Johann Mattheson: Harmony’s Monument

Colin Booth’s world premiere recording project, 2008.

If we compare Mattheson’s portrait with that of his most famous contemporary (as we now see him), J.S.Bach, the difference between their characters is immediately clear. Johann Mattheson was an extrovert: fluent in several languages, both ancient and modern, he was a notable dancer, fencer, horseman, and fashionable beau. Undoubtedly good company, he was also notoriously egocentric, as is clear from his own voluminous writings.
 
As a musician, he was precocious in the extreme: a virtuoso organist by his early teens, he also became a soprano soloist in one of the Hamburg opera houses at the age of 15 (How different from Bach, who sang in a church choir at this age!). He graduated to be a highly successful operatic tenor, but in 1705, at the early age of 24,  gave up this career (perhaps due to an early onset of his progressive deafness), and entered a less adventurous musical life than that undertaken by his then friend and collaborator Handel, who departed for Italy to consolidate his operatic career. Mattheson became secretary to the English ambassador to Hamburg, learnt English, and subsequently married an English wife.

His musical activities, however, continued: he became one of the leading organists of the city, and left a considerable oeuvre, of solo and chamber-works, operas, and church music. A factor which will have helped build his reputation as one of Hamburg’s leading musical figures, was that he also wrote extensively, in an informal and entertaining style, on the subject of music and musicians. These books are still widely read in Germany today, whereas the music itself (seldom published and thus mostly confined to manuscript copies like most music of the period) perished in large measure during bombing raids upon his native city in the Second World War.

The Twelve Suites

One of the few publications of Mattheson’s music was the Twelve Suites (subtitled in Germany “Harmony’s Monument”) which appeared in London and Hamburg more-or-less simultaneously, in 1714. We have an account of their release in London, where Handel was increasingly to be found. Handel retired with a copy to the nearest harpsichord, and played them right through at a single sitting. (As this recording demonstrates, this would require at least two and a half hours).

The Suites, taken as a whole, offer a huge variety of mood and musical character. The influences of earlier generations of composers, like Froberger, are present in some movements, and other German masters, like Buxtehude, Bohm, and Kuhnau, also come to mind. A few pieces contain elements which sound just like Handel, but Mattheson was far more economical in their use: where Mattheson used a creative motif for a few bars, Handel would continue for whole pages. This difference suggests that Mattheson was the more likely originator of certain elements of musical material common to both composers. In any case, Mattheson was drawing inspiration from a deep pool, but his voice was a personal and original one.

Colin Booth’s double CD:
Johann Mattheson: Harmony’s Monument SBCD208
will be released in the first half of 2008.

For more about Colin Booth, visit: www.colinbooth.co.uk