Schmähgedichte (op. 27) - 1. Switze, inimice Dei - 2. In Basilienses, eandem urbem Constanciam - 3. In Helvetios anno MDXII - 4. Hie Schwytz, ein ander lied
2026 will mark the 525th anniversary of Basel's accession to Switzerland. Even before the change of sides, the city was caught between the fronts of the Swabian War, which the Swabian League waged against the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1499. Not only did the Swabians lose the decisive battle at Dornach, but also Basel: although the city remained neutral for the longest time until the conclusion of the Peace of Basel, negotiations were pushed forward early on and sealed its accession to the Swiss Confederation in 1501, which became de facto independent with the Peace of Basel (formally confirmed in 1648 in the Peace of Westphalia). Satirical and abusive poems between the Swabians and the Swiss Confederates were widespread in the climate of war. Even respected scholars such as Hieronymus Emser, Heinrich Bebel, and Sebastian Brant did not shy away from composing verses in the artistic style of their ancient role models, which commented scornfully on the foreseeable departure from the empire.
Three of the most famous satirical poems of the time have been set to music in this composition for 6-part mixed choir and 6 double basses. They represent the attitude of the imperial elite towards Basel's “fall from grace” from three perspectives. A concluding final movement provides the contrast, with the praise of a Basel schoolmaster remaining as the last impression and a bridge to the future of that time and the present day. The first sketches were made in the winter of 2022 in Gansingen, where my friend, the double bassist Caspar Streit, provided the impetus for the instrumentation. They were completed in 2024 during two stays in remote locations in Greenland and Suriname. A key element throughout all movements are fourth chords based on the fourth tuning of the double bass.
The first movement (A minor) deals with Emser's threatening gestures and slander. He insults the Swiss as enemies of the faith, peasant rabble, and murderers. From this “pagan shadow,” an eight-bar basso ostinato in the style of a passacaglia drags itself very slowly in five passages from the lowest double basses to the choir voices—as if a funeral march were passing through the Dornach battlefield with thousands of fallen Swabians. The religiously connoted insults are set in a traditional fugue form, with the passacaglia (literally “through road”) anticipating the impending political change. High notes are absent, and all voices move very slowly upwards in their lowest registers. The harmony is strongly chromatic and augmented, yet consistently cantabile. The long introduction culminates in impetuous cries: insults and lamentations from the peasants in abbreviated sharpness – expressions of an attitude that would catch up with the city of Basel some 300 years later when the canton was divided. The most violent insults, such as murderer and robber, are parodied in a dance-like 5/8 rhythm, with plucked double basses accompanying the alternating responsorial and homophonic vocal passages. Emser prophesies the flying arrows of the French army as a final warning – in 1495, to the displeasure of the Swabians, the Swiss renewed their alliance with their enemy France – and depicts a kind of “Last Judgment” as the boomerang effect of victory in the Battle of Dornach. The basso ostinato is quoted as a rhythmic caricature, over which the choir wages a fierce battle. A bitonal final chord leaves the outcome of the trial by fire open.
The second movement (C-sharp minor) sets three verses to music, which Bebel wrote as a note – thanks to the title line and closing abbreviation in ancient Greek, they seem more like the minutes of a committee of old men. The stenographic inserts are accordingly reserved for the deep male voices. This time, the people of Basel are explicitly addressed. In A-B-A' form, they are first defamed as demonically possessed traitors, then compared to the city of Constance, which is exalted as an exemplary imperial city. The comparison is obvious: like Basel a few decades earlier, Constance was a council city and was under the direct influence of the Swiss Confederates. Constance's forced accession to the Swabian League at the end of 1498 was perceived as a serious provocation and was ultimately the final trigger for the outbreak of the Swabian War. Finally, Bebel also issues a final warning, but this time not to, but to the French themselves: he seems to have been aware of the Swiss Confederates' notorious military successes at the time. While the framing couplets sound sorrowful with their free harmonies, the middle three lines on Constance are sweet and lovely in character: the rigid permutation fugue, symbolic of a centuries-old power structure, has an ironic effect. In the interludes, the double basses can be heard for the first time as an independent and not just accompanying sound body, building up and breaking down in broken chords and equally free harmonies.
The third movement stands out in several respects: everything is kept minimal, completely tonal, but with only a fleeting center. The main protagonist is not the choir, but a solo double bass: it “sings” the actual main melody in the opening and closing sections over an seemingly endless C/D ostinato played by the other double basses. Both elements are mirrored in the choir parts: the male voices – as a distant choir and more to be interpreted as a “council of ancestors” or “council of wise men” – recite Brant's Latin verses like a litany, which he wrote more than ten years after Basel's accession and which seem like a bitter elegy to the vanished Basel. The female voices sing the folksy version in German in alternation and represent the change that is constantly taking place (the approaching Reformation movement and the still distant women's movement are just two examples). Only in the middle section does the mood change: the C/D ostinato finally cadences in G major and is briefly replaced by a four-bar tutti ostinato (A-B-A'-B). Brant's words seem more composed here, even if they mourn the past again in the final section. The movement ends with the retrospective and at the same time anticipatory “Hie Schwytz” quint calls, as already hinted at in the prologue of the first movement, overlapping in the voices to form diatonic clusters. The third calls to the word “Basel” are also symbolic: The ambivalent cuckoo here underscores Brant's sense of a diabolical mirage, the reversal to the harbinger of spring becoming clear in the last movement. But Brant was ultimately proven right: only three years later, the Swiss Confederates lost the Battle of Marignano, a lasting turning point in their expansionist policy at the time.
After the three perspectives of the empire before, during, and after accession, the fourth and final movement (A major) presents a counterargument from the profane, German-speaking perspective of schoolmaster Caspar Jöppel, which is likely to have been representative of the celebrating population of Basel. The arrival of the Swiss delegation was celebrated by children in front of the Aeschentor gate with cries of “Hie Schwytz” (Here is Schwyz), and the day of accession was a city festival with much ceremony, pomp, and music in the streets. Accordingly, the traditional oath, which begins with “Hie Schwytz,” is set to music as a whirling dance: a percussive motif in the first double bass forms the basic pulse around which the other double basses move, accompanied by the choir voices in double choir as in a couple dance or wildly intermingled. This is followed by the 10th verse of Jöppel's 12-verse song, as a cheerful final fugue with the theme from the middle section of the third movement and with the first entry in the choir tenor – a tribute to Hans Huber, who immortalized Jöppel in the role of a singer as a tenor part in his festival music in 1901. The strict march rhythm of the fugue is loosened up once again for the last verse in a 5/4 rhythm. A cadence inspired by the Trecento madrigal finally leads into the coda, where the oath formula once again culminates in a brilliant tutti finale.
The finale's ecstasy is based on the trance-like dynamics of Bob Marley's live performances of “Exodus,” with the bass figure borrowed from Marley's bassist Aston Barrett. Even before that, offbeat and one-drop elements in the double basses in the final fugue are reminiscent of the unmistakable reggae rhythm. It would be going too far to read into this a biblical analogy of Basel's “exodus” from the ‘slavery’ of the empire to the “promised (Swiss) land.” The Basel Confederation was certainly a starting point for rapid progress, such as emancipation from the bishop, the heyday of humanism (including Erasmus of Rotterdam), and the Reformation. Rather, it is about recreating the atmosphere of the lavish celebration with dancing and cheers that heralded the beginning of an era in Basel on July 13, 1501, which continues to this day.
