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• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Baroque
• Theorist

(Yo’-han Mat’-te-zon) 1681–1764 German composer and theorist Mattheson was the most important writer on music during the Baroque era. His Die Vernünfftler, which translated the Tatler and Spectator of Addison and Steele, was the first German weekly (1713). He befriended Handel when he arrived in Hamburg in 1703 and sang the leading tenor role in Handel’s first opera, Almira ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1681–1764, German Born into a wealthy family, Mattheson received a gentleman’s education in languages and the arts, and studied law before becoming immersed in Hamburg’s operatic scene. He made his debut as a soprano in 1696, but his voice broke soon after and he sang tenor roles until 1705. He took part in more than 60 new ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Baroque
• Satirist

sonatas, sinfonias and sacred vocal music. Fifty psalm paraphrases in the vernacular, published under the title Estro poetico-armonico (‘Theories on Poetic Harmony’, 1724–26), were admired by Telemann, Mattheson and others. His celebrated satire on Italian opera, Il teatro alla moda (‘The Theatre in Fashion’, 1720), ridiculed the operatic practices of Vivaldi on its title page and those ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

and Frankfurt, Telemann became director of music at Hamburg’s five principal churches in 1721. The following year he became musical director at the Gänsemarkt opera house (where Handel and Mattheson had worked in the early years of the century). Seven of Telemann’s alleged 35 Hamburg operas have survived. Most of these date from the 1720s, and demonstrate the bizarre ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Baroque

The leading operatic master at the Gänsemarkt was Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739), from whose work Handel borrowed ideas throughout his career. He became great friends with a younger composer-singer, Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), but in December 1704 the pair quarrelled and fought a duel outside the theatre. The sword-fight, Mattheson tells us, ‘might have ended unfor­tunately had not God graciously ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

in counterpoint and theory, but it is likely he yearned to escape Halle’s devoutly Pietist atmosphere. In 1703 he arrived in Hamburg, where a chance meeting with Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) in an organ loft drew Handel into working his way up through the ranks of opera house orchestra until he composed his first opera, Almira, at the ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Baroque

his pupils. He was enormously influential in the development of north and mid-German organ music, later prompting the most important writer on music of the German Baroque, Johann Mattheson (1681– 1764), to describe him as the ‘creator of Hamburg organists’. He worked all his life in Amsterdam, where he was organist at the Oude Kerk. He mastered the ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

devoted his talents towards comic opera, and was one of the first to establish it as a respected art form. Introduction | Late Baroque | Opera Personalities | Johann Mattheson | Late Baroque | Opera Houses & Companies | Baroque Opera in Naples | Early & Middle Baroque | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Baroque

churches, additionally assumed directorship of the opera house. Keiser was skilled in writing comic scenes and imaginative in his lively handling of recitative. He also wrote oratorios and Passions. Mattheson called Keiser ‘the greatest opera composer of the world’. Recommended Recording: Croesus, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (dir) René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi) Introduction | Late Baroque | Classical Personalities ...

• Styles & Forms
• Alternative Folk
• Folk

in Brazil into a unique fusion of Celtic, Latin and Caribbean music. Landmark Collaborations Some such fusions have come from unlikely sources. Built around the traditional heritage of Karen Mattheson and the songwriting of Donald Shaw, Capercaillie was long established as a well-respected band when, unexpectedly, the group experimented with techno. The band acknowledged that its efforts ...

• Stage & Scene
• Classical Era
• Opera

opera in the eighteenth century. Its name was not coined until the twentieth century, but the ideas behind it were discussed in the writings of theorists such as Johann Mattheson (1681–1764). These ideas were put into practice on stage by the famous librettists Zeno and, in the following generation, Metastasio. The doctrine defined specific ‘affections’ or emotions, ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Late Baroque

musique, 1703) and Johann Walter (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732). Their ideas and others were later discussed and developed by a profusion of composers, theorists and lexicographers among whom Mattheson, Quantz and Avison made important contributions to the debate. Mattheson, in addition to his many theoretical writings, produced the first lexicon to include biographical information on German ...