[63] In theory rather than in practice: for his operas are mediocre. Besides, he soon lost his taste for the theatre, his religious scruples being too strong for him. He wished at first to purify the Opera, to make the theatre something serious and sacred, which should act on the masses in an instructive and elevating manner (Musikalischer Patriot, 1728). Then he saw that his conception of a moral and edifying opera had no chance of being realised. Finally he lost his interest, and even rejoiced in 1750 over the final ruin which overtook the Hamburg Opera.
[64] Mattheson, who spoke perfect English, and who became a little later the secretary to the English Legation, then resident in the interim, presented Handel to the English Ambassador, John Wich, who entrusted them both with the instruction of his son.
[65] Ehrenpforte.—Telemann, a co-disciple of Handel, says also that both Handel and he worked continually at melody.
[66] With a kind of protective touch, however, on the part of Mattheson. During the first months Handel would never have dreamt of offending him. The style of his letters to Mattheson in March, 1704, was extremely respectful. In fact Mattheson was then in advance of him, and his superior in social position.
[67] See in the Ehrenpforte the story of this journey, and the frolics which happened on the way to the two joyful companions.
Buxtehude was a Dane, born at Elsinore in 1637. He settled at Lubeck, where he remained as the organist of St. Mary’s Church, from the age of thirty years until his death in 1707.
[68] It was the custom that the organ of a church should be given with the daughter, or the widow of the organist. Buxtehude himself, in succeeding Tunder, had married his daughter.
[69] J. S. Bach went to Lubeck in October, 1705, and instead of staying a month, as arranged, he spent four months there; an irregularity which cost him his position at Celle.
[70] The organ works of Buxtehude have been republished by Spitta and Max Seiffert, in 2 volumes by Breitkopf (see the short, but pithy, study of Pirro in his little book on L’Orgue de J. S. Bach, Paris, 1895, and Max Seiffert: Buxtehude, Handel, Bach, in the Peter’s Annual, 1902). A selection (too restricted) of the cantatas has been published in a volume of the Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst. Pirro is preparing a longer work on Buxtehude.
[71] Particularly during 1693.