quarters, and from him radiated an influence over all the country in return. It was thus that he preserved the ideas of Keiser, which apart from him would have fallen into oblivion without leaving any traces of their existence. It was these traces that he rescued out of the débâcle and preserved for us—a multitude of imperishable souvenirs for the musical history of the eighteenth century—which Mattheson gathered together and published in his monumental Ehrenpforte.[1] He acted powerfully on his times. His books laid down the law for the Kapellmeisters, the Cantors, the organists, and the teachers.
His criticisms, his advice on style in singing, on gesture in acting, were no less efficacious. He possessed the real "theatre" feeling. He expected life in the stage action, attaching considerable importance to the pantomime "which is a silent music."[2] He waged war against the impossible action and the want of intelligence amongst the German singers and choralists, and he desired that the composer should think always in writing of the action of the player. "The knowledge of facial expression by the actors on the stage," says he, "can often be a source of good musical ideas."[3] This is indeed the language of a true man of the
- ↑ Grundlagen einer Ehrenpforte, worin der tüchtigsten Kapellmeister, Komponisten, Musikgelehrten, Tonkünstler, etc. Leben, Werke, Verdienste, etc., erscheinen sollen, 1740.
- ↑ Vollkommene Kapellmeister, 1739—he devoted a very important study, which he called the Hypokritik (Pantomime) to it, in this work.
- ↑ Ibid.
