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Sep 18, 2011

This article is one in a series of occasional pieces on the interrelation of Art and Politics, written by Larry W. Allen for Southern California Early Music Society and is reprinted with their gracious permission.

Herr Schlendrian, whose attempts to persuade his daughter to give up coffee are so humorously recounted in J.S. Bach's Kaffee-Kantate, may serve to remind us that ours is not the only generation to view the ingestion of pharmacologically active commodities as a hazard.

From ancient times to the late Renaissance, the common people of Europe had only one drug to ease their way through the travails of life:  alcohol --consumed in the form of wine around the Mediterranean and in lands strongly influenced by Roman conquest, and consumed as beer in the north of Europe.  Then, in the comparative short span of a century, Europe was introduced to not one, but two drugs of a quite different character -- nicotine and caffeine -- were ingested via the consumption of tobacco and coffee.

To Europeans, these new drugs were so different that there was no folkloric structure to guide attitudes toward them.  Nietzsche, working much later, analyzed the contrasting Dionysian and Apollonian attitudes; the former representing the mood brought about by alcohol, the latter resulting from contemplation.  But there was no similar allegorical figure to represent activity. Thus, the new drugs could be seen as providing a new paradigm for Europeans.

The commodities by which nicotine and caffeine were ingested were both symbolic of the new age and the subject of much of that age's social and commercial intercourse.  Symbolic in that activity -- exploration, colonization, trade (and trade wars), and the beginning of industrialization -- was a characteristic of the age.  Subjects, in that the commodities themselves were the object of much of the trade, and trade rivalries, of the period.

Tobacco was introduced first.  It was noted by Columbus on his 1492 voyage and by the mid-16th century small quantities were being imported into England by such adventurers as John Hawkins; by 1613 it was being grown commercially at Jamestown, Virginia.

Coffee arrived half a century later.  The first published mention of coffee by a European was not until 1582 (by Leonhard Rauwolf, in his account of travels in the Near East), and the first coffee beans imported into Europe (Marseilles) arrived in 1634.

Acceptance of coffee as a beverage came slowly, and Europe's first coffee houses were established only in towns where international trade was important:  London (1652); Marseilles (1664); Paris (1672, at the Saint-Germain fair); Vienna (1683, reputedly based on inventory seized from the camps of Turks fleeing their defeat by the Christian forces that year); Leipzig (before 1690; and succored by the city's famous annual fair); and Hamburg (1690).

At first, commodities containing these new drugs were very expensive.  In Renaissance England, one pipeful of tobacco would be shared amongst a number of smokers (reminiscent of a smoke-able commodity in our own time).  In mid-17th century Marseilles, coffee was deemed a medicinal substance and was available only by prescription, and then only to the well-to-do.  But the activity of the age would quickly change this.

In the early 1600s, tobacco plantations were developed in the New World, and by mid-century, tobacco cultivation was widespread in Persia.  The impact on prices was dramatic.  Tobacco from the Spanish West Indies cost 18 shillings per pound in England early in the Century, but the (admittedly inferior) tobacco produced In Virginia (following 1615) could be had or one to three shillings per pound.  So too with coffee.  The cultivation of this Ethiopian plant was established in Mocha (in Yemen) by the 14th century, but had not expanded in the next three centuries.  The late 17th century saw the colonial powers establishing coffee plantations in Sumatra, Java, Ceylon, Brazil and the West Indies.  The increased supply, and available of direct transport form the colonies, had the predictable impact on prices.

By the time of the High Baroque, both tobacco and coffee were cheap and widely available.  By all accounts, use was widespread and common among all social classes -- the new drugs were consumed by men, women and children.

Acceptance of the new pharmacology was by no means universal, or without contest.  Medical opinion on coffee was strongly divided (obviously less so today!):  Doctors in Marseilles inveighed against its corrupting influence, whereas the English physician Tisbot proclaimed that coffee "…clarifies the ideas and sharpens the understanding…."  Similar opinions were heard regarding both the salutary and deleterious effects of tobacco.  The ordinary consumer, however, probably did not need learned disputations to form an opinion of tobacco's relative merits and vices, as Tobias Hume's witty song Tobacco (c.1605-07) so ably attests.

Two verities regarding coffee were widely accepted, however.  First, it was seen as a counter, or even a cure, for drunkenness (which was especially prevalent in northern Europe).  This was attested by learned scholars (Walter Rumsey, pupil of Bacon and Wm. Harvey, and the historian Michelet) but also embraced by the purveyors of alcoholic beverages, who prophesied bankruptcy for themselves and impoverishment for farmers growing grapes and grain.  The sale of coffee was opposed by vintners in Marseilles, brewers in England and distillers in Vienna.

Access to coffee often became then a political or economic decision for the monarch or prince, who would consider the relative political and monetary influences of the opposing sides, what commodities could be most easily taxed to augment always-lean royal coffers, the necessity to conserve hard currency versus the need for a sober workforce to support industrial competitiveness, and so forth.  (The Brenier Coffee Cantata humorously recounts the struggle between coffee and alcohol -- ed.)

Second, coffee was viewed as inspiring sedition.  It was widely viewed as promoting mental acuity, and thus disputation.  It was thought that peasants and burghers who were compliant and somnambulant under the influence of alcohol would become questioning and restless under the influence of coffee.  Such a result would naturally worry a monarch during this restless and questing age, but it was a worry to rulers in previous ages as well.  The first recorded repression of coffee consumption was the unsuccessful attempt by the viceroy Khair Bey of Mecca to ban coffeehouses from that town in 1517.  The Ottoman Sultan Murad IV in the 1630s decreed death for consumption of coffee (along with wine, opium and tobacco) in his realm.  Later, the English Kind Charles II viewed coffeehouses as "seminaries of sedition" and ordered all 3000 in London closed in 1675, but was forced to relent three days later due to popular outcry.  The police forces of France's Louis XVI regularly monitored activities in Parisian coffeehouses (but of course were unsuccessful in preventing the Revolution of 1789).

By the mid-18th century, the secular cantata had developed to the point of going beyond tales of amorous adventures involving characters from classical mythology.  This subject matter was still pursued, or course, but in keeping with such an active age (and the seditious effects of coffee!) many texts were satires on contemporary culture or events.  Cantata subjects included Freemasonry, Gulliver, Don Quixote, wine and beer, dentistry (punctuated with screams and groans), natural phenomena, battles, the doings of princes and patrons, and…coffee.  I have yet to discover a reference to a tobacco cantata; if you are aware of one, kindly let me know.