ABSTRACT
The Czech music lexicographer, Janovka, in the 'stylus musicus' entry of his groundbreaking dictionary, offers his reader Kircher's definition of the stylus phantasticus, the Latin of the Jesuit's original description remaining largely unchanged. While eighteenth-century writers describing the stylus phantasticus generally took Kircher's definition of the style in the Musurgia as their starting point, the concept of a 'fantastic style' was significantly transformed in meaning by 1740. Mattheson wrote about the stylus phantasticus more than any other theorist of the Baroque, to the extent that his name has almost become inextricably linked with the style in much musicological writing on keyboard and chamber music of the period, particularly works by north German composers. Mattheson regarded the south German composer as a key exponent of 'this style of writing', as his name appears three times in the eleven-paragraph section devoted to the style.
