著者

松原 薫

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.66, no.1, pp.161-172, 2015

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This paper considers the role of the theory of melody (die Melodielehre) in Johann Mattheson's Der vollkommene Capellmeister. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the mathematical view of music and the strict artificial contrapuntal theory were often criticized. As this paper will exemplify, Mattheson criticized the former in "Die canonische Anatomie" (in a dispute with Heinrich Bokemeyer) and the latter in Das neu-eroffnete Orchestre. These two criticisms, however, seem to be inconsistent with his description of the contrapuntal theory in the third part of Der vollkommene Capellmeister, which encompasses the northern German Baroque theory. I then turn my attention to the role of Mattheson's theory of melody, wherein he regards the melody as 'noble simplicity' or 'naturalness'. He also introduced the words 'Symphoniurgie', instead of 'counterpoint' at the bridge of the explanation of a single melody, and 'Vollstimmigkeit', or full-voicedness, which means an artistic combining of different melodies sounding together simultaneously. This re-definition of the counterpoint indicates that he considered it the mass of the plural melodies. Mattheson's theory of melody leads to the integration, without inconsistency, of the contrapuntal theory and the criticism of the mathematical view or rational, artificial treatment of music.