PDF file, free to read, of the ECF article. - Eighteenth

The Wandering Minstrel:
An Eighteenth-Century Fiction?
Patricia Howard
O
f all the various productions of the press, none are so eagerly received
'" as the writings of travellers."t Travellers' tales formed one of the
most popular genres of eighteenth-century literature. The fact that travel
itself was becoming easier and safer stimulated rather than quenched the
thirst for descriptions of serious scientific inquiries, accounts of the Grand
Tour, quests for romantic landscape, and investigations into the curious
manners and customs of societies near and far. Travel books were published
in proliferation, widely read, and frequently referred to by other travellers,
so that a chain of reception can often be established. A seminal text, Joseph
Addison's Remarks on Several parts of Italy (1705)2 shaped the aims and
ambitions of many travellers embarking on their own tours, Boswell among
them: "I shall certainly take Addison's Travels with me, as you hint. I
shall read them abroad, with high relish."3 Almost as influential, and not
I Ralph Griffiths, Monthly Review 38 (March 1768), 174.
2 Nine further editions were published in London between 1718 and 1767, in addition to editions in
Glasgow (1755) and Dublin (1773). It was also translated into French (1722) and Dutch (1724).
3 Boswell to John Johnston, 23 July 1763, in The Correspondence of James Boswell and John
JohllSton of Grange, ed. Ralph S. Walker (London: Heinemann, 1966), p. 98. Addison's readers
are discussed in Charles L. Batten, Pleasllrable Instruction: Form and Convention in EighteenthCentlll}' Travel Literatllre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); and Percy G. Adams,
Travel Literatllre and the Evoilltioll of the Novel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983).
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 13, Number I, October 2000
42 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
only with musicians, were Charles Burney's two journals, The Present
State ofMusic in France and Italy (1771) and The Present State of Music
in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces (1773). Such works
were read throughout Europe, and national pride was often wounded by
the readiness of authors to pronounce on the countries and customs they
visited so fleetingly. Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who wrote accounts of
his own musical journeys, twice attacked Burney's imperfect knowledge
and faulty judgment, declaring that "I would state openly that Mr Burney
is a poor observer of things musical." (Burney's reply was more subtly
phrased: "Reichardt is an animated and rapid writer and composer ... a
patriotic and decisive critic.")4
The classification of Addison's Remarks and Burney's tour-journals as
non-fiction is unproblematic, but the boundary between travel fact and
travel fiction was often muddied, sometimes deliberately SO.5 Practical
guide books with no literary pretensions, such as Thomas Taylor's Gentleman's Pocket Companion for Travelling into Foreign Parts (1722) or
Joachim Nemeitz's Sejour de Paris (1727), lie at one end of a spectrum,
which encompasses both blatant fraud-for example, William Symson's
New Voyage to the East Indies (1715), a totally fictitious work by an invented author, purporting to be a true record of a journey-and narratives in
which "every fact hath its foundation in truth," as Fielding declared of his
Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755). Novels with travel as a theme extended the genre into imaginative fiction, and, as with travel journals, the
borderline between fact and fiction is sometimes indistinct. While no one
is likely to take Candide (1758) as a record of Voltaire's own adventures, to
read Smollet's Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) as equally fictitious
is to miss important biographical clues. 6 Andjust as we can trace factual experiences in novels, some narratives claiming to be true accounts can be
found to bear the imprint of a well-read rather than a well-travelled au4 "leh sagte es doch unverholen--daB Herr Burney ein schlechter musikalischer Beobachter is!."
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Brie.fe eines al!flllerksalllen Reisenden die Musik betre.ffend (Frankfurt
and Leipzig, 1776), vol. I, letter 3, p. 65; see also vol. 2 (Frankfurt and Breslau, 1776), letter 9, p.
123. Charles Burney, A General HistOl)' of Music (London, 1786-89), ed. Frank Mercer (1786-89;
London and New York, 1935; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1957), vol. 2, p. 960.
5 See Percy G. Adams, Travelers aud Travel Liars: 1660-1800 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1962).
6 See Charles L. Batten, "HUlllplll)' Clinker and Eighteenth-Century Travel," Genre 7 (1974), 392408.
THE WANDERING MINSTREL 43
thor. A case in point arises in a travel narrative from the life of the composer
Christoph Gluck (1714-1787). 7
The year 1774 was a high point in Gluck's life. At the age of sixty, after a
career of mixed fortunes in opera houses across Europe, he arrived in Paris
an international celebrity, and began five of the most successful years of his
career. Between establishing himself at the Paris Opera and securing the
patronage of the dauphine Marie Antoinette,S he enjoyed the hospitality
of many illustrious hosts. On first arriving in Paris he was the guest of
Duke Christian IV of Zweibriicken, under whose aegis he was launched
into the heart of Parisian society through his affiliation to one of the most
powerful Masonic lodges in the capital, the Saint-Jean d'Ecosse du Contrat
Social,9 He rapidly became a sought-after guest in many houses, numbering
among his hosts abbe Franc,,;ois Arnaud, count Franc,,;ois-Louis D'Escherny,
abbe Andre Morellet, the Countess Stephanie de Genlis, and many other
salonnieres. 1O It is no accident that the travel narrative we are to examine
is presented as reported speech. Gluck quickly acquired a reputation for
vigorous and original conversation. D'Eschemy described the composer's
unique manner:
7 Christoph Willibald Gluck is best known as the composer of O/feo ed Euridice (1762), and as a
reformer of the baroque style of Italian heroic opera.
8 "Orphee alloit etre enseveli pour toujours dans ses enfers, lorsqu'a une de ses representations deux
belles mains battirent et applaudirent a ses accens. II n'en fallut pas davantage pour l'en faire sortir
glorieux et triomphant. Tout Paris en a ete enchante." Sara Goudar, Le Brigalldage de la musique
italielllle (Paris, 1780), p. 15.
9 Gluck's arrival at the Duke's hOtel is described in detail in the principal source on which this paper
is based: Johann Christian Mannlich, "Histoire de rna vie," MS, in D-Mbs, Codex Gallicus 61619; excerpted in Henrietta Weiss von Trostprugg, ed., "Memoires sur la musique a Paris a la
fin du regne de Louis xv," La Revue musicale 15 (1934), July-Aug. 111-19; Sept.-Oct. 16171; Nov., 252-62. For Gluck's wide circle of Masonic friends, see Gerardo Tocchini, I fratelli
d' O/feo (Florence: Olschki, 1998).
10 Amelie Suard, Essais de mel/wires sur M. SuaI'd (Paris, 1820), p. 97. D'Eschemy, MeLallges de
litterature, d'histoire, de //lorale, et de la philosophie (Paris, 1811),2:366-67. Gluck's participation at Morellet's famous artistic dinners is described by Dominique-Joseph Garat, Mel/wires
historiques sur la vie de M. SuaI'd (Paris, 1820), 1:360--61. Mme de Genlis, Memoires illedits
(Paris, 1825-26),2:216-17; Gluck's attendance in other salons is noted in Sophie Gay, Salolls
celebres (Paris, 1837), passim.
44 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
Copy of bust ofWillibald Gluck by Jean Antoine Houdon (1775). Reproduced by permission
of the Herzogin Anna Amalie Bibliothek, Weimar.
THE WANDERING MINSTREL 45
II parloit trois ou quatre langues sans en savoir aucune; illes estropioit egalement
toutes, ce qui donnoit it son eloquence une teinte originale et sauvage, qui seduisoit,
qui entrainoit, plus que ne l'auroit fait des discours etudies. 11
During these years in Paris Gluck made a radical attempt to reconstruct
his self-image. While previously his music had not lacked enthusiastic
audiences, his dramatic theories had attracted little attention. He had won
a reputation for pragmatism, for narrow professional diligence, and for
little else: "e' est un allemand grossier, un cheval qui ne voit pas plus loin
que sa musique," was the verdict of the court at Parma, when he cobbled
together a three-opera entertainment to celebrate a royal wedding (even
though one of the operas revised was his revolutionary 01feo)Y In Paris
he found an audience readier to discuss his artistic innovations and more
likely to accord him the status he craved. When he told the editor of the
Memoires secrets that he was perfectly confident in the capacity of his
music to succeed, if not at the first performance, then by the end of the
season, or the next year, or in ten years' time, the editor anticipated the
charge of arrogance and immediately deflected it: "Cette confiance, qui
seroit ridicule et folledans un homme mediocre, doit etre regardee, de
la part de ce grand homme, comme une conviction intime de son merite,
comme cette noble audace du genie qui sent ses forces et sa valeur, et qui
se juge avec la meme impartialite que s'il etoit etranger a lui-meme."13
Several autobiographical fragments stem from that first summer in
Paris. 14 The most extended of these narrates a journey to which Gluck
attributed a substantive role in the formation of his character. The occasion was reported by Johann Christian Mannlich, court painter and fellow
guest in Duke Christian's palace. The scene, according to Mannlich, was a
picnic-one of those pseudo-pastoral idylls so popular among the middle
and upper classes in eighteenth-century France:
Mme Gluck ... me proposa un diner au parc de Saint-Cloud. Nos vivres etoient
etalles sur une serviette parterre, nous etions tous assis it l'entour. ... Gluck etoit
I I D'Eschemy, pp. 366-67.
12 Letter dated 15 May 1769, MS, in F-Pn Gluck leures autographes, no. 2; the signature is missing.
13 Mbnoires secrets pOllr servir ii I'lzistoire de la repllbliqlle des leltres en France depllis MDCCLXIl
jllsqll'ii Ilosjollrs (London, 1777-89), vol. 9, ed. Mathieu Fran~ois Pidansat de Mairobert, p. 105.
14 Other biographical anecdotes have been transmitted by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who described his source as a "manuscript in French, received from the hand of a Viennese gentleman,"
Mllsikaliscize Monatsclzrift 3 (1792),72-74. Mannlich is the most probable author of the manuscript.
46 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
de la meilleure humeur et but et mangea de bon appetit. "Vive la vie simple et
independante, libre, exempte de toute gene, de souds et de prevoyance!" nous
disoit-il. "Je I'ai toujours ambitionnee et dans rna longue carriere n'en ai joui que
pendant quinze jours; je ne les oublierai jamais." II ne se fit pas presser de nous
les faire connoltre: c'etoit les renouveler que de lui fournir I'occasion d'en faire
Ie detail.
Mon pere, nous disoit-il, etoit maItre des eaux et forets it N.15 en Boheme; il
m'avoit destine it Ie remplacer un jour dans son poste. Dans mon pays tout Ie
mond est musicien; on enseigrie la musique dans les ecoles et dans les moindres
villages les paysans chantent et jouent des differens instrumens pendant la grandmesse dans leur~ eglises. Comme j'etois passione pour cet art, je fis des progres
rapides. Je jouois de plusieurs instrumens, et Ie maItre, en me distinguant des
autres ecoliers, me donna des le~ons chez lui dans ses moments de loisir. Je ne
pensois et ne revois plus qu'iila musique; I'art forestal fut neglige. Ce n'etoit pas
Ie compte de mon pere; il doubla rna besogne et en exigea severement l'execution
pour me detourner (comme il disoit) d 'un metier qui ne pouvoit jamais me donner
du pain. Ne pouvant plus m'exercer Ie jour, je voulois y employer les nuits; mais
cela d6rangea Ie sommeil de mon pere et des autres habitants de la maison; mes
instrumens furent mis sous clef. Ne pouvant resister it rna passion pour la musique,
je pris la Guimbarde ou Rebube 16 et devins bient6t habile sur ce nouvel instrument
pur brouiant [peu bruyant]. Le dimanche iiI' eglise, j' etois au comble de mes vreux.
Enfin, devore par Ie desir de me livrer entierement it rna passion, je conjurois mon
pere de m'envoyer it Vienne et de m'y faire etudier la musique; il fut inflexible et
me mit au desespoir.
Un beau jour, n'ayant que tres peu de monnoie sur moi, je quittois la maison
paternelle et pour n'etre pas retrappe,je ne pris pas la route la plus courte pour me
rendre it Vienne. Voulant menager Ie peu d'argent que j'avois, je m'approchois
d'une maison de paysan, la famille etoit it table; tirois rna Guimbarde de rna poche
et les regalois de quelques airs. Me voyant proprement vetu, ils me firent entrer
et me donnerent place it leur table. Le soir, it l'entree de la nuit, me trouvant dans
un autre village, rna Guimbarde me valent des oeufs, du pain, du fromage, qu'on
me donnoit par les fenetres des maisons ou je m' etois fait entendre. Ala derniere
[maison] je demandois l'hospitalite; on me la donna avec plaisir, et par dessus un
bon souper en leur delivrant mes oeufs, mon pain et mon fromage. Mes h6tesses
me choyerent comme I' enfant de la maison, tant rna Guimbarde et mes chansons
m'avoient gagne leur bienveillance. Le lendemain je continuois gayement rna
route, apres bien d6jeune. C' est ainsi, grace it mon instrument portatif et rna voix,
que sur d'une bonne reception partout ou je me presenterois, j'avan~ai gaiement
et sans Ie moindre souci vers la capitale. Les fetes et dimanches je jouois toujours
tant6t d'un instrument, tant6t d'un autre dans les eglises de villages. J'y passois
pour un virtuose et Ie Cure me recevoit et me logeoit ordinairement chez lui. Ces
15 Gluck may have referred to Neustadt an der Waldknab, his father's birthplace to which Alexander
Gluck returned from time to time throughout his life.
16 Jew's harp.
THE WANDERING MINSTREL 47
bons pasteurs etoient tous musiciens et me retenoient quelquefois plusieurs jours
dans leur maison. La, faisant de la musique toutte la journee, bien vu, bien servi,
libre et independent,j'etois Ie garc;on Ie plus heureux.
En approchant ainsi de Vienne, Ie dernier Cure auquel j'avois fait une demiconfidence me donna une lettre pour un de ses amis dans la capitale. En y arrivant
je me presentois avec confiance chez lui, il me rec;u mais ne me cachoit pas
qu'a Vienne il y avoit milliers de vituoses de mon calibre, et que je risquois de
mourir de faim avex mes talents si on ne me fournissoit pas [Ies moyens] pour
me perfectionner dans mon art. II falloit lui avouer qui j'etois et d'ou je venois;
il s'interessa a moi, ecrivit a mon pere et Ie persuada de ne plus s'opposer a mon
penchant. II y consentit enfin et me donna des secours. Si d'un cote je perdois
l'independance, la liberte et les agremens d'une vie vagabonde et sans souci, je
pouvois de l'autre me livrer a rna passion sans reserve, faire de la musique et
composer du matinjusqu'au soir.
C' est ainsi que je suis devenu ce que je suis aujourd'hui, en regrettant toujours les
quinze jours passes dans I' independance par Ie simple secours de rna Guimbarde.
Gluck's account of a youthful journey, told some twenty years after the
event, deserves further scrutiny. The episode is not dated, but Gluck located
it in his youth, before he embarked on a professional career. The starting
point was his parent's home. Alexander Gluck moved several times during
Gluck's childhood, but from 1727, when Gluck was thirteen, his father
finally settled in the village of Eisenberg (now Zelezny Brod), near the
town of Chomodau (Chomutov).17 Gluck claims to have walked from his
parents' house to Vienna (mentioned four times in the narrative). The
only journey he is known to have made from his parental home was not,
however, to Vienna but to Prague, where he entered the university in 1731.
This fits well enough with Gluck's ambition to run away in order to pursue
his music-the classes in logic and mathematics in which he enrolled were
no more than an excuse to enjoy the opportunities for music afforded by
the churches and opera house in Prague. 18 There is, though, no record that
his father opposed his studies, and the venture lasted not two weeks but
three years. If Gluck's destination really was Vienna, the likeliest time for
the journey would be at the end of his university studies: in the winter of
1734-35 he made the journey from Prague to Vienna. Now twenty years
17 Where Gluck may have attended the Jesuit college, though most biographers conclude this is
unlikely. The college archives record the name of his younger brother, Franz Gluck, but not
Christoph.
18 While in Prague, Gluck played the organ in the Tyn church and possibly also in the church of St
Frantisek. He would also have attended operas, open to the public, given in the private theatre of
Count Franz Anton von Spark.
48 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
old, Gluck would have seen this as a very different expedition from the
childhood escapade described in Mannlich's narrative, though he might
have associated the conclusion of his journey with a loss of freedom and
independence, since on arriving in Vienna he was taken into the household
of his father's employers, the Lobkowitz family, and it is possible that his
father intervened to beg this patronage.
It ought to be possible to establish Gluck's destination by calculating
the distances involved. Eisenberg to Prague is some sixty miles, a journey
that could be comfortably accomplished on foot in the course of the two
weeks Gluck spent at large. Eisenberg to Vienna is more than two hundred
miles, which surely rules it out. The two-week duration of Gluck's travels
is mentioned twice, but the details remain vague. It could not, for example,
have included the period spent at the last house, where Gluck remained
long enough for letters to travel to and from Eisenberg. And Gluck almost
seems determined to throw biographers off the scent by his comment that
he avoided taking the direct route. A passage in the earliest full-length
biography of the composer suggests a third time and place for the journey.
More than sixty years after the composer's death, Anton Schmid, who
derived his information from Gluck's brothers and their children, wrote that
in his university vacations, Gluck journeyed "from village to village and
from one place to another; he entertained the inhabitants with his playing
and singing, often earning by his performances in the villages nothing more
than eggs, which he exchanged elsewhere for bread."19 Schmid's account
appears plausible as a foundation for Gluck's tale of a boyhood escapade,
transferred by the composer from an undergraduate holiday to a (more
romantic) boyhood bid for freedom from parental control.
Gluck's journey may well have been a real event, casually remembered,
or imperfectly transcribed, but that is not the only possible interpretation.
The tale is, after all, a familiar one: a wandering minstrel, travelling for
his own amusement or improvement, and supporting himself by his ability
to offer musical entertainment along the way. Precedents in fact and fiction abound, and one of these, known to Gluck, may have stimulated his
I9 "Von Dorf zu Dorf, und von einem Flecken zum andem, unterhielt die Bewohner mit Spiel und
Gesang, und emte fur seine Leistungen in den Dorfen oft nichts als Eier, die er an anderen Orten
gegen Brad vertauschte." Anton Schmid, Christoph Willibald Ritter VOIl Gluck (Leipzig, 1854), p.
22.
THE WANDERING MINSTREL 49
artist's desire to construct a romantic legend around his childhood, at the
same time expressing the sense of rebellion that inspired his career as a reforming composer. A few years before telling his own story, Gluck read
the following passage:
I was now too far from home to think of returning; so I resolved to go forward.
I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice, and now turned what
was once my amusement into a present means of subsistence. I passed among
the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor
enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their
wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one
of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence
for the next day.20
Goldsmith's account, in The Vicar ofWakefield, of an episode from George
Primrose's continental travels is uncannily similar to Gluck's narrative.
Furthermore, it lay to hand, ready to playa part in shaping Gluck's story.
In 1767, the year after its publication, Goldsmith's novel was published
in Lei,pzig, translated into German by Johann Gellius as Der Landpriester
von Wakefield. Gluck read it-there is a good deal of evidence to establish
him as a voracious reader throughout his life-and read it closely enough
to refer to an obscure sentence from the book a few years later: on a
short visit home to Vienna, the composer, obsessed with planning his next
operatic activity in Paris, wrote fretfully of the restrictions of his official
post in the imperial capital: "but if M. de Vismes [the director of the Opera]
cannot secure me the empress's permission, I shall stay at home and think
like Goldsmith's lad."2l We need to recall the ponderous resignation of
the words of Moses Primrose to decipher Gluck's reference: "However
dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the
apartment sufficiently lightsome."22
But what of Goldsmith's sources for Primrose's travels? The foggy
boundaries between fact and fiction are again at issue. George Primrose's
travels were based on Goldsmith's own adventures: in the winter of 175455, the writer left his studies at Leyden University23 to set off on a tour
20 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of
1986), p. 129.
Wak~field,
ed. Stephen Coote (1766; London: Penguin Books,
21 "Wan aber Mr. de Vismes mir die Erlaubnis von der Kaiserin nicht auBwirkt, so bleib ich zu HauBe,
und dencke wie goldschmits junge." Letter dated 29 July 1778, facsimile in Georg Kinsky, Glucks
Bri~fe an Franz Krutho.ffer (Vienna: Strache Verlag, 1927), p. 32.
22 Goldsmith, p. 58.
23 Nominally medicine, but Goldsmith probably spent most of his time studying French.
50 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
of France, Switzerland, and Italy. But Goldsmith's journey was in its turn
inspired by the youthful adventures ofBaron Ludvig Holberg, whom Goldsmith met at Leyden, and from whom Goldsmith may well have received
at first hand the account he gives in An Enquiry into the Present State of
Polite Learning in Europe:
The late famous baron Holberg, upon the death of his father, being left entirely
destitute, though only a boy of nine years old, he still persisted in pursuing his
studies, travelled from school to school, and begged his learning and his bread.
... Without money, recommendations or friends, he undertook to set out upon his
travels, and to make the tour of Europe on foot. A good voice, and a trifling skill
in music, were the only finances he had to support an undertaking so extensive;
so he travelled by day, and at night sung at the doors of peasants' houses to get
himself a lodging. 24
Goldsmith himself set off on his travels with "a flute and one clean shirt,"25
and gives some account of his experiences in "The Traveller" where:
How often have I led thy sportive choir,
With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire ...
And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still,
But mock'd all tune, and marred the dancers' skill,
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance forgetful of the noontide hour. 26
Goldsmith followed an established tradition when he took the eminently
portable flute on his travels. But Gluck claimed to have played a jew's
harp, and this unusual option again has a literary precedent. Humphry
Clinker, who has claims to be called another wandering musician, made the
same choice: "1 know something of single-stick, and psalmody, (proceeded
Clinker) 1 can play upon the Jew's-harp, sing Black-ey'd Susan, Arthur
o'Bradley, and divers other songs."27 We do not have direct proof that Gluck
read Smollett's novel, but his taste for English novels has been established,
and the publication of a German translation of Humphry Clinker in 1772
seems timely.28 The jew's harp continues the tantalizing puzzle of fact or
24 Oliver Goldsmith, An Enquil)' into the Preselll State ofPolite Learning in Europe (1759), Collected
Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 1:284.
25 A. Lytton Sells, Oliver Goldsmith: His Life and Works (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 50.
26 Oliver Goldsmith, "The Traveller," lines 243-50.
27 Tobias Smollett, The Expedition ofHumphry Clinker, ed. Lewis M. Knapp and Paul-Gabriel Bouce
(1771; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 84.
28 Humphry Klinkers Reisen, trans. Johann Joachim Christoph Bode (Leipzig, 1772).
THE WANDERING MINSTREL 51
fiction. There is no other record of Gluck ever playing the instrument,
and it appears in some respects to be unsuitable for the task. A folkinstrument, widely used in Europe and the Middle East, its structure was
primitive. 29 Since the notes available were limited to the harmonic series
above a single fundamental, its melodic capacity was no greater than, for
example, a bugle, so Gluck would have been severely restricted in the
tunes he could play-perhaps his audience was as undiscriminating as
Goldsmith's. He plausibly claimed to have chosen the instrument for its
quiet volume: Curt Sachs describes it as "a quaint instrument, pleasing
to the player because of its clear though tiny sound, almost inaudible to
a listener."3o This would have met his need to practise without disturbing
his family, but appears less suitable for entertaining a whole household. 3l
Throughout his life, however, Gluck demonstrated a taste for unusual
instruments, and interestingly, Francis Gilpin classifies the jew's harp in
the same category as an instrument on which Gluck was known to have
given recitals, the glass harmonicaY
The navy, the circus, and music are traditionally professions to be approached by running away from home. Gluck's escapade has some parallels
with the early lives of two composers who were among his intimate friends.
Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729-177 4), born in Most, near Eisenberg and
Chomodau, may have attended the same Jesuit college that is mentioned
in connection with Gluck. In his late teens he ran away from home in the
face of parental opposition to his musical ambitions, and supported himself by singing and playing his harp as he travelled towards Italy.33 Gluck
29 "A mouth-resonated instrument consisting of a flexible tongue, or lamella, fixed at one end to a
surrounding frame.... The player places the free end of the lamella in front of his mouth cavity
and sets it in vibration manually; the resulting oscillation produces a sound of constant pitch, rich
in overtones.... By various movements of the tongue and larynx the player is able to regulate
the frequency of the air in the mouth cavity ... to produce a wide variety of sonorous and musical
effects." The New Grove Dictionary ofMlIsicalInstrulllents, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,
1984).
30 Curt Sachs, The History ofMlisicailnstrulllents (New York: Norton, 1940), p. 58.
31 A celebrated exponent, Charles Eulenstein, gave concerts on the jew's harp in London, Bath,
and Scotland from 1827, but he had 16 instruments, differently pitched, and by changing rapidly
between them was able to playa wide repertoire. The New Grove DictionQ/Y (!{ Music and
Musicians.
32 Francis Gilpin, Old English Instruments of Music (London: Methuen, 1965), p. 194. Gluck gave
recitals on the glass harmonica in London (1746), Copenhagen (1749), and Naples (1751).
33 Franz Kosch, "Florian Leopold Gassmann als Kirchenkomponist," Stlldien zur MlIsikwissenschaft
14 (1927), 215.
52 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
knew Gassmann well, and the latter eventually succeeded him as composer of ballets in Vienna; news of the younger composer's death would
have reached Gluck only a few months before he told his own story in St
Cloud. Another of his Viennese colleagues told a similar tale, though Carl
Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799) is less useful as an icon of independence and rebellion: at the age of twenty he fled from Vienna to Prague for
no more elevated reason than to escape his gambling debts;34 he travelled,
moreover, by coach: the authentic wandering minstrel always travelled on
foot.
The character of the wandering minstrel was a familiar one for
eighteenth-century readers. He (and the minstrel is always male, though
in fiction he may be accompanied by a female, as Mignon accompanied the harpist in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrejahre) inhabits both
fact and fiction. The similarities between the accounts are striking: Gassmann, Holberg, Goldsmith, Smollett, and Gluck appear to have been living
and writing to a common formula. Contrary to all the unwritten rules of
travel writing,35 the focus of the narrative, whether in fact or fiction, is entirely on the traveller. Unlike the elevated cultural inquiries of Addison and
Burney, these travellers' tales are dominated by the getting of food, drink,
and lodging, and the convention requires that these are of the simplest:
eggs, bread, and milk, and accommodation in rustic cottages. Little musical skill is involved, and the villagers are represented as an uncritical
audience. The criterion for choice of instrument is portability: the voice,
the jew's harp, the flute, with Gassmann's harp coming in as the most unwieldy option. The aim of the journey is not the acquisition of knowledge
but a bid for personal freedom. There is a clear line of literary influence connecting some of these accounts, but the thread constantly crosses
the line between fact and fiction. It seems certain that Gluck enjoyed some
experience of life as a wandering minstrel, but it is impossible to disentangle the event from the web of romance he himself spun around it. Other
writers and musicians absconded, but none have made so merry a tale of it
as Gluck.
The Open University
34 The Autobiography of Karl von Dittersdorf, trans. A.D. Coleridge (London: Bentley, 1896), pp.
93-95.
35 See Batten, PleaSlirable Instruction, pp. 13-15.