Sophie Elisabeth Herzogin zu Braunschweig und Lüneburgaus barock

Sophie Elisabeth Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (* 20 August 1613 in Güstrow, Germany; † 2 July 1676 in Lüchow, Germany) was a German poet, composer and impresario.

Life

Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Mecklenburg belongs to the 17th generation of the Mecklenburg dynasty and descended from the line of the sub-duchy of Güstrow. She was very musical and received her artistic training at her father’s court, where the English composer and viola da gamba virtuoso William Brade was employed. She was also well educated linguistically and intellectually in order to fulfil her representational duties at the prince’s court.

In 1635, Sophie Elisabeth married Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who ascended the throne in the same year. At the age of 21, she was the 56-year-old’s third wife and bore him three more children.

In 1638, she made the acquaintance of Heinrich Schütz in Dresden, whose pupil she became. She also maintained contact with Georg Philipp Harsdörffer in Nuremberg and participated with her husband in the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft. She also rendered outstanding services to the education of the sons and daughters of the ‘Prince of Peace’ brought into the marriage.

Elisabeth Sophie was entrusted with the organisation of the court chapel and at times worked closely with Heinrich Schütz, who was appointed absent Kapellmeister in 1655. She may have collaborated with him on arias in his Theatrical New Imagination of Mary Magdalene.

She made a significant contribution to the culturally stimulating atmosphere of the princely court: She composed baroque musical comedies and inspired community poetry, wrote edifying literature, poems, various dramas and librettos as well as courtly masquerades, which have survived as manuscripts. She extracted a narrative strand from the successful French novel L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé and translated it (freely) as the novel Die histori der Dorinde, which she used to refine the social forms at court.

In 1642, on the occasion of the separate peace treaty concluded between Austria and Mecklenburg a few years earlier, she composed a ‘Neuerfundenes Freudenspiel, genannt Friedenssieg’, which, together with Sigmund Theophil Staden’s ‘Seelewig’ (1644, text: Harsdörffer), is one of the oldest surviving pieces of German music theatre. From 1648, she was responsible for organising court festivities and developed the Wolfenbüttel court theatre into a cultural centre. Mainly ducal family members and relatives performed there in front of a select court audience. The princess gave public testimony to her convictions on the stage, particularly in matters of state policy, for example in 1656 with the publication of her drama Ein Frewdenspiell von dem itzigen betrieglichen Zustande in der Welt. In it, a good and virtuous prince is contrasted with a ruthless and corrupt prince as an opponent, both of whom are followed by the subjects of the respective state theory towards good and evil. In this and other pieces, the absolute prince is legitimised as the ruler of the land, but he is intended to serve as a role model.

Most of Elisabeth Sophie’s compositions are hymns or devotional arias. Some of them were published in 1651 and 1667. Vinetum evangelicum, Evangelischer Weinberg, printed in 1651, is said to have been the first music published by a woman in Germany. Two of her dramatic works have survived: Friedens Sieg (1642, Brunswick) and Glückwünschende Freudensdarstellung (Lüneburg, 1652).

Sophie Elisabeth’s grave is in St Mary’s Church in Wolfenbüttel.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchess_Elisabeth_Sophie_of_Mecklenburg