*** I submitted the following text to Autoharp Quarterly in November 1999 together with three (rather rough) music sheets containing the tunes mentioned in the text. It appeared in AQ Vol.12, No.2 (Winter 2000) in a cautiously edited version; the music sheets were beautifully created anew by Heidi Cerrigione from my drafts. Alas, I do not have access to these sheets; the interested reader is referred to AQ. ** The following text is the original as submitted (with a few "typos" corrected). ***

Foolishness and Music (Siegfried Knöpfler, 1 Nov 1999)

Recently, while taking part in the “showcase” at the end of the first UK Autoharp Day (organized by Nadine White and conducted by Mike Fenton, both of whom did a splendid job!), I made a fool of myself: I began to play Fools‘ Jubilee (see below) and got stuck in the middle of it because, although I’m playing this piece for 15 years, I suddenly had forgotten the melody! In order to never let this happen again, being rather visually oriented, I wrote down the tune from my memory (shortly after the unlucky event I recalled it, of course!). And then I thought why not share it on paper, after the failed attempt to do so performing it. But I realized that some explaining words on the background of the tune may be called for.

Let me begin with a very early historical mention and tell you that in the year 1284 Pope Martin IV officially encouraged Christianity to celebrate then already well established customs, today known as carnival. In order –possibly– to supersede pagan feasts in early spring as well as –certainly– to give a tangible quality to the church’s teaching; on the basis of St. Augustine’s doctrine of the two states, "civitas diaboli", the worldly state of Babylon, and "civitas dei", the heavenly state of Jerusalem, and the struggle between them; ecclesiastical offices had promoted for carnival and kept on elaborating (well into the 18th century) a cast of characters or roles and a script which outlined what to do, namely to give allegoric life to the foolishness of worldly ways (as for instance following one’s low urges or other devilish paths like e.g. seizing (local) political power) and to demonstrate, how the foolish behaviour of these allegoric characters necessarily leads to doom: a fate which only can be averted by renouncing worldly foolishness and redirecting one’s way to follow God’s guidelines. This metanoia should start with fasting in order to be prepared for celebration of Christ’s resurrection at Easter.

Well, as you may suspect, most people then appreciated very much the opportunity to live enactment of worldly foolishness for some days before turning to heavenly fasting, and quite a few of them forgot in their enthusiasm that they were expected to only play foolishness, not to really live it! And later admonitions from Rome to respect the pure idea didn’t help much. So, when Reformation came, one of the first things reformers abolished was carnival. And still in the first half of this century, only by looking where people have carnival six weeks before Easter one could see which parts of Germany (and similarly in the rest of the world) have remained Roman Catholic or, on the other hand, have been reformed. Given that only few Catholics today know of the ecclesiastical origins of carnival, the rest of humanity is certainly not to be blamed that nowadays people see only fun in it and want to celebrate it all over the world, as can be observed even in once most pious Protestant regions.

While the Rhineland (as other parts of the world as well) emphasizes the fun in carnival and has it made into quite a big business (carnival time is called there the fifth season!), in southern Germany, however, as well as in parts of Austria, northern Switzerland and in Alsace, a more traditional form of the old customs has survived with names like Fasching, Fastnacht or Fasnet, all referring to the night (in fact, usually six days and nights!) before Ash Wednesday when Lent begins. And so every town and every village there has an association, often called Narrenzunft (fools guild), for organizing the locals (of any denomination! — it is not reported that non-catholic fools need special guidance) to properly and thoroughly enact worldly foolishness, but to stage it —at least during daylight— somewhat decently and violate only those laws which are in conflict with the holy duties as referred to by Pope Martin IV!

Although I’m living now for nearly 15 years mostly in Cologne —the heart of the Rhineland and the place of Germany’s biggest carnival parade (Rosenmontagszug) drawing at least a million visitors yearly—, I still am a (paying!) member of the fools guild of Ludwigshafen am Bodensee, the “Pearl of Lake Constance” (according to the words of the aforementioned Fools‘ Jubilee). In 1984 we celebrated our guild’s Centennial (meanwhile we’ve learned from newly discovered sources that the guild was then already some 20 years older!) and our church organist wrote a song in waltz tempo for this important event, the one which I refer to as Fools‘ Jubilee; I enclose it as I remember it from my playing.

If you have a closer look at this tune you may notice that it has some challenging parts, challenging not only for an autoharper with limited abilities (like me) but also for a brass band, especially if —additionally to cheering up their fellow fools with supporting music— the musicians are striving to obey papal duties as tradition demands, i.e. devouring certain amounts of alcoholic beverages (perhaps only very reluctantly or hesitantly in these profane days?). So we (the guild) have also a Fools‘ Waltz, which is easier to play in difficult circumstances. I enclose my recollection of this song (written, too, by our organist, and very much so in appropriate style) as the second one, which, by the way, I actually got through with at the initially mentioned showcase, myself following our guild‘s well-established fallback procedures!

And, naturally, we also have a fools‘ parade through our village at Fasnet Sunday (after church service, of course, and attended or watched also by not that dutiful Christians): for the parade (as well as for other occasions) we also have our own Fools‘ March, which I enclose as third tune. You may observe a natural sequence with regard to keys. I like to play these songs in the order presented here and in the respective keys on my chromatic autoharp: Notwithstanding the break in measure, it is a nice progression from G to C to F. By the way, all three of the songs have words in our local German dialect, more or less, and therefore I omitted them; but I added the chords that I use for melody picking with my standard OS 21 chord layout, a very simple chording, in fact. (There is no fancy tab stuff since my software, MusicTime, doesn't allow.) I did not add “rhythm chords” because from my isolated, rather unorthodox way of learning to play tunes on the autoharp, I’m not yet feeling really comfortable with the concept of rhythm chords – in spite of being aware (since joining the Cyberpluckers and attending workshops) of the importance attached by most autoharp teachers to this concept.

The Fools‘ March tune is also a bit tricky, but in many, many decades it got so deeply rooted with the brave musicians of our guild’s band that I never watched them fail, even in the most difficult circumstances which may arise after hard work to dutifully demonstrate where it leads to if you foolishly follow the devil’s ways!

So you see why I cherish these songs and why I proudly present these gems of a local music culture: from their origin it is clear that they help people getting better Christians!