(1772) he boasted "of having been, vanity apart,[1] the first to insist emphatically and expressly upon the importance of melody." … Before him, he says, there was no musical composer "who did not leap over this first, most excellent and most beautiful element of music as a cock leaps over burning coals."
If he was not the first, as he professed, he at least made most noise about the matter. In 1713 he entered upon a violent battle in honour of melody as against the Kontrapuntisten, who were represented by an organist of Wolfenbüttel, Bokemeyer, as learned and pugnacious as himself. Mattheson saw nothing in canon and counterpoint but an intellectual exercise, without power to touch the heart. To move his adversary to repentence he chose as arbitrators Keiser, Heinichen and Telemann, who pronounced in his favour. Bokemeyer declared himself defeated and thanked Mattheson for having converted him to melody, "as the sole and true source of pure music."[2]
Telemann said:
"Wer auf Instrumenten spielt muss des Singens kündig seyn. (Who plays on instruments must be versed in song.)"
And Mattheson:
"Whatever music one is writing, vocal or instrumental, all should be cantabile."
This predominant importance given to cantabile melody, to song, overthrew the barrier between the different classes of music, by upholding as the
- ↑ There was, on the contrary, a good deal of vanity in his claim, for it is evident from the foregoing quotations from Telemann, and the example of Keiser, that he had no lack of forerunners.
- ↑ Bokemeyer was so convinced that he wrote a little treatise on melody and sent it to Mattheson for the latter to correct.
