Bias or Factuality? Music in Majestic Representation and Public State Ceremonies in Late 18^th Century Portugal, as Seen by German Travellers

Abstract

In the second half of the 18^th century, travels to Portugal increased significantly, partly due to the military movements provoked by the peninsular wars, partly because of the curiosity that the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and subsequent reconstruction of the city had aroused, partly because of scientific expeditions, and partly due to the emerging popularization of travelling and tourism among the middle class. The thus resulting travelogues contain precious elements which help us better understand and characterize the musical and cultural practices of the time. However, their use requires a careful contextualization, as well as the identification of several typical filters and meta-discourses that, quite often, might have little to do with the observed reality. In this article, we will consider a group of German travelogues – which have traditionally been, by far, the least studied by Portuguese musicology – to examine, using a three-layer-analysis methodological approach (extra-discursive, intra-discursive and identity/alterity), how Portuguese music, and particularly the one related to majestic representation and public State ceremonies, was apprehended by German travellers.

1 Preliminary Considerations

1.1 The Problematic of Using Travelogues as Musicological Sources

When analyzing travel reports, or travelogues, as a source for musicological studies, the first thing needed is to define the object of study. We consider a travel report or travelogue to be a text that describes a travel experience that existed¹. This broad definition comprehends books (published or unpublished), newspaper articles, letters (published or unpublished), newspaper articles, etc.

The problem of using travel reports as a musicological or historical sources involves the degree of objectivity that we attribute – or choose to attribute – to the traveller's discourse. This problem is visible, as Hans-Jakob Zimmer clearly identifies in his doctoral thesis (Zimmer 2019, p. 21), in the opposition between the «factual primacy» of reports, defended by theorists such as Jürgen Osterhammel, for whom the travel report, despite containing many subjective elements, can and should be taken as documentary evidence of the reality described in it, that is, they must be read primarily as historical documents (Osterhammel 1999, p. 122), and the idea that, on the contrary, a report characterizes not the observed reality, but the observer himself, as stated, among many others, by Peter Brenner (Brenner 2010). Michael Harbsmeier puts the emphasis on the fact that the subjective parts should also be taken as valuable sources, not of the described facts, but of the mentality which produced the description (Harbsmeier 1982, pp. 1–2):

man [muss] sich eigentlich wundern, warum bisher so wenige auf den Gedanken gekommen sind, […] die Reiseberichte nicht als Quellen zu den beschriebenen Ländern oder der literarischen Phantasie ihrer Autoren, sondern ganz einfach als Zeugnisse für die spezifische Denkungsart des Verfassers und indirekt für die Mentalität seines Heimatlandes anzusehen. Reisebeschreibungen können in diesem Sinne als eine Arte unfreiwilliger kultureller Selbstdarstellung der Ausgangskultur verstanden werden. Schon diese Unfreiwilligkeit verleiht den so verstandenen texten ein ganz anderes Maß von Glaubwürdigkeit².

In other scientific areas, for example in Ethnography or Ethnomusicology, this is a well-established point: a Western description of a non-Western culture, for example, will always imply a detailed study of the circumstances and factors that led to the shaping of this view; however, in other areas of knowledge, such as historical musicology or literary studies, this issue is not usually considered. What is described in the travelogue is often taken as a fact or historical truth, simply because it is an eyewitness account of another time. It is therefore urgent to recognize that there is a bias, whether chronological or geographical, even within the same region (like Europe) and within the same time frame (for instance, the 18^th century). In other words, a travel report is, above all, the travel experience of the person who wrote it. cases.

In an essay on foreign travelogues and their musicological use, Rui Vieira Nery draws attention to some aspects of German reports that can shape the descriptions contained therein: the quest to provide “useful notions” to readers, taking advantage of the enormous popularity of this literary genre in Europe; the constant confirmation of the moral superiority of the country of origin, as opposed to the exotic reality described; the fact that travellers do not master the language, with all the resulting misinterpretations; their own religious prejudices, which vary according to the traveller’s origin; very often, the lack of a solid musical education, which leads to superficial appreciations; and the tendency to look to the Portuguese reality under the light of German aesthetic currents, which often result in the search for elements (like the Volksgeist or German pre-romanticism) where they simply do not exist (Nery 2001, pp. 78–79)³.

As we see, there are some filters which should be taken in considerations before simply using the text as a 100% true testimony. With this in mind, we find appropriate to consider the three levels of analysis proposed by Fernando Clara (Clara 2007, pp. 25–26): the extra-discursive materiality, which examines what is external to the text, such as the historical, sociological and political framework; the intra-discursive materiality, which examines what is contained in the text, the discourse literally written in the text; and finally, a level dealing with issues of identity and alterity, which explores the text in a transnational and transcultural perspective.

1.2 German Travelogues in This Study

Departing from this theoretical framework, we will take in consideration German travelogues of the second half of the 18^th century which contain references to the music in Portugal, in State representations of the public sphere. For the sake of brevity, a selection was made based on relevance to the topic in question, resulting in four reports with rich descriptions to the detriment of others with only casual mentions⁴.

The selected sources are the following (Table 1):

Table 1. Sources used for this study.

Johann Andreas von Jung (1735–1789) was a Prussian diplomat who came to Portugal as a soldier, in the context of the so-called Fantastic War, joining the army commanded by the Count of Schaumburg-Lippe, who had been entrusted by the Marquis of Pombal and oversaw carrying out a reform of the Portuguese army. With an extremely conflicted personality, marked by lawsuits brought against him by defamation, mythomania and wrongful appropriation of third-party money, he was dismissed from his job as Legationsrath (employee of the Prussian Embassy in Danzig) by Frederic II himself, having been the subject to public admonitions and a disciplinary process. Heir to a large fortune from his late grandfather, who had been the king's pastry chef, Jung retired to a castle in Falkenhagen, leading a discrete and embittered existence. In 1778, sixteen years after his travel to Portugal, he published with great success the first Portuguese grammar for Germans, the Portugiesische Grammatik, which contained an essay on Portuguese literature and customs, where, amidst a lot of information of previous bibliographic collection, Jung writes some descriptions of his personal observations about Portuguese public life.

Little is known about Heinrich Vogel. His travelogue was published in 1797, supposedly thirty years after the events he describes. It is a story full of adventures, much to the taste of adventure books of the time, in which a series of very peculiar episodes would have taken him on a journey around the world, passing through Portugal. The account itself presents a whole range of highly unlikely and possibly fictionalized stories; however, the descriptions of Portugal are very detailed and reveal in loco knowledge, so whether they were collected by Vogel or by someone else, they constitute a rich source for musicological study.

Karl August Engelhardt (1768–1834) was born in Dresden, Saxony, where he spent his entire professional career as an archivist, writer, and pedagogue. In 1794, after studying theology at the University of Wittenberg, he gave up a career in public administration to devote himself to literature. Ten years later, he took up the post of archivist at the Dresden Public Library and remained an archivist until his death. He published twelve volumes of children's literature and several pedagogical works, books on the history of Saxony, based on his privileged access to little-known sources, as well as travel accounts in Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Although it is legitimate to think that his Portuguese travelogue could have been written based not on the testimony, but on the consultation of archival sources, the degree of detail in his descriptions (which we cannot trace back to any other known source) leads us to believe, as in Vogel, that they result from on-site observations of an existent travel to Portugal (if not from Engelhardt himself, than of someone else), and for that reason this text is included in the study.

In 1799, a German translation of a Dutch travelogue was published in Hildesheim, reportedly referring to a travel made in 1797 by a Dutch trader. Nothing was said about the author, unless that he was the son of a certain Admiral H., and the translation was made by writer Susette Horsting, born von Elgelbronner d’Aubigny. Although technically not German, this travelogue – due to its interest, its German linguistic and cultural proximity, and the fact that it circulated mostly, if not exclusively, in the German translation – is included in the group of German reports.

Esther Bernard (ca. 1767-after 1833) was a Prussian writer, essayist, and translator of Jewish origin. She was known in her time for her staunch defence of women's rights, namely the right to education, civic participation, and financial independence, having been involved in public debates on these issues. She frequented the circuit of Berlin literary salons, having been friends with influential personalities in the German culture of her time, such as the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, the poet Jean-Paul Richter, the writer Madame de Genlis and the salonnière Rahel Varnhagen. She was an assiduous operagoer, multilingual and avid reader. She wrote a theatre review, some poetry, a travel report about Saxony, and tried to position herself as a writer in a publishing market still very dominated by the male presence and the expectation of what a woman could and could not write. After converting to Christianity, she came to Portugal with her husband, Wilhelm Domeier, the Duke of Sussex's personal physician, who in turn had business to attend to in Lisbon and demanded the presence of his doctor. Her travelogue on Portugal, published in two volumes as a collection of letters to a hypothetical addressee, was present at the Frankfurt and Leipzig book fairs, was listed in the newspapers of the time, was republished five years later, and served as material for several magazine articles that were extracted from it.

Although published as printed books, each one of these sources have been sparsely used, if at all, in Portuguese musicological studies. Their authors – adventurers like Vogel, military like Jung, traders like the anonymous Dutch author of the Tagebuch, or tourists like Engelhardt and Bernard, the latter also being the only female writer of the group – belonged to the middle class, without aristocratic connections, so they mostly describe public ceremonies, observable by any citizen.

2 Descriptions of Music in the Selected Travelogues

Travellers from Prussia, such as Jung and Bernard, or in some way affected by the Prussian sphere, show a certain strangeness towards the public State ceremonies and the type of majestic representation they observed in Portugal. In an extra-discursive perspective, taking a close look to Prussian public ceremonies might be a good tool to understand why.

The public ceremonies of the Prussian court were indelibly marked by the long reign of Frederick of Prussia (1740 to 1786), and had two fixed moments throughout the year: from December to February the Winter Entertainments, which consisted of the opera season of the Berlin and at the gala balls at the palace; and in May and September the troop inspection at the Tiergarten (a huge public event in which the King symbolically inspected the many thousands of soldiers in the Prussian army, and which ended with a gala at the Berlin Palace). Outside of this fixed scheme, there were festivities to celebrate extraordinary events related to the royal family, such as births, marriages, state visits, etc., as they occurred. Frederick the Great had an aversion to public ceremonial that departed from these models. In 1751, being called upon to resolve a hierarchical dispute between several court ladies, who did not agree on who should have the primacy in a ceremony, Frederick replied: «die dümmste soll vorangehen» [the dumbest is the one that should go ahead] (Biskup 2012, p. 56). Prussian travelers were, therefore, used to public state ceremonies associated with military power and opera, where the presence of the King and the royal family was mandatory, visible, and celebrated. This position was maintained by his successor: see, for example, the list of festivities planned by Frederick William II to celebrate the visit to Berlin, in 1789, of his sister Wilhelmina of Prussia (Henzel 1994)⁵.

In Portugal, since the destruction of the Tejo Opera House by the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755, the majestic representation did not find its exponent in the theater building, opera having retreated, for the Royal Family, to an entertainment status of a more private nature. Thus, the presence of the court in the opera, whether in court theaters or in public theaters, was an activity practiced on a small scale, naturally with an associated code of distinction, but without the representative apparatus that the same activity was covered with in Berlin.

The following section examines the relevant excerpts within the chosen sources, confining the analysis only to the spaces and practices that were mentioned by travellers. Other spaces and practices not mentioned in these sources (for instance, other public theaters) will not be examined here.

2.1 The Royal Theatre of Salvaterra De Magos

Johann Andreas von Jung provided the first known German description of the Royal Theatre of Salvaterra de Magos, founded in 1753 and located in a small village 60 km northeast of Lisbon⁶. He goes through various aspects of the musical practice encountered, commenting in a way that seems to be an implicit comparison with the country of origin. His first appreciation goes to the quality of the Portuguese chapel (Jung 1778, p. 56):

Der Hof unterhält eine vortreffliche Kapelle, und dabei einige sehr gute verschnittene und unverschnittene italiänische Sänger, die, wenn er sich während dem Carneval in Salvaterra, 6 Meilen von Lissabon, an der andern Seite des Tagus aufhält, italiänische comische Opern aufführen⁷.

The traveler's pleasure could be linked to the quality of the singers, but it could also result from the correspondence between what was presented and the expected model: a Royal Chapel that performed Italian opera and had castrated and non-castrated singers, just like the Prussian chapel of Frederick II, where the castrati enjoyed a special status as singers. Jung goes even further and says that the use of castrates did not cause any strangeness, and takes the opportunity to make a comment that can be interpreted as a reference to the existence of homosexual practices, as well as a mockery of the supposedly frivolous and foolish character of the English (by implicit opposition to the far more keen and accurate character of the Prussians) (Jung 1778, pp. 56–57):

Auch auf diesem Theater waren die Rollen alle mit Mannspersonen besetzt, welches aber keinen sonderlichen Uebelstand machte, da junge schöne Castraten zu Frauenzimmerrollen genommen wurden, die zu Anfange des Jahres 1763 den englischen und andern Officieren, ehe sie es merkten manchen Seufzer und Handkuß abgedrungen haben⁸.

The informal atmosphere, in turn, contrasted with the solemnity of the Prussian Carnival presentations, in the absence of strict exclusivity in the former – the fact that foreigners were allowed to reside in the same place and spend time with the royal family (Jung 1778, p. 56):

Diese Carnevals- oder eigentliche Winterlustbarkeiten, bestehn in Jagden, womit sich die königliche Familie das ganze Jahr erlustigte; nur mit dem Unterschiede, daß in dieser Zeit die Fremden Erlaubniß haben, ihnen beizuwohnen, und dazu aus dem königlichen Marstall wit Pferden versehn werden. Hier hatte man Gelegenheit, mit der königlichen Familie täglich, und ohne sonderlichen Zwang, es sei auf der Jagd, wo die Königinn immer ihren nunmehr verstorbenen Gemahl begleitete, oder beim Spiel, welches sehr spät in die Nacht dauerte, da der hochselige König niemals vor 4 Uhr des Morgens sich zu Bette verfügte, umzugehen⁹.

This strangeness with this lighter protocol is also present in the implicit criticism of the unreserved behavior of the Portuguese Queen (Jung 1778, p. 57):

Dem Carneval ein lustiges Ende zu machen, wurden am letzten Tage alle Rollen durcheinander geworfen. Die Liebhaberinn machte den Vater, der Großvater eine Kinderrolle u.s.w. Dieser Faschingsstreich verbreitete ein so ausgelaßnes Vergnügen unter die Zuschauer, daß ich niemals jemand lauter und herzlicher habe lachen sehen, als die Königinn, die sich zuleßt nicht mehr halten konnte, und athemlos dem Könige über den Schooß fiel¹⁰.

Based on the description of the roles (with children and elderly people), we were able to identify the opera which was performed in the Carnival of 1763 (the only one attended by Jung, whose stay in Portugal was from July 1762 to March 1763). It was L’amore artigiano, from Gaetano Latilla over a libretto from Goldoni, that was known to have been performed in this theater a year before, and that only thanks to this passage was possible to confirm that it was also performed in 1763¹¹.

2.2 The Lisbon Opera House

In Portugal, in the second half of the 18th century, the triumphal representation of the State took place mostly at public festivities, in the tradition of the Baroque, its locations being the church, the palace or the street, that is, outside the opera house. King Joseph (1714–1777) had tried to bring the representation of power to the scope of the court opera and ordered the construction of a big, luxurious opera house, which was destroyed in the earthquake and never replaced. The gap between the royal representation par excellence and the opera theatre was such that the Italian Opera House in Lisbon, the Teatro de São Carlos, was founded in 1793 by a group of businessmen and not by the Crown¹². It was a bourgeois theatre where aristocrats and civil society converged. The royal presence was, therefore, the exception, and even on days of royal celebration there were no paid tickets, only invitations, making it difficult to attend for those who did not belong to the sphere of the court, as was the case of German travellers.

Unaware of Portuguese representation mechanisms, and having little or no chance of coming across the Royal Family in opera, German travellers often criticize the absence of monarchs in public theatres, as does Esther Bernard (Bernard 1802, 258):

In London ist es das angenehmste Schauspiel, die königliche Familie im Schauspiel zu sehen. An solchen Abenden kann man nur mit der größten Mühe einen Platz im Schauspielhaus bekommen. Aber es ist auch ein erfreulicher Anblick, das tugendhafte königliche Paar, das in Liebe und Eintracht alt geworden ist, von der Menge ihrer Kinder umgeben zu sehen, die alle schöne Gestalten sind. Wenn man die englischen Prinzen und Prinzessinnen sieht, erinnert man sich lebhaft an eine Gruppe der Niobe. Die Aufmerksamkeit der Zuschauer ist an solchen Abenden mehr auf die schöne königliche Familie als auf die Schauspieler gerichtet. Und mit welchem lauten Jubel wird der König, die Königin und jedes Glied der königlichen Familie beym Hereintreten in die Loge und beym Hinausgehen begrüßt! Die armen Portugiesen sehen ihren König nie; der portugiesiche Hof entzieht sich sorgfältig dem Anblick des Volks¹³.

Unlike London or Berlin, the place where the royal family showed itself to the people was not the opera, but churches, streets, and bullrings¹⁴. We shall now look how these German travelogues describe the last two.

2.3 Processions

The mysterious Dutch merchant reported in his Tagebuch the arrival of the Portuguese Prince of Brazil, future King John the 6^th, to the southern village of Évora, on the 12^th January 1797 (Tagebuch 1799, 43–4):

Gerade als wir aus dem Kloster zurück gingen, kam der Prinz und die Prinzessin von Brasilien mit ihrem ganzen Gefolge an. Dieser Zug war nicht ausnehmend glänzend. Der Prinz saß in einer Chaise coupée, die durch zwei Maulesel gezogen wurde, neben ihm sein Neffe, der Infant. Ein Detachement Kavallerie escortirte den Wagen: nun folgte eine 4sitzige Kutsche mit 6 Mauleseln bespannt. Die Prinzessin und drei Damen saßen darin. Sie wurde wie die vorige durch ein Detachement Kavallerie begleitet. Viele Chaisen und Wagen mit dem Gefolge endigten den Zug. Alle Glocken der zahllosen Kirchen lauteten, und machten einen solchen Lärm, daß einem Jeden Hören und Sehen verging. Der Prinz logirte diese Nacht in dem Pallast des Bischofs. Den Abend wurde die Stadt illuminirt¹⁵.

The prince's arrival in Alentejo was probably not as imposing as the public festivity made in Lisbon, in 1760, to mark the second anniversary of the failed attack on King Joseph, and his vigorous recovery afterwards. Said festivity, for which a big wooden structure was built on the outskirts of Lisbon, in Belém, was described by Guiseppe Marco Antonio Baretti (1719–1789), an Italian literary critic, writer and linguist, in the most complimentary way (Baretti 1839, pp. 109–113):

Verso le nove giunse il detto segretario di Stato [the Marquis from Pombal], preceduto da molti gentiluomini, da molti servidori, da un tamburino e da un trombettiere, tutti a cavallo. Sua Eccellenza era in una carrozza tirata da sei cavalli biancastri. Quella carrozza era intorniata da venticinque guardie reali a cavallo. Due palafrenieri andavano a piede di qua, e due di là dalla carrozza. [...] Pochi minuti dopo ecco il Patriarca. E che Patriarca! Tranne il Papa, non v’è signore ecclesiastico nel mondo che s’abbia tanta pompa intorno. Precedevano la sua carrozza due carrozze a sei cavalli piene de’ suoi officiali e ministri. [...] Dietro al Patriarca veniva la sua carrozza di rispetto, che una più bella non credo l’avesse la regina Semiramide […] Il popolo fece a un dipresso la cerimonia rispettosa al Re, che aveva fatta un quarto d’ora prima al suo principal ministro. Entrato il Re, venne la Regina puré in uma carrozza a sei cavalli leardi e bellissimi, preceduta da due altre carrozze, e seguita da due altre, tutte piene delle sue dame, e ciascuna a sei cavalli di vari mantelli. [...] Tanto la Regina quanto le figlie erano magnificamente vestite, con cerchi grandissimi, e con un tesoro immenso di brillanti in capo, al collo, al seno, alle maniche, in cintura e alle scarpe. Quelle figlie sono quattro principesse di bella statura [...] e una d’esse, che credo sai la terza, manca poco a essere un plusquamperfetto di bellezza [...] Terminò la messa, e terminò il feffauttare e il violinare di buon numero di castrati e di suonatori, de’ quali è mantenuta in corte copia molto maggiore che non di professori di lettere in Coimbra; e ognuno se ne tornò per la via ond’era venuto, sudato e affaticato, chè la faccenda fu lunga, e il caldo fu infernale¹⁶.

Baretti, perhaps used to the opulent religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church, did not hide his pleasure at seeing the procession, for which he possibly had more reading keys than the Dutch merchant. But despite all differences, especially those regarding size, the procession at the entrance to Évora also had cavalry guards, chaises coupés, various carriages and even a coach with six animals, which were the vehicle of distinction par excellence throughout Europe. The Dutch traveller's greatest displeasure is channelled into the ringing of bells and their inclusion in the royal staging: in their incessant ringing, they reinforced and underlined the Catholic Church's connection to the Royal Family and gave sacred endorsement to secular codes of distinction.

2.4 Bullfights

A public spectacle that caught the attention of foreign travellers was the bullfight. The explicit mention in the title of the Dutch trader's diary – “with a description of bullfighting in Portugal” – shows how this practice could serve as an exotic decoy to attract readers. According to Heinrich Vogel, they were the most popular shows in Lisbon (Vogel 1797, 94):

ein Auto da Fe, bey welchem ein armer Jude, oder andrer Ketzer bey langsamem Feuer geröstet wird, und ein Stiergefecht, das sind Schauspiele, an denen selbst das weibliche Auge sich nicht müde sehen kann¹⁷.

Bullfighting was, indeed, a very popular event rooted in Portuguese tradition. Its presence in public life was so pronounced, that the boundaries between the sacred and the profane were often blurred, as was the case with bullfights in honor of Saint Anthony or Our Lady of Remedies. In the 18th century, bullfighting was often linked to solemnity and important celebrations (Madureira 1990, p. 92). The great visual impact, the associated ceremonial (with strict rules for parades, entrances, and greetings, like a hierarchical order with the King on top), and the subliminal display of the Crown's military strength, even in times of peace, made the 18th century bullfight a public spectacle par excellence for the staging of royal power.

As was customary in large public celebrations, bullfights could be held in large squares, such as Rossio or Terreiro do Paço, or in any place where a temporary wooden structure was set up, like the example mentioned above described by Baretti (P. J. da C. P. Ferreira 2012, 53). Vogel thus describes what he saw in 1765, in front of the Palace of Ajuda, in Lisbon (Vogel 1797, 95):

Da diese Stiergefechte hier noch mit aller Pracht und Feyerlichkeit der Ritterzeiten gehalten werden, und sie vielleicht manche meiner Leser nur von Hörensagen kennen, so will ich ihnen hier eine Beschreibung davon mittheilen. Wenn der Hof den dazu festgesetzten Tag, durch Trompeten und Pauckenschall hat bekannt machen lassen, dann scheint Jedermann vom Taumel des Vergnügens ergriffen zu seyn, und allenthalben hört und sieht man nichts als Frohlocken und Zubereitungen zu diesem festlichen Tage. Die vorderste Seite des königlichen Pallasts wird mit einem Amphitheater oder Halbzirkel eigefaßt, auf dem Balkons errichtet sind, auf welche die Fenster stoßen, durch die man aus den Zimmern tritt. Der mit einem prächtigen, von Gold und Edelsteinen schimmernden, Thronhimmel bedeckte Balkon des Königs, nimmt den Mittelpunct ein, und die übrigen Plätze dieses Amphitheaters werden zu sehr theuren Preisen vermiethet. Rund umher zeigen sich in allen Fenstern, und auf den an den Häusern erbaueten Gerüsten die Damen mit ihren Begleitern in dem kostbarsten Putze, und alle Balkons sind mit den reichsten Stoffen ausgeschlagen¹⁸.

The role of the King as the most important part (and the actual protagonist) of the celebration was reinforced by the choice of the royal palace instead of a public square, the assembly of the structure in a semicircle incorporating the main side of the palace, the central position, and the expressive decoration of the royal tribune. The staging of royal power was underlined by the royal guard, the omnipresence of weapons and the participation of the aristocracy (Vogel 1797, 95–6):

So bald der König in seine Loge getreten ist, nimmt das Fest seinen Anfang und die königliche Leibwache rückt auf den Platz, den ein Haufen in rothen Taft gekleideter junger Leute mit Wasser besprenget, und um welchen die Alguazils, oder Schaarwächter, zur Vermeidung aller Unordnung, in geschlossenen Gliedern, und mit vorgesenkten Hellebarden stehen. Sind diese Verfügungen getroffen, dann nähern sich die Torreadores, (so nennt man die Ritter, welche fechten sollen,) unter dem Schall einer langsamen Kriegsmusik, von ihren Bedienten, welche ihre Lanzen führen, und ihnen nie von der Seite weichen, begleitet. Nicht selten wird der Anfang des Festes mit Aufzügen und Tänzen riesenförmiger Figuren und Negers gemacht¹⁹.

Thus, we have the description of a slow, solemn, war-like music that alternated with black dances. This coexistence of two different musical styles is corroborated by the report of the Dutch merchant, who attended a bullfight held in Terreiro do Paço, for the celebration of the birth of D. Maria Isabel de Bragança in May of that year and the postpartum recovery of the mother²⁰. The bullfight was seen by around 28,000 people, in a triumphant affirmation of power in which the arrival of the royal family was announced through music, with pomp and solemnity (Tagebuch 1799, 133):

Um 3 Uhr Nachmittages kam der Prinz und die Prinzessin mit dem übrigen Hofstaate. Man hörte 4 Chöre von Musikanten, welche sich in den 4 Ecken des Platzes befanden. Gleich bei ihrer Ankunft wurde das Fest mit einem glänzenden Einmarsch durch den groβen Portikus eröfnet²¹.

After the parade of the guards, both on foot and on horseback, of the bullfighters and their servants, the choreography culminates with the greeting to the royal family, in front of the tribune. Lastly, the bullfighting commander and the triumphal chariots with musicians enter the arena:

Nachdem auch dieser sein Kompliment auf die eben beschriebene Art gemacht hatte, kamen vier große prächtig dekorirte Triumpf-Wagen, deren jeder von 6 Maulesen gezogen wurde, die mit emblematischen Figuren verziert waren, welche so sinnreich zusammengestellt erschienen, daß kein Mensch begreifen konnte, was sie bedeuten sollen. Diese Wagen waren übrigens mit maskirten Musikanten besetzt. Nachdem sie einige Mal um den Platz gefahren waren, machten sie zweien kostbar gekleideten Pikeurs von dem Prinzen Platz, welche mit den Stieren zu Pferde fechten mußten²².

The other style of music, which in Vogel's description were “black dances”, is here, in the Dutch merchant's description, made by men and women of low status (Tagebuch 1799, 137):

Während der Zeit, daß diese Pikeurs abgingen, um weniger kostbare Pferde zu holen, kamen einige Trupps von Männern und Weibern: die letztern waren von der Klasse, die man in Paris les dames de la halle nennt. Jeder Trupp war verschieden gekleidet, und von ihren eigenen Musikanten begleitet. Sie tanzten verschiedene Ballets, die ganz artig waren, mit Tamburins, kupfernen Becken, Kastagnetten u. dgl²³.

The “dames de la halle” were Parisian market women who, in October 1789, marched to Versailles in a crowd of thousands, to protest the shortage of bread and to demand concrete measures from the King; they invaded and sacked the palace and returned to Paris in triumph, with the King and with the bread. To the contemporary reader, this expression signalized that these women were of low social status, without education, did not follow the rules and acted outside the behaviour standards for their sex – in a word, poor, wilful and marginalized women, as would be the case of those who danced in bullfights.

This coexistence ensures the representation, also musical, of different social groups at the party: both the lower classes (in the dances) and the higher classes (symbolized here in the solemn function of the marches that precede the important entrances). Music in its solemn march/popular dance duality would serve this purpose of representing the various groups, in a logic of cohesion and social appeasement, in which each one plays its place, all subordinate to the King.

3 Conclusion

We can now summarize the contents exposed, using the tripartite analysis model proposed at the beginning of this article.

From the intra-discursive level, we can pick concrete elements which help characterize the musical practice of majestic representations and public State ceremonies: the opera performed in the Theatre of Salvaterra de Magos in the Season of 1763; the more or less informal atmosphere of that theatre, even in the presence of the King and Queen; the coexistence of two music types in bullfights, one type being slow, martial, markedly solemn and associated with power, which announced the arrival of the royal family and other important actors of the parade, and the second type being more entertainment-like, with popular instruments such as castanets, tambourines and cymbals, and dances performed by people of low status, including women of low social classes and men of African descent.

On the extra-discursive level, we find the displeasure for the lack of clear separation, in Portuguese musical practices, between the sacred and the profane spheres; the existence of different spaces for the representation of the State in Portugal and in the German States (which in the first case were essentially the church, the street and public parties, and in the second the opera); but also the normality of the use, in the Prussian as in the Portuguese Chapel, of castrated and non-castrated singers.

On the identity and alterity level, we see the affirmation of the moral superiority of the country of origin, the rejection of unknown models, the seek for a national discourse and for depicting the exotic.

Taking all these levels, we have now an amount of information that is more detailed and more robust than what we would get if we simply took every word of the travelogue as factual truth. On the other hand, the fact that each travelogue is full of the author's personal opinions did not prevent us from extracting useful information for musicological research. In this example, the information can be used not only in studies about the repertoire and music practices in the 18^th century, but also of music and power, or even for the history of mentalities and international relations.

Departing from the particular case of majestic representation and public State ceremonies, we hope to have exemplified, in broad strokes, a possible approach to using German travelogues as a musicological source, and also highlighted the important contribution of these sources to our knowledge of musical practices in Portugal in the 18^th century, and whose in-depth study – of the sources – can only be encouraged.