a vigorous war for good sense, real musical intelligence, music which speaks to the heart and not to the ear, moving and strengthening the soul of the intelligent man with beautiful thoughts and melodies.[1] He saw in music a religious idea.[2] By his wide culture, his knowledge of the artistic theories of the past, his familiarity with all the important French and Italian works, his relationships with the principal German masters, with Keiser, Handel, J. S. Bach, by his rich practical experience, his acute critical sense, his ardent patriotism, his virile and flowing language, he was well fitted to be the great musical educator of Germany, and he accomplished his task well. In the dispersion of German artists which took place then, in addition to the many vicissitudes of their work, there was chiefly lacking a support of political solidarity which could cause music to rise above the fluctuations of the tastes of little towns and the small coteries. Mattheson was then for half a century the sole tribune of German music, the intellect where thoughts concentrated from all
the last concert, on the life of a musician, on a new clavier, on a singer, etc. One finds pre-eminently very solid musical critiques, perhaps the oldest which exist. The minute analysis of Handel's Passion according to St. John was still celebrated when the work itself was forgotten. "It is perhaps," said Marpurg in 1760, "the first good critique which was written on choral music" since it sprang into being.
- ↑ Critica Musica.
- ↑ "When I think as a tone-poet (Tondichter)," he says, "I think of something higher than a great figure.…Formerly musicians were poets and prophets." In another place he writes, "It is the property of music to be above all sciences a school of virtue, eine Zuchtlehre" (Vollk. Kapellm.).
