Neue Lauten-Früchte (Testudo)

Peter De Cleyn Neue Lauten-Früchte

stoneware clay, engobe, wood

(38 x 30 x 27 cm)

From TESTUDO:

"Which pumpkin would have been the model for this work? The Cucurbita Pepo or rather the Cucurbita Moschata, subspecies of De Lange van Naples ? Admit it. The belly of a lute looks like a pumpkin. The title ' Neue Lauten- Früchte' refers to the collection of the same name by the German composer Esaias Reussner Jr. (1636-1679): 'New Lute Fruits' (Berlin, 1676). Could he also have had a pumpkin in mind? Or did he want his father, Esaias Reussner Sr. ., do it justice? Father was his first lute teacher and also took to the garden with the collection: Musicalischer Lust-Garten (1645), the 'Musical pleasure garden'. Junior's collection includes 13 dance suites. Esaias Reussner jr. in Germany as a predecessor of his compatriot Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750), the most excellent lute player ever.

This work by Peter De Cleyn also reminds me of the pumpkin hut or Kürbishütte by Heinrich Albert (1604-1651), notorious pumpkin grower but above all composer, student of Heinrich Schütz and also of Johann Hermann Schein. In 1626 Albert fled the Thirty Years' War and moved from Leipzig to Königsberg, a city in East Prussia (now Kalingrad in Russia). He was a member of a group of poets and musicians dedicated to spiritual song. The circle was named after Albert's garden house, the place where they met, a shelter before the war: the pumpkin hut or Kürbishütte . Albert also gave his song cycle that name: Musikalische Kürbs-Hütte ."