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Johann Mattheson's BequestAuthor(s): Hans Joachim MarxReviewed work(s):Source: Early Music, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 365-367Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3126203 .
Accessed: 23/01/2012 05:48
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Opening
of
the first
harpsichord
part
of Johann
Mattheson's
G
minor
Suite for two
harpsichords (c1705) (East
Berlin,
Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek
[D-Bds],
eld in
trust)
2 First
page
of
Mattheson's
Remarques
ur
lOrgue
oculaire
1739)
(D-Bds,
held in
trust)
Johann Mattheson's
bequest
Hans Joachim Marx
Reviewing
Beekman
C. Cannon's
monograph
on the
composer
and
theorist,
writer
and
diplomat
Johann
Mattheson
(1681-1764),'
Friedrich
Blume
wrote
in
1948
that,
in all
probability,
Mattheson'swhole
bequest
of
manuscripts
must be considered lost
in
World
War
II,
together
with
many
other
materials of
Hamburg's
Staatsbibliothek
.2
This was a naturalsupposition at
the time.
Blume
noted that ProfessorCannon
had
seen,
and had described
in
his Yale
dissertation,
what
perhaps
was now lost for ever.
For
the
devastating
bombing
of
Hamburg
n
July
1943 had
destroyed
more
than half a million volumes
in
the
Staatsbibliothek;
did
these include
the whole stock of the former Stadt-
bibliothek,
including
Mattheson's
bequest
of 1763?
Laterwritershave
accepted
without
question
Blume's
assumption
that the
bequest
was
totally
lost.3
But
documents
preserved
in
the archives of
the
Staats-
bibliothek,
which were
evacuated
during
the
war,
throw a
quite
different
light
on the
affair.
We know that
in
his
will
Mattheson
bequeathed
all
the books and manuscriptsin his possession that he
had written himself
to
the famous
Johanneum,
the
oldest
grammar
chool
in
Hamburg;
is books
by
other
authors went to be sold
in
aid of the construction
of
a
new
organ
in
the Michaeliskirche.
In
April
1764 the
Johanneum
library-later
to become the
Stadtbiblio-
thek-catalogued
Mattheson's
bequest:
the
inventory
records
128 volumes with
their
complete
titles.4
EARLY
MUSIC JULY 1982
365
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The Stadtbibliothek
preserved
Mattheson's
library
as an
entity
for more than 100
years.
In the last
quarter
of the
19th
century,
however,
all the
library's
manu-
scripts
and
prints
were
reclassified,
and
Mattheson's
bequest dispersed
to different
departments
of
the
Stadtbibliothek.
The
autograph
cores
(among
hem
22
oratorios
and
11
operas
and
cantatas),
the
printed
music andthe theoreticalwritingsweregivendifferent
classification
numbers,
as
were
his
treatises
on
philo-
sophical
and moral
subjects.
Mattheson's
smaller
writings,
fragments
and occasional
compositions
became
part
of the
Hamburg
manuscripts
and
were
classified
under
'Cod.hans.'
(=
Codices
hanseatici).
The
breaking
up
of
Mattheson's
bequest
had un-
expected
and unfortunate
consequences
in the
20th
century.
When
the
bombing
of
Germanybegan
during
World
War
II,
the
government
in Berlin ordered
that
cultural treasures
be
protected
from
aerial
attack.
Shortly
after
the outbreak
of
war,
the
Staatsbibliothek
in Hamburgbeganto evacuate its precious collections
of
manuscripts.
Because
bank
safes and air-raid
helters
were
found to be
unsuitable,
it
was
decided to store the
most
precious
items
in
mines
and
remote castles.
Thus
a
total of
763
chests
containing manuscripts
and
rare
prints
was
evacuated,
their insurance value
being
assessed
at no
less
than
nine million Reichsmarks.
A small
part
of the
music
collection,
including
129
of
Handel's
Handexemplare,
he
Gdinsemarkt-Oper's
collection of
librettos,
and Beethoven's
'Heiligenstadt
Testament',
was
stored
n a
mine
in
the
Harz
mountains,
Grasleben.
All
these
were
returned
o
Hamburg hortly
after the end of the
war,
because
the mine
was in
the
area under British control.
The
larger part
of the music
collection, however,
had
been taken to Lauenstein
Castle,
south
of
Dresden,
in
Saxony.
It
included
Mattheson's
bequest,
as
well
as
autographs
of
J.
C. and C. P. E.
Bach,
Brahms,
Humperdinck,
Marschner, Reincken,
Sweelinck and
Telemann
not
to mention
copies
of works
by
Giovanni
Bononcini, Caldara,Carissimi,Durante,
CarlHeinrich
Graun, Keiser,
Pergolesi,
Alessandro
Scarlatti,
Tele-
mann
and,
in
particular,
Johann Adolf
Hasse).
We still have the inventoriesof evacuated materials
(the
Fluchtgut-Listen),
nd these
give
classification
numbers and
information
concerning
the
progress
of
the
evacuation.5
They
show that
by
16
April
1943 a
total of 287 chests had been
transportedby
rail from
Hamburg
o
Lauenstein;
less than three months
later
the
library
building
in
Hamburg
was
destroyed.
The
evacuated
stock
was marked as
belonging
to the
3
IF,
qx
..
c I T. I
Ar
cl
*F6 jt
4,~C
0
oI
li
i'
3
Opening
of
the chorus 'Gott
sei
uns
gnAdig'
rom
the oratorio
Das
frohliche
Sterbelied,omposed by Mattheson in 1756 for his own
funeral
(D-Bds,
held in
trust)
Staatsbibliothekand stored on
the second
floor of
the
castle.
The chests
numbered 163-77
contained the
musical
manuscripts
with the old
classification
number
'ND
VI'.
Mattheson's
bequest
was
located
in
three
chests: no.
163contained
most of his
scores and
musical
treatises,
175 his
cantatas,
and
327 the
minor
writings
and
fragments
(Cod.hans.).
Towards
he end
of
1944,
when the
collapse
of the
Third Reich was foreseen, the librarysent a mem-
ber
of its staff
to
Lauenstein
to have a
look
at the
chests
stored
there and
to
investigate
the
possibilities
of
getting
them
back
to
Hamburg.
This
precautionary
measure,
however,
proved
fruitless. On the
division
of
Germany,
Lauenstein found
itself
in
the Soviet-
occupied
zone and
thus
outside
the
influence of the
Western
powers.
The
Staatsbibliothek
in
Hamburg
366 EARLY
MUSIC JULY
1982
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tried to discover what
had
happened
to
the
evacuated
collections,
and on 13
February
1946 received
infor-
mation from the
administrator of
Lauenstein
Castle
that the Soviet
Army
had confiscated
the chests
on
the
orders of the
local
headquarters
in
Dippoldiswalde.
Early
hat
February
all 287
chests had
been carried
off
to
an unknown
destination in 20
army
trucks.
We should still knownothing at all about the fate of
the
greater part
of the
music
collection and
of
the
Mattheson
bequest
in
particular,
had
not a librarian
of
the
Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek in
East
Berlin
made an
astonishing
chance
discovery:
in a
depot
in
Moscow
he
found
manuscripts
bearing
the
stamp
'Bibliotheca
Hamburgensiumpublica'.
Later
on,
in
1959,
the
Soviet
Union handed
over to
East Berlin about
1,850
manu-
scripts belonging
to the
Staatsbibliothek
n
Hamburg,
and
they
are
being
held
there
in
trust.6
The
manuscripts
evidently
form but
a small
part
of the
whole
evacuated
stock. Of
Mattheson's
bequest,
only
the
volumes
Cod.hans.39-42 have been handed overto EastBerlin.
Through
he
friendly
co-operation
of both
libraries
n
Hamburg
and
East
Berlin,
I
have
been
given
access
to
these volumes.
It
is
not
possible
to
deal with
Matthe-
son's
manuscripts
in
detail
here,
but
I
should
like to
offer a
short
survey.
The
manuscripts
are
collected in
four
volumes
bound in
leather or
with
pasteboard
covers,
each
of
them
bearing
the
Cyrillic
inscription
'F-p'
(signifying
'Hamburg
manuscript').
The four
volumes
together
comprise
about
1000
pages
covered
with
writing,
mostly
in
Mattheson's
own
hand. The
individual
volumes contain
the
following
manuscripts:7
Cod.hans.IV.39
Verschiedene
apiere
die von
Mattheson
herausgegebene
Zeitschrift
der
Vernfinftler'
etreffend
Matthesoniana
olitica:
Matthesons
Glfickwunsch
Rede an
Graf
v.
Sch6nborn
(1708)
Besondere,
neue
Gros-Britannische
Denkwiirdigkeiten
(1723)
Adversaria
ad
Mentem
Lockii
(1725)
Gespriche
m
Reiche
der
Musicanten
1728)
Kurtze,
och
deutliche
Regeln
von
den
Doppelten
Contra-
puncten notautograph)
Cod.hans.IV.40
Collectanea d
conficiendam
istoriam
musicam
1730)
Cod.hans.IV.40-41
Matthesoniana
hilosophica
t musica
autographa:
Predigtgedanken
cl
725)
Gedult-Biichleinaus
dem
Welschen
des
Zarlino
iibersetzt
(1734)
Abhandlung
von
der
Seligkeit
Esaus
aus dem
Lateinischen
(1735)
Sentiments
Chr6tiens
et Casuels sur l'examen
de la
religion
(c1744)
Remarques
sur
I'Orgue
oculaire
(on
a
translation
by
Tele-
mann,
1746)
Shorter
sketches,
with additions
to
Mattheson's
printed
books, in
particular
Weitere
ortsetzung
es
Matthesonischen
Lebenslaufes1759)
Cod.hans.IV.2
Des Menschen Eitelkeit
(on
Pascal's
Pensees,
c1734),
Mattheson's
Schutz-Wehr
(c1736)
Urbild
der Falschheit
(1735)
Notes
on
Fontenelle,
Gespriche
von mehr als einer
Welt,
verdolmetscht
von Gottsched
(1744)
Das Buch
vom
Bficherschreiben
(1745)
Correspondence
Caracterisee
(c1746)
Raisons Chretiennes
et
Morales
(1749)
Ten occasional
compositions
written
by
Mattheson,
among
them his own
funeral oratorio
Das
fr6hliche
Sterbelied
(1756)
In conclusion:
the four volumes
of documents
re-
discovered
are
only
a
very
small
part
of
Mattheson's
bequest,
but that small
part
is rich
enough
to
give
a
new
impulse
to
Mattheson
research.
The
philosophical,
moral
and
literary
writings
in
particular
deserve
thorough
examination
by
students
of those
disciplines.
As for the occasional
compositions
(which
I have
dealt
with
elsewheres),
I think
they
extend
our
knowledge
of
Mattheson
the
composer
and
again
raise the
question
of his historical
importance
in this
role. Such
ques-
tions, however, can only be fully answeredwhen all
Mattheson's
manuscripts-which
are
presumably
stored
somewhere
n Eastern
Europe-
are
made
acces-
sible to
international
research.
'B. C.
Cannon,
Johann
Mattheson,
pectator
n Music
New
Haven,
1947/R1968)
2Die
Musikforschung, (1948), pp.69-72
3E.g.
H.
Becker,
'Hamburg',
The
New Grove
4The
nventory
is
now
Hamburg,
Staats-
und
Universititsbiblio-
thek,
Bibliotheksarchiv,
Sign.VI.4.
5Ibid,
ypewritten
list
6See
W.
Kayser,
500
Jahre
wissenschaftliche ibliothek
n
Hamburg:
1479-1979
(Hamburg,
1979), p.192.
7Most
of
the
manuscripts
are
described
in
Cannon's
bibliography
undernos.15, 83, 93, 94, 110, 115, 122, 125,
131-3,
147,
151-3,
156,
165 and 189.
8See
my
article
'Unbekannte
Kompositionen
in
Johann
Mat-
thesons
NachlaB',
Johann
Mattheson:
New
Studies
of
his
Work
and
Times,
ed. G.
J.
Buelow and
H.
J. Marx
Cambridge,
n
preparation).
In MARY
ASMUSSEN's
nd
FRIEDRICH
ON
HUENE's
rticle
in EM Jan
82,
the
pictures
on
p.35
were
reversed.
EARLY
MUSIC
JULY
1982
367