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Welcome to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani. Grab a cup of your favorite brew and get ready to perk up as we travel the coffee trading routes from the Arabian Peninsula to Western Europe. This hour, we’ll explore the musical connotations of coffee in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and learn about meanings associated with the drink, its consumers, and spaces of consumption. Musicians are depicted in some of the earliest illustrations of coffeehouses in 16th century Türkiye. These spaces remained closely connected to (music making) as coffeehouses began to spread throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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Here’s an example of music contemporary to the establishment of the earliest coffeehouses—a Turkish makam rast.
MUSIC TRACK
Orient-occident: 1200-1700
Hespèrion XXI
Alia Vox 2006 / 829410084161
Anon. (arr. D. Cantemir)
Tr.1 Murass'a Usul Düyek (Makam Rast) (4:40)
Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI performing Murass'a Usul Düyek (Makam Rast) from the 17th century Turkish manuscripts of music by Kantemiroglu.
Coffee was first grown in Ethiopia. While there are many different origin stories of how it first came to be consumed by humans, coffee consumption began around the 9th century in Ethiopia and by the 15th century, spread across the Red Sea to Yemen where it was consumed by monks to help stay alert during prayer. In the late 15th century, a distinct space for this drink emerged with the opening of the first coffeehouses in Constantinople (later Istanbul), Türkiye.
Today, the most well-known musical work associated with coffee is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht,” BWV 211, nicknamed the coffee cantata. Bach’s home of Leipzig was home to two coffeehouses during the 18th century: Richter’s and Zimmermann’s. Gottfried Zimmerman’s establishment first opened in 1715 as a space for coffee drinking, intellectual exchange, and mixing of a variety of people of different classes and genders. It also held musical performances, including those by Bach and his collegium ensemble.
Bach’s secular coffee cantata, composed in 1735, depicts a comic argument between a father (Herr Schlendrian) and daughter (Liesgen) about her coffee consumption. After a narrator begins by telling the audience to be quiet, Schlendrian complains of how difficult children are. Then, as we’ll hear, Liesgen sings about the joys of coffee drinking while Schlendrian adds more privileges that will be taken away if she continues to consume the foul beverage.
MUSIC TRACK
J.S. Bach, The Coffee Cantata
Amor Artis Chorale and Baroque Orchestra
Lyrichord Early Music / LEMS8039
J.S. Bach
Tr.9 Recitative: Du boses Kind, du loses Madchen (0:35)
Tr.10 Aria: Ei, wie schmeckt der Coffee susse (4:15)
Tr.11 Recitative: Wenn du mir nicht den Kaffee lasst (1:08)
Tr.12 Aria: Madchen, die von harten Sinnen (2:24)
Excerpts from Bach’s coffee cantata, performed by Ann Monoyios, soprano, John Ostendorf, bass-baritone, and the Amor Artis Chorale and Baroque Orchestra.
Listening to this discussion, we might agree with Liesgen, and feel like we must have coffee to refresh and revive ourselves. Coffeehouses sprouted up all over Engla, too, in the 17th century, and their patrons sang popular songs. Lyrics regularly compare the approaching dawn as an enemy to lovers. Perhaps composer John Wilson needed more than the beauty he described in the next song to arise in the morning.
MUSIC TRACK
Musick for severall friends: English 17th century theatre music
Newberry Consort; Mary Springfels, conductor
Harmonia Mundi 1989 / HMU907013DI
John Wilson
Tr.11 Cheerful Ayres or Ballads: Awake, awake! The morne will never rise (2:01)
Tr.12 Wherefore peep'st thou, envious day? (2:46)
Two songs by John Wilson— Awake, awake! followed by Wherefore peep’st thou, envious day? performed by the Newberry Consort under the direction of Mary Springfels.
Apart from its benefits of helping us awake and face the day, coffee and coffeehouses, were associated with activities of which not everyone approved. One late 17th-century ballad lists other coffeehouse practices and patrons. It is titled:
“A COPY of Verses, Containing, A Catalogue of young Wenches, which will be expos'd to Sale
by Inch of Candle, at the Cuckold 's Coffee-House”
Each verse goes on to describe a specific woman. Perhaps Herr Schlendrian’s concerns about coffee were not unfounded. Coffeehouses were spaces that could host revolutionary discussions leading to changes in politics, economics, and culture. People not only drank coffee but also consumed other substances as well, which were sung about in a similar manner to coffee.
MUSIC TRACK
MAYNARD, J.: XII Wonders of the World (The) / RAVENSCROFT, T.: Yonder comes a courteous Knight
The Consort of Musicke ; Anthony Rooley, conductor
Decca 2010 / 00028947847625
[Originally issued l'Oiseau-Lyre 1980 / DSLO 545]
Tobias Hume
Tr.14 The First Part of Ayres: Tobacco, tobacco (1:46)
Bass David Thomas with the Consort of Musicke performing Tobias Hume’s Tobacco, tobacco.
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Early music can mean a lot of things. What does it mean to you? Let us know your thoughts and ideas. Contact us at harmonia early music dot org, where you’ll also find playlists and an archive of past shows.
You’re listening to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani.
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MUSIC TRACK
Orient-occident: 1200-1700
Hespèrion XXI
Alia Vox 2006 / 829410084161
Anon. (arr. D. Cantemir)
Tr.21: Turna (Makam 'Uzäl Sakil) (excerpt of 3:44)
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Welcome back… This hour we’re looking at music related to coffee, its spaces, consumers, and countries in the 16th to 18th centuries.
Bach was not the first composer to write a coffee cantata. French composer Nicolas Bernier included a cantata about coffee in his third collection of published cantatas from 1705. Unlike Bach’s work, this cantata does not have operatic-style characters, but rather speaks from one perspective as an ode to coffee, beginning with the text:
“Delectable coffee, which uncharted regions
Do not know the joy your vapours inspire?
Your great empire’s provinces oppose
The rule of Bacchus?”
It goes on with political and military comparisons discussing how the beverage helps the drinker vanquish sleep. Coffee’s army here includes Minerva (the goddess of wisdom), the muses (or daughters of memory), and Apollo. All of them support coffee in recapturing those who have been poisoned by the god of wine, Bacchus.
MUSIC TRACK
The Palais-Royal
Ensemble Battistin
ABC Classics 2006 / Label ID# 196292178517
Nicolas Bernier
Tr. 21 L'Astre dont chaque nuit la clarte douce et pure (That Star, whose soft, pure radiance each night) (0:56)
Tr. 22 Air gai: Cafe, du jus de la bouteille (Coffee, of the draught in the bottle) (4:17)
Tr. 24 Air gai: O toi, liqueur que j'aime (O thou, liquid that I love) (6:32)
Excerpts from Nicholas Bernier’s coffee cantata performed by Ensemble Battistin with Sara Macliver, soprano.
These battles between beverages and Greco-Roman gods had a long history in broadside ballads and their music sung in English coffeehouses and taverns. In some, such as Rebellions Antidote, a dialogue between coffee and tea, shows a sympathetic tea commiserating with coffee about the crimes ale and wine have committed. In others, coffee is seen as the enemy, and Bacchus is exalted.
Regardless of the beverage, spaces like coffeehouses and taverns were spaces of communal gathering where broadside ballads expressed old tales, political and social commentary, and views on contemporary beverage trends. Next, we’ll hear a late 17th-century broadside ballad, Nottingham Ale.
MUSIC TRACK
Royal delight: 17th C. ballads & dances.
King's Noyse
Harmonia Mundi 2005 / HMX 2907370.71
Anon.
Disc 2, Tr.23 Nottingham Ale (2:47)
Ellen Hargis and Paul O’Dette with The King’s Noyse performed the ballad Nottingham Ale.
The combative language used in some of these ballads is no coincidence. The spread of coffeehouses in Europe came from diplomatic and mercantile exchanges between European nations and the Ottoman Empire. Dialogues about alcohol versus coffee were often thinly veiled views of the influence of Ottoman culture in Europe. One important diplomatic exchange was ambassador Suleiman Aga’s 1669 visit to Paris. In an attempt to repair relationships between Türkiye and France, he brought large amounts of coffee and served it in elaborate ceremonies. Although the diplomatic exchange with French king Louis XIV failed, the taste for coffee remained and spread throughout France.
This hour’s featured release, Routes du café by Ensemble Masques from 2019, showcases music of different geographic areas where coffee was consumed in the 17th and 18th centuries. It ties together early Baroque instrumental works from London and Paris; Bernier and Bach’s coffee cantatas; and works by late-17th-century Sufi composer Nayî Osman Dede in into a musical coffee journey. Here are three taksim compositions by Dede, the first for ney (a wooden flute), the second for oud (a plucked string instrument), and third for ney.
MUSIC TRACK
Routes du café
Ensemble Masques
Alpha 2019 / ALPHA543
Nayî Osman Dede
Tr.1 Taksim ney (2:39)
Tr.10 Taksim oud (1:09)
Tr.12 Taksim ney II (:56)
Three taksim works by Nayî Osman Dede performed by Adrien Espinouze on ney and oud with Ensemble Masques on our featured release, Routes du café.
While the taksim generally features one instrument – sometimes with the accompaniment of others -- Dede’s rast compositions feature several instruments together, playing the same melody with different ornaments and variants.
MUSIC TRACK
Routes du café
Ensemble Masques
Alpha 2019 / ALPHA543
Nayî Osman Dede
Tr.11 Rast Dilârâ Saz Semâî (4:12)
Ensemble Masques performed Nayî Osman Dede’s Rast Dilârâ Saz Semâî in their 2019 Alpha recording Routes du café.
The diplomatic exchange between different coffee cultures is represented musically in this recording through new compositions by Ensemble Masque violist, Kathleen Kajioka. Her works combine elements of 18th-century Turkish and Western Baroque music. Kajioka’s Wahda Sarabande combines elements of Baroque dance forms with wahda “a rhythmic mode from the Middle East in 5/8 time.” It showcases her interests in Baroque music and skill on a Middle-Eastern bowed string instrument: the kaman.
MUSIC TRACK
Routes du café
Ensemble Masques
Alpha 2019 / ALPHA543
Kathleen Kajioka
Tr.15 Wahda sarabande (3:51)
Kathleen Kajioka, on the kaman and Ensemble Masques playing Kajioka’s Wahda Sarabande, a dance drawing on rhythmic modes from the places of coffee’s origin combined with Baroque formal structures influenced by music in European coffeehouses on our featured release Routes du café.
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Harmonia is a production of WFIU and part of the educational mission of Indiana University.
Support comes from Early Music America: a national organization that advocates and supports the historical performance of music of the past, the community of artists who create it, and the listeners whose lives are enriched by it. On the web at EarlyMusicAmerica-dot-org.
Additional resources come from the William and Gayle Cook Music Library at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
We welcome your thoughts about any part of this program, or about early music in general. Contact us at harmonia early music dot org. You can follow us on Facebook by searching for Harmonia Early Music.
The writer for this edition of Harmonia is Devon Nelson.
Thanks to our studio engineer Michael Paskash, and our production team: LuAnn Johnson, Aaron Cain, and John Bailey. I’m Angela Mariani, inviting you to join us again for the next edition of Harmonia.
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