kammermann, and Wey, Alpenstimmung: Musikalische Beziehung zwischen Alphorn und Jodel: Fakt oder Ideologie? 225 singer was to the mountain, the higher the pitch went.10 Scholars also became interested in the primitive qualities of the yodel when early ethnomusiologists discovered that the Pygmies of Central Africa also yodeled. A particularly fascinating example of this was the “Ecstatic Phonation Hypothesis,” that the yodel came from primitive cries of sexual pleasure.11 While Baumann and others have studied the same sources that I treat in this chapter, they have not situated the yodel within some of the larger social or nationalist pressures at the end of the nineteenth century, which offer a richer context for its meaning and development. Specifically, the way that many nineteenth-century Swiss scientists and musicologists wrote about the yodel did so in ways that foregrounded how the Swiss yodelers had a deep connection to mountains, and perhaps reflected some pre-modern ways of being. I propose that the nineteenth century was marked by the “yodel myth,” a set of ideas, stories, and legends that positioned the yodel as a sonic manifestation of the national past, particularly within the male Älpler body from 1860–1900. This is an elaboration on a widely accepted theory about Swiss nationalism that describes how the mountains anchored Swiss national identity. Ulrich Im Hof calls it the “Swiss mythos,” (Mythos Schweiz) and Oliver Zimmer renames it the “Alpine myth,” in particular 10 Alfred Leonz Gassmann: Zur Tonpsychologie des Schweizer Volksliedes. Zürich 1936, p. 46. Alfred Leonz Gassmann, Zur Tonpsychologie Des Schweizer Volksliedes (Zürich: Zürich Hug, 1936), 46. Cited in Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels, 111–12. 11 As explained in Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels, 108–109. 226 reference to nationalist developments from 1870–WWII.12 Both Im Hof and Zimmer cite the folk song movement as evidence for the Alpine myth, but pull mostly from the song texts rather than the contemporary understanding of song itself. The yodel is not considered at particular length by either author, most likely because it is textless (or when texted, generally nonsensical). This chapter puts a wealth of primary sources, ethnographic studies, and nationalist studies in dialogue to explore how the yodel developed under pressure from a complex of national anxieties in the second half of the nineteenth century. I also fold in work from masculinity studies, particularly by George Mosse and Barbara Eichner, who have shown how modern masculinity developed roughly during the period 1850–WWI as the embodiment and performance of a national, often premodern utopian ideal. For Switzerland, that ideal was encapsulated by the Alps, manifested in the body of the Älpler, and sounded through the yodel. The Swiss yodel is known today for its characteristic rapid alternations between head and chest voice. This contrasts with the majority of Kühreihen from 1805 onwards that we encountered in Chapters III and IV, which often looked more akin to art song. However, the Kühreihen before 1800 had quite a lot in common with the vocalization that people called a “yodel” after 1850. Both were warbling phonations used for calling cattle, and were likely textless; the first texted Kühreihen appeared only in the 1805 12 Im Hof, Mythos Schweiz. Zimmer’s theory occurs in much of his work, including: Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory, and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891. Oliver Zimmer, “Competing Memories of the Nation: Liberal Historians and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Past 1870–1900,” Past & Present 168 (August 2000): 194–226. Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation.” 227 Unspunnenfest collection.13 Late eighteenth-century writers such as Johann Gottfried Ebel described the Kühreihen in ways that later nineteenth century scholars, like Alfred Tobler, would use to portray the yodel. Ebel explained in 1798 that “the so-called shepherd’s song of the Swiss mountain dwellers [the Kühreihen] does not consist of articulated sounds, and is never sung in words.” He wrote that the sound of the Kühreihen was unlike any other vocalization, because the sounds are usually formed “in the glottis, without help of the other parts of the pharynx,” and that there is “little or no movement of the jaw and its muscles in this song,” creating a sound like a wind instrument.14 Almost a century later, Tobler, in his 1890 “Kühreihen or Kühreigen, Jodel and Jodellied in Appenzell,” depicted the yodel in similar terms: the vocalization featured an unusual tongue and mouth position, and the sound resembled a wind instrument. The examples he gave were often not conventionally texted, although several featured shouting syllables.15 13 Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels, 90. The introduction to the 1805 collection indicates that the words to the pre- existing Kühreihens have been garbled beyond all meaning in other editions, although what precisely these other editions remains unknown, so for now Wagner’s are the earliest texted Kühreihen. von Wagner, Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text, np. 14 “The famous shepherd's song of the Swiss mountain people, which goes by the name of Kuhreihen (or ranz des vaches in French) is sung quite often in Innerrhoden [Appenzell]. This song does not consist of articulated sounds and shepherds and herdsmen never sing it with words. All its tones are simple, and are mostly formed in the glottis without the aid of any part other than the pharynx. One thus sees little or no movement of the jaws and their muscles in this song; therefore these tones have almost nothing similar to those which one is otherwise accustomed to hear from the human throat, but rather seem to be tones of a wind instrument...” “Den so berühmten Hirtengesang der Schweizerischen Bergbewohner, welcher unter dem Name Kuhreihen (Ranz des Vaches in französischen) bekannt ist, singt man in Innerrhoden sehr häufig. Dieser Gesang besteht nicht aus artikulierten Lauten, und wird von den Sennen und Hirten nie mit Worten gesungen. Alle Töne desselben sind einfach und werden meistens in der Stimmritze ohne Beihülfe anderer Theile als des Pharynx gebildet. Daher sieht man bei diesem Gesänge gar keine oder nur geringe Bewegung der Kinnladen und ihrer Muskeln; daher haben diese Töne fast nichts ähnliches mit denen, welche man sonst aus der menschlichen Kehle zu hören gewohnt ist, sondern scheinen vielmehr Töne eines Blasinstrumentes zu sein…” Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 152. 15 Alfred Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart. (Leipzig und Zürich: Gebrüder Hug, 1890), 41. 228 At this point, there is not enough evidence to determine if the eighteenth-century Kühreihen and yodel were truly synonymous, or simply very closely related; however, what did distinguish them over the course of the nineteenth century were the ideological agendas attached to them. This chapter explores how the yodel represented a sonic expression of the primeval national past, particularly within the male Älpler body, starting in the mid 1860s. The clear divergence of the yodel from the Kühreihen at this same time was part of a conscious anti-modernist nationalist project by the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC). The SAC used music as part of their larger enterprise to preserve traditional practices and safeguard the cultural essence of the Alps against the threat of industrialism and foreigners. In this, the SAC differentiated the masculine yodel from the effeminate Kühreihen, which they dismissed as a product of foreigners and domestic music-making. The yodel, on the other hand, represented the ideals they sought: idyllic masculinity and the wild timelessness of the high Alps. The difference between old and new, and authentic and cosmopolitan, were understood according to elevation, just as botany and geology were (and still are) studied according to zonation. Partially because of its association with high elevations, over time the yodel became increasingly coded with masculinity and correlated with conservative politics. By the end of the century, the yodeling topos had spilled into other elements of Swiss culture. Nationalism in the late nineteenth century was fundamentally entangled with gender and the idyllic timeless past, so analyzing them as separate entities may well miss the point. This is a study of proxies: nationality was expressed in the ideal male body, and the timeless, traditional past was elided with the ideal future. The yodel is an entry point for understanding how these ideas 229 were intertwined, and how groups of Swiss men understood them according to Alpine zonation––that is, according to elevation. The Yodel Myth The need for Switzerland to be understood both nationally and internationally as a cohesive unit became more urgent after the 1848 revolutions, which compelled much of Europe to re-interrogate their national identities. Germany and Italy, on the north and south of Switzerland, individualized and legitimized themselves by pointing to their linguistic or ethnic unity. Switzerland could not defend its borders using either of these parameters, and in 1862 Italy publicly considered incorporating the Italian-speaking south of Switzerland (using much the same logic that Hitler would later use in 1933).16 The Alps were seen, as Zimmer phrases it, as a “defensive castle” against these threats.17 The mountains were a natural choice for the national symbol and image: they were the setting for the majority of national myths, like the Oath of the Rütli and William Tell, which had been treated in the eighteenth-century nationalist song project discussed in Chapter III. The mountains were visible from every major city and the most common figure on tourist souvenirs, such as small wood carvings and playing cards.18 By mid- century, the Alps were widely accepted as the symbol and physical manifestation of the national historical past, and thus as the source of the Swiss future. Just as the Helvetic 16 Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation,” 652. 17 This is discussed throughout Zimmer, “In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation.” 18 Ibid., 648. 230 Society had used song to celebrate Älpler and Alpine spaces as the seat of Swiss virtues, men’s groups continued celebrate sonic expressions of the Alpine past as proof of the profundity of Switzerland’s good future. Nationalist developments were often spurred on by the perceived threats of modernity as well as international pressures, and for Switzerland, the Alps could both anchor the national identity and preserve it against the menace of an industrializing world. A similar phenomenon where national identity was attached to the landscape was also happening in Germany, as Thomas Lekan has explained.19 Liberal intellectuals were some of the first to suggest that one antidote to the dangers of modernity and industrialization were the mountains; they often contrasted the Alps against the evils of modern life and speculated that the mountains could help restore the threatened purity of modern humans. This line of thought passed into the popular consciousness by the 1870’s, particularly as industrialization disrupted existing social structures. Just as the Alps were the image of purity and immutability, the Älpler became constructed as the human embodiment of virtue and timelessness, qualities that by the 1880’s and 1890’s were also associated with expressions of traditional masculinity. Scholars have written substantially about how the modern gender duality developed alongside nationalism during this period, and how specifically masculinity became associated with an ideal national future.20 We can see a similar phenomenon playing out 19 Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885– 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). The Germans in the second half of the nineteenth century also tried to make the German-speaking areas of the Alps into a pillar of Germanic identity, which reached a culminating point during the Third Reich. Edward Dickinson, “Altitude and Whiteness: Germanizing the Alps and Alpinizing the Germans, 1875–1935,” German Studies Review 33, no. 3 (October 2010): 579–602. 20 See, for instance: Barbara Eichner, History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848–1914 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012). Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, eds., 231 in Switzerland in the last decades of the nineteenth century, wherein the Älpler and the Alps both referred to the ideal nation and the ideal Swiss man. Within this framework, Swiss intellectuals wrote about the yodel–– an Alpine, male vocalization––as an expression of the ideal Switzerland, particularly as it arose from the connection between a man and the Alps, according to the earlier discussion of Geist. In other words, the yodel was the sound of a Swiss man living harmoniously with his nation and tradition, safe from the dangers and decay of the industrializing world. It was the sound of Swiss utopia. While the intellectual foundations of these ideas certainly hailed from eighteenth- century thought, Swiss nationalism after 1850 can be distinguished by inflections from the so-called Golden Age of Alpinism. This period from 1854–1865 saw the rapid development of mountain climbing techniques and technology, first by Englishmen, who started their London Alpine Club in 1857. Partially in response to this dramatic increase of enthusiastic Englishmen in their mountains, Swiss climbers and scientists established the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) in 1863. (The Swiss had almost always been part of expeditions, no matter who the leaders were; the English especially relied on the services of Swiss guides, who they called Bergführer, mountain leader; I suspect that the singing porters, discussed in Chapter III, were some of the early guides.)21 Masculinity and Western Musical Practice (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009). Tamar Mayer, ed., Gender Ironies of Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 21 Michael S. Reidy, “Mountaineering, Masculinity, and the Male Body in Mid-Victorian Britain,” in Scientific Masculinities, ed. Erika Lorraine Milam and Robert A. Nye, vol. 30, Osiris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 172–173.3 The German and Austrian climbing associations were also established in the 1860’s, and combined into the German and Austrian Alpine Association (Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein) in 1873. One historical source with only a couple degrees removal from the original mountaineers is Sir Arnold Lunn, The Swiss and Their Mountains: A Study of the Influence of Mountains on Man (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1963). 232 During this Golden Age of Alpinism, scientists and climbers divided the world into higher and lower elevations, which had concomitant moral implications; generally, the higher something or someone was, the purer and more valuable they were considered. The use of vertical zonation as an analytical tool was extended to the study of humans; as Michael Reidy has shown, Alpinists divided landscapes into elevational zones which corresponded with notions of physiological differences. In the case of the Swiss Alps, naturalists and mountaineers equated Alpine values and Urschweiz with Alpine men, because they believed that the Älper’s reported purity, premodernity, and manliness were all the product of immediate proximity to the peaks. As bodies moved uphill, they were associated with corresponding shifts “from civilization to isolation, from domestication to wilderness, and from the feminine to the masculine.”22 In this way, the high mountains became the site for the cultivation of masculinity in the climber’s body, which included the expulsion of femininity.23 Furthermore, the epistemology of the Golden Age of Alpinism also clearly pointed to the affiliation between an ideal past and masculine identity because both were located in the same geographic space. This was all supported by the scientific literature. Alpinism and Darwinian evolutionary theory emerged at the same time: the first edited volume on mountain climbing (which was set in the Alps) Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, came out in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s Origin of Species, which hypothesized that creatures were shaped by their natural environment.24 (Even though Darwin famously avoided suggesting that humans were subject to the same 22 Reidy, “Mountaineering, Masculinity, and the Male Body in Mid-Victorian Britain,” 159–160. 23 Ibid., 161. 24 Ibid., 160. 233 evolutionary processes as pigeons and barnacles until 1871 in The Descent of Man, the readership of Origin of Species absolutely read between the lines.) This offered a theoretical framework for scientists of the time to explain how rarefied Alpine male bodies could manifest Urschweiz. The word “yodel” (typically spelled for most of the nineteenth century with the Germanic initial “j”) started to be used much more frequently during this Golden Age of Alpinism, and it appeared especially connected with mountaineering episodes and, consequently, vertical zonation. Corresponding with how the English took the lead on the Golden Age of Alpinism, the word “jodel” as a high-altitude vocalization appears to be printed initially more often by English mountaineers, including several times in the expedition reports from the early editions of Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, to refer to a sort of “holler.” Yodeling might happen when a group of mountaineers were lost in the dark, as in: “Some one raised a despairing jodel on the chance that we were near the châlets,” or when men needed to communicate from different ends of the rope team: “As Almer reached the top, about twelve o’clock, a loud jodel gave notice to all the part that our prospects were good.”25 The word could also––although infrequently––refer to a joyous outpouring of emotion by a mountaineer, sometimes inserted between the strophes of a song.26 While we do not have many records from the perspective of the Swiss 25 Leslie Stephen, “The Jungfrau-Joch and Viescher-Joch,” The Alpine Journal: A Record of Mountain Adventure and Scientific Observation 1 (1864 1863): 109. and Ibid., 103. 26 “...and the joyful prospects of a successful expedition, after passing through scenes of mingled awe and beauty. With nervous energy he grasps his alpenstock still tighter, and thinks, in silent gratitude, of the great Giver of all this good, ere his pent-up feelings burst their bounds, and pour forth in the voice in one wild pæn of jödel and song: ‘Nous seons gais là haut.’” Frederick William Jacomb, “The De La Valpelline, from Prerayen to Zermatt; Including the Col Courgnier or Du Mont Cornière, and Ascents of the Château Des Dames and Tête Blanche Mountains,” ed. Edward Shirley Kennedy, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers; Being Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, Second Series, 1 (1862): 320. 234 guides, this is likely fairly representative of the Swiss understanding as well, given that many of these mountaineers spoke mountain Swiss. We see that the yodel is the sound of mountaineering, a means to communicate in wild, dangerous places. Figure 29 below shows the frontispiece to the 1862 Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, which depicts a mountain summit that very well could have been the site of some yodeling.27 Figure 29. The frontispiece to Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: Being Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, London, London (1862). Some of the most significant literature on yodeling in the last forty years of the century was published in natural science journals that contextualized the development of human life and culture as a reflection of nature. Alongside glaciers, fossils, and Alpine 27 Edward Shirley Kennedy, ed., Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: Being Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club, London, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862). 235 flora, mountaineers and scientists collected the yodel; they studied it and printed its variations in the same volumes where they shared botanical schemata and geomorphic sketches. As tourism infrastructure made the mountains increasingly accessible and popular, SAC members set out to keep the Alps exclusive by preserving the high wilderness and the traditional Alpine lifestyle. One index for this preservation was the yodel. These men wrote about the yodel as if it were latent in the Älpler body, and which would sound when the nation was as it was meant to be, much as certain flowers only bloom when an ecosystem is in balance. The Swiss Alpine Club A closer look at the activities of the aforementioned Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) shows how their combined scientific and cultural studies of the Alps, including folk music and the yodel, was a key part of their attempt to safeguard Swissness. Not all of the publications with their ideological genesis in the SAC milieu were published in the Jahrbuch, but the authors I consider here were largely Club members or affiliates, and their projects were part of the larger Club scope. One SAC member, Eduard Osenbrüggen, recounted a speech given by the SAC president Friedrich von Tschudi at a meeting in September 1866. Tschudi explained that they had not launched the club for the sake of rivalry in the art of climbing, as had been the main motivation for the London Alpine Club. Instead, patriotism compelled the Swiss club to gather. “The Swiss club has one thing ahead of the English,” Osenbrüggen explained, “a love of home.”28 Club ventures into the mountains were compelled by this 28“But the Swiss Club has one thing ahead of the English: it is the child of the Swiss love of home.” “...aber Eins habe der Schweizerische Club voraus vor dem englischen: er sei ein Kind der schweizerischen 236 love. Osenbrüggen quoted Tschudi’s proclamation, which addressed the landscape as an ode, as Germans sometimes did for the Rhine: How insurmountable, how loyal and courageous is our longing to own you completely and to understand you completely! Every foray into your labyrinths is a new triumph of our admiration and our pride in your unspeakable beauty.29 The German branch of the SAC’s goal in collecting authentic folksongs appears to have been at least twofold. On an idealistic level, it was out of that deep love of their country which they thought helped rival the London Alpine Club, as Tschudi expressed in his patriotic speech. This is reflected by the expressed desire to know everything about Switzerland and the Alps, in which music was only part of a larger anti-industrial data- collection project. Osenbrüggen goes on at great length about the various tasks of the Club, which include correcting place names, making maps more precise, changing mountain names to their native ones, and assembling local myths and songs.30 The task was essentially to assemble a fundamentally folk-based cartographic understanding of the Alps. One of the more urgent reasons Szadrowsky and Osenbrüggen gave in the early days of the Club for collecting folksongs was so that they could separate the authentic music from the imported material, much as they wanted to use the native names for the Heimatheliebe.” Eduard Osenbrüggen, Wanderstudien aus der Schweiz, vol. 2 (Schaffhausen: C. Baader, 1867), 255. 29 “O du wunderbares Land! Wie innig fesslst du mit deinem Zauber das Gemüth deiner Kinder! Wie unüberwindbar, wie treu und muthig ist unsere Sehnsucht, dich ganz zu besitzen und ganz zu verstehen! Jeder Streifzug in deine Labyrinthe ist ein neuer Triumph unserer Bewunderung und unseres Stolzes auf deine unaussprechliche Schönheit.” Ibid. 30 Ibid., 2:255–258. 237 mountains.31 The goal was to restore the indigenous material by removing the clutter of the modern age.32 Osenbrüggen also indicated that there was a second, and more practical reason for the SAC, particularly in its early days, to include music and folklore in their cartographic project. In order to grow their membership, the SAC advertised themselves to general Alpine enthusiasts, even if they were not trained in the sciences.33 The SAC saw this folksong collection as a topographic study because variations in song were considered a product of the topography.34 Two members from northeast Switzerland, the aforementioned Heinrich Szadrowsky (the individual who would publish a rejoinder to Hanslick about the yodel) and Alfred Tobler, spearheaded the musical project. It should be noted here that there were different regional divisions of the SAC and the French-language SAC showed much less anxiety around authentic folksong. Alpine music was certainly employed for patriotic purposes all across Switzerland; for example, the Genevois section of the SAC frequently set new text to a ranz des vaches melody (presumably “Les Armaillis”) to write patriotic songs about the high mountains.35 There is one delightful instance of a mountaineer carrying a clarinet to the top of the Matterhorn, which he used to play, “not without difficulty,” the ranz des vaches and other 31 Ibid. 32 A typical example from outside of the SAC is in Jost Winteler, Über Volkslied und Mundart. Ein Wort an die aargauische Lehrerschaft anlässlich der Kantonalkonferenz am 12. September 1895. (Brugg: Effingerhof, 1895), 1–2. In this instance, a man who grew up in Eastern Switzerland described how yodeling was dying out and needed to be preserved so that it can preserve the traditional love of the fatherland. 33 Osenbrüggen, Wanderstudien aus der Schweiz, 2:256. 34 Ibid., 2:262. 35 They often referred to it as “the ranz des vaches,” as if there was only one. 238 tunes.36 There may have been less anxiety in the French areas too because they were less concerned about foreign incursions. There was also less yodeling in these areas; yodeling was concentrated in German-speaking regions, and the French-speaking population seem to have taken little interest in it. Szadrowsky was a piano teacher and organist who worked as the St. Gall music director. He crossed paths with prominent composers, such as Mendelssohn, and at one point recruited both Wagner and Liszt to conduct at one of his subscription concerts.37 (This makes his response to Hanlisck even more germane). Szadrowsky’s work typified the late nineteenth-century intellectual crossover between music and the natural sciences. As a respected natural scientist with an ongoing interest in culture and sound practices, he routinely gave lectures such as “The psychological effects of music on human and animals” and “Observations and investigations regarding natural tones in the Alpine world.”38 He published two main texts on Alpine music in the SAC Jahrbuch. The first came out in the first publication by the SAC: “National Song of Alpine People,” and it 36 “It had been almost an hour since we were on the top of the Matterhorn when, having warmed his fingers somewhat, Hiler drew from his haven-bag a clarinet which he had absolutely wanted to bring, and drew from it, not without difficulty, the first notes from the “Rufst du mein Vaterland,” from the Ranz des vaches and from the Hymn to Garibaldi. An extraordianrily curious note is that the sound of the clarinet seemed veiled, and it was not like the instrument I had heard down in Zermatt.” “Il y avait près d’une heure que nous étions sur le sommet du Cervin lorsque s’étant quelque peu réchauffé les doigts, Hiler tira de son havre-sac une clarinette qu’il avait absolument voulu apporter, et en tira, non sans peine, les premières Notes du “Rufst du mein Vaterland,” du Ranz des vaches et de l’Hymne à Garibaldi. Un fait excessivement curieux à noter, c’est que les sons de la clarinette paraissaient voilés et ne semblaient plus sortir du même instrument que j’avais entendu à Zermatt.” This group was the eighth ascent of the Matterhorn, on August 4, 1868. F. Thioly, “Ascensin Du Mont-Cervin,” Jahrbuch Des Schweizer Alpen-Club 6, no. 1869–1870 (n.d.): 189. 37 [s.n.], “Heinrich Szadrowsky,” Jahresbericht der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Graubünden 22 (1878 1877): xxii. Chris Walton, Richard Wagner’s Zürich: The Muse of Place (Rochester, New York: Camdon House, 2005), 74. 38 “Die psychologischen Wirkungen der Musik auf Menschen und Thiere, im gesunden und kranken Zustande, and “Beobachtungen und Untersuchung über Naturtöne in der Alpenwelt.”[s.n.], “Heinrich Szadrowsky,” xxiv. 239 was mostly a call to action to study, collect, and preserve mountain music. Szadrowsky published a partial response to his own call to action a few years later, “The music and sounding instruments of the Alpine people.”39 Even though this second essay was much longer and more involved, Szadrowsky continued to lament the incompleteness of his work and urged the SAC readership once again to obtain and preserve a complete collection of songs as sung by the mountain people.40 The next substantial contribution to Szadrowsky’s project did not come until 1890. For Szadrowsky these other later members of the SAC, to go higher into the mountains was to go backwards in time, hoping to witness traces of Urschweiz prior to foreign influence. Szadrowsky wanted to study the Alpine music for the purposes of listening into the deep past. Specifically, he sought to shed any trace of tourists’ ears and listening instead as a “cultural historian.”41 Careful listening could “[show] the state of mind [Gemüthszustand] and the mental development of a people.”42 Szadrowsky wrote that this is specifically to be derived from German-speaking Switzerland, first because it was in the majority, and secondly because it was less polluted with foreign influences; 39 “Die Musik und die tonerzeugenden Instrumente der Alpenbewohner.” 40 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 279–280. This is echoed also in Osenbrüggen, Wanderstudien aus der Schweiz, 2:265. 41 “However, when I began my investigations, I abandoned the standpoint of the touirist who collects and enjoys, and situated myself as a cultural historian...” “Als ich aber mit den Untersuchungen begann, den Standpunkt des geniessenden und sammelnden Touristen verliess und mich auf jenen des Kulturhistorikers stellte...”Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 276. 42 “It is important to understand how a people sing; for here we can see the state of mind and mental development of a people.” “Es ist wichtig, zu wissen, wie ein Volk singt; denn hierin zeigt sich der Gemütszustand und die seelische Entwicklung eines Volkes.” Heinrich Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club 1 (1864): 508–509. 240 Italian-speaking mountain people sang Italianate melodies, and the Swiss-French music sounded like the French chanson.43 By contrast, Szadrowsky believed the music of the Swiss-German Alpine folk expressed a deeply hidden part of the national spirit, that a skilled listener could follow to a place where “where the people no longer rationalize, only feel,” a pre-rational state that connoted Urschweiz.44 In the interim, the most substantial musical discussions among the SAC come from members like Eduard Osenbrüggen, who consider Alpine music frequently in their writing, although mostly in a larger context of nationalist and folkloric topics. In 1879, the SAC Jahrbuch did print a list of questions about the yodel submitted by the Berliner George Simmel.45 Simmel’s questions show us what topics a German man was focused on, his letter did not contribute meaningfully to the literature of the time. Most of his questions were of an anthropological bent, such as: how young do people start to yodel? Do women yodel? Other questions belied a more psychological interest: is a yodel when a man is overcome by a need to scream? Is it a wild mating call? One Swiss SAC member, Alfred Tobler, dismissed Simmel’s questions as “extremely strange.”46 The next substantial contribution to Szadrowsky’s proposed project was SAC member Alfred Tobler’s “The Kühreihen, Jodel and Jodellied in Appenzell” in 1890.47 43 Ibid., 506. 44 “... wo das Volk nicht mehr raisonnirt [sic], nur fühlt.” Ibid., 508. 45 Georg Simmel, “An Den S. A. C.: Fragen Über Das Jodeln,” Jahrbuch Des Schweizer Alpen-Club 14 (79 1878): 552–54. 46 “Höchst wunderlichen.” Alfred Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart. (Leipzig und Zürich: Gebrüder Hug, 1890), 452. 47 Ibid., Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart. 241 Like Szadrowsky, Tobler was a learned musician who also worked as a folklorist: nicknamed the “Appenzell Singer Father” (Appenzeller Sängervater), he was a singer and academic who traveled around Europe, worked at the Universities of Basel and Zürich, and settled in Appenzell later in life, dedicating himself to folk studies, including music, history, and dance. Whereas Szadrowsky was remembered more for his contributions to the natural sciences, Tobler seems to have been appreciated for the equal dedication he gave to both folk and art music.48 Compared to Szadrowsky and Osenbrüggen, Tobler took a more tolerant approach to art music blending with the authentic Alpine, perhaps because he had been sponsored by Ferdinand Huber, and was, like his father had been before him, a respected composer of Volk’sche music for men’s choir. Szadrowsky, Osenbrüggen, and Tobler all agreed on the imperative to study Alpine music, and particularly the yodel, as a way to know and preserve the heart of the Swiss people. This was a departure from the once-glorified Kühreihen, which many authors considered too accessible and cosmopolitan to be authentically Swiss, and thus incapable of truly expressing the fantastic wilderness of the high peaks or the essence of Swissness. The Taming of the Kühreihen Before we can explore how the SAC understood the yodel, it is necessary to understand how its foil, Kühreihen, became domesticated. The domestication of the Kühreihen took 48 The respect that various people had for Szdrowsky can be seen particularly clearly in his obituary. [s.n.], “Heinrich Szadrowsky.” People who write fondly of Tobler include, Oscar Alder, “Dr. Alfred Tobler: der appenzellische Sängervater und Kulturhistoriker: ein Lebensbild,” Appenzellische Jahrbücher 52 (1925): 21, https://doi.org/10.5169/seals-270178. 242 place between 1805 and 1850, when music publishers marketed and modified it for tourists in a way that made it suitable for indoor settings and amateur performers. Other scholars have used the term “domesticate” to describe the phenomenon where a certain type of music is removed from its original setting and re-contextualized into a more accessible form for consumers. James Parakilas has written about how a musical work becomes domesticated when editors remove it from its original context; specifically, domestication occurs specifically when producers select and edit a larger and more complicated work for use in amateur domestic performances.49 Thomas Christensen has considered more specific examples of this process in the domestication symphonies as four-hand arrangements and opera music into at-home piano-vocal arrangements.50 For example, in the opera instance, operatic pieces are removed from their original visual contexts (the spectacle of the theater) and recontextualized in a new one (the home). Christensen writes that this process “shifts the aesthetic focus away from the visual to the aural, and implicitly alters the identity of the art work itself.”51 I believe that the Kühreihen-yodel was just as tethered to a specific space and visual spectacle as opera was (as discussed in Chapter IV), and that the “domestication of the Kühreihen” likewise altered the identity of the artwork. Parakilas’s central argument is that this process of domestication is a requirement for popular consumption. It follows then that if something 49 James Parakilas, “The Power of Domestication in the Lives of Musical Canons,” Repercussions 4, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 7. 50 Thomas Christensen, “Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52, no. 2 (1999): 255–98. Christensen Thomas, “Public Music in Private Spaces: Piano-Vocal Scores and the Domestication of Opera,” in Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. Kate van Orden (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 67–93. 51 Thomas, “Public Music in Private Spaces: Piano-Vocal Scores and the Domestication of Opera,” 68–69. Christensen, “Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception.” 243 is not domesticated (the yodel), it must belong to an exclusive group. This group (the SAC) countered the domestication of the Kühreihen by using it as a foil to the “originary” version of the vocalization. While I use the term “domesticate” to refer to the same phenomenon of contextual remove and simplification as Parakilas and Christensen, I also intend to employ it with inflections of the domestication of animals. A domesticated animal (in this case, the Kühreihen) is encouraged to behave according to certain human parameters and necessarily becomes obsequious to human procedures. The yodel, on the other hand, is the wild analogue: it lives in the mountains and makes its own demands. The domestication of the Kühreihen can be seen in the various changes made to later editions of the 1805 Unspunnenfest’s Acht Schweizer Kühreihen, last encountered in Chapter III.52 Particularly after the 1812 edition, edited by Johann Rudolf Wyss, these collections of Kühreihen and other cow-songs were revised and produced with both the tourists and the tourism season in mind. These editions were often referred to as the Kuhn-Wyss collections, referencing the compilers, editors, and composers Gottlieb Jacob Kuhn, Wyss, as well as, occasionally, Ferdinand Huber, another composer of Swiss Volk- ish songs. Many of these composers also wrote folk-themed ensemble pieces, with titles like “Homesickness” (Heimweh) and “Mountain Goat Hunter” (Gemsjäger) which were occasionally included alongside the Kühreihen. 52 These include: von Wagner, Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik und Text. Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern. Johann Rudolf Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern (Bern: J.J. Burgdorfer, 1826). Knop, Les délices de la Suisse ou Choix de ranz des vaches (Kühreihen) et autres chants, chantés par Mme Stockhausen, arrangé pour Piano seul, sans paroles par Fréd.Hegar. 244 The publishers adapted the Kühreihen to piano accompaniment, a substantial modification that betrayed the correlation between indoor settings, instrumentation, and tourism. The Bernese bookseller Johann Jakob Burgdorfer wrote two letters at the end of 1816 to a collaborator on the third edition requesting the addition of an accompanimental part (to the originally monophonic songs) in order to make the collections more appealing to tourists.53 He explained to his collaborator that musical connoisseurs had often told him that the Kühreihen characteristically broke (common practice) harmonic rules, and so, unfortunately, the tunes generally could not be outfitted with keyboard accompaniment. Thus acknowledging the difficulty of this task, Burgdorfer requested his musical collaborator, Herr Snyder, use his discretion and modify the Kühreihen so that they could be played with a keyboardist, but without doing too much unnecessary damage to the national character of the song.54 In a second letter from that December, we learn that a large part of the reason for retrofitting the original eight Kühreihen and Küherlieder with accompaniment is in particular response to the English tourists, who had a great fondness for the Kühreihen but because of language barriers could not sing them at home.55 Burgdorfer closed his letter by asking Snyder to try and have the work completed “as early as possible this next spring,” corresponding with the beginning of the next tourist season.56 53 These are described in Marin Staehelin, “Herkunftsangaben zu Stücken der ‘Sammlung von Schweizer- Kühreihen und Volksliedern’ vom Jahre 1812,” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 71 (1975): 1–7. 54 Ibid., 2–3. 55 Ibid., 4. 56 The third edition did not end up coming out until 1818, two years after Burgdorfer requested the keyboard arrangements. Kuhn and Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern. Theils 245 The keyboard arrangements proved to be so successful that by the third edition, published in 1818, all of the originally monophonic songs were outfitted with accompaniment, regardless of the desire for authentic representation.57 By the massively expanded fourth edition in 1826, all seventy-six pieces have accompaniment (which now included an accordion part along with the keyboard portion).58 This means that some characteristic tunings were adjusted to fit with the tuning of keyboards (and accordions) as acknowledged in Burgdorfer’s missives. The most significant pitch alteration was probably fa; the earlier fa was could be tuned to the so-called “alphorn-fa,” or a pitch partway between ♮4$ and ♯4" . In the 1805 Kühreihen collections, some songs contain both sharped and natural fas, and these accidentals are retained in later versions of the songs; it is unclear whether the notated sharp or natural fas were adjusted from their originally neutral tuning. In the 1818 edition, the editors noted that the shepherds might prefer to use a sharper fa than a strictly neutral fa.59 Hugo Zemp has also suggested that mi could have been naturally tuned, rather than at the conventional major or minor.60 Thus, if the reader were to sing the opening phrase to the Oberhasler Küheihen, the first song in the 1805 collection (Figure 30 below), with neutral mis and slightly sharp fas, they would nach ihren Bekannten, theils nach neuen Melodien in notenschrift gebracht und mit Clavier-Begleitung versehen. 57 Nonetheless, this edition still includes Ebel’s description of the Kühreihen that explains how the song cannot be imitated without the flip between head and chest voice, or on a keyboard. See –ibid., (1818), vii– viii. 58 Johann Rudolf Wyss, Text Zu Der Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen Und Volksliedern. Vierte, Viel Vermehrte Und Verbesserte Ausgabe. (Bern: Joh. Jaf. Burgdorfer, 1826), 7–8. 59 Kuhn and Wyss, eds., Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern, (1818), xix. 60 Zemp, Study Guide: A Swiss Yodelling Series: “Jüüzli” of the Muotatal and Swiss Yodelling 30 Years Later, 13. 246 encounter a very different sound world than with “standard” tuning: “Hey cows! ho bravo! here under, high up...” Figure 30: The opening bars to the Oberhasler Kühreihen, from Sigismund von Wagner’s Acht Schweizer-Kühreihen, mit Musik and Text, Bern (1805), page 1. Later songbooks retained certain traditional elements of the yodel, such as the rapidly repeated notes, which were often used in refrains in between strophes of a pre- existing folksong. This created an intermediary genre between the Kühreihen fad and the later “holler” yodel, called the “Jodellied,” or “yodel song.” The Jodellied is a genre where we can speculate some of the changes to the “national character” of the songs that Burgdorfer mentioned, particularly because these songs were most often marketed under the title “Kühreihen.” For instance, the above Oberhasler Kühreihen was expanded by the 1826 with a new twelve-bar coda, with the text “hoppeli ho la hu a do, jo bili alli olli ho ja do,” etc. Figure 31 below shows the transition from the song text to the yodel syllables: 247 Figure 31: The closing bars to the Oberhasler Kühreihen, from Johann Rudolf Wyss’s Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern, Bern (1826), page 2. The yodel was likely inserted between strophes of the Kühreihen to give the song a more rustic, folky effect, which made it more appealing as a tourist souvenir. In even later iterations, the closing text “hulli dulli hulli dulli huu” is changed to a much more civilized “tra la la la la la, tra la la,” etc.61 In addition to shifting mi and fa to more conventional tunings, there are several ways that the yodel must have been changed to fit in the breaks of the Jodellied. First, the inserted yodel syllables became metered, as seen above, and which would be naturally contrary to statements by Ebel, Wyss, and Tobler about the rhythmic freedom and spontaneous inventiveness of the song.62 Certainly, barlines cannot force a singer to 61 This can be seen in a Liedkarten of the Oberhasli Kühreihen (see Appendix C). Liedkarten were printed with songs from the Kuhn-Wyss songbooks, as further evidence of their de-contextualization (see Appendix C.) 62 Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 153; Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen 248 perform in time, but the coordination of quick rhythms with the accompaniment likely compelled a certain degree of pulse. Second, the flipping between head and chest voice was probably greatly reduced.63 A century prior, Ebel had written that the Kühreihen featured these flips; Tobler agreed that the Kühreihen had them, but the yodel was completely saturated with them, and that they typically took place in male voices, which typically featured a more dramatic difference between the vocal registers. The “French and English tourists” who took the collections home “as a welcome souvenir,” as Wyss described them, were very likely unable to imitate the indigenous Ueberschlagen der Stimme, and their main tool–– the keyboard, as discussed above––would not have been able to replicate the contrast between registers like a human voice, and so the Kühreihen likely lost some of its more distinctive sounds as it was commodified.64 Third and lastly, there is also evidence that the Kühreihen/yodel was originally meant to be heard outside––it was much too loud for indoor performance. In 1812, Wyss wrote that “the Kühreihen, like the singing of our peasants generally, should be heard from a distance, which takes away all of the harshness of the voice raised by the strength (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 14–15; Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, 3. 63 “In terms of singing, the main difference between yodeling and the Kühreihen is in the transition from the chest voice to the head voice in male voices.” “In gesanglicher Beziehung hat der Jodel im wesentlichen Unterschied zum Kühreihen den Schwerpunkt für Männerstimmen im Ueberschlagen der Bruststimme in die Kopfstimme.” Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 41. 64 “...daß den zahlreichen Fremden, besonders Engländern und Franzosen, welche die Sammlung als ein willkommenens Andenken aus der Schweiz nach hause nahmen...” Johann Rudolf Wyss, Text zu der Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Volksliedern. Vierte, viel vermehrte und verbesserte Ausgabe. (Bern: Joh. Jaf. Burgdorfer, 1826), 6, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-24762. 249 of a healthy lung.”65 Many comments by early English tourists discussed in Chapter IV also suggest that this was the case. The songs certainly could have been taken outdoors, particularly with the accordion accompaniment in the 1826 edition, but the keyboard was such a solidly domestic instrument, and since the end of the preceding century, authors had repeatedly commented that one must be out among the mountains to truly feel the song. In other words, the Kühreihen was domesticated for the purposes of export. Domestication and commodification were understood as anathema to yodeling by the 1860’s. Tobler and Szadrowsky agreed that the practice of notating the song was futile, if not outright absurd. For Szadrowsky, notation obliterated all of the distinctive nuance of the yodel. 66 This recalls what Wyss had written in 1812, that the yodel cannot be notated––it could only be felt.67 For both Szadrowsky and Wyss, the notated songs were intended to encourage Swiss people to seek out more knowledge about the yodel, encouraging them to re-enter a living tradition (much in the way a botanical sketch is not actually the flower it depicts). Notating and harmonizing the yodel, as in the Jodellieder, made it accessible to anyone who could read music, including foreigners, and people who had never set foot on the high mountains––in other words, people who had not made the 65 “ Der Kühreihen, so wie überhaupt der Gesang unserer Bauern, will durchaus aus einer gewissen Entfernung gehört senn, die alles Rauhe der mit der ganzen Kraft einer gesunden Lunge erhabenen Stimme wegnimmt. ”Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, ii–iii. 66 “Our notation is too poor, its current elements are not adequately sufficient to express all the rhythmic changes, the rich, substantial variety of the performance exactly as the singer gives them. A claim to fidelity in execution can only be made through living transmission, through tradition.” “Unsere Notenschrift ist zu arm, ihre gegenwärtigen Zeichen sind nicht vollständig ausreichend , um alle rhythmischen Aenderungen , die reiche , grosse Mannigfaltigkeit des Vortrages genau so zu fixiren, wie sie der Sänger gibt. Ein Anspruch auf eine Treue in der Ausführung kann nur durch die le bendige Uebertragung, auf dem Wege der Tradition, hergestellt werden.”Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 517. 67 Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, iii. 250 effort to show they deserved access to this knowledge or felt the spirit of the place that the songs came from. At this point, the Kühreihen and Jodellied were undeniably associated with tourists and domestic settings, and skepticism about the Kühreihen’s provenance immediately followed. Szadrowsky was the first to express serious incredulity about the veracity of the Kühreihen’s supposed Alpine origins. He speculated that the Appenzeller Kühreihen was the only candidate for an authentic Kühreihen because it was featured in the oldest manuscript evidence for the genre.68 However, despite his best efforts wandering with open ears in the hills of Appenzell, he never encountered any Kühreihen in its supposed natural environment.69 He had been bothering other club members, asking them what songs they heard in the mountains, and it seems that nobody had ever heard an actual Kühreihen in the wild.70 (This is with the exception of “Les Armaillis,” which Szadrowsky gave as a Kühreihen that is actually sung, but as shown above, his primary concern is with German-speaking areas.71) Szadrowsky was willing to accept the old rumor about the French army banning the Kühreihen, but as a sort of embellished metaphor for how the Swiss folk song had been repressed by the upper classes. Nonetheless, in lieu of finding any traces of a living practice of Kühreihen in the Alps, 68 As mentioned briefly elsewhere in this dissertation, this earliest manuscript evidence was Rhau, “Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica, Tomus 2. Secundus tomus biciniorum quae et ipsa sunt gallica, latina, germanica: ex praestantissimis symphonistis collecta, et in germania typis nunquam excusa: additae sunt quaedam, ut vocant, fugae, plenae artis et suavitatis.” 69 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 335. 70 Ibid., 339. 71 Ibid., 331. 251 Szadrowsky speculated that the song genre was imported, rather than truly Alpine.72 However, besides the material discussed earlier, I have not found any clear evidence to support Szadrowsky’s import speculation. Thus concluding that the Kühreihen has “no origins in the mountains” (original emphasis), Szadrowsky declared that the next important musical task was to identify what was truly “aus den Bergen.” 73 Lamenting that “there is just no lack of work,” Szadrowsky explained that the collection by Kuhn, Wyss, and Huber must be swept away urgently, and replaced with genuine Swiss national songs.74 Recalling themes from the stated raison d’être of the SAC, he wrote that any friend of the Alpine world would find their time in the mountains enriched by knowledge of these songs. To underscore his point, Szadrowsky quoted the SAC president von Tschudi, writing: “It is undisputed that the value and enjoyment of high-mountain travels for each individual grows to the same extent that his observations gain in versatility, sharpness, and practicality.”75 At the end of the century, Tobler largely concurred with Szadrowsky’s assertion that the Kuhn-Wyss Kühreihen collections represented a largely fabricated song and 72 Ibid., 335. 73 Ibid., 279–280. “habe keine Abstammung aus den Bergen.” 74 “It would be the urgent task to thoroughly remove such scriptura mala by publishing genuine Swiss- national mountain pieces, and to do so with the sharp insight used by Prof. Dr. Anton Henne in the text collection that he has started at St. Gallen. There's just no lack of work.” “Es wäre die dringende Aufgabe, durch eine Herausgabe von ächten schweizerisch-nationalen Bergliedern dergleichen scriptura mala gründlich hinweg zufügen, und zwar mit jener scharfen Kritik, wie der treffliche Prof. Dr. Anton Henne in St. Gallen eine Textsammlung begonnen hat. An Arbeit fehlt just nicht.” Ibid., 330–331. 75 “Unstreitig wächst der Werth und Genuss der Hochgebirgstouren für jeden Einzelnen in demselben Mass, in welchem seine Beobachtungen an Vielseitigkeit, an Schärfe und an praktischem Gehalte gewinnen.” Szadrowsky, “Die Musik Und Die Tonerzeugung Instrumente Der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine Kulturhistorische Skizze,” 330–331. 252 likely imported phenomenon.76 After a thorough review of the Kühreihen literature, including Ebel, Tarenne, Wyss, and Szadrowsky, Tobler was willing to accept the Kühreihen as a Swiss song only when it was reclaimed a heritage practice, and he expressed optimism that the genuine folk Kühreihen could be revived.77 The Kühreihen Tobler described essentially countered all of the modifications made in the Kuhn-Wyss collections, and reclaimed its idiosyncrasies. Tobler’s authentic Kühreihen is characterized by the yodel-like leap from head to chest tones, which can only be sung by those who are practiced in it, and which cannot be imitated on piano.78 Like Szadrowsky, Tobler also had a vested interest in finding the original Appenzeller Kühreihen; he believed that Wyss misidentified the original Appenzeller Kühreihen because it was printed in the minor key, which for Tobler did not reflect the naturally happy mood of the Appenzeller people, nor sound appropriate echoing off the mountains.79 76 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 36. 77 “It is easy to see that a Kühreihen should thus only be sung by those voices that have practiced in it [the Ueberschlagen der Stimme], and that it is difficult to express this with a keyboard or any other instrument.” “Man sieht leicht, dass daher geübt sind, gesungen werden soll, dass es aber schwer ist, durch ein Clavier oder irgend ein anderes Instrument dieses auszudrücken.” Ibid., 65. 78 Ibid., 16–17. 79“Whoever plays both versions of the Kühreihen one after the other will not heistate for a moment to discern which of them is more natural, more powerful, and more appropriate to the nature of Alpine music. While the one in mior sounds melancholy and plaintive, the one in major, with its pastoral character and melodic motion around the natural tones, conjures up a wonderful effect on the intellectual/spiritual [giestigen] ear, which, for instance, can evoke alphorn sounds as they echo repeatedly on the rock walls.” “Wer sich aber beide Versionen des Kühreihens nach einander vorspielt, der wird keinen Augenblick schwanken, welche davon die natürlichere, wirksamere, dem Wesen der Alpenmusik entsprechendere ist. Während die jenige in Moll schwermüthig und klagend klingt, zaubert diejenige in Dur mit ihrem pastoralen Charakter und ihren melodischen Fortschritten im Kreis der Naturtöne dem geistigen Ohr die wunderbare Wirkung vor, welche z. B. Alphornklänge mit ihrem mannigfachen Echo an den Fels wänden hervorzurufen vermögen.” Ibid., 72. 253 While Tobler and Szadrowsky differed slightly in their presentations of the Kühreihen and the yodel, both distinguished between them on the basis of their relative levels of domesticability. The Kühreihen was performed on instruments, sung by non- Swiss voices, and presumably moved indoors. The yodel was part of daily life outside, unnotatable, and unlearnable. Instead, the yodel was felt, as Tobler wrote: “this mountain song is our inheritance.”80 The Timeless Yodel When SAC members invoked elevation to distinguish between the authentic folk music (the yodel) and the artificial folk music (the Kuhn-Wyss Kühreihens) they often referenced the epistemology of zonation: how elevational differences articulated the boundary between the natural and ageless on the one hand, and the artificial and temporary, on the other. They verified the authenticity and wildness of the yodel by explicating how (1) it was still practiced among Älpler but inaccessible to others, (2) it was learned from the mountains themselves, which meant that (3) it was a remnant of Urschweiz. The general sentiment was that lowland artifice threatened this pristine musical ecosystem like an invasive species. This threat was as psychic as it was musical; the vapid lowland styles were taught and learned, and that could cloud the intuitive connection between an Älpler and his mountains. Szadrowsky in particular tried to make 80 “Folk and art singing can be learned as a common good, but not the natural tone and manner of our alpine singing. This mountain song is our inheritance. Taking care of this song would not, however, have any adverse effect on the musically higher standing in the usual folk and art singing in the Appenzell region. “Do one thing and don't discard the other.” “Volks- und Kunstgesang sind lernbares Allgemeingut, nicht aber der naturwahre Ton und die Weise unseres Alpengesanges. Dieser Berggesang ist unser Erbtheil. Unter der Pflege dieses Gesanges aber hätte das musikalisch höher Stehende im üblichen Volks- und Kunstgesang bei den Appenzellern keineswegs zu leiden. “Das Eine thun, und das Andere nicht lassen.” Ibid., 65. 254 the characteristic wildness of the yodel more musicologically compelling, showing how both Szadrowsky and Tobler were attempting to situate Swiss music in the emergent musicological dialogue of the time, which was itself embedded in late nineteenth-century nationalism. Szadrowsky and Tobler indicated that unlike the Kühreihen, which could not be found in the Alps, the mountainous yodel was alive and well at the end of the century. SAC writers often referred to the yodeler as “the most peculiar child of the mountains,” as if he were a wild species endemic to the Alps and which could not survive elsewhere.81 Szadrowsky described the yodeler as “the immediate child of the mountains. / His original and true home is here. Beyond this, he appears only as a stunted copy; in the plain, he loses himself completely.”82 Osenbrüggen wrote that despite “all the changes that are taking place in the Swiss singing, the mountainous, strong yodeler persists in the Alpine regions, calling the echo from the rock walls like the alphorn. He could not come into being at the seaside any more than in the plains; he is the ‘peculiar child of the 81 “We have called the yodeler the most peculiar child of the mountains, which he is.” “Wir haben den Jodler das eigenthümlichste Kind der Berge genannt, was er in der That auch ist.” Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 516–17. 82 “... so ist dagegen der Jodler das unmittelbare Kind der Berge. / Seine ursprüngliche und ächte Heimath ist hier. Ueber diese hinaus erscheint er nur als ein verkümmerter Abklatsch; in der Ebene verliert er sich gänzlich.” Ibid. 255 mountains.’”83 In another publication, Osenbrüggen explained that Älpler yodel even when they’re trying to sing and even if they cannot sing.84 Szadrowsky outlined that there were three main types of yodeling.85 The first and most prominent was the north-eastern, Appenzellische style, which was lively and polyphonic (usually one voice will be the yodel, and the other voices will hold a drone that highlights the skill of the soloist). The second style was found in the Bernese Oberland, which was less exuberant than the Appenzell style, but with a greater geographic range. The third style occurred in Vaud, and showed influence from its proximity to France––Szadrowsky wrote that the yodel in Vaud “loses its beauty through a nasal performance style that is unique to French singing.”86 There were regional variants to the nomenclature as well as the styles; yodeling can be referred to as “Juchzer,” “Juiz,” “Juhezer,” and “Jüüzli.” In Appenzell, the region with the most intense yodeling practice, these are all described under the umbrella term, “Zauren.” According to Tobler, the yodel was an even less commodifiable practice than the Kühreihen, and was in fact characterized in part by the difficulty of notating it. The Kühreihen’s idiosyncratic Ueberschlagen der Stimme is significantly increased, as is the 83 “Bei allen Veränderungen aber, die im Sängerleben der Schweizer sich vollziehen, bleibt in den Alpgegenden der bergursprüngliche kräftige Jodler, der das Echo von den Felswänden ruft wie das Alphorn. Er konnte so wenig am Meere als im Flachlande entstehen, er ist das, eigenthümliche Kind der Berge.” Eduard Osenbrüggen, Caspar Huber, and Jakob Lorenz Rüdisühli, Das Hochgebirge der Schweiz : Prachtwerk mit 52 der interessantesten Anischten aus dem Alpen-, Gletscher- und Felsengebiete: nach Photographien und getreu nach der Natur (Basel: C. Krüsi, 1868), 208–209. 84 Osenbrüggen, Wanderstudien aus der Schweiz, 2:262. 85 Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 512. 86 “...verliert aber gesungen von seiner Schönheit durch eine dem französischen Gesang überhaupt eigene näselnde Vortragsmanier.” Ibid., 513. 256 curious woodwind-like tone color.87 For Tobler, the yodel was also distinguished by its textlessness (which sometimes take the form of nonsense syllables) and the high register. See Figure 32 below, one of Tobler’s basic forms of the Appenzell yodel:88 Figure 32: A typical example of a yodel from Alfred Tobler’s Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell, Leipzig and Zürich (1890), page 44. Tobler attested to the vibrancy of the living yodel practice when he outlined several varieties of yodel, and related vocalizations. For instance, a “Schnetzler” is a type of yodel “in which large intervals are sung as quickly as possible.”89 The textless yodel was 87 Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 152. Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 41. 88 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 44. 89 “A special kind of yodel, the peculiarity of which is suggested by the name, is the so-called. “Schnetzler”, in which large intervals are sung as quickly as possible in a clarinet-like manner one after the 257 also a technique that, like in the Jodellied, could be interspersed with sections of text. For instance, when a yodel was interspersed with comic or generally lighthearted text by a solo singer, it was called a “Ruggusser.”90 For instance, the text to one of the more common Ruggusser was: Löffel tretta, Step to the heel, Pfanna schlecka, Lick the pans, Näpf usariba, Rub the bowl, Saua triba. 91 Go wild!92 The first and last lines feature wordplay in idiomatic phrases. Szadrowsky explained that the songs of the Swiss mountain people were not easy to listen to because the music was so repetitive (“more reproductive than actually productive”), but the “Swiss vigor and originality” are still evident to those who know how to listen.93 Szadrowsky’s description of the harshness and vigor of yodeling did not other...” “Eine besondere Jodelart, deren Eigenthümlichkeit durch den Namen angedeutet wird, ist der sogen. “ Schnetzler », bei welchem grosse Intervalle möglichst schnell Klarinette artig hintereinander gesungen ...” Ibid., 45. 90 Ibid., 57. 91 This text, along with another Rugguser, is given in full in Titus Tobler, Appenzellischer Sprachschatz (Zürich: Drell, Füßli und Compagnie, 1837), 373. Thanks to Annegret Retusch Dykstra for help with the translation. 92 Thank you to Annagret Dykstra for her help with this very idiomatic translation. 93 “It should not go unmentioned that the Swiss mountain population cannot actually be described as musically inventive. Their making music is more reproductive than productive; it loves to hold onto what is already in use and tirelessly - one might say insatiably - repeat those tones. In this point it differs essentially from the mountain population of Tyrol, whose imagination always creates new variations on the old form and generally loves diversity.” “Es darf nicht unerwähnt bleiben, dass die schweizerische Bergbevölkerung nicht eigentlich als musikalisch erfinderisch zu bezeichnen ist. Ihr Musizieren ist ein mehr reproduktives, als ein eigentlich produktives; sie liebt es, das einmal gebräuchlich gewordene festzuhalten und die Tonweisen unermüdlich – man darf wohl sagen unersättlich – zu wiederholen. In diesem Punkte unterscheidet sie sich wesentlich von der Bergbevölkerung Tirol's, deren Phantasie immer neue Variationen über die alte Form Schafft und überhaupt die Mannigfaltigkeit liebt.”Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die 258 paint the vocalization in a typically flattering light. Szadrowsky was not the first folklorist to lovingly disparage Alpine song; in 1812 Wyss had noted that some people compare the sound Swiss folksong to “the creaking of a barn door.”94 This derision recalled Hanslick’s dismissal of the yodel as an art form explored in the introduction, but for Szadrowsky and other members of the SAC, beauty and artistry was not the point of the yodel; the point was to connect with the past and the mountains through the Alpine Geist. As evidence of its Alpine provenance, the yodel was said to be learned from the mountains themselves. There is evidence of a folk tradition from this time period that expresses that the yodel is born on the Alp and taught by one of the many monsters typical in Alpine folklore, sometimes called “the Winter Herdsman.”95 Baumann cites an interview from 1929 of a man from the Muotatal (a rural valley in Canton Schweiz) who was born around 1860, who tells a folktale called “the Jodelbub” (the little Jodel-boy). According to this story, a handboy was sent up to the Alp at night to retrieve a bowl his employer deliberately left back in the hut. Upon entering the hut he met a monster who offered him three drinks, one black, one red, one white. The monster told the boy that if he drank the black drink, he would be able to whistle; if he chose the red, he would be able to sing; and if he chose the white, he would be able to yodel. There are several tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 281. 94 “... überhaupt mit dem Knarren einer Stalltüren verglichen.”Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, iii. 95 There are other origin stories, according to Baumann, but these are largely unprinted in the scientific journals, and it is unclear when these stories arose. The “Winter Herdsman” would be very unnerving because he embodied the inversion of the yearly cycle for Älpler; herdsmen and cows typically went to the valley in winters; it would be very hard to survive winter on the mountain. 259 variants on the three-choices myth, and in Baumann’s retelling of the stories, he sometimes refers to the Winter Herdsman as a Geist. Tobler and Szadrowsky gave another explanation for how the mountain was the source of the yodel: the vocalization came from sounds echoing off the mountains. As each echo sounds higher, the yodeler was inspired to sing higher, hence the characteristically wide leaps.96 Szadrowsky speculated that the perceived heightened pitch of the echo is the reason for the great range of the yodeler’s voices, thus the first example below turns into the second:97 Figure 33: Heinrich Szadrowsky’s “stereotypical yodeling figure” (Jodler stereotype Figur), in “Nationaler Gesang bei den Albenbewohnern,” in Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club, volume 1 (1864), page 520. Figure 34: Szadrowsky’s example of the rising pitch in the echoes of a yodel, in “Nationaler Gesang bei den Albenbewohnern,” in Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen-Club, volume 1 (1864), page 520. In this way, Szadrowsky posited that the yodel was an autochtonous contrapuntal form made between the man and the echoes of the mountain. 98 Szadrowsky was sure to 96 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 517. 97 Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 520. 98 This contrapuntal construction might also have boosted the idea of the masculine yodel, because counterpoint was considered much more masculine than lyricism, and anything with a particular vocal or 260 note that cowherders prefer to yodel against rock walls even if there is no echo, because of the beauty of the tone that is generated from the rock walls.99 This so called “echo- hypothesis” for the origin of the yodel is perhaps one of the oldest and most well- represented in the literature. The echo hypothesis requires (1) a solo voice and (2) elevation, in other words, an Älpler and the mountains. Among the earliest instances of the echo explanation is an 1851 discussion of the echo as a broad Alpine phenomenon by the German historian and geographer Johann Georg Kohl. Much akin to Hanslick’s description, the yodel is one of the indigenous sounds of the mountains, like the sounds of birds, or the rushing of water, and he contrasts the sound of the solo, echoing yodeler against the almost entirely choral singing of the flatlands.100 Not everybody agreed with the echo theory. Samuel Beetschen wrote in 1880 that anyone who has heard a yodeler could tell that Szadrowsky’s theory was absurd. Instead, he asserted that, while the upper classes started to sing from printed books and get musical training, yodeling was simply the sound of ancient song that had been reduced to the purview of the lower classes who lived in the Alps.101 Part of the reason the Kühreihen clearly do not come from the mountains, in Szadrowsky’s estimations, is that the collections evidence a far too learned style, which lyrical idiom was considered feminine. See Citron, “Gendered Reception of Brahms: Masculinity, Nationalism and Musical Politics,” 149. Biddle and Gibson, Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. 99 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 517. 100 Johann Georg Kohl, Alpenreisen, vol. 3. Naturansichten aus den Alpen (Dresden and Leipzig: Arnold, 1851), 203–204. 101 Samuel Beetschen, Historische Skizze Über Kultur Und Wirkung Des Gesanges (Bern: Frei-Schmid, 1880), 38–39. 261 meant that they had been created by musicians’ hands, rather than shepherds’.102 People in the cities and wide-open plains did not sing folk music because they had been exposed to an art-music education. By contrast, according to Szadrowsky, there are no music teachers to be found among the mountain people, which makes theirs the purest folk music.103 Compared to the education in the valleys, Szadrowsky explained that in the mountains, songs were like a myth (Märchen) “that goes from mouth to mouth,” from father to son.104 Art song was like an invasive species that threatened this Alpine music, although scholars like Szadrowsky and Osenbrüggen disagreed about how well art song could survive at altitude and the extent to which it would manage to replace the native species of song. They did agree that when musics traveled up and down the mountain, they changed according to their elevation. Szadrowsky wrote that Älpler would often adapt the music that came to them from the lowlands, because of their attachment to the old ways, and so the presence of outside music was not itself a threat to the yodel. “It is well known that the mountain dwellers do not love what is novel and strange,” he explained, so they will change an imported song to fit their tastes.”105 He also explained Älpler would adapt the music to reflect their naturally happy mood. Szadrowsky gave an anecdote of a young man who added little “Jodel appendages” to the song “Freut euch des Lebens.” When 102 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 340. 103 Ibid., 279–280. 104 Ibid., 280–281. 105“Die Bergbewohner lieben bekanntlich nicht das Fremde und Fremdartige...” Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 522–23. 262 Szadrowsky asked the young man why he added these “kleinen Jodleranhängseln,” the young man explained that the original song made him sad, which could not help him express his essential state of merriment and love of the mountains. As a healthy young Älpler, it went against his nature to indulge in sadness.106 This concern with happiness also recalls Tobler’s skepticism about Wyss’s version of the Appenzell Kühreihen in the minor mode. If we were to imagine a dialogue between Hofer (Chapter II) and Tobler, they would agree that it was difficult, if not impossible, for a young Swiss man to be truly happy away from the mountains; men forced abroad would give into sadness, but their essential states were supposed to be one of merriment. Other authors warned against this sort of encroachment of the lowlander tunes and styles into the high mountains because it represented an existential threat to the Alpine lifestyle. Osenbrüggen in particular attributed the decline of the yodel to Älpler who visited lower elevations and learned the fashionable Mannerchör pieces, which they began to prefer to the yodel. This would be a personal tragedy for the Älpler, although he would not know it, because it corrupted his connection to the mountains. A young man, so seduced, would go home at the end of a good night and wishing to sing, select a modern-style tune (perhaps by Franz Abt or Friedrich Silcher) instead of a yodel. According to Osenbrüggen, this song would “sound like [the young man] is sitting in purgatory, while in the beautiful, waiting summer night, the stars twinkle above him.”107 For Tobler, the civilization of the lowlands was more threatening than the mix of musical 106 Ibid. 107 “Das klingt denn als säße er im Fegefeuer, während doch in schöner, lauer Sommernacht die Sterne über ihm funkeln.” Osenbrüggen, Huber, and Rüdisühli, Das Hochgebirge der Schweiz : Prachtwerk mit 52 der interessantesten Anischten aus dem Alpen-, Gletscher- und Felsengebiete: nach Photographien und getreu nach der Natur, 212–213. 263 styles. “As already implied,” he wrote, “modern civilization threatens to completely end an essential part of this precious and unspoilt country peculiarity.”108 For SAC writers, the yodel was as much of a way of life as it was a particular vocal technique. For the SAC, this way of life and the yodel were remnants of Urschweiz. Szadrowsky and Tobler believed the yodel was a basically unchanged continuation of the folk music that Notker Balbulus had heard 800 years earlier, and which had inspired his sequences. Szadrowsky recounted that on his travels, he encountered a young man in Appenzell singing a line that used the same figures as in a sequence by Notker.109 For Szadrowsky, this prompted the realization that as Notker wandered the hills around St. Gall (not unlike Szadrowsky) he listened to the music of the mountain people (also not unlike Szadrowsky). Notker then modified the melodies only slightly to fit them with text, and these became the sequences.110 Tobler joined Szadrowsky in this theory that Notker’s sequences, particularly their cadential figures, were inspired by yodel figures, which themselves predated even Notker.111 This was part of the larger nineteenth-century trend that imagined oral traditions as if they existed outside of time, and Szadrowsky and Tobler’s association of the yodel with Urschweiz was yet another reason to preserve the vocalization. 108 “Wie schon angedeutet, droht durch die moderne Zivilisation einem wesentlichen Theile dieser köstlichen und urwüchsigen Landeseigenthümlichkeit noch vollends der Untergang.”Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 296. 109 Ibid., 290. 110 Ibid., 294. 111 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 7. 264 Tobler and Szadrowsky both worked in Appenzell, which is very close to the abbey of St. Gall where Notker had composed his sequences, but their invocation of Notker was compelled by more than personal geographic association: it was akin to staking a claim in the burgeoning field of modern musicology, with a nod to the field’s nationalist roots. (This is in addition to Szadrowsky participating in the Germanic musicological dialogue by responding directly to Hanslick, as explored earlier.) Notker represented one of the first known composers; by positing that Notker’s sequences came from the yodel, Szadrowsky and Tobler made a stab at orienting all of Western music’s origins in the Alps, and specifically Alpine people. Szadrowsky stressed this when he cited Switzerland as the source of inspiration for later canonic works; in addition to the Notkerian sequences, he wrote that Beethoven’s “Pastorale” symphony was inspired by Alphorn playing (not implausible), and that Chopin’s mazurkas were inspired by traditional Swiss music (less plausible).112 Just as the Rhine had its source in the German- speaking Alps, so too did much of the world of Western music. Szadrowsky also argued for the national and musicological significance of the yodel by contrasting it with the German nationalist musical trends of the time; this contrast unsurprisingly includes reference to the topography, in which the Germans were lowlanders, and the Swiss were mountain people. Szadrowsky wrote that “in the folk songs of the German low lands... the imagination is lost in the world of fairytales and conjures up images of kings and knights in gold and precious stones, shimmering castles, 112 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 322. 265 idyllic countries and angelic people.”113 By contrast, the music of the mountain people is an endless, joyous paean for “the real state, not a dreamed one.”114 This authentic love of their mountain home, for which they “cannot adequately express their joy and love,” inspired the yodelers to be more lively and to change tempo more frequently than in German songs. 115 Just like the Alps, these paeans are wild and unpredictable, but also deeply real. Szadrowsky also contrasted the realness of Swiss yodeling with more modern, theatrical yodels from Tyrol. “Tyrolean evenings” had become a tourist-famous night of traditional Austrian Alpine music and dance, which included yodeling, and groups like the Tyrolese Family Rainier traveled and yodeled all over Europe as well as North America. Unlike German folk songs, Szadrowsky could not distinguish between the two yodels on the basis of elevation, so he used the character of the people and the listeners as the source of differentiation. Szadrowsky described the Tyrolese as relaxed and leisurely, while Älpler prefer more accented rhythms, that are “more natural, stronger, more youthful.”116 The Tyroleans sing softly, soulfully, but the joyful exultation of the Swiss required notes that go as high as possible, and be performed loudly, as if to fill the entire 113 “Während z.B. in den Volksliedern des deutschen Flachlandes [...] die Phantasie sich in die Märchenwelt verliert und Bilder zaubert von Königen und Rittern in Gold und Edelstein, von schimmernden Burgen, paradiesischen Ländern und engelgleichen Menschen.” Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 511. 114 “...den wirklichen Zustand, nicht einen geträumten, zu preise.” Ibid. 115 Ibid., 514. 116 “The middle register of the voices is better suited for the soft, soulful sound, as the Tyroleans prefer. The joyful exultation of the Swiss can only be expressed by a high and satisfying sound, which is why the sounds of these singers are intoned as high as possible.” “Zu der weichen, gefühlvollen Ausdrucksweise eignet sich mehr die Mittellage der Stimmen, wie denn auch die Tyroler diese vorzugsweise wählen. Dem fröhlichen Jauchzen der Schweizer kann nur eine hohe und höchst zu erreichende Stimmlage genügen, weshalb auch hier die Gesänge von Sängern und Sängerinnen möglichst hoch intoniert werden.” Ibid., 516. 266 mountain air. In contrast to the composed art-music Tyrolean style, the Swiss yodel was never thought out beforehand. Instead, it was always a product of fantasy, the artefact of his immediate mountain environment and thus it cannot exist beyond the mountains.117 This is similar to his comparison of the yodel to the Kühreihen, the Swiss yodel is much more masculine, requires more skill and primeval vigor. 118 Similarly, the people who could understand and appreciate the Swiss and Tyrolese yodels were men of different stripes; Szadrowsky wrote that “the general public, who are satisfied with instant enjoyment, will prefer the Tyrolean [yodel].”119 He explained that the general public, who were not accustomed to patient deep listening, preferred the Tyrolean style because it is more à la mode and accessible, often made especially so because they can be played on pleasant instruments like the zither. “The musicologist and friend of original mountain music, on the other hand,” Szadrowsky wrote, “will prefer the Swiss melody, even if it appears more austere, is not immediately accommodating to the ear, and is not performed by any such sonorous instrument as the zither.”120 In this way, Szadrowsky still managed to use elevation as a means of distinguishing the Swiss yodel. 117 Ibid., 517. 118 Szadrowsky, “Die Musik und die tonerzeugung Instrumente der Alpenbewohner, Aus Schafhäutle Nachlass. Eine kulturhistorische Skizze,” 281. 119 “Das allgemeine Publikum, das mit dem augenblicklichen Genuss zufrieden ist, wird sich vorzugsweise den tiroler Ländler-Formen zuneigen.”Ibid. 120 “Der Musikforscher und der Freund einer originellen Musik der Bergvölker wird sich dagegen mit der schweizerischen Weise befreunden, ob gleich sie herber auftritt, nicht sogleich ins Gehör fällt und von keinem so klangvollen Instrumente, wie die Zither ist, vorgetragen wird.” Ibid. 267 The Manly Yodel Because the Alps were the symbol of the Swiss national historical past and also a place to cultivate masculine qualities in the body, for the SAC and others, the yodel likewise became an index for the various masculine national ideals. Scholars and musicologists such as Barbara Eichner and George Mosse have explored how the growth of modern European nationalism was entwined with the development of binary gender models. When the yodel was coded male and national, it fit with larger trends in European music where a music could be simultaneously masculine and national.121 For instance, in Germany, Beethoven, along with other composers, was held up as a German musical icon and often described in masculinizing terms.122 Szadrowsky’s claim of Alpine music being just as meaningful to the Älpler as a Beethoven symphony likewise submits that the yodel is a Swiss version of the masculine-national ideal, although the yodel was described in much more generative than creative terms. The final section of this chapter offers an analysis for how the body of a Swiss man became a proxy for Alpine tradition, how foreigners and cosmopolitanization became associated with femininity, and thus how the yodel became the masculine-national sound of the mountains. For much of Europe, the modern masculine archetype typically embodied the ideal of modernity and the future. However, in the case of Switzerland, the vast majority 121 Biddle and Gibson, Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, 15–20. Eichner, History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848–1914. Georg L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, Studies in the History of Sexuality (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 122 Mary J. Citron, “Gendered Reception of Brahms: Masculinity, Nationalism and Musical Politics,” in Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, ed. Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 147. Citron uses the German archetype of a masculine Beethoven as a starting point for her discussion of Brahms. 268 of the ideal future was modeled on the past because Swiss identity had latched to the timeless Alps. Studying the yodel offers another example of how constructions of manliness and the urge to preserve the traditional nation were often elided with one another during this time. Stereotypes of masculinity have remained largely consistent from the late eighteenth into the twenty-first century; masculine attributes include strength, virility, virtuous living, and a commitment to freedom and independence. A good nationally- minded man is further distinguished by a willingness to fight and die for the greater good (which we saw developed in Chapter III). Much like the yodel was the sound of wholeness between an Älpler and his mountains, manliness was also a state of unity between outward appearance and inward virtue.123 These inner virtues and behaviors could manifest in the appearance of the male body, and a man’s physical fitness became the evidence for the strength of the fatherland.124 Thus, the appearance of the male body became a very important part of both masculinity and nationalism in the late nineteenth century. Male physicality was often cultivated and celebrated in gymnastics and wrestling in Switzerland as well as elsewhere in Europe; we also saw the beginnings of this in Chapter III, when the 1805 Unspunnenfest proudly featured a traditional Swiss form of wrestling called Hosenlupf (pants-tossing) alongside the various Kühreihen. Interest in the sport grew over the rest of the nineteenth century, and the Eidgenössischer Schwingerverband (Schwingen being a more universal term for wrestling) was established in 1895. 123 Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, 3. 124 Ibid., 48. 269 The promotional poster for the Federal Schwing und Älpler Fest from 1902 shows how the male body and Älpler music remained connected through the nineteenth century (Figure 35, below). The poster advertises that there will be wrestling, yodeling, stone throwing, and alphorn playing, all activities that dated back to the Unspunnenfest; “yodel” is the updated name for the Kühreihen, and Schwingen is the updated term for Hosenlupf. Threads of the association between masculinity and alphorn playing also appeared in Chapter IV, when only men and boys would play the alphorn for tourists. Figure 35: Poster for the Federal Games, August 17–18, 1902, lithograph by A. Eglin. Bibliothèque nationale suisse, Cabinet des estampes: Collection d'affiches, Bern (1902). 270 The man in the poster stands in front of the snowy high Alps, attired in a traditional Hosenlupf wrestling outfit, and looks directly at the viewer as he flexes his muscles. This display of an overtly muscled, male, Alpine body offers an archetype of Swiss national masculinity. The type of man pictured in the Schwingen poster and the Alpine setting were contrasted against the effeminizing and degrading effects of modernism and social change in the period 1870–WWI. Indeed, his manliness was a response to modernism: George Mosse has written about how the social changes during this period spurred the development of modern masculinity because the male body could be idealized as a safeguard against the changes of modernity.125 While the modern world was not necessarily viewed as feminine per se, it was certainly effeminizing because of how people felt it endangered tradition and standard masculinity. The threat of effeminization seems to have been largely separate from femininity, which in itself was not necessarily negative, just different than masculinity, so long as the separation of spheres was maintained. The separation of spheres in the last decades of the nineteenth century was part of the general nationalist movement. Men’s prerogatives were politics and economics; women’s roles were to be wives and mothers, capacities that were considered essential, but still accompanimental at best. Eichner has shown that the mythological couple Hermann and Thusnelda in late nineteenth-century Germany modeled this separation of spheres as an exemplar for German men and women. There could be no artistic genesis in a woman let alone an expression of national Geist, particularly since women could not exult in rural happiness (as in the Wyss quote 125 Ibid., 78. 271 above).126 Homosocial music making and societies upheld the separation of spheres; Sumner Lott has written about how gender-exclusive music making upheld the separation of spheres in public life, where men participated in government and commerce, and women managed domestic affairs.127 However, the encroachment of women into traditionally male spaces was more of a direct threat to the status quo. And indeed, many of the social threats in the last decades of the nineteenth century were associated with blurring the separation of spheres, whether it was literally the division between traditional gender roles, or foreign influence on Alpine culture. Three main forms of social change challenged some of the most basic presumptions upon which Swiss society was based: industrialization (which often manifested as train tracks and tourists spreading across the Alps), an influx of political émigrés on top of the already accelerating and expanding tourist population, and the push for women’s suffrage. The movement for women’s suffrage was associated with both industrialization and the influx of various political émigrés, and conservatives treated these like a uniform threat to traditional practices and the pure Alps. Simultaneously, industrialization had helped Swiss-born women gain economic independence and power. Swiss industry came to rely heavily on female labor: by the mid nineteenth century, about half of factory 126 Isabel Morf and Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart, The Cultural Role of Women in Switzerland (Zürich: Pro Helvetia, 2002), 12. 127 Marie Sumner Lott, The Social World of Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music: Composers, Consumers, Communities (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 13. 272 workers were women. As women gained more power, such as the right to manage their own property, suffrage seemed to many to be the logical next step.128 Many of these progressive ideas were encouraged by groups of powerful émigrés in cosmopolitan centers, which in turn fed conservative fears about foreign influence on rural traditions and hierarchical structures. The first formal association for legal and political equity for women was established in Geneva in 1868, called the Association Internationale des femmes, and it had been substantially influenced by political refugees who had sought asylum in Switzerland.129 In German-speaking Switzerland, the women’s suffrage movement was centered at the University of Zürich, where, much like the Association Internationale des femmes, émigré populations with generally progressive left politics had a leading role.130 This produced a connection between cities, women’s suffrage, and non-native incursions onto tradition, which were basically a point-by-point foil to the values that were increasingly associated with the yodel: tradition, nationalism, and rural lifestyles. Many conservatives felt that women were encroaching on politics like they were encroaching on the high mountains, both understood as masculine spaces of refuge. Regions and populations whose traditions were especially threatened by modernization particularly pushed back against these social changes. Men in these conservative areas resisted women’s suffrage because it threatened their existing power structures and social 128 Regina Weckler, “The Oldest Democracy and Women’s Suffrage: The History of a Swiss Paradox,” in 25 Years of Emancipation? Women in Switzerland 1971–1996, ed. Joy Charnley, Andrew Wilkin, and Malcom Pender (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998), 30. 129 Ibid., 25, 30. 130 Weckler, 30–31. 273 status, which were typically defined by one’s participation in local politics.131 Politics was a matter of leisure time, and as Regina Weckler writes, this “men’s time,” was “part of everyday male life [...]. Politics was part of a male-defined culture, a resort––a haven free of women––and after all men could not imagine women usurping their last retreat, one of the last bastions of male supremacy.”132 One way to push back against these threats was for Switzerland to lean into its Alpine heritage, much as a man could preserve against his own degradation by being outside in unspoiled nature, cultivating his health and strength.133 This precluded any interest in other countries or non-Alpine culture. In Chapter III we saw how the Schweizerlieder entreated young men to travel “as one should travel, in Schweizeralpenland!” because foreign cities might turn him into an effeminate dandy, who was interested in fancy clothes, fleeting theatrical attractions, and so on.134 Presumably the image of this fancy city man would be in stark contrast to the muscled wrestler depicted in the 1902 Schwingen and Äelpler Fest poster. The SAC members desire to preserve the yodel against the influence of music like Franz Abt’s or Friedrich Silcher’s was much the same as the imperative to preserve the good, masculine nation against the varied and effeminizing threats of foreigners and cosmopolitanization. 131 Weckler, “The Oldest Democracy and Women’s Suffrage: The History of a Swiss Paradox,” 38. 132 Ibid. 133 Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, 95–96. 134 Lavater, Schweizerlieder von Johann Caspar Lavater. Neue, vollständige Auflage, besonders für Schulen, 135. “Nimm, Brüder! Unser Lebewohl, / Und schlage Hand in Hand, / Und reise, wie man reisen soll, / Im Schweizeralpenland! / Fühl auf der Berge stolzen Haupt / Der tiefen Thäler Glück; / Die Freyheit, die kein Reid uns raubt; / Und Freude sey dein Blick.” 274 The SAC, as far as I have found, wrote relatively little about the explicit masculinity of the yodel, Switzerland, or their Club. This is because they were operating in a worldview where such explications were understood and unnecessary because they were built into the very way that the group worked.135 The SAC satisfied all of the requirements for a masculine social group in the second half of the nineteenth century: the group was nonprofessional and conducted during leisure time, which was a sign of status and independence.136 The time spent the mountains led to greater physical fitness, and the scientific bent of the group satisfied the requirement for learning and progress. Lastly, men’s groups required distance from, as Sumner Lott phrases it, “the feminine and feminizing domestic environment.”137 The SAC separated themselves from the domestic environment because they were still (despite Tschudi’s claims to the contrary) a climbing association, and mountaineering, as discussed, was male. Much of the way that Szadrowsky wrote about the yodel was like how the SAC and mountaineers thought of themselves as an exclusive group accustomed to challenging and stark environments––in other words, as a masculine Society: “Whoever really wants to feel the songs must stand on the grounds of their conditions; its beauty does not reveal itself to the overstimulated senses,” Szadrowsky wrote, alluding to busy cosmopolitan lifestyles, which were anathema to mountaineering.138 If the construction masculinity in the late nineteenth 135 One version of this has been studied by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 136 Sumner Lott, The Social World of Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music: Composers, Consumers, Communities, 14. 137 Ibid. 138 “Whoever really wants to feel the songs must stand on the grounds of their conditions; its beauty does not reveal itself to the overstimulated senses...” “Wer die Gesänge wahr mitempfinden will muss sich auf 275 century can be framed as the preservation of the genuine and traditional against the modern, then the SAC made that their very objective. The yodel’s association with male voices strengthened over the course of the century, along the same time frame as the discourse about Swiss national identity. The yodel’s male coding was partially the product of its early use in the Golden Age of Alpinism, as discussed above. The coding also happened because “authentic” Alpine song had become increasingly associated with male vocalists and physicality over the nineteenth century, and by the time of Szadrowsly and Tobler, who assumed that the necessary mountain Geist was solely accessible to men, and a yodeler was male. The earliest reports on the Kühreihen and other shepherds songs often describe the sound of a woman’s voice; George Tarenne’s ranz des vaches (1813) is to the sound of a woman’s voice; Ebel (1798) also wrote that the Ruggusser (the comic subgenre of yodel discussed above) could be sung by women.139 However, once the folklorists and scientists entered the fray and wrote about the vocalization as an expression of patriotic rural joy, those feelings, and thus the yodel, were identified as an exclusively male domain. While a man’s high falsetto range might suggest a female voice, the link between the yodel and the mountains, the exclusivity of the falsetto tone to the male voice, and the gymnastic effort of yodeling, all combined to elide any potential anxiety about effeminacy and high notes. For instance, according to Wyss in 1812, women were not capable of expressing the wild joy of the Kühreihen. He explained that the song “loses its character” when it is den Boden ihrer Bedingungen stellen; den überreizten Sinnen erschliesst sich ihre Schönheit nicht...” 524 Szadrowsky, “Nationaler Gesang bei den Alpenbewohnern,” 524. 139 Tarenne, Recherches sur les ranz des vaches ou sur les chansons pastorales des bergers de la Suisse, avec musique, 21–22. Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 157. 276 “sung by soft female throats that are so seldom capable of exulting the sound and joy of rural happiness.”140 Osenbrüggen also observed that the yodel was not suited to female throats because of the effort it takes for them to sing, which is similar to the notion in mountaineering that expeditions into the high Alps were effortful and therefore masculine. 141 For the yodel, not only did a man need to gain the heights, he needed to know how to feel the mountain Geist and sing in counterpoint with it. This was, of course, parallel to masculinity in mountaineering. For instance, as John Tyndall, a member of the London Alpine Club who occasionally visited and was published as a respected guest- speaker in the SAC, spoke of the high mountains: “they have made me feel in all my fibres the blessedness of perfect manhood.”142 As a song of the male spirit and connection to the home, practicing the yodel may have been a way to enhance and perfect national manliness. Still, both yodeling and mountaineering could be effortful to the point of self- detriment; for instance, Tobler acknowledged that yodeling could be very harsh on the voice, just as much of mountaineering necessarily required pushing the body perhaps 140 “...it loses its character when played on stringed instruments or sung by soft female throats so seldom capable of exulting sound and the joy of rural happiness.” “...daher verliert sie so ganz ihren Charakter wenn sie auf Saiten-Instrumenten gespielt oder auch von weichen weiblichen Kehlen gesungen wird, die so selten vermögen den jauchzenden Ton und den frohen Schren ländlicher Fröhlichkeit hinein zu legen.” Wyss, Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und alten Volksliedern, iii. 141 “...and finally the three-part yodeling of the Appenzell women is produced, which is strange in its kind, since the force it takes to yodel in the female throat does not quite fit.” “... und zuletzt produziert sich noch das Jodelterzett der Appenzellerinnen , das merkwürdig in seiner Art ist , da doch das dem Jodeln eigene Forcieren[sic] der Stimme für die weibliche Kehle nicht recht paßt.” Osenbrüggen, Huber, and Rüdisühli, Das Hochgebirge der Schweiz : Prachtwerk mit 52 der interessantesten Anischten aus dem Alpen-, Gletscher- und Felsengebiete: nach Photographien und getreu nach der Natur, 62. 142 Cited in Reidy, “Mountaineering, Masculinity, and the Male Body in Mid-Victorian Britain,” 162–163. 277 beyond its comfortable limits.143 There is also compelling preliminary evidence that in the field of nineteenth-century psychoacoustics, there were theories that could explain how the sound waves and listening experience of yodeling might enhance masculine qualities in a male body.144 The connection between conservative politics and a patriarchal yodeling practice in the late nineteenth century can be seen in the case of Appenzell. The name “Appenzell” refers to two neighboring cantons, both entirely surrounded within the canton of St. Gall in the northeast of Switzerland; Appenzell was one of the most conservative regions of Switzerland. Just as the SAC had encouraged the development of the yodel in order to preserve traditional Swiss ways of life, conventions around the yodel in Appenzell indicate that it was a conservative proxy for hierarchies and customs. There seems to have been a particularly lively yodeling practice in Appenzell; just as it had often been said that Freyheit was in the blood of a Swiss man, it was likewise often said that the yodel was in the blood of the Appenzeller.145 The first appearance of a Kühreihen in manuscript, in 1545, is attributed to Appenzell, and the most substantial piece in the early Kuhn-Wyss collections are likewise attributed to Appenzell (as 143 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 42. 144 The Jodel would be a very fruitful line of inquiry into the intersection between the late nineteenth- century psychophyiscal theories and gender. Relevant work on this subject includes Reidy, “Mountaineering, Masculinity, and the Male Body in Mid-Victorian Britain.” Christian, Ph.D. diss, Horror Vacui: A Cultural History of Air Around 1900; Alexandra Hui, The Psychophyiscial Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840–1910 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). 145 There was in fact so much yodeling in Appenzell that all of the varieties of yodeling were described there under the umbrella term “Zauren.” 278 mentioned in Chapter I).146 In 1798, Ebel noted that the Kühreihen was sung in Appenzell more than anywhere else and nearly a century later, both Szadrowsky and Tobler echoed this (although they used the word “yodel” instead).147 Thus, when Szadrowsky wrote that “we call [the yodeler] ‘the most peculiar child of the mountains,’” the “we” might well belong to the population of Appenzell. Many of the SAC authors linked the conservative culture of Appenzell with its yodeling practice in the same breath. Osenbrüggen in 1863 described “the lovely, green, yodeling Appenzell” as one of the most conservative areas in Switzerland.148 He observed that the men there are just as traditionalist as their forefathers were, and that their freedom and regional independence was part of their heritage.149 In a subsequent text, published in 1874, Osenbrüggen implied that their connection to tradition is part of why they yodel so much.150 146 Rhau, “Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica, Tomus 2. Secundus tomus biciniorum quae et ipsa sunt gallica, latina, germanica: ex praestantissimis symphonistis collecta, et in germania typis nunquam excusa: additae sunt quaedam, ut vocant, fugae, plenae artis et suavitatis.” 147 “On my more distant journeys through Switzerland, I have had occasion to notice that the Kühreihen is nowhere so often sung as in the Canton Appenzell.” “Auf meinen ferneren Reisen durch die Schweitz habe ich zu bemerken Gelegenheit gehabt, daß der Kühreihen nirgends so häufig gesungen wird, als im Kanton Appenzell.” Ebel, Schilderung der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz Theil 1, Schilderung des Gebirgsvolks vom Kanton Appenzell, 151–152. 148 “...dem lieblichen, grünen, jodelnden Appenzell-Innerhoden.” Eduard Osenbrüggen, Culturhistorische Bilder aus der Schweiz (Leipzig: Roßberg’schen Buchhandlung, 1863), iv. 149 Osenbrüggen, Culturhistorische Bilder Aus Der Schweiz, 4. Appenzell is still one of the most conservative areas in Switzerland today; by way of example, women were not granted the right to vote in Appenzell until 1991, and it is one of very few places in Switzerland where the Landesgemeinde is still practiced today. 150 He explained that the characteristic Appenzellische shouting and yodeling were an expression of the joy of their simple life, and that “like the birds sing, the Appenzell shepherds cannot stop yodeling and jauchzing.” Eduard Osenbrüggen, Die Schweizer: Daheim und in der Fremde (Berlin: A. Hofmann, 1874), 8. “Aber wie die Vogel das Singen, so können die appenzeller Hirten das Jodeln und Jauchzen nicht lassen.” Osenbrüggen, Huber, and Rüdisühli, Das Hochgebirge der Schweiz : Prachtwerk mit 52 der interessantesten Anischten aus dem Alpen-, Gletscher- und Felsengebiete: nach Photographien und getreu nach der Natur, 61. 279 Because the Appenzell yodel was so closely linked with heritage, the call to specifically preserve the traditional yodel in Appenzell resonated with the call to preserve traditional patriarchal structures. Just as the SAC was a masculine club by virtue of being comprised exclusively of men, Appenzell yodeling was a manly endeavor because it was traditionally sung in groups, which were almost always male. As Tobler wrote, Appenzeller men never like to yodel alone.151 Authors typically described the Appenzell yodel as a single soloist over accompanying, primarily drone voices. This group yodeling among Appenzellische men may have been an expression of traditional brotherhood. Similarly, only men were allowed to participate in the traditional political process of the Landsgemeinde, which, as discussed in Chapter III, still signified the patrilineal Alpine inheritance. Thus, singing the yodel in Appenzell could have been viewed as a social venue that upheld a patriarchal custom despite a changing world. Yodeling the Heimat One concluding case study can show how the yodel at the end of the nineteenth century was gendered male and signified the combined male-national perfection. Children’s literature from this period indicates how much this yodeling topos permeated patriotic culture, and how it was understood in topographic, premodern, and gendered terms, ideas that related back to the initial project of the SAC. To be sure, boyhood and manhood are related but are not the same topos. What we see in the children’s literature is that yodeling connects a boy to his Heimat––the rustic, timeless homeland––in much the same way that the yodel connected a man to his mountains. One book, titled Rudi, from 151 Tobler, Kühreihen oder Kühreigen, Jodel und Jodellied in Appenzell. Mit 7 Musikbeilagen (Documenta) theilweise in alter und neuer Schriebart., 38. 280 1897, is the most extreme example of the yodeling topos at work, and while yodeling occupies an unusually central place in this text, the use of the topos in other texts is thematically similar, if not as central to the storyline. The main character, an Älpler boy named Rudi, is an exuberant yodeler who yodels as an expression of his connection to the Alps and love of home. In the opening scene, he yodels about how his father is an Appenzeller, and he is gently teased for this falsehood (his father is an Unterwaldener), but presumably Rudi affected the Appenzellishness because it is associated with yodels. He yodels when he sees the mountains near his home. He yodels when he sees the modest objects of daily living in his parents’ hut. He yodels when he thinks about the names of the mountains, and especially when he sees the primary peak of his Heimat.152 His favorite Jodellied is “In the Heimat, it is beautiful” (In der Heimat ist es schön). In one scene, Rudi explains to a friend that yodeling is best understood in the mountains, because the echoes from the mountains make it seem like the mountain crags themselves are yodeling, which recalls the echo theory submitted by Tobler and Szadrowsky.153 He eventually yodels “in the Heimat” for his girlfriend, which proves to be the catalyst for their decision to marry and for her move from the valley into his family home.154 Rudi can only yodel when he is in the mountains and when there is national peace––in other words, when everything is as it should be. “’It’s strange,’ he mused, ‘how I can jodel and shout [up here in the mountains] again. Down in the country (Land) 152 Adele Gründler, Rudi: eine Erzähling, Himmelsblumen: Neue Erzählungen für Jung & Alt (Zürich: Christliche Vereinsbuchhandling, 1897), 5. 153 Ibid., 3. 154 Ibid., 33. 281 I couldn’t, no matter how much I wanted to.’”155 Rudi’s yodel also goes silent during times of national strife. During a period of war, the mountain crags no longer yodel or thunder with the sound of avalanches, but instead echo with the rumbles of gunfire and battle.156 When Rudi’s father disappeared in the war, Rudi again could not yodel.157 Yodeling in Swiss children’s books at the end of the nineteenth century show how the stereotypical song had become gendered and accepted as an expression of national well-being. In these books, the yodel corresponds with a deep yearning to be faithful to rural ways of life, and an indication of complete wellness.158 All of these boys are young, rural Älpler. Children’s books are just one part of Swiss popular culture, and a worthy direction of further study would be to look for the yodel in other areas. It is also worth asking about ideals imposed upon Swiss women and femininity, and how those might have been contrasted against the high Alps and/or the yodel. 155 “’Seltsam,’ sagte er einmal, “wie ich hier wieder jodeln und schmettern kann ! Drunten im Land könnt ich's durchaus nicht , so gern wie ich gewollt hätte! Die Evchen wollte mal von mir einen Jodler hören, aber ich brachte durchaus keinen zustande.” Ibid., 29. 156 Ibid., 10. 157 Ibid. A similar example of a lack of yodeling indicating strife is in Der Knabe des Tell by Jeremias Gotthelf in 1846. Gotthelf, Jeremias. Der Knabe des Tell: eine Geschichte für die Jugend. Zürich, S. Hoehr. 158 We can also see how yodeling is part of the separation of spheres in books by Johanna Spyri-Heusser (1927–1901) who is best known for the novel Heidi (1881). While Spyri’s books generally do not feature yodeling as prominently as the story of Rudi, she still wrote the yodeling topos in a gendered way that associates boys with the mountains and girls with domestic settings. For instance, in her Einer vom Hause Lesa, two young boys (Jos and Vinci), whenever they are particularly joyful, “yodel with inner well-being.” Johanna Spyri, Einer vom Hause Lesa: Eine Geschichte für Kinder un auch für solche, welche Kinder lieb haben (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1894), 214. Spyri, Einer vom Hause Lesa: Eine Geschichte für Kinder un auch für solche, welche Kinder lieb haben. In another text, Aus unserem Lande, the character Renz, another Alpine boy, likewise is compelled to Jodel to express his inner well being. Similarly to Rudi, Renz is particularly prone to Jodelling when he sees things that remind him of his rural heritage, like the rustic objects in his parent’s house. Johanna Spyri, Aus unserem Lande: Noch Zwei Geschichten für kinder und auch für Solche, welche die Kinder lieb haben (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1880), 19. 282 The yodel’s move into public consciousness may have been facilitated by the many national festivals that had been established over the course of the century, set in Alpine settings. These large, multi-day open-air festivals featured collective singing and musical plays of Swiss historical events. The list of festivals included several Fêtes des Vignerons from between 1819 and 1889, and many German-language festivals, including the 1891 Eidgenössische Bundesfeier, all of which put on historical plays and included collective singing that engaged with the outdoor, Alpine settings, and participated in the contemporary discourse about Swiss identity and origins. These festivals would be a logical next-step study for the future, along the same lines as Barbara Eichner has done with German music in this same period.159 The yodel myth persisted well into the twentieth century and took on new elements while retaining its core connotation with Urschweiz. The Federal Yodeling Association was formed in 1910, largely in response to the unrelenting popularity of the Tyroler yodel, which they saw as another commercialized folk tune, much as Szadrowsky had written half a century prior. The Federal Yodeling Association was intended to preserve the traditional, natural music––“our own down-to-earth songs”160 ––against the “flood” of foreign ones.161 This recalls the SAC’s preservation objective––safeguarding what they viewed as traditional, grounded folk practices against the creeping threat of cosmopolitan lifestyles. Similarly, scholars continued to reprint the idea that the yodel 159 Eichner, History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848–1914. 160 “...more Tyrolean songs than our own down-to-earth songs.” “...mehr Tirolergesang als bodenständiges eigenes Liedgut.” Quoted in Vignau, Modernity, Complex Societies, and the Alphorn, 42. 161 “...Foreign songs threatened to flood Switzerland.” “...Fremdes Liedgut drohte [...] die Schweiz zu überfluten.” Quoted in Ibid. 283 was an ancient vocalization that had influenced Notker, such as Wolfgang Sichardt in the 1930’s, and Walter Senn in the 1960’s.162 The Federal Yodeling Association is currently advocating for the yodel to become a UNESCO designated intangible heritage. Szadrowsky and Tobler’s attempt to situate the yodel in the larger musicological dialogue also had significant implications in the twentieth century when it was appropriated by the Third Reich. Nazi musicologists, on the hunt for propaganda, co- opted the construction of traditional purity with racial purity. The Nazis framed the Swiss yodel within a larger context of common Germanic heritage, which was also the basis of their attempt to annex Switzerland early in the war. Swiss yodels were published in Nazi songbooks and discussed in Nazi propaganda as indicators of timeless German character, much as it had been proof of Urschweiz to SAC members. Research into the Nazi appropriation of the yodel is only in its initial stages, but the appropriation likely occurred as part of the same process that Edward Dickenson has called the “Germanizing the Alps.”163 Furthermore, the premodern associations with the Alps would have complemented the Nazi mangling of Viking medievalisms, and there is very likely a complex of associations between the masculine-national Swiss yodeler, like Rudi or the Appenzellers, and the Nazis’ hypermasculine Aryan nation. 162 Wolfgang Sichardt, Der alpenländische Jodler und der Ursprung des Jodelns, Schriften zur Volksliedkunde un völkerkundlichen Musikwissenschaft 2 (Berlin: Hahnefeld, 1939). Walter Senn, “Jodeln. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehung und Verbreitung des Wortes. Mundartliche Bezeichnungen,” Jahrbuch des Österreichischen Volksliedwerkes 11 (1962): 150–66. A more complete list of those who espoused the echo theory can be found in Baumann, Musikfolklore und Musikfolklorismus: eine ethnomusikologische Untersuchung zum Functionswadel des Jodels. 163 The appropriation of the yodel is mentioned briefly in Plantenga, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling around the World, 62–63. Dickinson, “Altitude and Whiteness: Germanizing the Alps and Alpinizing the Germans, 1875–1935.” 284 Much as the naturalists at this time divided the world into distinct regions and species (an epistemology that has recently been convincingly problematized), Swiss nationalists used the yodel as a marker for what they saw as the necessary and increasingly threatened partition between highlands and lowlands. The ranz des vaches had once been thought of as an expression of the purity of Swiss tradition, but the eventual associations of the song genre with all things lowland––tourists, femininity, cosmopolitanization, artifice––meant that it lost the connotation of Alpine virtue. The discourse around the yodel from the period 1860–1900 shows us how the idea of Geist intersected with the developing concept of masculinity, and, as a result, how the past and the Heimat could be coded male. 285 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSIONS Origin stories This dissertation has focused on how sound can be used to articulate the relationship between humans and place, focusing on the specific case study of Älpler and the Alps. The story of the nostalgic ranz des vaches provided a point of departure, and physicians wrote about the song as if the people who spent their early lives in the mountains were bound to the Alps on a physical and/or spiritual level. The ranz des vaches caught the attention of the European aristocracy, and interest in the sound of the Älpler became part of the interest in the mountains. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Swiss leftist group called the Helvetic Society also used song to connect with the mountains in their patriotic collections of Schweizerlieder. Alpine values and archetypes initiated in large part by the Society gave the otherwise fractured area of Switzerland something to rally around during the Napoleonic occupation. After Swiss independence was restored at the Congress of Vienna, tourists began flocking to Switzerland hoping to hear that mythological ranz des vaches in the sublime setting of the Alps, but their very presence ended up changing the aural landscape of the mountains. In the last third of the century, the Swiss Alpine Club began to push back against foreign incursions into the high Alps, and they branded the yodel as the true sound of the mountains, in contrast to the now more cosmopolitanized ranz des vaches. In all of these case studies, song was a way to consider who belonged in the mountains and had the privilege of communing with the peaks. 286 To engage wholly with a place is also to engage with that place’s past and future– –Alpine song increasingly made references to other times and other singers. Throughout this dissertation, the Alps constantly acted as a reminder of an ideal world, and the song, or reception of it, grappled with the tension between the ideal world and real people. There is a constant fear about the moral degradation of the highlands; Rousseau wrote that the rural Swiss were losing the connection to their way of life (and thus the ranz des vaches no longer had any impact on them), tourists wrote that the Swiss were actively abusing their mountains with ill-used song, and Swiss mountaineers suggested that the impact of the foreign world was threatening the pure songs of the hills. Furthermore, it always takes a body to sing, and bodies are complicated. They can have diseases, they can be weak, they can look wrong. A good song in the mountains required a good body, whatever that meant. In many ways, this has been a sort of cultural origin story for the Swiss yodel, and how it became one of the stereotypical Alpine songs. The ranz des vaches sung by the porters in Chapter IV was quite possibly the same yodels that the mountaineers in the Golden Age of Alpinism performed. We have largely forgotten the ranz des vaches today, but it was alive and well in the academic and popular consciousness in the period at least from 1710–1900; however, the genre was primarily performed in informal or low- class or domestic settings and so except for a few significant exceptions, it never made its way into the critical canon. Much as the Swiss Alpine Club contrasted the yodel against the ranz des vaches, the yodel of the Federal Yodeling Society is now being contrasted against other, less refined vocalizations. Jüüzing is the name of a specific style found in the valley of the 287 Muotatal in German-speaking central Switzerland. The locals say that their long isolation had lead them over time to develop their own specific character, which is not only seen in their specific mountain dialect of Swiss-German, but also in their jüüz.592 The ethnomusicologist Wolfgang Sichardt, who recorded the Moutatal jüüz in 1936, believed it to be one of the most archaic forms of yodeling, because its isolation kept it from the influences of tourism and the development of choral societies. Historically, residents of the Muotatal have taken umbrage when jüüzing is referred to as yodeling, although the words have similar roots. To make this distinction clear, a jüüz can also be referred to as a Naturjodel, separating it from the Jodellied of the national yodeling ensembles. There is a long-standing tension between jüüzers and schooled yodelers; jüüzers are often stereotyped by the yodelers as being backwards, or uneducated, especially since jüüzing is typically associated with herding cattle in the mountains, much like the Kühreihen once was. Many members of the Federal Yodeling Society, who view yodeling as a high art form, find the vocal tension in jüüzing off- putting, and take pride in their own training. The ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp noted that at a regional yodel course, a yodeler announced to the press, “Just open your mouth and yodel? That’s all over. Today, vocal technique and resource, and of course practice, must be thoroughly understood.”593 This tension between those who cultivate a refined version of Swiss song, and those who practice a more rustic form is the same tension that we saw in various guises in Chapters III–V. 592 Zemp, Study Guide: A Swiss Yodelling Series: “Jüüzli” of the Muotatal and Swiss Yodelling 30 Years Later, 3. 593 Ibid. 288 I would like to expand several parts of this project in the future. There is a significant amount of archival work that could be done in Switzerland, especially in the collections left by Swiss folklorists and various holdings in the Swiss National Library. I am particularly interested to learn more about how the Helvetic Society promoted foreign tourism in Switzerland, in addition to their own Swiss Journey. There is also much work still to be done in various sources for folksong souvenirs and memorabilia. Many museums across the world have tabatières in their collections, but either the archivists do not know what music they play, or the mechanisms have fallen into disrepair. I want to collect more Liedkarten, so I can speak more authoritatively on the subject. Postcard enthusiasts will not share images of the material in their collection, so any scholarship on postcards has to draw largely from the author’s own compilation. There are also lots of hints that tourists used made musical panoramas, such as Obermann’s quote in Chapter II, a topic that would naturally follow work by Erkki Huhtamo.594 Any study of travel memorabilia could benefit from the application of theories about memory and the miniature from Susan Stewart, especially because souvenirs are often a way to miniaturize the mountains.595 A continuation of this study might also tease out the connections between Swiss national discourse and German nationalism of this same period. I want to spend more time thinking about the language of the Vaterland; the idea that the yodeler is the “most peculiar child of the mountains” suggests that there are larger points to unpack about 594 Erkki Huhtamo, Illusions in Motion: Media Arhcaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013). 595 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). 289 familial language and the landscape. I also want to learn more about the Heimat, especially how the notion of Swiss Heimat compared to Germany’s Heimat (especially since Germany tried to frame the Swiss Alps as their own true Heimat in the 1930’s). I suspect there are some interesting ideas to investigate about mountain song and the uncanny; the sound of the women at the Staubbach in Chapter IV has a lot in common with the banshee at the same time. The cry of a banshee is a harbinger of death; the songs of the Staubbach women were harbingers of the Sublime. Banshees are linked to burial mounds and the earth; the Staubbach women sang with the landscape. This, along with other spooky stories like that of the Winter Herdsman (Chapter V) could be a fascinating red thread for exploring the bond between body and place. Recently, some musicologists have started talking about how music has been a part of the Anthropocene––a time period where human activities have produced a profound impact on the globe.596 Swiss music is one way to link the familiar threads of Western European musicology (the Enlightenment, the Romantics, the nationalists) with humanity’s relationship to the earth. Of particular interest to me right now is how Alpine song might be a way to navigate cultural changes prompted by the discovery of geologic time. As theories of geologic time trickled into the general knowledge, it likely only strengthened the notion of the mountains as timeless and old––at least, they were now profoundly and perhaps disconcertingly older than humans. Around the same time as these new ideas, scientists began theorizing the existence of both soundwaves and their impact on their body, a field that scholars now call psychoacoustics. Given the 596 The journal Nineteenth-Century Music recently published a special issue dedicated to this topic. Kirsten Paige, ed., Special Issue: Music and the Invention of Environment, Nineteenth-Century Music (University of California Press, 2021). 290 characteristically physical nature of Alpine song, mountain voices might be a fascinating way to bring together nineteenth-century theories of psychoacoustics and the existential implications of geologic time. This line of inquiry would also complement further work into the relationship between medical nostalgia and eighteenth-century theories of vibration. This investigation has also made me think about sound and belonging in natural spaces closer to home. Land management systems have started to legislate against excess human noise in wild areas. In 2000, the National Park Service officially identified wild soundscapes, which they defined as the absence of man-made sounds, as something to preserve. Especially since COVID-19 compelled new numbers of people to spend time in the parks, the sheer number of people in the natural spaces and their noises are now treated as a type of sound pollution, recalling material from Chapter IV. Recently, drones, which were banned from the National Park System in 2014, have become a significant issue. While the drones are banned for many reasons, like disturbing wildlife or complicating wilderness rescue missions, in my personal experience most people first respond to the sound of the drone, because it interrupts the fantasy of the wilderness. This legislation of and gut reaction to human sounds is based on the unspoken premise that there is an intrinsic division between humans and nature. Bird song and frogs croaking belong in nature; our chatter does not. In a way, we have come full circle. Before the Enlightenment, it was generally believed that humans did not belong in the mountains, and now we are attempting to preserve that barrier, but by monitoring the sound. This exercise of control over human sound reflects a distinctly white attitude towards nature that conflicts in compelling ways with indigenous understandings of how human sound 291 interacts with natural environments, a tension that I believe needs to be explored in any musicology of the Anthropocene. As a Californian, I have been constantly aware of my own outsider status to the Alps, and how it is not necessarily my prerogative to make any judgment calls about the best or truest Alpine sound. Nonetheless, I do have one important thing in common with many of the people whom I have mentioned in this dissertation: almost all of us came to the topic of Alpine song by visiting the Alps. Eighteenth-century physicians, members of the Helvetic Society, and members of the Swiss Alpine Club all hailed from cities. Victorians visited from England. Even Älpler themselves are sometimes only visitors to the highest peaks––many of the high huts close down during the winter season, and the hut-keepers decamp to lower altitudes. Like many visitors, I have written about Alpine song while away from the Alps. This is partially because of the impact of COVID-19; much of the research has necessarily been done from a desk in the corner of a refurbished attic in Washington State (but made possible by the wonderfully searchable databases maintained by the Swiss library system). I look out the window at maple trees and power lines, not massive walls of limestone or Bergschrunds or couloirs. Those are up to recollection, and in a way, this project has been a massive act of nostalgia for me. In writing this, I have been constantly torn between the analytical perspective–– why did people think this? Why did they value that?––and the truth of my own emotional experience in the Alps. I share many of the same feelings about the Alps as the subjects in my chapters did. Reading English tourists’ descriptions of their first view of the Alps recalled my own experience of the same. I agree with the Helvetic Society and the Swiss 292 Alpine Club––spending time in the mountains can make your heart clean in a way that nothing else really does. The mountains there do conjure up a powerful emotional response, they are simultaneously horrible and beautiful, and sometimes when the air is just so I get that bone-deep ache to be on the Alp again, wondering how much of Zwinger’s fatal nostalgia might not prove to be real. 293 APPENDIX A – HISTORICAL REFERENCE MATERIALS Timeline including relevant events for Chapter III Date Governmental Events status 1762 Old Swiss Helvetische Gesellschaft established Confederacy, Rousseau publishes his Social Contract Republic of Geneva 1766 Martin Planta requests some songs 1767 Johann Kaspar Lavater provides first edition of Schweizerlieder 1775 Second edition of Schweizerlieder 1780 Laborde’s Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, including « Quand revérai-je en un jour tous les objects de mon amor ? ... » 1786 New edition of Schweizerlieder 1787 New edition of Schweizerlieder 1788 New edition of Schweizerlieder 1790 Bridel writes to Pierre-Léon Pettolaz about the ranz des vaches Bridel had originally planned to publish the products of this inquiry in the Étrennes helvétiennes in 1790 or 1791 1791 Grétry and Sedaine’s Guillaume Tell 1796 New edition of Schweizerlieder 1797 Fête des Vignerons 1798 March, Helvetic New edition of Schweizerlieder Republic The Helvetische Gesellschaft stops established. meeting 294 Départment du Léman established 1802 July, French troops withdraw from Switzerland Stecklikrieg (August 28–September 18) Fifty Genevans residing in London petition British politicians to intervene on their behalf against the French (who had breached the Treaty of Amiens by involving themselves in the Stecklikrieg) 1803 February, the Schiller starts his Wilhelm Tell, which Helvetic premiers in 1804 Republic dissolves and the “Act of Mediation” begins 1805 Unspunnenfest and Acht Schweizer- Kühreihen c.1810 Tabatière with “Les Armaillis” (c.1810– 1814) 1812 Sammlung von Schweizer-Kühreihen und Alten Volkslieder) 1813 Act of Mediation Napoleon goes into exile ends. Département du Léman dissolves. Bridel publishes “Les Armaillis” in Le conservateur suisse 1814 Jean-François Champonnière composes “Enfants de Tell” to celebrate an earlier military victory against the French, as well as the pending new union of Geneva with Switzerland 1815 Congress of Napoleon escapes the Isle of Elba, Vienna re- threatens to retake Geneva establishes Swiss independence 295 Sonnenberg’s tabatière with “Les Armaillis » 1819 Fête des Vignerons in Vevey, prominently features « Les Armaillis » 1848 Sonderbund civil war 296 Map of the Helvetic Republic, 1798–1799 Marco Zanoli, The Helvetic Republic 1798/99, February 19, 2017, February 19, 2017, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_Helvetik_3-EN.png. (CC-SA 4.0) 297 Map of Switzerland during the Act of Mediation, 1803–1814 Marco Zanoli, Die Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft 1803–14, accessed October 16, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_Mediation.png. (CC-SA 4.0) 298 Map of the Switzerland during the Restoration, 1815–1847 Marco Zanoli, Die Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft 1815–48, October 28, 2006, October 28, 2006, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_Schweiz_1815.png. (CC-SA 4.0) 299 APPENDIX B – SELECT PRIMARY SOURCES 1710–1813 Zwinger’s “Kühe-Reyen,” in Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa Non Minus Quàm Utilia Scienti (1710), 102–103. 300 Zwinger’s “Kühe-Reyen,” in Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa Non Minus Quàm Utilia Scienti (1710), 104–105. 301 Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa Non Minus Quàm Utilia Scienti (Basle, 1710), 89–90, http://mdz-nbn- resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10087097-4. “Neque verò de nomine deliberanti convenientius occurit, remque explicandam præcisè magis exprimens aut designans, quàm Pothopatridalgias vocabulum, origine græcum, & quidem decompositum è nominibus tribus substantivis, videlicet {παϑos}, desiderium, cupiditas; {παϑríς}, {παϑrídoς} patria, & {áλγoς}, dolor, tristitia: ut adeo {Ποϑοπàτridαλγíα} vi vocis indigitare possit tristem Animum ex reditûs in patriam ardenti desiderio atque difficultate oriundum.” Translation by Taylor Tyrell, personal correspondence: “And indeed it does, not rather conveniently, appear by considering about the name, and the thing must be explained more than briefly expressed or describing it; the expression is Pothopatridalgia, of Greek origin, and is indeed formed from a compound word of three substantive names, evidently {παϑos}, desire, wish; {παϑríς}, {παϑrídoς} native land, & {áλγoς} pain, sadness: so that {Ποϑοπàτridαλγíα} from the power of a sound it is able to invoke sadness of the spirit which springs with difficulty from a burning desire to return to a native land.” 302 Theodor Zwinger, Fasciculus Dissertationum Medicarum Selectiorum: Quibus Curiosa Non Minus Quàm Utilia Scienti (Basle, 1710), 101–102, http://mdz-nbn- resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10087097-4. “Præterire heic nequeo singularem quandam causam, quam Helveticæ in Galliis & Belgio militiæ Centuriones observârunt, non infrequentem apud suos Milites occasionem Pothopatridalgiæ dedisse: illa verò est certa quædam Camœna, quam Rustici in alpibus Helveticis Armenta pascentes Tibiis suis canere solent. Hanc itaque Musicam tibialem, sive cantilenam audientes, qui recenter è Patriâ advenerunt, Milites, refricatâ patriarum deliciarum memoriâ prontinus hoc Morbo corripiuntur, præsertim si iam alteratum aliâs sanguinem adepti, vel tristitiæ cuidam naturaliter obnoxii fuerint. Cumque Tribuni Militum vidissent, plures hâc ratione ad repetendæ Patriæ desiderium stimulari, aliquos etiam impetratâ hinc Febri ardente mortuos esse, severâ lege prohibere coacti sunt, ne quis amplus Cantilenam istam, quam vernaculâ linguâ den Kühe-Reyen nuncupare consueverunt, sive Ore sibilando, sive Fistulam inflando canere sustineret. Curiosis verò heic sistere voluimus Lectoribus Cantilenam notis musicis expressam, quò ipsimet de effectu ejus in Mentes Helvetiorum judicare, si velint, queant.” Translation by Taylor Tyrell, personal correspondence: “I am not able to disregard this single certain cause, which the Commanders of the Swiss military observed in the Gauls and in Belgium, nor am I able to give a frequent occasion of Pothopatridalgia among their Soldiers: truly this is clear as some Song, which the Rustic people pasturing Farm animals in the Swiss Alps are accustomed to sing with their Flutes. And thus, hearing this flute Music, or an old song, the Soldiers, who had arrived recently from Home, with the memory of the delights of their homelands refreshed, immediately are seized by this Sorrow, especially if they already were overtaken at another place/time in their changed blood or they were naturally liable to a certain sadness. Whenever the Commanders of the Soldiers had seen that many were roused by this reason toward a desire of needing to recollect their Homeland, and also that from this place, others died having obtained a burning Fever, they were compelled to prohibit by severe law that no esteemed person undertake to sing that Old song, which they tended to call with their native language den Kühe-Reyen, either by whistling with his Mouth, or by blowing a Pipe. Certainly, with the music known, we desired to stop the imitated/expressed Old song by Meddlesome Readers, by which itself, if they wished, they were able to judge about the effect of it on the Minds of the Swiss.” 303 Ranz des Vaches, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique (Paris: Duchesne, 1768), nonpaginated insert at the end of the text, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb166303772. 304 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, “Von Dem Heimwehe,” in Helvetiae Historia Naturalis Oder Natur-Historie Des Schweitzerlandes, Johann Jacob Scheuchzers Natur-Geschichte des Schweitzerlandes - samt seinen Reisen über die Schweizerische Gebürge (Zürich, 1746), 87–88. Wir Schweizer bewohnen, wie oben erweisen den obersten Gipfel von Europa, athmen deßwegen in uns eine reine, dünne, subtile Luft, welche wir auch selbst durch unsere Land-Speisen, und Getränke, so eben dieselbige Luft enthalten, in uns essen, und trincken [...]. Kommen wir in andere, fremde niedrige Länder, so stehet über uns eine höhere Luft, welche ihre schwerere Drückkraft auf unserer Leiber um so viel leichter ausübet, weil die innere Luft, welche wir mit uns gebracht, wegen ihrer grössern Düniung[sic] nicht genug widerstehen kan[sic]; wie z. B eines Holländers schwerere inwendige Luft mit gleichen Kräften der äussern, auch schweren, und dicken Dunst- und Luftkugel entgegen stehet. We Swiss live, as shown above, on the highest peak of Europe, so we breathe into ourselves a pure, thin, subtle air, which we eat and drink into ourselves through our country food and drinks, which contain that same air [...] When we go to other, foreign, lower countries, there is a higher air above us, which exerts its heavier pressure on our bodies so much more easily, because the inner air, which we have brough with us, cannot withstand [the pressure] because of its thinness; for instance, the heavier inner air of a Dutchman opposes the outer, heavy, and thick haze and air with the same forces. 305 Voyage dans les Alpes, partie pittoresque des ouvrages de Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, Précédés d’un Essai sur l’Histoire naturelle des environs de Genève, vol. 1 (Neuchâtel: Samuel Fauche, 1779), ix–x. Le moral dans les Alpes, n’est pas moins intéressant que le physique. Car, quoique l’Homme soit au fond par-tout le même, par-tout le jouet des mêmes passions, produites par les mêmes besoins; cependant, si l’on peut espérer de trouver quelque part en Europe, des Hommes assez civilisés pour n’être pas féroces, & assez naturels pour n’être pas corrompus, c’est dans les Alpes qu’il faut les chercher ; dans ces hautes vallées où il n’y a ni Seigneurs, ni riches, ni un abord fréquent d’étrangers. Ceux qui n’ont vu le Paysan que dans les environs des villes, n’ont aucune idée de l’Homme de la Nature. Là, connaissant des maîtres, obligé à des respects avilissants, écrasé par le faste, corrompu & méprisé, même par des hommes avilis par la servitude, il devient aussi abject que ceux qui le corrompent. Mais ceux des Alpes, ne voyant que leurs égaux, oublient qu’il existe des hommes plus puissants; leur âme s’ennoblit & s’élève; les service qu’ils rendent, l’hospitalité qu’ils exercent, n’ont rien de servile ni de mercenaire; on voit briller en eux des étincelles de cette noble fierté, compagne & gardienne de toutes les vertus. Combien de fois arrivant à l’entrée de la nuit dans des hameaux écartés où il n’y avoit point d’hôtellerie, je suis allé heurter à la porte d’une cabane; & là après quelques questions sur les motifs de mon voyage, j’ai été reçu avec une honnêteté, une cordialité, & un désintéressement dont on auroit peine à trouver ailleurs des exemples. Et croirait-on que dans ces sauvages retraites, j’ai trouvé des penseurs, des Hommes, qui par la seule force de leur raison naturelle, se sont élevés fort au dessus des superstitions, dont s’abreuve avec tant d’avidité le petit peuple des villes? Morality in the Alps is no less interesting than the physical. For, even though deep-down Man is the same everywhere, everywhere a toy to the same passions, produced by the same needs; however, if one can hope to find somewhere in Europe Men civilized enough not to be ferocious and natural enough not to be corrupted, it is in the Alps that one must look for them; in those high valleys where there are neither Lords, nor rich people, nor frequent encounters with strangers. Those who have seen the Peasant only in the vicinity of cities have no idea of the Man of Nature. There, familiar with masters, obligated to degrading respects, crushed by pomp, corrupted and despised, even by men degraded by servitude, he becomes as abject as those who corrupt him. But those of the Alps, seeing only their equals, forget that there are more powerful men; their soul is ennobled and elevated; the services they render, the hospitality they exercise, have nothing servile or mercenary; one sees shining in them sparks of that noble pride which is the companion and guardian of all virtues. How many times arriving at nightfall in remote hamlets where there are no hotels, I have gone to knock on the door of a hut and there, after a few questions about the reasons for my journey, I have been received with an honesty, a cordiality, and a disinterestedness of which one can hardly find examples elsewhere. And would one believe that in these remote retreats I found thinkers, Men, who by the sole 306 force of their natural reason, have risen high above superstitions, from which the little people of the cities so greedily drink? Translation by Juliette Angoulvant, personal correspondence. 307 P. S. Bridel, “Note Sur Le Ranz Des Vaches,” Le Conservateur Suisse 1 (1813), n.p. 308 P. S. Bridel, “Note Sur Le Ranz Des Vaches,” Le Conservateur Suisse 1 (1813), n.p., 426. 309 P. S. Bridel, “Note Sur Le Ranz Des Vaches,” Le Conservateur Suisse 1 (1813), n.426– 427. 310 P. S. Bridel, “Note Sur Le Ranz Des Vaches,” Le Conservateur Suisse 1 (1813), n.426– 427. 311 APPENDIX C – SELECT LIEDKARTEN Hilfiker-Julliard, Genève. Le Ranz Des Vaches (No. 9). n.d. Postcard. Emily Loeffler. 312 Cacao Suchard. Guggisbergerlied. [n.d]. Postcard. Emily Loeffler 313 This song is the same as the Oberhasli Kühreihen in the Kuhn-Wyss collections. Künsli Tobler, Carl. Der Kühreihen (No. 4798). Postmarked August 31, 1911. Postcard. Emily Loeffler. 314 APPENDIX D – SELECT PRIMARY SOURCES FOR CHAPTER IV Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through Switzerland, Compiled from the Much Esteemed Works of Ebel and Coxe, with Valuable Additions from the Observations of Recent Travellers, Seven (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1823). Character, Manners, etc. –– The Swiss are sober and industrious; and generally of a robust form: they have been celebrated, in all ages, for their bravery, good faith, hospitality, love of their ancient liberties, and passionate attachment to their native country. The amiable manners of the Swiss, particularly of the Genevese, and the Vaudois, together with the grace and modesty of the female sex, are so well known, and have been so eloquently depicted by J.J. ROUSSEAU , that they need no further encomium. Such is the intense attachment of the Swiss to their native country, that there are few who do not return there to end their days. This attachment is almost irresistible, and liable to be awakened by the most minute circumstances. Hence in the French armies, the tune called the Rans des Vaches, often sung by the Swiss milkmaids when they go to the pastures, was carefully interdicted, because it melted the Swiss soldier into tears, and seldom failed to produce desertion. This unconquerable passion seems to arise in part from a moral sensibility to the enchanting ease and frankness of the native manners, and in part from the picturesque, and wildly romantic features of their country. Few even of the most intelligent Swiss, on their return, after a long absence, can refrain from tears, when the frozen peaks of their native mountains, burst upon their view. The overpowering nature of this feeling is well described by the eloquent ROUSSEAU... 315 John Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, Including the Protestant Valleys of the Waldenses (London: John Wiley & Son, 1838). Ranz des Vaches. –– it is not uncommon to find the Ranz des Vaches spoken of, by persons unacquainted with Switzerland and the Alps as a single air, whereas they are class of melodies prevailing among and peculiar to the Alpine valleys. Almost every valley has an air of its own, but the original air is said to be that of Appenzell. Their effect in producing home sickness in the heart of the Swiss mountaineer, when heard in a distant land, and the prohibition of this music in the Swiss regiments in the service of France, on account of the number of desertions occasioned by it, are stories often repeated, and probably founded on fact. These national melodies are particularly wild in their character, yet full of melody; the choruses consist of a few remarkably shrill notes, uttered with a particular falsetto intonation in the throat. They originate in the practice of the shepherds on the Alps of communicating with one another at the distance of a mile or more, by pitching the voice high. The name Ranz des Vaches (Germ. Kuhreihen), literally cow-rows, is obviously derived from the order in which the cows march home at milking-time, in obedience to the shepherd’s call, communicated by the voice, or through the Alp-horn, a simple tube of wood, wound round with bark 5 or 6 feet long, admitting but slight modulation, yet very melodious when caught up and prolonged by the mountain echoes. In some of the remoter pastoral districts of Switzerland, from which the ancient simplicity of manners is not altogether banished, the Alp-horn supplies, on the higher pastures, where no church is near, the place of the vesper-bell. The cow-herd, posted on the highest peak, as soon as the sun has set, pours fourth the 4 or 5 first notes of the Psalm “Praise God the Lord;” the same notes are repeated from distant Alps, and all within hearting, uncovering their heads and bending their knees, repeat their evening orison, after which the cattle are penned in their stalls, and the shepherds betake themselves to rest. The traveller among the Alps will have frequent opportunities of hearing both the music of the horn and the songs of the cow-herds and dairy-maids; the latter have been thus described by Mr. Southey: –– “Surely the wildest chorus that ever was heard by human ears: a song, not of articulate sounds, but in which the voice is used as a mere instrument of music, more flexible than any which art could produce, sweet, powerful, and thrilling beyond description.” A word may be said on Swiss Husbandry to draw attention of such persons as take an interest in the subject to one or two practice peculiar to the country. The system of irrigating the meadows ... 316 Karl Baedeker, Handbook for Travellers (London and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1863), 124–125. Patience and small coin are indispensable in the Bernese Oberland. Contributions are levied upon the traveller's purse under every possible pretense. Vendors of strawberries, flowers and crystals first assail him; he has no sooner escaped their importunities than he becomes the victim to the questionable attractions of a chamois or a marmot. His admiration must not be engrossed by a cascade ever so beautiful, or by a glacier ever so imposing and magnificent, the active urchin who persists in standing on his head or turning somersaults for his express enjoyment must have his share and something more substantial with it; mendicancy is reduced to a system and a trade; those who refuse to submit to such extortion are assailed too frequently by abuse, the coarseness of which is the best evidence of the character of these supplicants for alms. If the tourist is unfortunate enough to come within range of an echo, a pistol shot is made to reverberate in his ears, and he is then called upon to pay for the unpleasant shock to which he has been subjected. Swiss damsels next make their appearance on the scene and the fast-ebbing patience of the traveller has another inroad made upon it by the national melodies with which he is indulged by these ruthless songsters— but there is still a crowning agony in store for him— there is the Alpine horn and the ranz des vaches — the associations they raise in his mind are sadly disturbed by his present experience. Surely that cannot be the air which, heard in distant climes, sets the stout heart of the mountaineer throbbing to return to his chalet and his herds! As performed under existing circumstances it is rather calculated to hasten the traveller's step out of a country in which the quiet enjoyment of Nature's glorious works is rendered by these odious intrusions almost an impossibility. The fact is, the simplicity and morality of the aboriginal character in these once lonely regions is sadly marred and corrupted by modern invasion. Still industrious and persevering, the enormous influx of travellers of late years, and the great temptation to impose upon them, together with political troubles and other causes have tended to de moralize a people, once famous for independence and honesty of character. The abuses, however, to which reference has been made, have become so crying that they will effect their own cure; the attention of Government ha* been directed to them, and commissioners have been sent to inquire into the subject. The remedy is principally with travellers themselves. Strawberries and flowers would soon wither were there no purchasers. The chamois and the marmot would speedily pine away when no longer supported by the misapplied bounty of the stranger; under like conditions the beggars would disappear for healthier employment: the echoes would only resound to the challenge of the lusty pedestrian; the Alpine songstress would become a myth, and the Ranz de vaches be reinstated in the position from winch it has been so rudely ejected. 317 William Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820, Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 19. “Scene on the Lake of Brienz” What know we of the Blest above But that they sing and that they love? Yet, if they ever did inspire A mortal hymn, or shaped the choir, Now, where those harvest Damsels float Homeward in their rugged Boat, (While all the ruffling winds are fled, Each slumbering on a mountain’s head), Now, surely, hath that gracious aid Been felt, that influence is displayed. Pupils of heaven, in order stand The rustic maidens, every hand Upon a sister’s should laid, –– To chaunt, as glides the boat along, A simple, but a touching Song; To chaunt, as Angels do above, The melodies of Peace in Love! 318 Marianne Colston, Journal of a Tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, during the Years 1819-20, and 21. Illustrated by Fifty Lithographic Prints, from Original Drawings, Taken in Italy, the Alps, and Pyrenees. In Two Volumes. Vol. 1. (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1822), 586–588. After ascending about two-thirds of the lake, we arrived at the fall of the Giessbach. Whist still at a distance, we were struck by the beautiful whiteness of the water, and the grandeur with which it fell foaming into the lake. We disembarked, and ascended for nearly a quarter of a mile, the precipitous shore; when we gained a point about midway down the fall, and exactly opposite, from whence its whole magnificent descent suddenly displays itself, and repays the traveller most richly for the fatigue he has encountered. Indeed, no words can express the delight and astonishment with which I viewed it. All that I can imagine of grand and beautiful in a cascade, are combined in this; and yet I cannot hesitate to pronounce it the finest I have yet seen It possesses a much fuller flow of water than the Staubbach; the Pissevache has but a sterile and barren grandeur, compared with it; and Terni must yield the palm, in nature, variety, and beauty. The rocks which, by impeding its progress, break it into so many distinct falls; the grandeur of the firs, which with a diversity of other forest trees clothe its sides, or romantically strike across its waters; and the picturesque little bridge of planks, suspended from one rock to another, render it altogether a picture of perfect beauty. We delayed to make a hasty sketch, and found a shed erected here, for the accommodation of travellers, by a worthy old Swiss peasant, who was formerly a school master at Brienze. From our little acquaintance with him, he might I think deserve to be immortalized by a second Goldsmith. He kept a book, in which the visitors to this delightful spot inserted their names, and we recognized the signatures of many of our English friends. On our descent, we entered his little cot, consisting of two rooms; it was situated half-way down the ascent we had climbed. He lit a fire to warm us, as we were very cold, having sat sketching on so elevated a situation; and regaled us with a little Kirshwasser, a Swiss spirit distilled from cherries, a little resembling whiskey, which the cold we had sustained rendered very acceptable. My little darling Arabella had likewise been comfortably housed here, during the whole time of our stay at the cascade. Struck by the singularity of so young a visitant, to such a spot, we wrote her name and age (two months and four days) on the cottage wall, that if she should ever live to visit these scenes at a more mature age, she may here find the memento of her early travels. The good old man promised it should never be effaced in his time, and that he would leave the same charge with his children. I must not, in writing of my own bairn, forget to commemorate his. They four fine, healthy looking children, whom he seemed to bring up in habits of order, industry, and as far as we could see, of morality and religion. The old man has in this remote spot a piano forte, on which he played us the air of “God save the King,” while his children sung the words, in German, in very good time and tune. They afterwards performed, in the same manner, the celebrated Swiss national air of the “Ranz des Vaches.” It is simple and touching; yet I do not think it is to its beauty that the wonderful effects it has produced are to be attributed, but wholly to the force of 319 association, and strong attachment to their land of beauty and sublimity, and their early pastoral habits. A cow, a little garden, and the small assistance he gains from travellers (almost all of our own nation), appeared the only means this worthy peasant had of supporting himself and four children. He received the trifle we gave him, with gratitude; and as we descended the steep declivity, to regain our bark, he and his children again serenaded us, with our own national air, but performed in a manner which I have only heard among the Swiss – with the voice, but without the words, making the melody as if produced by horns: – the effect is singular and pretty. I should not omit to mention, that his youngest child, a boy of five years old, played the “Ranz des Vaches” very correctly. We have heard much of Italian music, but I think the Swiss appear to rival them, at least in fondness for this art. 320 Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Alpenstock; or, Sketches of Swiss Scenery and Manners (Fleet Street, London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1829), 41–43. While commencing my ascent of the first stage of the opposite mountain, which is sprinkled with cottages, I remarked that the approach of a stranger had put their inmates in motion, each pouring from the doorway the younger members of the family. These beset the devious foot-way leading up to the hill-side, in a long scattered line to a considerable height, just like a train of gun powder, which only awaited my approach to explode. And so it was: for, as I advanced, one after the other set up his or her pipes in succession; offering me a little bouquets of roses, or the orchis nigra, and begging a batz in return. Had it been a fine warm day, I might have looked upon this preparation for my entertainment with a good-natured desire to be entertained; but it was terribly wrong and cold, and I had a ducking which still made my teeth chatter in my head, and, I own, I looked upon this pre-concerted plan of attack upon my ears and my pocket with a very jaundiced eye. Besides, a dear-bought night’s lodging and refreshment had tended to induce a passing economical if not parsimonious humour. So there was but a poor look-out for these songsters. Accordingly, the first two applicants I passed without noticing. The third screamed most vociferously, holding her petticoat ready for the batz. She song so loud, that I could not avoid looking her full in the face, and by way of stopping her song, gave her a truck under the chin, which she received with a low courtesy. Somehow or other the softened my heart considerably. The next, a bright face little girl was the gainer by it, as she held the flowers so near my fingers, that I was absolutely obliged to take them, and of course to give her the batz. Seen the success of the last, and that importunity had gained the day, the following insisted upon my taking her rose. I stopped and as, “Which of us was the poorer?” She answered, with hesitation, “That she was;” and there was something in the ready simplicity of her answer, and the glance she threw down to her naked feet, which made me ashamed of the sophistry, or whatever it was, which had dictated the question, and of course I satisfied the demand. The last and highest cottage turned out a party of five, a great boy, three little girls, and a sharp black-eyed urchin. This all made music. After giving once, it becomes very difficult to refuse. This I felt as I approached the rear guard. The boy I put a flight by saying I thought he was old and strong enough to earn his bread in a different manner and, turn into the rest, added, that begging was not originally a Swiss trade, and that they were abusing the beautiful flowers of their mountains, and the old and simple customs of their forefathers, when they made the excuse for an idol life and desire after the batzen of the stranger. Perhaps they did not understand me; but the mother did, and came forward from the cottage door, with her youngest still at the breast. She pleaded poverty, and a large family, and the bad weather, which obliged to the elder children to remain idle at home. She said she was a Swiss born, and did not like to see her children bag; but the bad custom had crept in no one knew how. She spoke like a mother, though faulty one, and of course was irresistible. 321 APPENDIX E – HAMMER-DULCIMER PLAYING DAMSELS ON THE WENGENALP There is one conspicuous instance of music making on the Wengenalp that was actually not a subject of distain. There are entries about two “damsels” from 1836–1860, who situate themselves on the alp just outside of Grindelwald and play for passing tourists. Twenty-four years is a substantial length of time, and at this point, it’d be difficult to determine if they were the same two individuals for this whole duration, but the ensemble is distinguished from other performers in the area because they were playing what was probably a hammer dulcimer, which one traveler describes as “a sort of nondescript guitar.” They played a program that consisted of a ranz des vaches and more vaguely titled “Heimweh-Lied,” and like the Giessbach, they sang a farewell to the travelers as they marched off. The most complete description of these girls comes from John Forbes, M. D. F. R. S., A Physician’s Holiday or a Month in Switzerland in the Summer of 1848 (London: John Murray, 1849), 236–237. “In the course of our ascent, we met with more than one road-side cottage or chalet, which tempted us to rest by other attractions than mere benches, though these were set out in attractive order. ... At the first station, our repast was accompanied by the instrumental and vocal performance of two damsels who reside in a neighboring cottage, and come to the resting-place for the special gratification of travellers. The instrument on which one of them played was a sort of nondescript guitar, and neither this nor the vocal organ, perhaps, discoursed very superior music; still there was something in the locality, the theme, and the occasion, which made the performance not a little interesting. They played, of course, the Kuhreien or Ranz des Vaches; but they also played another––the true Heimweh-Lied, or Home-sick lay of the Swiss, which would arrest the attention from its associations even if it were not itself attractive. But, as sung by these girls, it seemed to be a very pathetic air; and whether it was from its absolute quality, or from its manifold associations, I can answer for travellers, at least, feeling a sort of Heimweh in hearing it. We, of course, gave the damsels some little gratuity; and I suppose they must have been especially well- pleased therewith, as they continued their song long after we parted from them, making us often stop to listen and look back to where we could see them sitting and singing in the sun far below us in the valley.” Another representative mention comes from E. K. Washington, Echoes of Europe; or, Word Pictures of Travel (Philadelphia: James Challen & Son, 1860), 97. “Descending to Grindelwald from Wengen, two Swiss girls raised the song of Ranz des Vaches — one of them accompanying her voice on an instrument. The effect in this unworldly glacier-environed vale, was fine. Other songs were also sung — this being their way of levying a contribution on the stranger who penetrates into their valley.” 322 REFERENCES CITED Historical Sources Adam, Adolphe. Le Mal du pays ou La Batelière de Brienz. Opéra-vaudeville en un acte. 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