[72] The part played by these free cities, Hamburg, Lubeck, the abodes of intelligent and adventurous merchants, in the history of German music, should be specially noticed. The part is analogous to that played by Venice and Florence in Italian painting and music.
[73] There are about 150 manuscripts in the libraries of Lubeck, Upsala, Berlin, Wolfenbüttel, and Brussels.
[74] His organ music bears witness to his mastery in this style.
[75] See the penetrating intimacy, the suave melody, of the cantata Alles was ihr tut mit Worten oder Werken, and the tragic grandeur with such simple means of the magnificent cantata Gott hilf mir.
[76] We find on page 167 of the Denkmäler volume, a Hallelujah by Buxtehude for 2 clarini (trumpets), 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello, organ, and 5 vocal parts, which is pure Handel, and very beautiful.
[77] Mattheson adds: “I know with certainty that if he reads these pages, he will laugh up his sleeve, but outwardly he laughs little.”
[78] Amongst others, the subject from an air in minuet form, which he repeated exactly in the minuet of his overture to Samson.
[79] In the same week, Keiser and the poet Hunold gave another Passion, The Bleeding and Dying Jesus, which made a scandal: for he had treated the subject in the manner of an opera, suppressing the chorales, the chief songs, and the person of the evangelist and his story. Handel and Postel more prudently only suppressed the songs, but reserved the text of the evangelist.
[80] This criticism, certainly written in 1704, was repeated by Mattheson in his musical journal, Critica Musica, in 1725, and even twenty years later on, in his Wollkommene Kapellmeister, in 1740.
[81] The two young men had charge of the education of the English Ambassador’s son, Mattheson in the position of chief tutor, Handel as music master. Mattheson took advantage of the situation to inflict on Handel a humiliating rebuke. Handel revenged himself by ridiculing Mattheson, whose Cleopatra was being given at the Opera. Mattheson conducted the orchestra from the clavier, and took the rôle of Antony as well. When he played the part he left the clavier to Handel, but after Antony had died, an hour before the end of the play, Mattheson returned in theatrical costume to the clavier, so as not to miss the final ovations. Handel, who had submitted to this little comedy for the first two representations, refused on the third to give his chair to Mattheson. In the end they came to fisticuffs. The story is told in a rather confusing manner by Mattheson in his Ehrenpforte, and by Mainwaring, who sided with Handel.