Jon Gallant inquires:

>Does anyone know anything about a Bach contemporary named Johann
>Mattheson?

I don't even remember his dates, but that which memory does manage to
serve up is: along with Telemann, his apaproximate contemporary, he was
a force in animating the Hamburg opera as it sought to establish its own
German style in (largely unsuccessful) rivalry with the Italian variety.
Telemann and Mattheson remained largely true to this effort while Haendel,
aslo active in Hamburg, threw in his German hand and instead espoused the
Neapolitan mode.  Mattheson, if memory serves, wrote a "Boris Godunow"
about six score years before Mussorgsky got around to it.  However, the
German thing in Hamburg was not initiated by either Mattheson or Tellemann,
but, to be fair about it, by two musicians even less well known these days,
Reinhard Keiser and Johann Kusser.  Here in Munich we had Kerll, but he was
more happily Italianate than German.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]