Table Of ContentYALE 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
