Johann Georg Sulzer’s “Recitativ” and North German Musical Aesthetics: Context, Translation, Commentary

Abstract

Johann Georg Sulzer’s “Recitativ” is a uniquely ambitious article in his Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste. The longest music article in his encyclopedia and accompanied with over 100 musical examples, it describes the technical features and expressive functions of the genre of recitative through 15 rules. It also documents a regional dispute between Berlin and Hamburg over the composition of recitative. Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Adolf Scheibe, composers associated with Hamburg, are chastised in “Recitativ” for their willingness to abandon Italianate formulas and adopt French or newly invented techniques. In contrast, the Berliner Carl Heinrich Graun is celebrated, with passages of his recitative used as stylistic exemplars. In the years before the publication of “Recitativ,” a diverse group of musicians in Berlin beginning with Graun expressed distaste for French-influenced recitative, including even the Francophile Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg. The article is the product of collaboration between several Berliner authors who express their city’s Italianate taste in recitative, including Sulzer, Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, Johann Kirnberger, and Johann Friedrich Agricola. New evidence suggests that Agricola’s influence on the article is greater than previously acknowledged. Sulzer’s text is presented in a side-by-side translation that includes his 39 numbered musical examples, with added bibliographic commentary and translations of poetic texts (also downloadable as an Appendix).