long time included in my series of intervals, but which I myself did not yet believe to be practicable, never having met with them in the work of other composers. … All the intervals which occur in my system were employed by Telemann in the most graceful manner, and in a fashion so expressive, so moving, so exactly appropriate to the degree of emotion, that it is impossible to find any fault with them short of finding fault with Nature herself."
Another department of music in which he was an enthusiastic innovator was Tonmalerei, or musical description. In this he acquired a world-wide reputation, even while he offended the prejudices of his countrymen; for the Germans had little liking for this descriptive music, the taste for which came from France; but the most austere critics could not resist the power of certain of these pictures. Herr Max Schneider has discovered in a work of Lessing's[1] the following opinion of Philipp Emmanuel Bach:
"Herr Bach, who has succeeded Telemann at Hamburg, was his intimate friend; however, I have heard him criticise him very impartially. … 'Telemann,' he used to say, 'is a great painter; he has given striking proofs of this above all in one of his Jahrgänge (cycles of sacred music for all the feast days of the year), which is known here under the name of Der Zellische (The Zelle cycle). Among other things he played for me an air in which he expressed the amazement and terror caused by the apparition of a spirit; even without the words, which were wretched, one immediately understood what it was that the music sought to express. But Telemann often exceeded his aims. He was guilty of bad taste in depicting subjects which music should
- ↑ Kollektaneen zur Literatur, Vienna, 1804.
