COFFEE IN RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS Page 4

The libretto shows the father Schlendrian, or Slowpoke, trying by various threats to dissuade his daughter from further indulgence in the new vice, and, in the end, succeeding by threatening to deprive her of a husband. But his victory is only temporary. When the mother and the grandmother indulge in coffee, asks the final trio, who can blame the daughter?

Bach uses the spelling coffee—not kaffee. The cantata was sung as recently as December 18, 1921, at a concert in New York by the Society of the Friends of Music, directed by Arthur Bodanzky.

Lieschen, or Betty, the daughter, has a delightful aria, beginning, "Ah, how sweet coffee tastes—lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine!" the opening bars of which are reproduced on page 598.

Messenger and Narrator	Tenor
Slowpoke	Bass
Betty, daughter to Slowpoke	Soprano

Tenor (Recitative): Be silent, do not talk, but notice what will happen! Here comes old Slowpoke with his daughter Betty. He's grumbling like a common bear—just listen to what he says.

(Enter Slowpoke muttering): What vexatious things one's children are! A hundred thousand naughty ways! What I tell my daughter Betty might as well be told to the moon! (Enter Betty.)

Slowpoke (Recitative): You naughty child, you mischievous girl, oh when can I have my way—give up your coffee!

Betty: Dear father, do not be so strict! If I can't have my little demi-tasse of coffee three times a day, I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat!

Betty (Aria): Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee, and if any one wishes to please me, let him present me with—coffee!

Slowpoke (Recitative): If you won't give up coffee, young lady, I won't let you go to any wedding feasts—I won't even let you go walking!

Slowpoke: What a little monkey you are, anyway! I will not let you have any whale-bone skirts of the present fashionable size!

Slowpoke (Air): Oh these girls—what obstinate dispositions they do have! They certainly are not easy to manage! But if one hits the right spot—oh well, one may succeed!

Slowpoke, with an air of being sure of success this time (Recitative): Now please do what father says.

Betty: Till I give up coffee? Oh well—coffee—let it be forgotten—dear father—I will not drink—none!

Betty (Aria): Today, dear father—do it today. (He goes out.) Ah, a husband! Really this suits me exactly! When they know I must have coffee, why, before I go to bed to-night I can have a valiant lover! (Goes out.)

Tenor (Recitative): Now go hunt up old Slowpoke, and just watch him get a husband for his daughter—for Betty is secretly making it known "that no wooer may come to the house, unless he promises me himself, and has it put in the marriage contract that he will allow me to make coffee whenever I will!"

"Ah, How Sweet Coffee Tastes—Lovelier Than a Thousand Kisses, Sweeter Far than Muscatel Wine!"
Opening bars of Betty's aria in Bach's Coffee Cantata, 1732

Trio: The cat will not give up the mouse, old maids continue "coffee-sisters!"—the mother loves her drink of coffee—grandma, too, is a coffee fiend—who now will blame the daughter!

The Most Beautiful Coffee House in the World
The Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, Italy, empire period, erected by the poor lemonade vendor and coffee seller, Antonio Pedrocchi.

Research has discovered only one piece of sculpture associated with coffee—the statue of the Austrian hero Kolschitzky, the patron saint of the Vienna coffee houses. It graces the second-floor corner of a house in the Favoriten Strasse, where it was erected in his honor by the Coffee Makers' Guild of Vienna. The great "brother-heart" is shown in the attitude of pouring coffee into cups on a tray from an oriental service pot.

The celebrated Caffè Pedrocchi, the center of life in the city of Padua, Italy, in the early part of the nineteenth century, is one of the most beautiful buildings erected in Italy. Its use is apparent at first glance. It was begun in 1816, opened June 9, 1831, and completed in 1842. Antonio Pedrocchi (1776–1852), an obscure Paduan coffee-house keeper, tormented by a desire for glory, conceived the idea of building the most beautiful coffee house in the world, and carried it out.

Artists and craftsmen of all ages since the discovery of coffee have brought their genius into play to fashion various forms of apparatus associated with the preparation of the coffee drink. Coffee roasters and grinders have been made of brass, silver, and gold; coffee mortars, of bronze; and coffee making and serving pots, of beautiful copper, pewter, pottery, porcelain, and silver designs.

In the Peter collection in the United States National Museum there is to be seen a fine specimen of the Bagdad coffee pot made of beaten copper and used for making and serving; also, a beautiful Turkish coffee set. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York there are some beautiful specimens of Persian and Egyptian ewers in faience, probably used for coffee service. Also, in American and continental museums are to be seen many examples of seventeenth-century German, Dutch, and English bronze mortars and pestles used for "braying" coffee beans to make coffee powder.

A very beautiful specimen of the oriental coffee grinder, made of brass and teakwood, set with red and green glass jewels, and inlaid in the teakwood with ivory and brass, is at the Metropolitan. This is of Indo-Persian design of the nineteenth century.

The Metropolitan Museum shows also many specimens of pewter coffee pots used in India, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Russia, and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

One can guess at the luxuriousness of the coffee pots in use in France throughout the eighteenth century by noting that from March 20, 1754, to April 16, 1755, Louis XV bought no fewer than three gold coffee pots of Lazare Duvaux. They had carved branches, and were supplied with "chafing dishes of burnished steel" and lamps for spirits of wine. They cost, respectively, 1,950, 1,536, and 2,400 francs. In the "inventory of Marie-Josephe de Saxe, Dauphine of France", we note, too, a "two cup coffee pot of gold with its chafing dish for spirits of wine in a leather case."

The Italian wrought-iron coffee roaster of the seventeenth century was often a work of art. The specimen illustrated is rich in decorative motifs associated with the best in Florentine art.

Madame de Pompadour's inventory disclosed a "gold coffee mill, carved in colored gold to represent the branches of a coffee tree." The art of gold, which sought to embellish everything, did not disdain these homely utensils; and one may see at the Cluny Museum in Paris, among many mills of graceful form, a coffee mill of engraved iron dating from the eighteenth century, upon which are represented the four seasons. We are told, however, that it graced the "sale after the death of Mme. de Pompadour", which, of course, makes it much more valuable.

"The tea pot, coffee pot and chocolate pot first used in England closely resembled each other in form", says Charles James Jackson in his Illustrated History of English Plate, "each being circular in plan, tapering towards the top, and having its handle fixed at a right angle with the spout."

Tea Pot, 1670

Coffee Pot, 1681

Coffee Pot, 1689

Seventeenth-Century Tea Pots and Coffee Pots

The earliest examples were of oriental ware and the form of these was adopted by the English plate workers as a model for others of silver. It apparently was not until after both tea and coffee had been used for several years in this country [England] that the tea pot was made proportionately less in height and greater in diameter than the coffee pot. This distinction, which was probably due to copying the forms of Chinese porcelain tea pots, was afterwards maintained, and to the present day the difference between the tea pot and the coffee pot continued to be mainly one of height.