All About Coffee Part 116

[Ill.u.s.tration: "KAFFEEBESUCH"

From the painting by Peter Philippi]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "COFFEE COMES TO THE AID OF THE MUSE"

From the painting by Ruffio]

Hogarth figures in the Sam Ireland collection with several original drawings of frequenters of b.u.t.ton's in 1730.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) the great English caricaturist and ill.u.s.trator, has given us several fine pictures of English coffee-house life. His "Mad Dog in a Coffee House" presents a lively scene; and his water-color of "The French Coffee House" is one of the best pictures we have of the French coffee house in London as it looked during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

During the campaign in France in 1814, Napoleon arrived one day, unheralded, in a country presbytery, where the good cure was quietly turning his hand coffee-roaster. The emperor asked him, "What are you doing there, abbe?" "Sire", replied the priest, "I am doing like you. I am burning the colonial fodder." Charlet (1792-1845) made a lithograph of the incident.

Several French poet-musicians resorted to music to celebrate coffee.

Brittany has its own songs in praise of coffee, as have other French provinces. There are many epics, rhapsodies, and cantatas--and even a comic opera by Meilhat, music by Deffes, bearing the t.i.tle, _Le Cafe du Roi_, produced at the Theatre Lyrique, November 16, 1861.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MAD DOG IN A COFFEE HOUSE"--CARICATURE BY ROWLANDSON]

Fuzelier wrote, in honor of coffee, a cantata, set to music by Bernier.

This is the burden of the poet's song:

Ah coffee, what climes yet unknown, Ignore the clear fires that thy vapors inspire!

Thou countest, in thy vast empire Those realms that Bacchus' reign disown.

Favored liquid, which fills all my soul with delights, Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade, We vanquish e'en sleep by thy fortunate aid, Thou hast rescued the hours sleep would rob from our nights.

Favored liquid which fills all my soul with delights, Thy enchantments to life happy hours persuade.

Oh liquid that I love, Triumphant stream of sable, E'en for the G.o.ds above, Drive nectar from the table.

Make thou relentless war On treacherous juices sly, Let earth taste and adore The sweet calm of the sky.

Oh liquid that I love, Triumphant stream of sable, E'en for the G.o.ds above, Drive nectar from the table.

During the early vogue of the cafe in Paris, a _chanson_, ent.i.tled _Coffee_, reproduced here, was set to music with accompaniment for the piano by M.H. Colet, a professor of harmony at the Conservatoire.

Printed in the form of a placard, and put up in cafes, it received the approbation of, and was signed by, de Voyer d'Argenson, at that time (1711) lieutenant of police. The poetry is not irreproachable. It can hardly be attributed to any of the well known poets of the time; but rather to one of those bohemian rimesters that wrote all too abundantly on all sorts of subjects. It is the development of a theory concerning the properties of coffee and the best method of making it. It is interesting to note that the uses of advertising were known and appreciated in Paris in 1711; for in the _chanson_ there appears the name and address of one Vilain, a merchant, rue des Lombards, who was evidently in fashion at that period. The translation of the stanza reproduced is as follows:

COFFEE--A CHANSON

If you, with mind untroubled, Would flourish, day by day, Let each day of the seven Find coffee on your tray.

It will your frame preserve from every malady, Its virtues drive afar, la! la!

Migrain and dread catarrh--ha! ha!

Dull cold and lethargy.

The most notable contribution to the "music of coffee," if one may be permitted the expression, is the _Coffee Cantata_ of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) the German organist and the most modern composer of the first half of the eighteenth century. He hymned the religious sentiment of protestant Germany; and in his _Coffee Cantata_ he tells in music the protest of the fair s.e.x against the libels of the enemies of the beverage, who at the time were actively urging in Germany that it should be forbidden women, because its use made for sterility! Later on, the government surrounded the manufacture, sale, and use of coffee with many obnoxious restrictions, as told in chapter VIII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAPOLEON AND THE CURe--LITHOGRAPH BY CHARLET]

Bach's _Coffee Cantata_ is No. 211 of the _Secular Cantatas_, and was published in Leipzig in 1732. In German it is known as _Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht_ (Be silent, do not talk). It is written for soprano, tenor, and ba.s.s solos and orchestra. Bach used as his text a poem by Piccander. The cantata is really a sort of one-act operetta--a jocose production representing the efforts of a stern parent to check his daughter's propensities in coffee drinking, the new fashioned habit. One seldom thinks of Bach as a humorist; but the music here is written in a mock-heroic vein, the recitatives and arias having a merry flavor, hinting at what the master might have done in light opera.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COFFEE--A CHANSON; MUSIC BY COLET, 1711]

The libretto shows the father Schlendrian, or Slowpoke, trying by various threats to dissuade his daughter from further indulgence in the new vice, and, in the end, succeeding by threatening to deprive her of a husband. But his victory is only temporary. When the mother and the grandmother indulge in coffee, asks the final trio, who can blame the daughter?

Bach uses the spelling coffee--not _kaffee_. The cantata was sung as recently as December 18, 1921, at a concert in New York by the Society of the Friends of Music, directed by Arthur Bodanzky.

Lieschen, or Betty, the daughter, has a delightful aria, beginning, "Ah, how sweet coffee tastes--lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine!" the opening bars of which are reproduced on page 598.

As the text is not long, it is printed here in its entirety.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF KOLSCHITZKY IN VIENNA]

_CHARACTERS_

MESSENGER AND NARRATOR _Tenor_ SLOWPOKE _Ba.s.s_ BETTY, DAUGHTER TO SLOWPOKE _Soprano_

TENOR (_Recitative_): Be silent, do not talk, but notice what will happen! Here comes old Slowpoke with his daughter Betty. He's grumbling like a common bear--just listen to what he says.

(_Enter_ SLOWPOKE _muttering_): What vexatious things one's children are! A hundred thousand naughty ways! What I tell my daughter Betty might as well be told to the moon! (_Enter_ BETTY.)

SLOWPOKE (_Recitative_): You naughty child, you mischievous girl, oh when can I have my way--give up your coffee!

BETTY: Dear father, do not be so strict! If I can't have my little demi-ta.s.se of coffee three times a day, I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat!

BETTY (_Aria_): Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee, and if any one wishes to please me, let him present me with--coffee!

SLOWPOKE _(Recitative_): If you won't give up coffee, young lady, I won't let you go to any wedding feasts--I won't even let you go walking!

BETTY: O yes! Do let me have my coffee!

SLOWPOKE: What a little monkey you are, anyway! I will not let you have any whale-bone skirts of the present fashionable size!

BETTY: Oh, I can easily fix _that_!

SLOWPOKE: But I won't let you stand at the window and watch the new styles!

BETTY: That doesn't bother me, either. But be good and let me have my coffee!

SLOWPOKE: But from my hands you'll get no silver or gold ribbon for your hair!

BETTY: Oh well! so long as I have what does satisfy me!

SLOWPOKE: You wretched Betty, you! You won't give in to me?

SLOWPOKE (_Air_): Oh these girls--what obstinate dispositions they do have! They certainly are not easy to manage! But if one hits the right spot--oh well, one _may_ succeed!

SLOWPOKE, _with an air of being sure of success this time_ (_Recitative_): Now please do what father says.

BETTY: In everything, except about coffee.

SLOWPOKE: Well, then, you must make up your mind to do without a husband.