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YALE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC LEO SCHRADE, EDITOR VOLUME I Mattheson Johann SPECTATOR IN MUSIC BY , BEEKMAN C CANNON NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON • GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1947 Copyright, 1947, by Yale University Press Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. PREFACE This volume is the first in a new series of publications in the field of musical scholarship: the "Yale Studies in the History of Music." Our purpose is twofold: that musical scholars in Yale University may have a fuller opportunity to make known the results of their research; and that the study of the history of music in the aca demic institutions of this country may benefit by the achievements of youthful scholars. The editor of this series most earnestly be lieves that studies such as these must be maintained by colleges and universities. For at least two hundred years the history of music has received careful and honorable attention from more than one distinguished scholar, but it has never quite succeeded in gaining the place it should rightfully hold as companion to the other his torical studies undertaken by our colleges. In times long past music, as one of the liberal arts, had a secure place among academic studies. It then comprised a total knowl edge of everything that related to music, and this knowledge was conveyed to the student in the form of a scholarly discipline with out which no musical activity was of any avail. In the course of time, however, the science of music changed its meaning and and thereby forfeited the high place it held in institutions of learn ing. In recent years a return of this old discipline to the academic institutions has been sought—and, in various universities, both in this country and in Europe, with success. But a mere revival of the Ars Musica cannot bring back all the ideas which it once so fully embraced. Although the imitation of an old system of learning such as this would, certainly, be futile and mistaken, this fact should by no means exclude from our universities the maintain- ance of the study of music as an Ars Liberalis. Hence to regain for it its proper place amidst the commonwealth of scholars, we must stress that element in music which best quickens the nature of a liberal art—the history of music. Assiduous research into such history will, then, be the aim of the volumes published in this series, and we take pleasure and satisfaction in thus sharing in the vi Johann Mattheson attempt to establish the history of music as one of the liberal arts that a university represents. There is good reason for further satisfaction that our new series can be opened with the work of a scholar only lately returned from service in the armed forces. Commander Cannon was in the United States Navy from May, 1941, through January, 1946. His study on Mattheson was the subject of his doctoral dissertation in 1939, and this publication is a partial fulfillment of the require ments for the Ph.D. degree at Yale University. The author col lected all his material in 1938, chiefly in the libraries of Hamburg and Berlin. It is known that the archives of Hamburg were severely damaged by bombing; how much survives of the material used by the author in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek we have not been able to ascertain. This publication does, however, certainly contain a good deal of material that in all probability can never be recovered. We are happy to express our gratitude to all those who so con structively shared in the publication of this book: to Dean Edgar S. Furniss, Provost of Yale University, whose continued interest made the inception of this series possible; to Professor Robert D. French, whose counsel has been an encouraging guide to the author for many years; to the late Professor Robert C. Bates, whose devoted friendship was the author's best advice and help; and to Mr. Beecher Hogan, whose masterly understanding of style has given to the following pages a good deal of their present form. We wish likewise to thank Miss Eva O'Meara, Librarian of the Yale School of Music for her generous help, and the members of the staff of the Sterling Memorial Library, particularly Miss Anne S. Pratt, to whose efforts we owe the view of eighteenth- century Hamburg reproduced in this book. LEO SCHRADE. Yale University, December, 1946 INTRODUCTION MATTHESON— born in 1681—belongs to an age that, at the very moment of its decline, seemed to put JOHANN forth all its strength into one last effort to procure some final form for human thought, some perfect skill for man's deed. His birth occurred within a decade that was to confer extraordinary distinction upon the history of music. Francesco Durante, Dome- nico Scarlatti, Francesco Feo, Niccolo Porpora, Leonardo Vinci, Jean Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, and — numerous others of lesser importance all were born between 1680 and 1690. Italians led baroque opera to its last triumphant phase in Europe. Rameau gave to French opera its most convincing form by creating an entirely original transformation of its Italian proto type. Together with these Mattheson represents the last generation of baroque musicians. While Mattheson was alive the music of his own country ex hibited, both in style and in intention, a singular lack of unity. Bach was the unequaled and incomprehensible reorganizer of Protestant church music at a time when secular forms were almost wholly predominant. Händel swept aside the narrow, anachronistic traditions of German music and gained international rank in as many branches of composition as his generation could provide. Anxious to maintain the contact with generally recognized Euro pean forms, such as the opera, Christoph Graupner stood aloof from Bach's ideals. Telemann, artist of the rationalistic enlight- ment which finally numbered Bach himself among its victims, made the most of whatever the painfully strict limitations of Ger man music during the baroque had to offer; he even lived long enough to witness its downfall. And another close witness, al though he was never altogether aware of this breakdown, was Johann Mattheson. German baroque music is indeed so diverse and contradictory that it can in no way be considered as the outgrowth of an un viii Johann Mattheson broken, steadily developing ideal. The extreme individuality of its spokesmen was at continual variance with the general state of musicianship throughout Germany itself. Johann Mattheson knew this. He tried to eliminate the discrepancy, or at least to mitigate it. With this in mind, he wrote his many theoretical works. The older he grew, the more he came to be concerned with the welfare of German music. He made every effort to absorb the total output of musical thought in all fields of musical knowledge. He studied English literature extensively, from the advantageous point of view of secretary to the English Resident in Hamburg. He stud ied French literature, philosophical and musical, and became one of the most eloquent advocates of Descartes' philosophy. He trans lated French treatises, reshaped them, combined them with Italian works and with German tradition, and thus presented to German musicians a complex and rounded knowledge which should have eliminated agood bit of their backwardness. Hestudied the Italians, reacted sensitively to their artistic achievements, examined the best of their literature, translated again, and tried to reconcile their ideas to German concepts. His profound knowledge of the actual situation of music in Germany gave him a superiority bordering on conceit that at times is not easy to put up with. This fact does not, however, diminish the importance of the man. Although in his generation there were numerous German writers who treated the material of composition theoretically, there were scarcely any who tried to search out the real reasons for the peculiar state of German music. But of writers who understood the problem, and who gave the full energy and power of their pens to emancipating German baroque music from its dreary isolation, there was, it — would appear, but one Johann Mattheson. The contradictory phenomena in German culture during the baroque age were, however, not restricted to music alone. In more than one way this culture displayed pecularities that had no par allel. The Protestant Reformation in Germany was brought about by a resurgence of intense religious fervor. So unwieldly was the Holy Roman Empire of Charles the Fifth that the German princes