Leipsic, and
educated at the Thomas School. His attention had been directed to
dramatic music early, and at the age of nineteen he was commissioned
to write a pastoral, "_Ismene_," for the court of Brunswick. The
success of this gained him another libretto, "_Basilius_," also
composed with success. He removed to Hamburg in 1694, and for forty
years remained a favorite with the public, composing for that theater
no less than 116 operas, of which the first, "Irene," was produced in
1697. In 1700 he opened a series of popular concerts, the prototypes
of the star combinations of the present day. In these entertainments
the greatest virtuosi were heard, the most popular and best singers,
and the newest and best music. His direction of the opera did not
begin until 1703; here also he proved himself a master. The place of
this composer in the history of art is mainly an adventitious one,
depending upon the chronological circumstance of his preceding others
in the same field, rather than upon the more important reason of his
having set a style, or established an ideal, for later masters. His
operas subsided into farce, the serious element being almost wholly
lacking, and, according to Riemann, the last of them shows no
improvement over the first. Their only merit is that they are not
imitations of the Italian nor upon mythological subjects, but from
common life. In his later life he devoted himself to the composition
of church music, in which department he accomplished notable, if
somewhat conventional, success. The Hamburg theater furnished a field
for another somewhat famous figure in musical history, that of Johann
Mattheson, a singularly versatile and gifted man, a native of that
city (1681-1764). After a liberal education, in which his musical
taste and talent became distinguished at an early age, he appeared on
the stage as singer, and in one of his own operas, after singing his
role upon the stage, came back into the orchestra in order to conduct
from the harpsichord the performance, until his role required him
again upon the stage. Indeed, it was this eccentricity which
occasioned a quarrel between him and Haendel, who resented the
implication that he himself was incapable of carrying on the
performance. Mattheson composed a large number of works, including
many church cantatas of the style made more celebrated in the works of
Sebastian Bach, later, the intention of these works having been to
render the church services