Mattheson, Johann (EN)

Mattheson Johann, pseudonym Aristoxenos Junior, *28 September 1681 Hamburg, †17 April 1764 Hamburg, German music theorist, composer, organist, opera singer, and diplomat. At the age of 6, he began studying music under J.N. Hanff (harpsichord), J. Losen (viola da gamba, violin, flute, oboe, and lute), and Woldag (singing). From 1693, he studied at the famous Johanneum Gymnasium in Hamburg; he also took private lessons in English, French, and Italian, dance, horse riding, and fencing, and attended lectures by renowned lawyers. Mattheson made his stage debut at the Theater am Gänsemarkt in 1690. Initially, he performed in supporting roles and in the choir, but later, under the direction of R. Keiser, he almost always played leading roles, singing in a total of 65 operas. Between 1699 and 1705, he also worked at the Hamburg opera as a composer, conductor, and harpsichordist; most of his lost stage works date from this period. After resigning from his positions in 1705, he continued to work with the Gänsemarkt-Oper as an advisor. Thanks to his work at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, he became acquainted with the Italian vocal style introduced there by J.S. Kusser; this experience proved important for Mattheson’s formulation of his theory of melody. On 9 July 1703, Mattheson met G.F. Handel for the first time. The friendship between these two artists has been commented on in various ways by historians. Mattheson greatly admired the genius of the composer, who was four years younger, but also saw him as a threat to his own position; an argument with Handel (5 December 1704) confirms the fact of their rivalry. However, the years of collaboration between the two artists were of great importance for their development. Mattheson learned a great deal from Handel in terms of dramatic style, while he himself advised Handel during his work on the opera Almira; he ended his vocal career performing the leading roles in Handel’s operas Almira and Nero. In 1703, Mattheson began looking for new employment. On 17 August of that year, he traveled with Handel to Lübeck, where both applied for the position of organist after D. Buxtehude at the Marienkirche; their candidacy was accepted, but both refused to accept the position because it involved marrying Buxtehude’s daughter. In 1704, Mattheson gave concerts in Amsterdam and Haarlem, where he was offered the position of organist at the parish church, which he declined. In 1705, he was offered the position of organist at St. Catherine’s Church in Hamburg, replacing J.A. Reincken, but again he declined. In 1706, Mattheson became secretary to the English ambassador in Hamburg, J. von Wich (Mattheson had previously been a teacher to his son Cyrill). He was well suited to the role of diplomat, spoke fluent English, and was also well versed in the history, law, and political system of England. His numerous diplomatic trips provided an excellent opportunity to observe musical life in other German centers and to make acquaintances with musicians from all over Europe. During his stay in Hanover in 1706, he met J.B. Farinelli and F. Venturini, and while in Leipzig (1707, 1720) he had frequent contact with J. Kuhnau. During one of these trips, he met the Englishwoman Catharina Jennings, whom he married in 1709. At the same time, Mattheson developed his musical activities; in 1705, he composed several harpsichord pieces for Cyrill von Wich, followed by a series of secular cantatas, sonatas for flute and basso continuo, and finally the operas Boris Goudenow and Henrico IV (premiered on 9 February 1711, at the Gänsemarkt-Oper under Mattheson’s baton). In 1715, he was offered the prestigious position of Directorium Musicum and a minor canonry at Hamburg Cathedral. He took up these positions on 24 March 1718, while formally remaining in diplomatic service. Between 1715 and 1728, he wrote 20 oratorios for Hamburg Cathedral; in 1715, he caused a sensation by entrusting a woman with the soprano part in one of his Christmas compositions. One of the most interesting works from this period is the Passion Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus, based on a text by B.H. Brockes, which had already been set to music by Keiser, Telemann, and Handel; this composition was performed twice in Hamburg (1718, 1719). On 4 July 1719, Mattheson was appointed Kapellmeister to the Duke of Holstein in Kiel. In 1722, he founded the first German music periodical, “Critica musica” (published irregularly, 1722–25, nos. 1–24), and in 1728, “Der musicalische Patriot”. In 1705, Mattheson began to experience hearing problems, which worsened over the next 30 years and eventually led to deafness. For this reason, on 15 October 1728, Mattheson resigned from his positions at the cathedral. From then on, he composed less and less. After 1730, he devoted himself to music theory; this was undoubtedly due to his hearing loss, but it was also related to his teaching activities (from 1717, he gave regular lectures to organists and cantors, including on the science of composition). After 1740, Mattheson was completely deaf and also had problems with his eyesight. Afflicted by misfortune (including the death of his wife in 1753), he devoted himself to intensive study of the Bible. Having no children, he bequeathed 40,000 marks in his will for the renovation of the organ in St. Michael’s Church in Hamburg, but he donated this sum during his lifetime. Mattheson’s last composition was an epicedion intended for himself, performed in St. Michael’s Church under the direction of G. Telemann on 25 April 1764, during the funeral ceremonies following Mattheson’s death.

Mattheson’s compositional output, most of which was lost during World War II, is dominated by operas and oratorios, in which he realized his later ideas about the essence of melody, that it should be “cantilenous and natural” and “easy to remember.” Mattheson strove to strictly adhere to the meter of the poetic text in accordance with the rhythm of the music and the manner of conducting the vocal parts. In the introduction to the text of the passion Der Blut-rünstige Kelter-Treter, Mattheson justifies the primacy of melody over harmony by pointing out that “a simple but graceful melody without particularly ornate figures and many intricate leaps” makes a much greater impression than all the “mandatory embellishments.” In this respect, Mattheson proved to be a modern composer, although in some arias and ensembles from dramatic works he did not abandon traditional contrapuntal means (canonical vocal and instrumental lines, the exchange of vocal and instrumental voices, canon as an ensemble texture). These features of Mattheson’s operatic technique point to the influence of Kusser and Keiser. Mattheson’s progressiveness was also evident in his unorthodox approach to formal issues. While the older generation of composers insisted on the unity of affect in a single aria, Mattheson violated this principle in the name of consistent subordination of form to text. Thus, for example, in his Passion according to Brockes, he broke with the traditional sequence of recitative and aria, introducing a smooth transition between arioso and recitatives. The choice of compositional means, which Mattheson classified as the so-called “mixed style,” was determined by the musical characteristics of the changing states of the human soul. In vocal music, he boldly used unconventional harmonic solutions, and in dramatic works, unusual instrumentation. Mattheson’s harpsichord compositions, especially those from the Harmonisches Denckmahl collection (London 1714), are marked by virtuoso flair, but above all they are chiefly of pedagogical value; in their contrapuntal assumptions, they are traditional and strongly refer to Kuhnau’s works. Aesthetically, Mattheson’s music is very strongly linked to the spirit of his time. This is due, among other things, to his mastery of various musical styles, his new approach to the musical interpretation of texts, but above all to his great erudition as a composer. Mattheson went down in music history primarily as one of the most outstanding German theorists of the 18th century, with impressive erudition and vast practical experience. Among his early theoretical works, the most important is Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (1713) – the first German-language musical compendium, in which Mattheson advocates progress in art, blaming conservative composers for the decline of music and arguing that the ultimate arbiter in matters of musical beauty is the auditory criterion. Recognizing the historical variability of compositional styles and techniques, he believes that the rules of art applicable at a given moment in its development are subject to change. He criticizes mediocre artists who care only about their own financial position. He sometimes puts forward controversial theses, for example, questioning the mathematical basis of the consonance of the fourth. He also seeks a compromise between the tonal concept (major-minor) and modal theory, but advocates modern tonality, albeit without using its characteristic concepts. He also describes the affective properties of individual keys in both the major-minor and modal systems. He takes a modern approach to sacred music, placing it on a par with theatrical music. In this work, Mattheson finally dispels the mathematical, still medieval concept of the foundations of music and draws attention to the importance and value of music from different European countries. The innovative theme of the sensual evaluation of the beauty of music returns in Part 1 of Das forschende Orchestre (1721). Based on Locke’s empirical theory, Mattheson emphasizes the role of sensory activity in the process of creating and receiving a musical work. His repeatedly expressed view on the role and importance of the senses in music and his contesting of the Pythagorean tradition make Mattheson a pioneer of musical empiricism in the 18th century. It is therefore not surprising that already in the second part of Das beschützte Orchestre (1717) Mattheson adopted the pseudonym Aristoxenus Junior to emphasize his connections with the pragmatic thinking of the great Greek. Mattheson is considered the founder of modern music criticism. In addition to information about the most interesting musical events in Europe, “Critica musica” published essays and treatises on current topics related to music. Wishing to disseminate his own views, Mattheson presented numerous opinions on the empirical and mathematical foundations of music in “Critica musica.” Thirteen theorists from across Europe expressed their views on this issue, generally supporting Mattheson’s position. The aesthetic debates of French theorists were also commented on, and the famous texts of F. Raguenet and J.L. Le Cerf de la Viéville were published in German translations. In “Der musicalische Patriot,” Mattheson discussed the relationship between church music and dramatic opera music, the goals and functions of good opera theater, the causes of the decline in taste, and the reasons for the decline of opera in Hamburg; he advocated for the dominance of melody and a natural and fluid singing style. In Exemplarische Organisten-Probe (1719), Mattheson addressed the issue of basso continuo. This treatise deserves special attention due to its defense of equal temperament; the issues were illustrated with musical examples in all keys three years before the creation of the first part of Bach’s Das wohltemperierte Klavier. The Grosse General-Bass-Schule (1731) expands and revises some of the views expressed in this treatise. Both textbooks were intended for trained organists and harpsichordists, hence the number of comments on performance. The Kleine General-Bass-Schule (1735) complements both works. In the impressively worded introduction to this textbook, Mattheson attacked conservative church musicians who refused to allow the use of dramatic musical devices in sacred works; Rameau’s harmonic concepts also became the target of his attack. Among Mattheson’s later works, Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte (1740), which Mattheson began working on as early as 1714, deserves special attention. This work, containing biographies of 148 musicians of his time, is today a valuable historical source. The summary and crowning achievement of Mattheson’s theoretical work is the treatise Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), which addresses almost all practical, theoretical, and aesthetic issues important to composers, cantors, conductors, and organists of the 18th century. Among the many issues addressed by Mattheson in Der vollkommene Capellmeister, the theory of melody and the study of rhetoric and affects are of particular importance. The culmination of Mattheson’s development of melody theory is found in the second part of the treatise. Mattheson had already taken up this topic in 1721 in connection with his Passion composition Der Blut-rünstige Kelter-Treter, and then developed it consistently, especially in Kern melodischer Wissenschaft (1737), a work almost entirely incorporated into the second part of Der vollkommene Capellmeister. For Mattheson, melody is the only true and valuable basis for composition and musical practice, the most natural element of musical art; he considered harmony to be merely the result of four melodies sounding simultaneously; according to Mattheson, melody is the body of music, rhythm is the soul, and harmony is only the clothing. In terms of harmony, he therefore lagged far behind Rameau. Mattheson’s theory of melody is based on the fundamental assumption that music, by its very nature, should move the listener and give them pleasure. Melody turns out to be the core of musical composition hence the study of melody becomes a central issue in the theory of composition. Only through melody can music manifest itself as a language of emotions, as a kind of speech of sounds (Klangrede) in both instrumental and vocal forms. Melody should be subordinated to the ideals of simplicity, clarity, expressiveness, and melodiousness; this postulate entails appropriate assumptions regarding formal structure (rhythmic-harmonic periodic pattern), the subordination of the rhythm of the melody to the meter of the poetic text, and the rejection of any artificiality in shaping its course. By proclaiming a view contrary to the Baroque tradition, that the true nature of music lies in the “noble simplicity” of melody, Mattheson became a precursor of the musical ideals of Classicism. Music as a language of emotions is, in Mattheson’s view, completely different from verbal language. From the grammatical theory of classical languages, Mattheson borrowed such concepts as the comma, colon, and period, which he applied to the shaping of melody; from rhetoric, he transferred into the realm of musical composition such concepts as exordium, narratio, propositio, confutatio, confirmatio, and conclusio. He repeatedly emphasized that it is not the word itself, but the word in combination with music that produces a fully valuable effect. Mattheson claimed that music is the simplest way to reach the human soul and that musicians should be aware of the emotions evoked by the art of sound, so the doctrine of musical rhetoric and the musical theory of affects were a natural basis for the process of composition for him. The doctrine of rhetoric was supposed to provide a formal foundation for the process of presenting affects. One of the most important elements of this theory were the so-called loci topici (a Greek-Latin pleonasm meaning ‘place of location’), an extensive catalog of which can be found in Part 2 (Chapter 8) of Der vollkommene Capellmeister. The two most important types of loci topici are locus notationis, referring to musical figures such as imitation, inversion, repetition, etc., and locus descriptionis, associated with metaphoricality and allegoricality. Such solutions were of great importance for 18th-century ideas about the essence and power of music. A natural consequence of the issues raised was a lecture on the theory of affects, which Mattheson had already enumerated in Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, but his most important observations on this subject were made in Der vollkommene Capellmeister. The systematization of the affects contained in this work nevertheless gives the impression that Mattheson understood affective symbolism only partially in intellectual terms; as a result, the coherent approach to the doctrine of the affects, strongly rooted in philosophy and characteristic of seventeenth-century music theorists drawing on Cartesian thought, became blurred. Hence, Mattheson’s theory of affects became, to some extent, a rationalist muddle, one element of which is the previously unheard-of system of loci topici. The lack of a philosophical foundation makes it difficult to consider Mattheson’s theory of affects as the actual culmination of the supposedly evolutionary development of this science in the field of music. In Mattheson’s view, the shaping of musical character is a problem of compositional technique, hence the logical sequence: affect – style – compositional technique. For Mattheson, musical sounds can themselves arouse the appropriate emotional response in the listener, and this psychological effect of music on humans is as binding as a law of nature. Mattheson devotes the chapter Von der Naturlehre des Klanges in Der vollkommene Capellmeister to this phenomenon. He refers to Descartes here, but only points to simple analogies between musical and psychological events. He sees affect as the result of ‘nature and experience’ rather than the result of complex physiological processes. Mattheson describes his theory of affects here as ‘musical pathology’. He also attempts to systematize affects, starting with the simplest ones (joy, sadness) and moving on to increasingly complex ones, introducing a much larger number of derivative emotions than before. Mattheson’s science of affects is merely a typical enumeration of emotions and their superficial description, so common in the Baroque period, without delving into the causes of the psychological process caused by music or explaining the effects of specific rhetorical or metaphorical solutions. What Mattheson proposes can be described as generally understandable, tradition-sanctioned symbolism, resulting from upbringing, teaching, and sensitivity in the perception of musical works. In this respect, Mattheson’s thinking is based primarily on contemporary compositional practice, and he attempts to explain the musical phenomena in question (mainly the musical theory of affects) using rationalist methods, remaining an advocate of these methods rather than their creator. Der vollkommene Capellmeister also presents Mattheson as a music historian who understood the history of music as the history of music theory and the history of individuals, referring to the views of M. Scacchi and A. Kircher in his classification of musical styles. The influence and significance of Mattheson’s theoretical work on the further development of music was enormous. His works, especially Der vollkommene Capellmeister, were widely cited in contemporary musical works. Many prominent theorists and composers were influenced by the ideas contained therein; Mattheson was valued as a theorist in Germany and abroad. Der vollkommene Capellmeister was read by Haydn, Beethoven, and Goethe, and Zelter admitted to Mattheson’s strong influence on his writings. L.Ch. Mizler lectured on Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre and recommended reading Mattheson’s works, while J.A. Hiller believed that Mattheson’s “Critica musica” should be found in all German libraries. Most books on music and art in the 18th century are based on Mattheson’s writings. Mattheson’s influence is evident in Mizler’s “Musicalische Bibliothek”, J.A. Scheibe’s “Der kritische Musicus”, J. Adlung’s Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit, J.G. Sulzer’s Theorie der schönen Künste, and many other writings of the era; J.G. Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon and J.F. Majer’s Museum musicum are based in particular on Mattheson’s writings. Mattheson also had a large group of opponents, primarily among the conservative cantors he attacked, who could not come to terms with his view of the superiority of auditory experience over intellectual experience in the assessment of musical phenomena, with his new understanding of the essence of melodic style, and with his rejection of the old theory of solmization and rigid rules of counterpoint. From today’s perspective, Mattheson appears primarily as the most outstanding music journalist of the 18th century, the most important critic, aesthetician, and polemicist in the German music history of that time. His insightful observation and cool assessment of phenomena occurring in musical culture, deeply rooted in compositional practice, remain not only an invaluable source of knowledge about Baroque music for contemporary music historians, but also allow for a proper interpretation of the message conveyed by the art of that period. Mattheson’s theory clearly reveals the detachment of musical thought from the university tradition of the quadrivium, which led to the loss of the coherence, systematic structure, and elitism of the previous music education, but gained a direct connection with the musical work. Mattheson’s musical thought, which is a manifestation of a conscious break with the tradition of speculative theory, moves towards modern musical aesthetics; however, its strict systematization and categorization would be a contradiction of Mattheson’s epistemological ideals.

Literature: H. Schmidt Johann Mattheson Ein Förderer der deutschen Tonkunst im Lichte seiner Werke, Leipzig 1897; F. Stege Johann Mattheson und die Musikkritik des 18. Jahrhunderts, “Zeitschrift für Musik” CVI, 1939; B.C. Cannon Johann Mattheson Spectator in Music, New Haven (Connecticut) 1947, facs. ed. 1968; H. Becker Johann Matthesons handschriftliche Einzeichnungen im „Musikalischen Lexicon” J.G. Walthers, “Die Musikforschung” V, 1952; H. Lenneberg Johann Mattheson on Affect and Rhetoric in Music, “Journal of Music Theory” II, 1958; K.G. Feilerer Sixteenth-Century Musicians in Matthesons „Ehrenpforte”, in: Studies in Musicology, celebratory publication for G. Haydon, ed. J.W. Pruett, Chapel Hill (North Carolina) 1969; H. Federhofer J.J. Fux und Johann Mattheson im Urteil L. Ch. Mizlers, in: Spéculum musicae artis, celebratory publication for H. Husmann, eds. H. Becker and R. Gerlach, Munich 1970; G.J. Buelow Johann Mattheson, the Composer. An Evaluation of his Opera „Cleopatra” (Hamburg 1704), in: Studies in Eighteenth Century Music, celebratory publication for K. Geiringer, eds. R. Landon and R.E. Chapman, New York 1970; H.J. Marx Johann Mattheson Lebensbeschreibung des Hamburger Musikers, Schriftstellers und Diplomaten, Hamburg 1982; New Mattheson Studies, eds. G.J. Buelow and H.J. Marx, Cambridge 1983.