Bernhard Havestadt's "Chilidúǵu" (1777/1883) - A Critical Look at the Available Digital Copies

In the previous article I have discussed the digitized copies of the works of French Dominican Jean-Baptiste Labat. The basic questions were: how much is available online? Are these digital copies usable for serious work? The result was mostly positive. Nearly all of Labat's publications have been digitized. At least one good and reliable copy exists for most of them. 

Here I will discuss another example: German Jesuit Bernhard Havestadt's Chilidúǵu, a book first published in 1777 and then reprinted in 1883. This was a groundbreaking linguistic work about the language of the Mapuche in Chile. But besides that it also included 19 tunes used for a versified Catechism in this particular language. That is the part of this book that I want to have a look at. I am interested in the publication of non-European tunes in Europe. This is a well-documented example of the reverse process, the export of Western music to the New World. 

Music was always an important tool used by the missionaries to promote Christendom among the indigenous people. They brought with them tunes from home and used them for religious songs in the local languages which they taught to their flock. The Jesuits were particularly well-versed in this respect (see f. ex Bach 1843, pp. 17-8, pp. 44-46). On the other hand there wasn't much interest in documenting local musical cultures. At that time - until 1777 - only 6 tunes from South America - the five from Brazil in de Lery's famous Histoire d'Un Voyage Faict en la Terre du Brésil (1586, p. 159 etc) and one lone fragmentary melody from Chile in Frézier's Relation du Voyage de la Mer du Sud (1716, here 1717, Vol. 1, p. 114) were available to European readers (see also my bibliography, at Google Docs). In this respect the cultural exchange between the old and the new world was very one-sided. 

Bernhard Havestadt (1714-1781; see NDB 8, 1969, at Deutsche Biographie; Wikipedia; Müller 2004; Meier 2010) from Cologne became a Jesuit in 1732 and in 1746 he traveled to Chile to work as a missionary. He stayed there for more than 20 years until the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish colonies in South America in 1768. Havestadt learned and studied Mapudungu, the language of the Mapuche. His original manuscript was written in Spanish. He returned to Germany where he spent the rest of his life. His great work was then published in 1777, but in Latin: 

• [Bernhard Havestadt], Chilidúǵu, Sive Res Chilenses Vel Descriptio Status tum naturalis, tum civilis, cum moralis Regni populique Chilensis inserta suis locis perfectæ ad Chilensem Linguam Manuductioni, Deo O. M. Multis ac Miris Modis Juvante opera, sumptibus, periculisque Bernardi Havestadt, Agrippinensis quondam Provinciae Rheni Inferioris primum Horstmariae in Westphalia, deinde Americae Meridionalis Regno Chilensi e Societate Jesu Missionarii, Monasterii Westphaliae Typis Aschendorfianis, 1777, 3 Vols.

The book consists of seven parts in three volumes (see Rich, Bibliotheca Americana Nova 1, 1835, p. 262), among them a grammar (pt. 1), a vocabulary (pt. 4) but also Havestadt's diary of some of his travels (pt. 7). The latter - which is, by the way, very worthwhile to read - was even later translated into German (in Murr II, 1811, pp. 431-96). But I am mostly interested in the Catechism (pt. 3) and the music (pt. 6). 

I found four digitized copies from three different libraries at Google Books as well as one at the Internet Archive:

• at Google Books:  Vol. 1 & Vol. 2/3 [= KBN], pts. 1-7, in 2 Vols.:,
  at ÖNB [= GB: Vol. 1 & Vol. 2/3], pts. 1-7, in 2 Vols.,
  at BSB [= GB: Vol. 2 & Vol. 3], pts. 3-7 in 2 Vols.,
  at BSB [= GB: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3], pts 1-7, in 3 Vols.,
  at the Internet Archive [= JCBL] 

Let's have a look at first at the scan Google has produced from the copy at the National Library of the Netherlands (KBN). The "Catechismus in Versu" is of course there (pp. 582-99). But of the part with the music we only get the title-page (p. 892): Notae Musicae Ad Canendum in Organo Cantiones Partis Tertiae á Numero 650 usque ad 676. On the following page already the next part of the book starts. A note at the bottom of this title-page tells us that the music as well as a map have been published separately. Unfortunately this part can't be found anywhere in the digital copy, neither added after the title-page nor at the end of the book. It is simply missing. 

This is also the case with the copy from the Austrian National Library (ÖNB; see p. 892) and one of the two from the Bavarian State Library (BSB; see p. 892). The Notae Musicae are not included and no reason is given. It is easily possible that this extra booklet got lost and is not part of these particular copies. But there is no information about this problem in these libraries' catalogs. Therefore it is not clear if the music is missing from the original book or if it simply wasn't scanned. 

Then I look at the second copy from the BSB and I see that here these pages were bound in after the title-page of part 6 (p. 892). But unfortunately they were not scanned correctly and are not usable. This is of course a general problem with Google Books: pages exceeding a book's standard size are usually not reproduced completely. 

All in all we have four digital copies of Havestadt's important work that were made made available by Google and none of them is complete.  Quantity was apparently more important than quality. We can see once again the general problem with Google Books: they have digitized not the books but only the texts. 

One more digital copy can be found at the Internet Archive. This one is from the collection of the John Carter Brown Library which is usually very reliable. I have rarely encountered any problems with the scans of their books that were created by the Internet Archive itself. They are usually excellent and also complete. In this case there are some problems. First there is curious error with the title of the book. It is given as "Chilidúu" instead the correct "Chilidúgú". I assume the "ǵ" got lost somewhere. That makes it a little bit difficult to find it. But these things can happen and I found it nonetheless. Unfortunately the part with the music is missing here, too. Thankfully this is noted in the extensive bibliographical description. Therefore the reader knows that this digital copy is not complete and that these pages were not part of the library's copy of the book. 

In 1883 a facsimile edition of Havestadt's work was published. The legendary Dr. Julius Platzmann (1832-1902; see Kammler 1994; Wikipedia), botanist and (amateur-)linguist, collected rare books about Indian languages and then made them available anew as reprints. 

• [Bernhard Havestadt], Chilidúgú Sive Tractatus Linguae Chilensis Opera Bernardi Havestadt. Editionem Novam Immutatam Curavit Dr. Julius Platzmann, Teubner, Lipsiae, 1883 [2 Vols.],
  at the Internet Archive [= GB - Harvard]
  at Memoriachilena (Biblioteca National de Chile): Vol. 1, Vol. 2 [now also at the Internet Archive] 

This one was also digitized by Google. Here in Europe we are not allowed to see scans of books published after 1875 at Google Books but thankfully this has been uploaded to the Internet Archive where I can use it. Much to my surprise the pages with music are included here. The extra booklet can be found at the end of the book. This is fine but I have to add that their scanners haven't been able to reproduce the map. It missing and therefore this copy is still not complete. 

 

In the end I was saved by the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile that also has an excellent digital library. They offer a very interesting presentation about "Música de las misiones jesuitas de la Araucanía" (at memoriachilena) and here we can find not only a helpful introduction to this topic, a bibliography, links and images but also digitized books as downloadable pdfs. One of them is the 1883 edition of Havestadt's work and this digital copy is really complete (now available at the Internet Archive, see Appendix). Both the music and the map are included and the quality of the scan is excellent. Thankfully they also have a scan of only this extra booklet and there we can get even soundfiles of the tunes (at memoriachilena). 

All in all there are 7 digital copies of the two editions of this book but only one of them is complete and perfectly well usable. This result is not particularly convincing and encouraging. In fact it shows that there are still great problems. The basic prerequisite for serious work with digital copies is that they are complete. At the moment it is always necessary to search for good and complete copies. In this respect it is not a good idea to rely solely on the scans produced by Google. There is always the chance that something is missing.

In the meantime, while searching for the available copies of Havestadt's book, I also found some of the relevant literature. Chilean musicologist Victor Rondón is the foremost expert on the music in Chilidúgu. An article published in 2001 is available on the site of the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile (at memoriachilena) while a short introduction to his important book about the 19 canciones misionales (1997) can be found in his own blog. An article in English (2006) may serve as a good introduction. It can be inspected at Google Books and should be easy to get from the next library. He has unearthed the sources and origins of most of the tunes and notes that they are "derived mainly from the old religious songbook of Cologne" (2006, p. 502). 

I also learned that Havestadt in fact offered at least one piece for the admirers and collectors of non-European "folk poetry", but unfortunately only the words without the music. In the grammar (pt. 1) we can find a text with the title "Machiorum medicantium cantiunculae seu geicurehuen pu machi ta ni úl" (pp. 237-9). German linguist Johann Christoph Adelung (1732-1806) was of course familiar with Havestadt's book. He later referred to it in his - posthumously published - Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (Vol. 3.2, 1813, p. 403 etc). 

But already in 1799 he put together a little anthology with the title Proben der Dichtung ungebildeter Völker that was published in W. G. Becker's Erholungen. This included texts from Lappland, the Baltic, Siberia and the Americas in the original language and in German translation. One of them was Havestadt's piece, here called "Lied eines Zauberers in Chili beim Kräutersammeln" (pp. 203-6). The Brothers Grimm later copied these exotic poetry for their own intended collection of Volkslieder. But this project remained unfinished and they never managed to publish it (see Oberfeld I, 1985, pp. 442-4; Becker & Schopf 1889). 

Literature 

• Johann Christoph Adelung, Proben der Dichtung ungebildeter Völker. Erstes Dutzend, in: Erholungen. Herausgegeben von W. G. Becker, 1799, 1. Bändchen, Koch und Weigel, Leipzig, 1799, pp. 194-208, at Google Books [= Princeton; bad quality]; at UB Göttingen [quality much better] 
• Johann Christoph Adelung, Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in beynahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarten, Voss, Berlin, 1806-1817, 4 Vols. ,at the Internet Archive (Vols. 1/3; Vols. 2/4) 
• Moritz Bach, Die Jesuiten und ihre Mission Chiquitos in Südamerika. Eine historisch-ethnographische Schilderung. Herausgegeben und mit einem Vorworte begleitet von Dr. Georg Ludwig Kriegk, Mittler, Leipzig, 1843, at Google Books [= BSB]; at Google Books [= BL] 
• Jörg Becker & Frederico Schopf, Lied eines Zauberers in Chili, in: Charlotte Oberfeld et al. (eds.), Brüder Grimm Volkslieder. Aus der Handschriftensammlung der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, Bd. 2: Kommentar, Marburg, 1989, pp. 308) 
• Henry Kammler, Karl Julius Platzmann: ein Leipziger und die Indianersprachen, in: Quetzal. Politik und Kultur in Lateinamerika. Online-Magazin 8, 1994 (at quetzal-leipzig.de) 
• Johannes Meier, P. Bernhard Havestadt (1714-1781), ein Kölner Jesuit als Missionar und Sprachwissenschaftler bei den Mapuche in Chile, in: Mariano Delgado & Hans Waldenfels (eds.), Evangelium und Kultur. Begegnungen und Brüche. Festschrift für Michael Sievernich, Fribourg & Stuttgart, 2010 (= Studien zur Christlichen Religions- und Kulturgeschichte 12), pp. 545-550 
• Michael Müller, P. Bernhard Havestadts "Chilidúgú". Das literarische Vermächtnis eines Indianermissionars, in: Jahrbuch Kirchliches Buch- und Bibliothekswesen 5, 2004, pp. 105-129 
• Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, Nachrichten von verschiedenen Ländern des Spanischen Amerika. Aus eigenhändigen Aufsätzen der Gesellschaft Jesu 1810, Hendel, Halle, 1809/11, 2 Vols., at the Internet Archive [= GettyRI] at BSB [= GB] 
• Charlotte Oberfeld et al. (eds.), Brüder Grimm Volkslieder. Aus der Handschriftensammlung der Universität Marburg, 1: Textband, Marburg, 1985 
• O. Rich, Bibliotheca Americana Nova; or, A Catalogue of Books in Various Languages, Relating to America, Printed since the Year 1700. Compiled principally from the works themselves, New York & London, 1835, at the Internet Archive [= CDL] 
• Victor Rondón, 19 canciones misionales en mapudúngún contenidas en el Chilidúgú (1777) del misionero jesuita, en la Araucanía, Bernardo de Havestadt (1714-1781), Santiago, 1997 (see: elcobijoenlacolina.com, 19.10.2011) 
• Victor Rondón, Música y evangelización en el cancionero Chilidúgú (1777) del padre Havestadt, misionero jesuita en la Araucanía durante el siglo XVIII, in: Manfred Tietz & Dietrich Briesemeister (eds.), Los Jesuitas españoles expulsos: su imagen y su contribución al saber sobre el mundo hispánico en la Europa del siglo XVIII. Actas del Coloquio Internacional de Berlín (7-10 de abril de 1999), Frankfurt/M. & Madrid, 2001, pp. 557-580; online at memoriachilena (BNC) 
• Victor Rondón, 22/Sung Catechism and College Opera: Two Musical Genres in the Jesuit Evangelization of Colonial Chile, in: The Jesuits II. Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773. Edited by John W. O'Malley, S.J. et al., Toronto etc., 2006, pp. 498-510