ABSTRACT
Mattheson’s reference to the German having ‘a few ideas and some foundation’ as the basis for his compositional craft of course raises the question as to what those ideas or that foundation might be, and what he means by ‘German’. In addition to the general impact upon him of his experiences at the Hamburg Opera, his writings suggest that he was also well aware of the main currents and trends in keyboard music of the time. His knowledge of, if slight disdain for, the academic learning of his musical forebears has already been canvassed in previous chapters. But, in addition, he certainly appears to have been familiar with keyboard works by at least Kuhnau, Handel and Böhm from the first decade of the eighteenth century, all of which had elements that pointed to the future.
