differing from that of the followers of Lully, who were a little disdainful of expressive power in the orchestra, and were always disposed to sacrifice it to the primacy of the voice.[1] He believed, as did his admirer and commentator, Mattheson, that one can express the feelings by means of the orchestra alone.[2]
He was, moreover, a true master of recitative; one might say that he created the German recitative. He attached extreme importance to it, saying that the expression in recitative often gave the intelligent composer much more trouble than the invention of the air.[3] He sought to note with exactitude, accent, punctuation, the living breath itself, without sacrificing anything of the musical beauty. His Recitative arioso takes an intermediate place between the oratorical recitative of the French, and the recitative secco of the Italians, and was one of the models for the recitative of J. S.
- ↑ "Is it the orchestra which is the hero?" asked the theorist of Lullyism, Lecerf de la Viéville. "No, it is the singer.…" "Oh, well, then, let the singer move me himself, and take care not to worry me with the orchestra, which is only there by courtesy and accident. Si vis me flere.…" (Comparaison de la Musique italienne et de la Musique française, 1705).
- ↑ "One can represent quite well with simple instruments," says Mattheson, "the grandeur of the soul, of love, of jealousy, etc., and render all the feelings of the heart by simple chords and their progressions without words, in such a way that the hearer can know and understand their trend, the sense and thought of the musical discourses as if it were a veritably spoken one" (Die neueste Untersuchung der Singspiele, 1744).
- ↑ The preface of the Componimenti Musicali of 1706. Mattheson exaggeratingly says that "to compose well a single recitative in keeping with the feelings and the flow of the phrase as Keiser did, needs more art and ability than to compose ten airs after the common practice."
