Barbara Kluntz
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Barbara Kluntz (born 5 February 1661 in Ulm; buried 22 May 1730 in Ulm) was a German composer and music teacher. On all of her book titles, she calls herself "Barbara Kluntz the Noble Music Art Lover", in order to explicitly emphasize her position: She did not consider herself a professional musician.
Entry into the Ulm Collection Foundation
Barbara Kluntz, called "Schneiderbärbele", was the daughter and third child of the tailor Peter Kluntz and his wife Katharina Kluntz, née Messerschmid. She joined the charitable Third Order of the Ulm Collection Women who were evangelicals after the Reformation. The monastery-like association also owned several villages around Ulm and was located on Ulmer Frauenstrasse at the corner of Sammlungsgasse. The building was destroyed in World War II.
Since the women who entered the order did not have to take any vows, Barbara Kluntz was not a nun.
When she entered the collection, Barbara Kluntz was widely known as a “piano virtuoso, organ player and poet”, according to older research. Excerpts from her will, which no longer exists, show that she had her own organ, a clavichord, many books, and music.
How Barbara Kluntz came to her skills and what position her father had as a tailor within the Ulm tailors' guild is not yet known. Until then, only patrician women had been included in the collection. Why Barbara Kluntz only joined the collection at the age of 44 remains to be explored. Her musical activities can only be documented when she joined the collection in 1704. So far, no evidence can be found about her childhood, early and late adolescence.
Barbara Kluntz was not married; she moved into the collection under her maiden name and as a "maid". Her vocal and instrumental music making was probably dedicated to purely religious purposes. She also taught her colleagues, their students and many patrician daughters, in "clavier-playing". Her great role model was the French poet Georgette de Montenay, whose portrait she had included in her chorale book from 1711.
Contacts and concerts
Barbara Kluntz maintained contacts in Berlin through correspondence and probably had the latest musical works sent from there so that she could study and perform them. She probably accompanied herself and others herself on the clavichord and on the organ. Since the Ulm collection women were free to move around the city and in the monastery, it can be assumed that the Ulm collection was a center of Ulm music practice alongside the permanently employed Ulm city performers and the emerging theater business.
Poetry
In addition to music, Barbara Kluntz also wrote many poems that she published in her chorale books, including a work that expresses her joy and vitality:
„Deß Davids Harpff in Himel klingt,
wol dem, der mit mir frölich singt.
Lutherus singt uns allen vor,
Nach Gottes Wort führt den Tenor.
Wir singen nach und zwitzern mit,
Und Gott nimt an solch Lob und Bitt.
Wer nun Gott fürcht und hat mich gern
der singt mit mir zu Gott dem Herrn.“
(Choralbuch 1711)
Barbara Kluntz quoted the French poet Georgette de Montenay in her 1711 chorale book.
Choralbuch 1711
The 245 chorales of the magnificently handwritten Choral Music book from 1711 are recorded only with title and partly without text. The melodies are set to chords with up to six voices, whereby the settings can suddenly switch between full voices and two-part passages. Occasionally, Barbara Kluntz also offers alternative suspensions to a chorale melody on the same page.
In her works, Barbara Kluntz often used the fifths and octaves in parallel, and the third is just as often missing in the movements despite four and five voices. This could be an indication that she learned her art auto-didactically, since the use of the third had long been common at this point in music history.
At the end of her first chorale book, Barbara Kluntz puts her happiest credo, her way of viewing music:
„Ich waiß nit z’sagen, wie vil Gut,
In Musica ist verborgen;
Gott und Menschen sie g’fallen thut,
Music vertreibt die Sorgen,
Music verjagt die Traurigkeit,
Music den Geist erneüet,
Music macht Lust, und kürzt die Zeit,
und ewig uns erfreüet.
Music lieb’ ich, so lang ich leb,
und frölich meine Stimm’ erheb,
und sing: O Music! Himmels Kunst,
du bist wehrt aller Ehr’ und Gunst.“
(Choralbuch 1711)
