Johann Mattheson was
both a prodigy and a polymath. He was
giving organ recitals before he reached
the age of ten. As a child he also acquired
a competence on several other instruments,
including the violin, oboe, flute and
viola da gamba. His abilities as a singer
led to performances with the Hamburg
Opera at the age of twelve. He went
on to study law while also being active
as an opera singer and a conductor,
a harpsichordist and organist, and a
composer. As an author he translated
a range of works from both French and
English. Extraordinarily, he translated
Defoe’s Moll Flanders within
a year of its English publication; he
translated essays from the Spectator
and the Tatler; he prepared a
German version of Richardson’s huge
(and hugely influential) novel Pamela.
He became secretary to Sir John Wich,
the English ambassador in Hamburg. He
was sent on some diplomatic missions.
He spent some years as Kapellmeister
of Hamburg Cathedral. In 1722 he established
the journal Critica musica, the
first music periodical in German, and
one of the first in any language. His
1713 book Das neu-eröffnete
Orchestre raised fundamental questions
about the ‘new’ directions which music
might take and stirred up much controversy.
Later works included two treatises on
keyboard playing, published in 1731
(the Grosse General Bass-Schule)
and 1735 (the Kleine General
Bass-Schule) and Der volkommene
Capellmeister (1739), a book
of guidance for those occupying such
a role which also offers some important
ideas on music’s power over the emotions.
His Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte
(1740) is a remarkable encyclopaedia
of enduring interest for its information
on many of his contemporaries. His own
autobiography has been edited and published
in modern times – as Johann Mattheson:
Lebenssbeschreibung des Hamburgers Musikers,
Schriftstellers und Diplomaten,
edited by Hans Joachim Marx, 1982. Marx
plausibly argues that Mattheson should
be regarded as one of "the most
significant representatives of the musical
and intellectual life of his time".
Mattheson was not without
a very high opinion of his own abilities
and this led him into many a conflict.
Charles Burney, in his Present State
of Music in Germany … has a revealing
account (revealing whether or not it
is literally true or not) of a quarrel
between Mattheson and the young Handel
(Mattheson was three years older) during
the years that handle spent in Hamburg.
The account is based on that which Mattheson
published in his Grundlage:
"About this
time there was performed there [Hamburg]
an opera composed by Mattheson,
called Cleopatra, in which he acted
the part of Anthony himself, and
Handel played the harpsichord; but
Mattheson being accustomed, upon
the death of Anthony, which happens
early in the piece, to take the
harpsichord, in the character of
composer, Handel refused to indulge
his vanity, by relinquishing to
him this post; which occasioned
so violent a quarrel between them,
that at going out of the house,
Mattheson gave him a slap on the
face, upon which both immediately
drew their swords, and a duel ensued,
in the market-place, before the
door of the opera-house: luckily,
the sword of Mattheson was broke
against a metal button upon Handel’s
coat, which put an end to the combat,
and they were soon after reconciled."
He may have had the
upper hand in a duel (or so he implies),
but Mattheson was not, unsurprisingly,
Handel’s superior when it came to composition.
His music – on the evidence of these
suites and individual movements taken
from the two volumes of his Pièces
de Clavecin, published in two volumes
in 1714 (in London), and described on
its title pages as "consistant
des Ouvertures, Preludes, Fugues, Allemandes,
Courentes, Sarabandes, Gigues, et Aires"
– is no more than competent and somewhat
short of the spark of real individuality.
But it is very competent, good,
professional keyboard music of its time,
and makes for very pleasant listening.
Adopting the He adopts the essential
musical strategies of the French suite,
initially evolved by the lutenists of
the French school, and to some extent
formalised by harpsichordists such as
Louis Coperin and Chambonnieres; the
work of a number of his German predecessors
had, by 1714, made it a natural choice
for a composer such as Mattheson. His
well-educated writing shows both a sure
grasp of harpsichord technique and the
instrument’s possibilities, as well
as a magpie-like ability to draw on
French, Italian and German models alike.
His handling of counterpoint is generally
impressive and if his dance movements
don’t always have the greatest vivacity,
they are never actually dull.
His slow(ish) movements
are often particularly fine - as in
the sarabande from the first suite or
the allemande from the twelfth suite.
Cristiano Holtz plays
Mattheson’s music with understanding
and with a convincing grasp of idiom.
He plays an instrument made in 1989
by Bruce Kennedy, based on an instrument
of 1702/4 by the Berlin instrument maker
Michael Mietke, of whose instruments
we know Bach to have been fond. In scale
and sound it seems perfectly suited
to Mattheson’s suites.
My only reservation
is that Holtz chooses to play only three
complete suites, and to represent three
others by single movements or short
sequences of movements. Gustave Boisdheux’s
booklet notes suggest that this choice
was "based on the spirit of the
suite itself: informal and originally
for domestic consumption", but
the evidence of what is to be heard
on the CD itself is that the movements
of Mattheson’s suites generally sound
better when heard in the context that
he designed for them.
This relatively minor
reservation doesn’t seriously detract
from my pleasure in an interesting and
rewarding recording. Discussing Mattheson’s
musical theories, Francis Sparshott
(Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
56, 1998) observed that "Mattheson
is endlessly fascinating". The
same can’t quite be said for his actual
music – not, at any rate, when one listens
to it in the context provided by such
near contemporaries as Bach, Handel
and Domenico Scarlatti. But it is plenty
good enough to retain the attention
of ear and mind throughout a well recorded
CD such as this.
Glyn Pursglove
Cristiano Holtz (harpsichord) 
