Dokumente zur Telemann-Rezeption, 1767 bis 1907 (review)

Dokumente zur Telemann-Rezeption, 1767 bis 1907. By Christine Klein. (Schriftenreihe zur Mitteldeutschen Musikgeschichte, ser. 2: Forschungsbeiträge, 1.) Oschersleben: Ziethen, 1998. [xl, 370 p. ISBN 3-932090-31-4 (pbk.).]

How does a composer considered one of Europe's leading masters during his lifetime fall into the ranks of the Kleinmeister and Vielschreiber soon after his death? In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681- 1767), the journey from universal admiration to widespread denigration was hastened not only by the shifting sands of musical taste, but by changing notions of creativity and thoughtless parroting of received wisdom. One of the few composers of his generation to survive past the 1750s, Telemann achieved an almost legendary status during his last decade. But despite his mostly successful efforts at keeping up with the latest musical developments, this "alte Noten-Held" (as one young visitor referred to him in 1765) reflected the expectations and priorities of an earlier time; starting in the 1770s, Telemann was more often viewed as a modestly talented polygraph than a cultural hero.

Christine Klein's meticulous documentary study of Telemann's posthumous reputation appears at a time when the composer's popularity has reached its highest level in over two centuries. It is not only a major step toward a comprehensive Telemann Rezeptionsgeschichte, but a revealing glimpse of how the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries viewed the not-so-distant musical past. This collection of 223 chronologically arranged documents is largely a reprint of the author's 1991 dissertation ("Beiträge zur Geschichte der Telemann-Rezeption im Zeitraum von 1767 bis 1907," University of Erlangen), though the original volume of commentary is reduced here to a preface of twenty pages. Those seeking more detailed treatment of particular aspects of the documents will want to consult several articles published by Klein over the last decade but not cited in the book's bibliography ("Georg Philipp Telemann im Spiegel der Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung," in Musikalisches Füllhorn: Aufsätze zur Musik: Günter Fleischhauer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Bernd Baselt [Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1990], 45-54; "Zur musikalischen Malerei G. Ph. Telemanns im Urteil der Musikhistoriographie im Zeitraum von 1767 bis 1907," in Telemanniana et alia musicologica: Festschrift für Günter Fleischhauer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Dieter Gutknecht, Hartmut Krones, and Frieder Zschoch [Oschersleben: Ziethen, 1995], 132-41; and "Georg Philipp Telemanns Gelegenheitswerke im Urteil der Musikhistoriographie des ausgehenden 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts," in Telemanns Auftrags- und Gelegenheitswerke: Funktion, Wert und Bedeutung, ed. Wolf Hobohm et al. [Oschersleben: Ziethen, 1997], 244-51).

Klein's preface deftly outlines the aesthetic underpinnings of the principal criticisms leveled at Telemann's vocal music during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: overuse of rhetorical figures for textual expression (tantamount to charging that the music represents--to turn Beethoven's description of his "Pastoral" Symphony on its head--more painting than the expression of feeling), undue prominence of the instrumental accompaniment and faulty declamation in arias, and a willingness to sacrifice quality for quantity, perhaps the ultimate sin in an age when "original geniuses" were supposedly impelled by their inner convictions to compose works of lasting value. Klein also identifies several main tendencies in nineteenth-century Telemann reception (the repetition of late-eighteenth-century views up until 1850, the application of new criteria to the evaluation of Telemann's life and works starting in the middle of the century, the intensification of this criticism from the 1860s, and the beginning of analytical studies around 1900) and sketches the posthumous dissemination of Telemann's music through performances in Hamburg, Riga (where Telemann's grandson, Georg Michael, served as Kantor and music director of the city's churches), and elsewhere in central Europe. There is potentially much more to be said on the topic of dissemination, for Klein does not consider such important sources as auction catalogs of musicians' estates (other than that of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, document 76) and the nonthematic catalogs issued...