NOTATIONS ON MATTHESON'S "DER BRAUCHBARE VIRTUOSO"

Author(s): Jane Ambrose

Source: Bach, Vol. 25, No. 2, 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE (Fall-Winter 1994), pp. 91-98
Published by: Riemenschneider Bach Institute
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41640400
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NOTATIONS ON MATTHESON'S DER BRAUCHBARE VIRTUOSO

Jane Ambrose

Although Johann Mattheson is recognized as one of the most

important theorists and critics of the eighteenth century, the Brauchbare
Virtuoso - a long essay organized as a play with a prologue, three acts,
and an epilogue followed by twelve sonatas for flute or violin and
clavier - has neither been translated nor received critical attention. Pub-
lished in Hamburg in 1720, the work is dedicated to the brothers Dob-
beler, Hamburg nobles with whom Mattheson had become acquainted
at Chapter meetings of the Cathedral. He refers to them as genaue Ken-
ner ("knowledgeable connoisseurs") and performers on the flute and
clavier. That Mattheson writes here a work that may be seen as prepara-
tory to the Volkommene Capellmeister of 1739 is evident from a refer-
ence to the earlier work in the later one: "Rehearsals are so essential
that it is quite amazing when one still meets people who contradict this
and yet pretend to have intelligence. In the foreword of Der brauchbare
Virtuoso brief comment has been made on this."1

The title page grants the fit virtuoso permission to perform

these twelve new chamber sonatas and lists Mattheson' s professional
accomplishments. Mattheson' s epigraph - verum [enimverv] is demum
mihi vivere atque frui anima videtur, qui aliquo negotio intentus
praeclari f acinous aut artis bonaefamam quaerit ("But ultimately that
man seems to me to have real life and to possess the vital spirit who,
absorbed by an occupation, seeks glory through brilliant action or fine
art.") - is drawn from the exordium to Sallusťs Catilina 2.9 where vir-
tus of the mind and soul is set against vis corporis as the superior force
in human progress. The larger context of the epigraph gave Mattheson
material for his conception of the virtuoso , while the word negotium in
the quotation itself must be related to the dominant intention in Matthe-
son' s work of providing rules of behavior for music as a professional
occupation.

The Prologue begins with Mattheson' s assertion that it is

important to write a good prologue. He sees himself in his role as

xDer Volkommene Capellmeister, III, 26, 23. All quotations from this work are taken from
the Ernest C. Harriss translation. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981).

91

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 92 BACH

author, as a satirist
Using a barber meta
there is no hair." W
standard enough tha
was included in the
etymological lexicon
through 1922). G. P
Musik-Meister 1728
brauchmusik as were
osi in different prom
but attractive musi
unusual or of a too
equating their music
those who are skilled in an art - Kenner - but not mere amateurs -
Liebhaber - to use C.P.E. Bach's terminology. Mattheson criticizes the
interpretation of those who want "virtuosity" to be synonymous with
"incomparability." He uses a proverb to make his point: "Everyone can
find his master." Mattheson's virtuoso is essentially a moral man of
whom it can be said that he is extremely learned - Doctissimus
Doctus - the Latin equivalent of Mattheson's dedication to the sehr
gelehrten Dobbelers.

And what is an "unfit virtuoso"? Virtuosi may be speculative

or practical intellects - presumably, critical or theoretical practitioners
or performers. One may be called "a virtuoso" and may not be one for
several reasons: because one exaggerates the values of antiquity or
because one has done no work in music theory, for example. Mattheson
hopes that his presentation will provide a guide to the preparation of
"fit" musicians.

Actus Primus deals with the criticism of an "unfit practicus "

who may behave in eating or drinking "as if there is no difference
between men and beasts." His unfitness manifests itself in drunkenness,
misuse of tobacco,3 disgracefulness, and discourtesy. Clean clothes and

2Reading this statement one is reminded of Scheibe s attack on Bach s turgid and con-
fused style" and "excess of art" and Mattheson's own criticism of Bach, "an otherwise
excellent practicing musician" (= brauchbare Virtuoso as a "musicus practicus") who
abused the principle of repetition in Cantata 21. See Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel,
The Bach Reader, Revised Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), pp. 238, 229.
3In 1712 Mattheson had translated a tract which cited tobacco as a patent remedy for a
plague in Hamburg. See Beekman C. Cannon, Johann Mattheson, Spectator in Music (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 155. He criticized Lully who, "while he composed
at the Clavier, made the keys completely filthy by covering them with snuff 'just as Tele-
mann did to his cap and dressing grown.'" This translation from the Ehrenpforte appears in
Walter Beigmann's article "Double Tercentenary," Recorder and Music, March, 1981, p. 3.

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 DER BRAUCHBARE VIRTUOSO 93

a combed and powdered wig are amenities requiring

He criticizes church musicians who leave when they
drink wine or beer during the sermon and return to
condition that they see all the notes doubled" and exc
saying they can neither hear nor understand the serm
Nor should musicians swear in church or defame themselves or others
in their profession or practice flattery or falsehood as if they were
"shaken from the sleeves of perverse politicians." Frugality should pre-
vail. Laziness and idleness "are the brother and sister of an improper
life." Mattheson hopes that his enumeration of the plagues bothering
virtuosi will prevent things from going further astray. "A virtuoso as
such, no matter how capable, must cultivate good manners and morals,
if not for the inner peace of the soul, then, in the manner of politicians,
for the outward reputations of musicians." Otherwise he is unfit.

Actus Secundus, purportedly dealing with the theoreticus, is

actually a virulent attack on all who exaggerate the value of ancient
Hebrew music "raising it to the third level of heaven." According to
Mattheson, these are the worst virtuosi of all. Repeatedly and vehe-
mently such a one argues that it is inconceivable that the music of
David and Solomon, although obviously good, could have been bet-
ter than modern music. A modern monarch should not try to emulate
the ancients who used huge masses (4,000 or so Levites) for effect
because "art, intention, care, and cleverness bring out the best, not
number," warns Mattheson. "The ancients ate acorns, but we let the
pigs eat them and eat rye bread instead. If the ancients went to war,
they, like David, were stuck with slings, but today children play with
slings and men use pistols." However, he says, he would not and can-
not look down on ancient music for it would serve no purpose. Later
statements leave no doubt of the rabid antisemitic nature of Matthe-
son's feelings. He begins an anti-semitic diatribe by noting that "one
should go to the synagogues to hear music that would make even the
devils in the Jewish purgatory dance . . . Were the Jews a people
who bothered less with their ancestors' arts but had rather accepted
the New Testament and the new modes of singing, then their stench
{Gestank) would have been softened by the balm of Gilead and their
crude rumbling smoothed by songs of praise and lovely Pauline
hymns." Jews howl and cackle disgustingly and are lost humans who
as antiquity eaters {Fresser - those who eat like animals) despise and
criticize our Christian music. They also belch and grunt[!!]. Matthe-
son is sure that David and Solomon would be astonished if they
could hear even a single oratorio by one of the best contemporary
composers.

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 94 BACH

His ethnocentricity

It is difficult to pr
perfection as the O
had instruments an
would like to know
present Turkish am
exercise this practi

Mattheson' s curios
nomusicological obse
Syrian kingdom. All
that the ancient Jew
ate antiquarians are u
"long ago have trans
The following (origi
dog and a mud-lovin

It is interesting to
lical music and musi
notations in Bach's c
music of the ancien
writes: "N. B. This c
pleasing to God."

The very Levites

Bach's comments on Calov's notes to I Chronicles 28, Verse 21: "An
excellent proof that, in addition to other regulations for divine service,
music, especially, has been ordered by God's spirit through David."
Finally, beside II Chronicles 5:13, which describes the playing and
singing of the Levites "as if it were one voice to praise and thank the
Lord," Bach wrote "N. B. In devotional music, God with his grace is
always present."

It is always presumed5 that the Jewish music that Mattheson

and Bach might have heard in Hamburg or Leipzig did not differ sub-
4See "Bach* s Bible" by Howard Cox in Bach in Bethlehem Today (Bethlehem, Pa.: Mora-
vian Book Shop, 1979), pp. 31-35.
5See, for example, A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1948),
p. 212: "All the tunes and selections composed at that time (the eighteenth century) are
influenced by harmonic principles and by the Italian-German style. We look in vain for
some Jewish features. With the exception of those pieces adopted from the East, called
'Polish,' which, as mentioned above, were introduced by Eastern European chazzanim
and were based upon the minor or Ahavoh-Rabboh mode, no distinction can be discov-
ered between those 'Jewish* compositions and German or Italian instrumental or vocal
selections for secular or even 'sacred' purposes prevalent in the eighteenth-century."

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 DER BRAUCHBARE VIRTUOSO 95

stantially from contemporary Christian music. The a

ple from Bach and Mattheson's argument that ancient
ish music are of the same species (the latter being a d
of the former) may indicate that they heard modern
Jewish music of the ancient and Oriental type from Po
ing to Germany.6 One could speculate on a possible di
subject by Bach and Mattheson at the time of their pr
Hamburg in 1720.7

In his Actus Tertius, Mattheson returns to the c

church musicians. "Unfit virtuosi," he indicates, "are
the services of the church in a cavalier and unenthusiastic manner."
Willingness to rehearse is an attribute of "fit virtuosi" who know that
"there are as many opinions as there are heads" and that it is arrogant to
assume that one good performance will assure others. An unidentified
and misprinted elegiac couplet (Ovid's epistle Ex Ponto II, ix, 47-48),
"to have learned to be wild," reinforces Mattheson's view of the impor-
tance of rehearsing; the imitating of masters is also important because
of the legitimacy of the adage Nam qualis Rex , talis grex ("As the King,
so the flocks"). Mattheson concludes by calling for the establishment of
academies like those in Italy, London, Paris, Cambridge, and Oxford,
because they assure rigorous discipline.

In the Epilogue , Mattheson, after having apologized for setting

his material in Acts and disclaiming an intention to offend any virtuoso,
remarks that he has chosen not to include "secret writing" in his music
so that none will have to go to the trouble of discovering the key. Here
he refers to J. B. Friderici whose Cryptographia was published in Ham-
burg in 1685. "Therefore," he writes, "I have prepared this for you in
German (i.e., clearly) with a bit of Latin and French sauce and set it be-
fore you as such to be easier to enjoy."

In presenting these sonatas to the public, Mattheson cites

Johann Kuhnau and "others" who have expressed high opinions of his
work, perhaps better judgments than he deserves. He wishes that Kist-
ner, his publisher, had managed to get the sonatas out in a quicker

6That Mattheson was intensely interested in Jewish music is proved by the 1728 publica-
tion of Der musikalische Patriot: Mostly on the music among the Hebrews and on the
headings of the Psalms. Alfred Sendrey, Bibliography of Jewish Music (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1951), p. 31.
7See op. cit., The Bach Reader, p. 79, "Excerpts from the minutes of the Jacobi Kirche,"
and p. 81 "An Account of the Affair by Johann Mattheson: from Der musikalische
Patriot."

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 96 BACH

( galanter ) fashion t
saying that he does
praised in his own
strive ... to be with unadorned truth the musical reader's devoted and
useful servant, Mattheson."

The sonatas themselves9 seem to have little to do with the

introduction, but may be studied with Mattheson' s theoretical tracts,
particularly Der volkommene Capellmeister, to examine the relationship
between his ideas and their musical execution. William Newman10 cites
four Mattheson items of interest to the history of the sonata: a sonata à
due cembali from about 1705 (possibly the first of this genre), the
twelve Opus 1 Sonatas for two or three recorders without bass (1708), a
sonata pour le clavecin from 1713, and Der brauchbare Virtuoso. He
assesses Mattheson' s writing as, like Telemann's, "fluent, effective,
intelligible, and classically restrained, with somewhat more distinctive
melodic ideas," noting that "it, too, is not outstanding, either for melo-
dic originality or for expressive force."

In the Volkommene Capellmeister (II, 13: 137) Mattheson says

that the sonata must be marked by "complaisance" and that its effect
must accommodate everyone. "A melancholy person will find some-
thing pitiful and compassionate; a sensuous person, something pretty;
an angry person, something violent; and so on, in different varieties of
sonatas." In an earlier chapter (II, 12: 34) he writes in describing the
general nature of common tempo indications, "an Adagio indicates dis-
tress; a Lamento , lamentation; a Lento , relief; an Andante , hope; an
Affetuoso, love; an Allegro , comfort; a Presto , eagerness, etc."

Even the most imaginative and experienced fit virtuoso would

have trouble expressing these "affects" in any but the most general man-
ner in the movements presented him in Mattheson's pieces. With the
exception of three sonatas in A major, possibly intended for violin, all of
the pieces are in keys common to the traverso - two in D major, two in

8It is possible that the lack of connection between large parts of Mattheson's essay and
the sonatas themselves can be explained by this lapse of time between the composing of
the sonatas and the publication of the entire work. It could also be that the essay was writ-
ten at a later date and appended to a work about to be published.
The sonatas without the essay or complete title were published in 1923 by Wilhelm Zim-
merman in Frankfurt-Main "in freier Bearbeitung" by Ary van Leeuwen. Those wishing
to play what Mattheson wrote should check this edition against the manuscript for octave
transpositions in the flute part and anachronistic tempo indications. While the realization
is accurate, it is quite uninteresting. The figures are not given.
10William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Baroque Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972),
pp. 290-291.

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 DER BRAUCHBARE VIRTUOSO 97

G major, two in e minor, two in b minor, and one in

son's description of the key "affects" in Das neu-eröff
are too well known to be repeated here, except to giv
one in A major, affecting and brilliant and especially a
which he seems to attend to in these sonatas and one in b minor -
bizarre, morose, melancholic - which he ignores. As the relative minor
of the natural scale of the traverso , the key of В is a common key for
that instrument (as, for example, in the b-minor sonata and the b-minor
orchestral suite of Bach), in many cantata obbligati, and in numerous
sonatas by various other composers such as Handel and Telemann.

A detailed study of the first and last sonatas in the Brauchbare

Virtuoso set can serve to acquaint genaue Kenner with Mattheson's
approach to the sonata/suite style of chamber writing. The first sonata is
in D major ("a strident and headstrong tonality - a pleasing introduc-
tion to delicate works when a flute replaces a clarino "). The first move-
ment of the sonata, an Intrada (VC II, 13, 136) - "the Italian substitute
for an overture which should arouse longing - is a fanfare-like move-
ment with alternating 'slow' and 'slower' tempos." A Tempo di Gavotta
in b minor ("jubilation"; VC II, 13, 87) follows. Here, Mattheson
describes the duple meter and skipping nature of Gavotte melodies, a
formula which he illustrates by writing a melody with larger intervals
than he normally uses. A transitional Adagio of six bars modulates
through F-sharp minor to the major Allegro, a gigue- like movement in |
time. The Adagio which follows, again in D, is indeed "pleasing"; in
fact, it is one of the loveliest movements in the entire set. The final
movement, once more in D, is an Aria "without doubles" (VC II, 13,
129), a very English-sounding piece which fits Mattheson's definition
as a "singable, simple melody divided in two parts, frequently so very
simply arranged that one might crimp, trim, and alter it in innumerable
ways, thereby showing one's manual dexterity, while still retaining the
basic passages." Sonatas VI and X also contain five movements; eight
others of the sonatas, four movements; and one, three movements.

The twelfth sonata, a suite in b minor, carrying the subscript,

Alla Correlli [sic], is a tribute to a composer admired by Mattheson:

I want especially to praise as an excellent paragon the

profundity of Corelli's works, despite their age, of
which, if I am right, there are five obtainable in

nA translation of these descriptions appears in George J. Buelow, "An Evaluation of

Johann Mattheson's Opera, Cleopatra " (Hamburg, 1904), published in Studies in Eight-
eenth Century Music , A Tribute to Karl Geiringer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by
H. C. Robbins Landon (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1970), pp. 98-102.

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 98 BACH

Amsterdam. The i
in instrumental ch
have even heard his sonatas in Holland's churches
with much pleasure . . . (VC 1, 10, 105).

Mattheson goes on to say, "I want to suggest the world-famous Corelli

as the outstanding model, as far as the three-part instrumental pieces
written in the Italian manner are concerned ..." (VC III, 17, 8). He
notes further that the imitative entrances of the first movement establish
the treble and bass as equal partners, a Baroque ideal; that the Corrente
in b minor contains running figures common to a movement of that
nature; and that the anticipated Sarabande , again in b minor, has "no
other emotion to express than ambition" (VC II, 13, 118). He closes by
explaining that a Giga in ^ time ends the suite.

While all of these pieces are competent and well intended in

terms of form and melodic interest,12 they are only marginally better
than the hundreds of contemporary sonatas by unknown and known
brauchbare Virtuosi ; and they never approach the best works of Handel
or Telemann or the Bach sonatas, probably composed in Cöthen around
the same time. Of far greater interest is Mattheson' s extensive and pro-
lix introduction, which provides a viewpoint on competence and incom-
petence from which to observe the efforts of the early eighteenth-cen-
tury musician, practicus and theoreticus , and an opportunity to see the
roots of many of the ideas brought to fruition in the Volkommene
Capellmeister, Mattheson' s most important treatise dealing with musi-
cal thought and practice.

(The author gratefully acknowledges the translation help af-

forded her by Z. Philip Ambrose.)

"Mattheson's rules for good melodic writing are given in the Volkommene Capellmeister
(VC И; 5, 48 ff) and in the article by Buelow cited above on p. 95.

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