[43] “Is it the orchestra which is the hero?” asked the theorist of Lullyism, Lecerf de la Viéville. “No, it is the singer....” “Oh, well, then, let the singer move me himself, and take care not to worry me with the orchestra, which is only there by courtesy and accident. Si vis me flere....” (Comparaison de la Musique italienne et de la Musique française, 1705).
[44] “One can represent quite well with simple instruments,” says Mattheson, “the grandeur of the soul, of love, of jealousy, etc., and render all the feelings of the heart by simple chords and their progressions without words, in such a way that the hearer can know and understand their trend, the sense and thought of the musical discourses as if it were a veritably spoken one” (Die neueste Untersuchung der Singspiele, 1744).
[45] The preface of the Componimenti Musicali of 1706. Mattheson exaggeratingly says that “to compose well a single recitative in keeping with the feelings and the flow of the phrase as Keiser did, needs more art and ability than to compose ten airs after the common practice.”
[46] Compare the recitative in the first great cantatas of J. S. Bach, “Aus der Tiefe, Gottes Zeit,” which cover from 1709 to 1712-14, with such recitatives from “Octavia” of Keiser (1705), notably Act II, Hinweg, du Dornen schwangere Krone! Melodic inflections, modulations, harmonies, grouping of phrases, cadences, all in the style of J. S. Bach even more than in that of Handel.
[47] See in Croesus (1711) the air of Elmira, with flute, which calls to mind a similar air from Echo and Narcissus by Gluck.
[48] In this genre a scene from Croesus is a little masterpiece in the pastoral style of the end of the eighteenth century; and is very close to Beethoven.
[49] Such as the Song of the Imprisoned Croesus, which calls to mind certain airs in The Messiah.
[50] I need only cite one example: it is the air of Octavia with two soft flutes, “Wallet nicht zu laut,” one of the most poetic pages of Keiser, which Handel reproduced several times in his works, and even in his Acis and Galatea, 1720.
[51] Postel, who used seven languages in the Prologues of his Libretti, was opposed to this mixture in poetical works, “for that which ornaments learning,” he says, “disfigures poetry.”
[52] Certain German operas mix High German, Low German, French and Italian.