by Tim Rayborn
When, at one of his executions,
A certain noble could no longer stand the stench,
And held his nose in revulsion,
Dracula had the man seized and had a longer stake prepared.
Presenting it, he said, “you may live up there,
Where the stench cannot reach you.”
Dracula did not invent impalement; the Turks and others had used it, and perhaps he saw it as a way of answering them. But he perfected it to an art form, if such a thing can be said.
Detesting foreigners “polluting” his land, he was especially harsh toward Germans and Roma (gypsies) as well as criminals, the homeless, and outcasts of any kind. Not unlike Hitler, he had a vision of a “pure” homeland wherein only desirable people would live.
Hearing all of this, Beheim worked the details into his poem, sparing his audiences none of what Jacob had reported to him. He noted how Dracula had contempt even for ambassadors, who should have been given immunity. Once, he was receiving Italian envoys. Other versions say that it was Turkish ambassadors; perhaps it was both on different occasions. Beheim records the meeting:
They [the envoys] removed their hats.
Under their hats, each of them wore a skullcap
That they did not take off.
Dracula asked them why they did not remove them.
“This is our custom,” they replied,
“We are not obliged to remove our caps under any circumstances,
Even in an audience with the sultan or Holy Roman Emperor.”
Dracula said “in all fairness, I want to recognize and strengthen your customs”…
Then, this tyrant took some large iron nails,
And planted them in a circle in the skullcaps of each ambassador.
“Believe me,” he said, as his servants nailed the skullcaps to the envoys’ heads,
“This is how I will strengthen your customs!”
In the summer of 1462 (the year Beheim met Jacob), the Ottoman sultan brought an army to Wallachia, easily three times the size of Vlad’s. For all of his cruelty, Vlad was not foolhardy or stupid. Knowing his forces could not defeat a much larger, better-equipped army in an outright battle, he had to resort to guerrilla tactics in the form of nighttime raids to try to even the odds a bit. He followed a “scorched earth” policy of burning crops and villages so that the Turkish forces would find no food or water. He even committed a kind of early biological warfare by sending afflicted individuals (with tuberculosis, leprosy, plague, and other diseases) into the midst of the enemy army dressed as Turks. If the sick survived both their illnesses and their mission, Vlad promised he would reward them handsomely. These tactics did have an effect, and Turkish morale began to wear down.
But it was his most brazen act of defiance that not only blackened his reputation forever, but also actually succeeded in driving back the Turkish army—something that no other Balkan leader had been able to do. In spite of the setbacks, the sultan was poised to attack Wallachia’s capital city, Tîrgovişte. In response, Vlad played his last card, probably because he knew that the city could not withstand a siege.
Arriving at a point about sixty miles north of their destination, the Turkish army encountered a scene of horror unlike any they had ever seen:
The Turks saw, in a half-circle a mile wide,
Thousands of stakes holding the bodies of 20,000
Turkish soldiers captured in battles.
It is said that birds of prey made their nests in the skulls of some,
So long had they lain bare to the elements.
What a desolate spectacle this was for the Turks,
And for the sultan himself.
So overwhelmed by disbelief in what he saw,
He said that he could not take this land away from a man
Who could do such terrible things,
And that surely a man who had accomplished this
Was worthy of greater things.
Given the heat of the summer, the stench of rotting flesh and decay must have been unbearable. This ghastly scene was enough for the Ottoman troops and even the sultan, who at last conceded defeat and ordered the army to retreat. Ultimately he must have decided that, at least for the time being, Wallachia was not worth the price he would have to pay to take it.
Vlad had triumphed and halted the advancement of the mighty Ottoman Empire, but his victory was short-lived. Not long after this event Vlad fell from power and ended up as a prisoner in Hungary for several years. His own people had clearly had enough; what he demanded of them for their freedom was simply too much. He briefly returned to power again in 1476, but was soon killed in another Turkish attack. Beheim mused:
It is conceivable that the devil himself
Would not want Dracula.
Dracula’s story passed into legend and became fodder for various propaganda machines. Beheim reported these stories as they were told to him by Jacob, but just how accurate are they? Undoubtedly, Vlad was a monster; there are a number of independent reports that confirm several of his atrocities, but we have to use some caution before believing everything that was said, no matter how horrifyingly fascinating it sounds. The Holy Roman Emperor and the Hungarian kings had long-standing political rivalries with Wallachia and it was in every way to their advantage to portray Prince Vlad as a kind of Antichrist. As a sycophant to Frederick III, Beheim would have wanted to please his emperor; most historians are convinced he embellished his poem quite a bit, making the horrible parts even more horrific. Estimates that Vlad killed one hundred thousand people, for example, are probably far too high. Likewise, the stories of his cannibalism and blood drinking are both probably untrue.
It would be foolish and wrong to try to excuse his actions by saying that he was a product of his times, but the terrible tortures he is said to have committed already existed and were practiced in other countries; he merely refined them and ordered their use on a greater scale. His unorthodox warfare techniques did stop the Turkish juggernaut, at least for a few decades. As a result, many Romanians now view him as a national hero. It’s certainly not the case that he got a bad rap, but the evils that he did commit were at least partly amplified by those looking to sell books or please their patrons.
Whether he was a psychopath, a tyrant, or just an extreme patriot, the chilling words of a German musician ensured that the Son of the Dragon and his legend lived on to disturb and frighten many later listeners and readers.
Joan the Mad and singers for her husband’s corpse
Queen Juana I of Castile (1479–1555) is often known as Joan the Mad, though historians have debated whether or not she was truly mad. It’s quite possible that she was declared insane for political reasons, as there were those who had much to gain from this label. What is certain, though, is that she was a temperamental and passionate woman deeply in love with her husband, Philip the Handsome of Austria (1478–1506); what a great name! For her, it was a love bordering on obsession that continued well after his untimely death.
Born in 1479, Joan was the second daughter of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. The marriage of these two united Spain, and their military efforts drove the Moors from the south of the country forever. In 1492 Granada fell, the last stronghold of Moorish resistance. They were also the monarchs who supported Columbus’s first journey, and their daughter, Katherine of Aragon, was to marry that accomplished musician, King Henry VIII of England. Joan herself was said to be gifted in music, playing the harpsichord and lute and having a fondness for dancing.
By the age of sixteen she was betrothed to Philip, the son of Emperor Maximilian of Germany. They met in 1496 and fell in love (or lust, given Philip’s epithet) immediately. It was said that they found the nearest priest to marry them on the spot so they could be off to the bedroom. A “proper” church wedding was conducted the following day, just to make things nice and official. While Joan was hopelessly infatuated with her husband, Philip was used to drinking, eating, and philanderi
ng; he had no intention of changing his ways, regardless of his attraction to Joan. She was just another bonus in what must have been a pretty darned good life. For him, the marriage had been political, but for Joan, it was a love match, and she became very jealous and angry as he continued his wanton ways. She was irritable and moody, and her anger about his infidelities caused him to avoid her for days at a time. She remained in love with him despite this, and was determined to see him reformed into the ideal husband that she wanted him to be.
Over the next several years, a number of incidents seemed to push Joan closer to the edge. As her instability increased and she became more suspicious of Philip’s activities, his trip to Spain caused nearly irreparable family problems. Philip had no taste for the austere and conservative Spanish court and wanted to be away from it. He left, but Joan was forced to stay behind, a decision she raged against incessantly.
By the time of her return to Flanders in 1504, Philip had taken a mistress. Joan consulted her servants for love potions and spells to try to bind him back to her. He discovered this and dismissed them. Eventually the two were reconciled. Later that year, Joan was proclaimed Queen of Castile. Wary of this and fearing his own loss of royal power, Ferdinand set in motion a series of events to try to deprive Joan of her right to rule.
However, in September of that year Philip took ill with a fever. Within days he was dead, at only twenty-eight. Joan, pregnant at the time, was inconsolable. She refused to have his corpse removed, staying beside it and caressing it. She wore only black from then on, and her mental health seemed to gradually deteriorate.
She intended that he be buried in the south of Spain, a journey that would take some time given her condition. In the meantime, the body was interred temporarily at the monastery of Burgos. Rumors began to spread that each night Joan would open the coffin and gaze at her husband’s remains, overcome with grief. In fact, she did open the coffin more than once to ensure that the body was still there. She is said to have begun kissing the corpse’s feet when it was unwrapped, and she had to be forcibly removed from its presence.
Eventually she set out on the journey. She had the coffin escorted by an armed guard and insisted that women not be allowed near it; she must have feared Philip’s philandering ways even beyond the grave. The retinue traveled only at night and would not stop at nunneries; Joan apparently thought that nuns were particularly susceptible to a dead man’s charms. During this time, she engaged some of Philip’s musicians and composers in a macabre ritual. Philip had a following of musicians in his employ. Most of them had departed back to Flanders and France upon his death, but Gilles Reingot and Pierre de La Rue remained in her service. La Rue is known these days for his fine songs and sacred music (masses and motets). Joan was quite fond of him, raising him in rank to her premier chapelain, the head of the chapel; she also paid him twice what the other singers received. This generous salary was probably enough of an incentive to remain with the increasingly eccentric queen. He journeyed with her and the coffin through Spain, and each night the chapel choir would sing a Requiem Mass to the corpse. Whether or not it was visible is not recorded, though legend says that Joan wanted to view the ever-decaying body on a regular basis, so perhaps she frequently forced the singers to gaze upon the grisly sight while they chanted and sang for Philip’s soul.
To put a stop to this whole business, her father Ferdinand eventually shut Joan away in the town of Tordesillas, in central Spain. He dismissed her singers, and Reingot and La Rue went back to Flanders. By 1508 La Rue was in Brussels, and he stayed there and in the vicinity until 1514; apparently, hoofing it around Spain singing to a dead body had somewhat soured his taste for travel.
Was Joan truly mad? She may have been schizophrenic, or perhaps she suffered from paranoid delusions. Inbreeding among the royal families and the resulting unspecified mental illness has also been offered as an explanation for her bizarre behavior. On the other hand, Ferdinand had a lot to gain, in terms of power, by declaring her insane and ruling in her stead.
Both La Rue and Reingot remained with her long after they were required to. They could easily have found comparable employment elsewhere (as they eventually did). But they seemed quite content to say prayers and sing masses to a corpse to humor their patron.
La Marseillaise and the French Revolution
The Marseillaise is the rousing national anthem of France, associated with the country almost as strongly as the Eiffel Tower and baguettes. Created during the time of the French Revolution and an impending war with Austria, the song has a curious history. In 1792 the revolution was in full swing, and Austria had declared war on France for imprisoning Marie Antoinette, who was Austrian by birth. In the town of Strasbourg on the German border, the mayor, P. F. Dietrich, sent out the call for a new anthem to raise the morale of the French troops and give them heart and enthusiasm for the fighting ahead.
A captain of engineers, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836), responded with the song that became world famous, writing the words in one night. He borrowed music from a work written by Italian composer Giovanni Battista Viotti in 1784 and called it the “War Song for the Army of the Rhine.” The troops took to the tune immediately, and it became so popular that when some volunteer soldiers from Marseilles took it with them to Paris, it was attributed to them and dubbed La Marseillaise. Indeed, it was declared the French national anthem on July 14, 1795 (the date now known as Bastille Day). However, when the revolution ended and Napoleon took power, he banned the song because it had the ability to stir up strong feelings and had come to be associated with loutish behavior, riots, and disorder. It was rather like a late eighteenth-century European football fans’ chant. It was made legal in 1830 and then banned once again by Napoleon III. It was only finally restored permanently as the anthem in 1879, long after revolutions and wars had faded in immediate importance.
Ironically, the mayor who had commissioned the work to inspire patriotic fervor and revolutionary spirit was ultimately sent to the guillotine because of his aristocratic background. He became the victim of his own success. De Lisle himself was imprisoned in 1793; no one was safe from suspicion or the terror of the blade. He was eventually freed and went on to write other songs, but nothing ever came close to the fame he had achieved with his anthem. He lived until 1836 and died in poverty, which, of course, is a common fate for many creators of lasting works of art.
Blood-letting and a haircut
We think of barbershop quartets as groups of men singing close harmonies, adorned with impressive moustaches, turn-of-the-century clothing, and straw hats, though there are women’s groups, too. There is something “county fair in the American heartland” and nostalgic about them that may suggest cheesiness to some, in spite of the obvious talent required to harmonize so well.
How did the genre acquire its name? There are actually two different histories, one considerably bloodier than the other. In sixteenth-century England, barbers were not just those who trimmed hair and whiskers; they had multiple roles. They were often associated with surgeons, and the two belonged to the same guild, the Company of Barber-Surgeons, which had merged in 1540. If that makes you uncomfortable, it should. They offered such services as bleeding (believed to restore health and balance), leeches, the binding of wounds, and tooth extraction. Indeed, the familiar barber’s pole, with its red and white stripes, originated in this time, the white representing bandages and the red symbolizing blood. Just remember that the next time you go in for a trim.
So what is the musical connection? Those who went to the barber often found that there were instruments provided for making music while they waited. This practice actually seems like a good idea, offering patients a means of calming themselves before submitting to whatever curative torture they were seeking. Barbershops provided lutes, citterns (a kind of early mandolin), and virginals (a small harpsichord), and encouraged the singing of popular tunes. The music provided cheer and quite possibly drowned out the patients’ screams. Writers su
ch as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson referred to barber music, and the composer Thomas Morley noted that one popular pavane (a slow dance) was sometimes called the “Gregory Walker” after a well-known hairdresser and musician, though he further implied that barber’s music is hardly worthy of serious consideration.
What connects this English cultural oddity with modern barbershop music? An error of historical interpretation. The vocal harmonies that we know today had their origins in poor, working class populations, especially in African American communities. The barbershop served as a kind of social center, where informal singing and harmonizing of popular songs began at the end of the nineteenth century.
With the invention of the phonograph and the desire for recordings, barbershop repertoire caught the attention of the new recording businesses because the groups were small and literally could all fit in front of the recording horn (the precursor of the microphone). But it wasn’t the men from the barbershops who were being recorded. There was probably a racist assumption that white singers would be more appealing and marketable than black, so new groups were formed to meet the demand, and the genre was solidified.
Some confusion about the origin of the term arose later. Music historian Percy Scholes made an error in the 1930s when reading about the practice of making music in Elizabethan barbershops. He assumed that this meant that the modern barbershop quartet had come from England and was a contemporary survival of an old practice, when in fact the two were separate art forms. His Oxford Companion to Music notes, for example, “Possibly, however, these terms [barbershop quartet and music] are a mere survival of an English expression now obsolete in the land of its origin—‘Barber’s Music’—for any kind of extemporized noisy tune-making.” As a result, he created an erroneous association between them, assuming that the vocal groups were Elizabethan in origin, perpetuated in his reference book. Barbershop music continues to this day and has both its admirers and detractors, though thankfully, leeches, teeth-pulling, and the opening of veins are no longer involved.