Speer

In the year 1688, when the 52-year-old Georg Daniel Speer, son of a reputed peltmonger family of Breslau, had his 'Musicalisch-Türckischer Eulen-Spiegel' published in Ulm, he was an organist and assistant teacher in South Germany and already had an eventful life behind him. At the age of 18, he had set off through the Carpathian Mountains to Spisz (located in the north-east of present-day Slovakia). Throughout the following years, he worked as a mercenary for various armies, once as an army drummer, then as a bugler in the war of Hungary against the Turks. Finally, he reached Constantinople in the company of a 'high-born lord'. In his 'Musicalisch-Türckischer Eulen-Spiegel', Speer sets texts from his picaresque novel 'Ungarischer oder Dacianischer Simplicissimus' in music. Speer lets his hero Lompyn travel musically through all the countries then affected by the Turkish invasion.