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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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8/11/2019 Johann Mattheson's Bequest

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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