German Commentary by Frederik Kranemann, translated into English by Derek Remeš. Edition edited and translated by Derek Remeš

Commentary

The following is the first complete edition of the Fundamenta Compositionis Jean Kuhnaus 1703 (“Johann Kuhnau’s Fundamentals of Composition 1703”) in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (RISM signature D-B) under the signature Mus. ms. autogr. theor. Kuhnau, J. 1.[1] This project, which includes an English translation, thus makes a central source for the reconstruction of compositional pedagogy around the year 1700 available to an international readership. Although this treatise has been known at least since Kurt Hahn’s discussion of it in 1957 and later via Paul Walker’s 2000 dissertation,[2] the true value of this source has yet to be fully recognized.

It is tempting to view this source as authentic teaching material originating from around the Leipzig Thomasschule. Yet, despite the titular reference to Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), J. S. Bach’s predecessor as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, there exists neither tangible evidence that Kuhnau actually used the Fundamenta nor concrete information regarding its origin. Nevertheless, the Fundamenta represents an instructive example of a musica poetica compendium that enables insight not only into the design of a course in composition based on the rules of intervallic progressions, but also into the topical priorities of a course on the “craft” of composition at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

At the Berlin Staatsbibliothek there also survives a previously unexamined manuscript: Kurtze Verfaßung, wie ein musicalisches Stück ohne Fehler zu componieren sey (“Brief Instruction How to Compose a Musical Piece without Errors”) under the listing Mus. ms. theor. 1640. This manuscript can be traced to a group of sources that can be understood as a sort of “music-theoretical appendix” to the “Österreich-Bokemeyer Collection,” which represents one of the most extensive compilations of music sources from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.[3] This manuscript is in the hand of Heinrich Bokemeyer (1679–1751) and is preserved under the signature D-B Mus. ms. theor. 1640.[4] Since the Verfaßung exhibits a great number of concordances with the Fundamenta, not only in the arrangement of its content, but also in exact turns of phrase, the Verfaßung will also be discussed below.[5] And since there are multiple indicators that both the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung bear a close relationship to Bokemeyer’s teacher, Georg Österreich (1664–1735), the following article aims to reconstruct the plausible circumstances of their origin and to identify shared sources based on Hahn’s and Walker’s research. In this regard, we will also examine the Praecepta der musicalischen Composition by Johann Gottfried Walther (1684–1748), the Weimar city organist, lexicographer, and distant cousin to J. S. Bach, the reason being that the Praecepta manifests numerous similarities with both the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung. It is likely that the Fundamenta (with Kuhnau as its possible author), the Verfaßung, and Walther’s Praecepta all draw from a shared older source that is now lost.[6]

The Scribes and Owners of the Manuscripts

The Fundamenta survives in a half-leather binding that was probably prepared in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.[7] According to a note on the inside cover, the source stems from a music collection owned by Georg Johann Daniel Poelchau (1773–1836) that was bequeathed to the institution that would later become the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.[8] Besides the Fundamenta, the volume also contains copies of three additional music-theoretical treatises: the extensively-studied Ausführlicher Bericht vom Gebraucht der Con- und Dissonantien and the singing manual Von der Singe-Kunst oder Maniera, both of which are attributed to Christoph Bernhard (1628–1692), together with a treatise by Johann Theile (1646–1724) outlining rules for invertible counterpoint. This third treatise is known under various names, but is here titled Kurtze, doch gründliche Reguln von den doppelten Contrapuncten.[9] Hahn dates all four treatises in this collection to the first third of the eighteenth century.[10] However, the manuscript also contains a biographical sketch of Kuhnau and an index of his theoretical works[11] that probably date from the nineteenth century. These sections begin on f.94v of the Fundamenta, and the treatises listed in the index are now lost.[12]

Unlike the other three treatises in this volume, the Fundamenta exhibits the handwriting of multiple scribes, as is visible from a comparison of the title page, table of contents, and the main body of the text. Already at the time of Hahn’s study, Harald Kümmerling, who was the first to investigate the Österreich-Bokemeyer Collection, identified the writing on the title page of the Fundamenta as Georg Österreich’s hand.[13] Thus the provenance of the Fundamenta may have been as follows: it was likely owned by Österreich (the original scribe remains anonymous), after whom it passed to his pupil Heinrich Bokemeyer, then to his son-in-law Johann Christian Winter, next to the Göttinger musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel (Bach’s first biographer), then to the above-mentioned G. J. D. Poelchau, and finally to the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.[14]

On the title page’s verso there appears a brief listing of contents with the heading Institutio Kuhnaviensis (“Kuhnau’s Instruction”), which underscores the collection’s pedagogical intent. This index could potentially have been added after the pagination, which appears to be in Österreich’s hand. However, Kümmerling did not determine whether the index, like the title page, also stems from Österreich. Moreover, different kinds of ink suggest that the index initially remained incomplete and was later completed.[15] Despite the differences in ink, both index and pagination could stem from the same scribe, although one cannot rule out that a later scribe could have imitated the handwriting of the earlier scribe.

In any case, the main body of the Fundamenta is not in Österreich’s hand. And as Hahn has already made clear, the Fundamenta cannot be a Kuhnau autograph, despite the work’s title. The reason is the existence of some misspellings and factual errors, which suggest that the scribe may not have been completely versed in the material at hand, as one would expect from a musician of Kuhnau’s caliber. For instance, § 25 of Chapter V mistakes cantus mollis for cantus durus, and the heading of Chapter XIV mistakes “bicinio” for “ionico.”[16] That the latter error is carried over into the above-mentioned index without correction begs the question whether Österreich merely made a simple copying error, or whether the index was in fact written by another scribe.

According to Daniel R. Melamed’s research, the handwriting found in the main body of the Fundamenta also appears in two other eighteenth-century manuscripts[17]: first, as the header of the motet “Erforsche mich, Gott” by Sebastian Knüpfer (1633–1676)[18]; and second, as the header of Kuhnau’s “Magnificat in C.”[19] These findings suggest that the anonymous scribe was probably affiliated with the Thomasschule or its broader circle.[20] Yet neither the title page nor the main score of Knüpfer’s motet are in this anonymous scribe’s hand.[21] This suggests that our anonymous scribe’s professional work may have been restricted to a more or less official “workshop” that specialized on the copying of texts.[22] The existence of such a workshop remains mere speculation, however.

The manuscript of the Verfaßung is preserved in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek as a single source with its own binding, which may date from the nineteenth century. In contrast to the volume containing the Fundamenta, the handwriting of the Verfaßung is more uniform, as it stems from a single scribe. There are no explicit indications regarding his identity or the dating of the source. Georg Österreich is indicated as the scribe in subsequently added annotations in catalogues of the Staatsbibliothek,[23] yet there are hardly any similarities with Österreich’s usual handwriting. As Kümmerling determined, the Verfaßung is very likely in the hand of Österreich’s pupil, Heinrich Bokemeyer, as can be confirmed via a comparison with other Bokemeyer writings.[24]

Comparing the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung

Both sources share the abbreviation for “with God” at the beginning of the main text – in the Fundamenta in Greek, in the Verfaßung in Latin (“C. D.”, cum deo). This designation does not appear in other music-theoretical manuscripts copied by Österreich or Bokemeyer. Far more common is the abbreviation “I. N. I.” (In Nomine Iesu).

The contents of the Fundamenta can be summarized thus: the first of the four overarching sections contains three short chapters treating the nature and use of consonances and dissonances; the second section contains four chapters that include an extended description of the modes, their transposition, and cadences; the third section contains detailed instruction on fugues; and the fourth section treats invertible counterpoint at length. This final section is by and large a duplication of Bernhard’s Anhang von denen doppelten Contrapuncten (“Appendix on Invertible Counterpoint”) from the Tractatus compositionis augmentatus.[25]

The most significant differences between the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung occur mostly at the beginning of both manuscripts. While the Fundamenta introduces its explanation of interval sizes with the sentence “Was Intervalla seyn, […] ist ex Modulatoria […] bekandt,” the Verfaßung first defines Sonus as “sound” and “Grund und Anfang aller Musicalischen Intervallen” (“the basis and starting point of all musical intervals”). Then the Verfaßung notes that the method at hand will be limited to simultaneously sounding intervals, since the study of successive intervals belongs to the art of singing, such that it can be excluded for the time being.[26] The Verfaßung continues with a lucid explanation of all kinds of intervals, as one finds in most musica poetica treatises in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It also describes the difference between simple and compound intervals.[27] With a few exceptions, both the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung are identical beginning at the fourth chapter of the Verfaßung (corresponding to chapter one of the Fundamenta) until §. 4 of the Fundamenta.[28] §§. 5–11 of chapter four in the Fundamenta on the various kinds of fourth are missing in the Verfaßung. The Fundamenta’s subsequent division of consonances into perfectae and imperfectae appears in the Verfaßung as noted above. In place of §§. 5–11, the Verfaßung has five empty pages that could easily have accommodated the missing material; perhaps they were left blank in order to be completed at a later point. There follows an explanation of the transitus (passing note), whose examples stem primarily from Bernhard and which are the same in both treatises. Chapter four (De Triade harmonica) and chapters five through seven (modes) of the Fundamenta do not appear in the Verfaßung.[29] In contrast, the subsequent chapters on fugue and invertible counterpoint are almost identical in both sources.

A Teaching Document by Johann Kuhnau?

The title page of the Fundamenta suggests that this source may represent authentic teaching material from the Leipzig Thomasschule in the generation of Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729), Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758), and Johann Christoph Graupner (1683–1760). Yet no evidence survives that confirms Kuhnau’s use of the Fundamenta in lessons.[30] While Hahn claims that a connection to Kuhnau can neither be proved nor disproved, Melamed’s discovery that the Fundamenta and the Knüpfer motet share the same scribe suggests that the Fundamenta at least originates from Thomasschule’s broader circle. In addition, the words Institutio Kuhnaviensis in the heading of the above-mentioned index in the Fundamenta imply a didactic function. Paul Walker has cast doubt on the reliability of Österreich’s attribution of the Fundamenta to Kuhnau, given that Österreich is known to have misattributed other sources.[31] Yet given several similarities in Kuhnau’s and Österreich's biographies, it seems likely that the two, who were nearly the same age, would have met: documentary evidence confirms that after an apprenticeship with the Cantor Johann Scheffler, Österreich was an student at the Thomasschule from May 10, 1678 until August 28, 1680, the date of his departure to Hamburg because of the rampant pestilence in Leipzig.[32] Johann Kuhnau studied law in Leipzig beginning in 1682 before taking up the post of organist at the Thomasschule in 1684.[33] Previously, Kuhnau had been educated as a choir boy for the second court organist, Johann Heinrich Kittel, and had spent several years in Zittau. In the winter semester of 1683–84, Österreich matriculated at the Leipzig University, where he remained for five years. Since these two young, highly talented musicians studied in Leipzig at the same time, it is possible that they had personal contact. Moreover, Österreich’s dating of “1703” on the title page of the Fundamenta might have to do with Kuhnau’s professional life. When Kuhnau became Thomaskantor in 1701 he would have had to produce teaching materials for the compositional instruction of interested pupils and graduates.[34] Teaching might have played a less important role in his previous role as an organist.[35]

Alongside occasional engagements as a singer in the opera houses of Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel, along with the post of Schlosskantor in Wolfenbüttel, Österreich, like his own teacher Johann Theile, probably decided to extend his activities beyond singing instruction and into private composition lessons.[36] The time span in question lies close to the year 1703 given on the title page of the Fundamenta. From June 14, 1702, Österreich lived in Braunschweig, where he had inherited a brewery from his step-father, Hans Darnedden.[37] Up to this point he had held the post of Hofkapellmeister at the court in Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, which was inactive due to the chaos of the Great Northern War. After his savings were spent, it seems that Österreich went looking for further employment opportunities, since he never received an official dismissal from his duties in Gottorf, and he had to consider the possibility that the court would not be revitalized.

Moreover, the type of paper used in the Fundamenta and the binding could reflect the genesis of the different sections written by Österreich and the anonymous scribe from the Thomasschule circle.[38] The textual portions of the Fundamenta treatise are (with the exception of the title page) written on what Hahn denotes as “Paper I.” In contrast, the title page to the Fundamenta and the remaining treatises by Bernhard and Theile (including the title page to the Ausführlicher Bericht), are on what Hahn calls “Paper II.”[39] If one assumes that Paper I and II stem from different scribes and were not exclusively available to the above-mentioned anonymous Leipzig scribe, then the following is a plausible hypothesis: Paper I may have been initially available to the Leipzig scribe from the Thomasschule circle for the text. If one assumes, on the other hand, that Paper II exhibits some connection to Georg Österreich (since the title page of the Fundamenta is Paper II in his hand), then the Leipzig-scribe must have obtained reams of Paper II at the latest by the time the Ausführlicher Bericht was copied, since entire body of the main text is in the same hand. Assuming that Österreich’s library included not only writings from his regions of professional activity (Hamburg, Gottorf, Braunschweig, etc.), but also could have included writings obtained through third parties and via letter exchange, then it is at least possible that Österreich was aware of the Fundamenta circulating in Leipzig.[40] The anonymous scribe from the Thomasschule circle prepared a copy of the Fundamenta (perhaps at Österreich’s behest), which he then sent to Österreich. After receiving the manuscript, Österreich could have added a title page on Paper II and shortly thereafter sent reams of Paper II to Leipzig with the intent of ordering copies of additional works, the next of which would have been the Ausführlicher Bericht.[41] Unfortunately, Hahn did not investigate Paper II any further, so for the time being it remains uncertain whether Österreich used Paper II with any regularity.

That the original pagination only includes the Fundamenta and the Ausführlicher Bericht (not the Singe-Kunst or Kurtze Regulen) suggests that initially only these two treatises were bound together and were present in this form in Österreich’s library for a certain period of time.[42] The volume would have remained in this form until Österreich also received a copy of the Singe-Kunst from the same Leipzig scribe. This would have made necessary the alteration of the title page, Anleitung zur Composition (“Instruction in Composition”), which was originally intended only to introduce the Ausfühlicher Bericht. The oddly compact text “und Sing-Manier,” which appears in the margin after the comma of Composition, could stem from Österreich’s adaptation of the title page.[43] The first page of the Singe-Kunst apparently lacked an indication of its author at the outset, which is why someone (probably Österreich) added the name Bernhard in the narrow margin above the title. For whatever reason, Österrich did not continue the pagination past the Bericht and into the Singe-Kunst. Ultimately, these three treatises (the Fundamenta, Bericht and Singe-Kunst) were either bound together or Österreich immediately added the copy of Theile’s Kurtzen Regulen without giving it an independent title page.

The dating of the Verfaßung manuscript is much more difficult: here too one finds at least two different kinds of paper. The watermark that appears most frequently can also be found in the Österreich-Bokemeyer Collection; building on Kümmerling’s research, Konrad Küster refers to this watermark as Postreiter-IKB.[44] This watermark appears in manuscripts by Georg Österreich,[45] as well as in a copy Bokemeyer made of Johann Joseph Fux’s “Nisi Dominus.”[46] Küster dates the use of paper with this water mark to the time after 1703.[47] Two manuscripts with the related watermark Postreiter-NW can be dated to 1721 and 1723, so Küster assumes that the entire group of writings originated from this relatively late period. Yet such a late origin for the Verfaßung is unlikely, since it exhibits significantly more misspellings than the Fundamenta. These errors include grammatical mistakes and Latin terminology—types of mistakes that are nearly absent in Bokemeyer sources from the 1710’s and 1720’s.[48] Most of these errors have been corrected in what seems to have been a second pass after the initial copying phase.[49] In light of these corrections, these kinds of errors at such a late date can only be explained through an atypical degree of negligence on the part of Bokemeyer, who was in fact a well-educated cantor fluent in Latin.[50] Alternatively, insufficient familiarity with terminology that was in fact common knowledge in the early eighteenth century would seem to indicate a sort of juvenile inexperience. This would support the motivation for copying such rudiments, or “fundamentals” and would place the origin of the Verfaßung in Bokemeyer’s time as Österreich’s pupil “around 1706.”[51] At this point Bokemeyer was already twenty-seven years old and had held the post as Martinikantor in Braunschweig since 1704. His copying of a treatise on composition could thus be explained in the context of his new duties, which included the composition of sacred works. At the same time, composition probably played a less significant role during Kuhnau’s time as organ pupil of Johann Justus Kahle.[52] Insofar as the date 1703 on the title page of the Fundamenta can claim any accuracy as to the origin of this copy, it would appear that it would predate any regular contact between Bokemeyer and Österreich by at least three years. Thus it is possible that Bokemeyer either copied the Verfaßung from the Fundamenta itself (for a fee) or from another copy thereof. On the other hand, if there was no personal contact between Kuhnau and Österreich, then Kuhnau’s reputation as a teacher must have reached Österreich, who at this point was in search of pedagogical material.

Whereas the main sections of the Fundamenta appear to have originated about the same time, differences in the Verfaßung’s pagination suggest that individual fragments were later bound together: the first page of text begins with page one, which is continued until page nine. There follow five empty pages with the watermark Postreiter-IKB without pagination. A later pagination in pencil in the upper margin (perhaps from the nineteenth century or later) continues the numbering from the next recto page (Vom Gebrauch der Consonantien) for the remaining pages. Beginning on folio thirteen of this new sequence in pencil, the earlier sequence that ended with “9” is continued on the lower margin. Presumably these numbers, which are mostly concealed by the binding, also stem from Bokemeyer. If one reconstructs the concealed numbering, there appears to be a continuous pagination after all. This continues from the first texted page after the blank ones, such that the entire volume seems to have lacked any continuous pagination before the appearance of the penciled numbering. These various sets of pagination divide the volume into subsections, the first encompassing chapters one through four, and the second from Vom Gebrauch der Consonantien to the end of the chapter on fugue.[53]

The Significance of the Fundamenta

The fact that the Fundamenta borrows material from a variety of sources makes it a significant document for contemporaneous music-theoretical discourse. Yet the precise relationship between the sources remains an open question at this point. Thus it is possible that both the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung contain material taken from a yet-unidentified common source. Moreover, it is by no means certain that the Verfaßung was copied from the Fundamenta. For instance, each source contains unique errors in spelling and content: for example, the swapping of bicinio for ionico (mentioned above) is not found in the Verfaßung, which has the correct header.[54] If the Verfaßung is in fact an early Bokemeyer source copied from Österreich’s copy of the Fundamenta, then one must assume that such mistakes either were left uncorrected in the text but were corrected when dictated orally, or that an as-yet-unidentified intermediary treatise served as a source.[55]

Like Hahn, Walker has investigated the Fundamenta’s relationship to other sources. Both authors note the obvious parallels between the Fundamenta and Walther’s Praecepta (completed 1708). Both sources borrow from Bernhard’s Anhang von den doppelten Contrapuncten from his Tractatus, as well as in their treatment of fugue.[56] Thus Hahn posited the notion that the Praecepta might be based on the Fundamenta, given that it was completed some five years after 1703. Yet Hahn favored the hypothesis that both sources could be based on a lost intermediary, since there is little direct evidence that the Praecepta is based directly on the Fundamenta.[57] At the same time, contrary to Walker’s assertion, the fact that Walther’s biography of Kuhnau in the Lexicon does not mention the Fundamenta does not necessarily mean that Walther did not know of it.[58] The reason is that “Fundamenta” (including its variants) can be understood to imply a relatively broad blanket term for basic instructional material and thus may never have been intended to claim status as a mature musica poetica treatise, as for example Bernhard’s Ausführlicher Bericht or Walther’s Praecepta do, and thus may not have been understood as a source worth mentioning in Walther’s bibliography. In addition, it is possible that the term Fundamenta stems from Österreich, so that Kuhnau’s instructional originally had a different name (or no name at all), in which case Walther could not have mentioned the Fundamenta.

Yet assuming there is a connection to Kuhnau, the source situation cannot support the theory that the Fundamenta and Verfaßung are truncated versions of Walther’s Praecepta. This is because Kuhnau apparently first learned of the Praecepta many years later. In a letter dated May 3, 1720, Kuhnau confirmed that he received a copy of the Praecepta, which he judged to be of high value to both theorists and practitioners.[59] Thus Kuhnau could not have produced the Fundamenta as a summary of Walther’s Praecepta around 1703, since he first became familiar with Walther’s work via Gottfried Ephraim Thiele after 1720. In this case, Österreich’s dating of 1703 on the Fundamenta would have no relationship to the source’s origin.

At the same time, it is highly unlikely that Bokemeyer’s Verfaßung is based solely on Walther’s Praecepta, since it has much more in common with the Fundamenta. Moreover, Bokemeyer apparently first encountered Walther’s work on January 28, 1734. In a letter carrying this date, Walther mentions that he would send his “compiled Musical Poëticam” to Bokemeyer.[60] Such a late date would indeed correspond with the dating of the paper employed in Bokemeyer’s Verfaßung, yet it would assume that Bokemeyer, who was more than fifty years old, made several basic writing mistakes.[61]

Influences, Possible Predecessors, and W. C. Printz’s Phrynis Mitilianaeus

For these reasons it is likely that all three sources share an unknown intermediary source. If this be the case, then the questions of their relationship to each other, as well as of Kuhnau’s authorship, become of secondary importance. While the Fundamenta does not directly mention which sources it is based on, Walther reveals a variety of influences on his Praecepta in a letter to Bokemeyer dated August 3, 1731, including Wolfang Schonsleder and Bernhard.[62] In addition, Hermann Gehrmann,[63] Georg Schünemann,[64] and Peter Benary[65] have been able to identify the influence of Wolfgang Printz, Antonio Bertali, and Andreas Werckmeister in the Praecepta, and that of Giovanni Maria Bononcini in the chapter on canon and fugue.[66]

This kind of inference as to Walther’s sources can also be applied to the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung, to the extent that these share textual congruities in certain chapters. As Walker has shown in his discussion of the largely identical sections on fugue in the Fundamenta and Praecepta, a fourth source containing partially concordant material provides important evidence in this regard: a manuscript (D-B Mus. ms. theor. 1595) that bears a relationship to the Nordhausen cantor, Christian Demelius (1643–1711), and can be dated to ca. 1701,[67] since it contains a reference to the Bellum musicum of Johann Beer (1655–1700) from 1701.[68] Like the Fundamenta, the second part of this source consists of a complete copy of Bernhard’s Ausführlicher Bericht; the first part, on the other hand, is a veritable “greatest hits” of seventeenth century music theorists, including material by Sethus Calvisius, Johann Crüger, Johann Andreas Herbst, Athanasius Kircher, and Andreas Werckmeister, along with other works by Bernhard.[69]

Yet another author is of particular interest in this regard: Walker has noted that the explanation of repercussio in Mus. ms. theor. 1595[70] names the now-lost fourth part of Printz’s (1641–1717) Phrynis Mitilinaeus as its only source.[71] Since precisely this same material can be found in the Fundamenta (without any mention of its source),[72] it is possible that large portions – if not the entirety – of the concordant material on fugue were taken from the Phrynis.[73] In any case, this material appears in more abridged form in the Fundamenta, Verfaßung, and Mus. ms. theor. 1595 than it does in the Praecepta. This suggests that Walther’s version, which would seem to be more faithful to Printz’s surviving three volumes in its retention of more extensive descriptions and its frequent use of Greek and Latin terminology, may represent a less heavily edited version of Printz’s work, such that at least parts of Printz’s lost fourth volume might be reconstructed via Walther’s Praecepta. Insofar as the date 1703 is reliable for the Fundamenta, one would assume that Printz’s fourth volume appeared somewhere between 1696 and 1703, since a collected edition of Printz’s first three volumes appeared in 1696 published by Johann Christoph Mieth in Dresden. In addition, by 1703 the fourth volume must have already been disseminated in various contexts.[74] Printz’s influence is also supported by the similarities between the subtitle of the Verfaßung “wie ein musicalisches Stück ohne Fehler zu componiren sey” and Printz’s Phrynis. The latter contains the phrase “…wie ein Musicalisches Stück rein, ohne Fehler, und nach dem rechten Grunde zu componiren und zu setzen sey,” such that it is likely that Bokemeyer based his formulation on Printz.[75]

For Walker, the fact that Kuhnau did not mention the similarities between the Fundamenta and the Praecepta in the above-mentioned letter suffices to cast doubt on Kuhnau’s authorship of the Fundamenta.[76] According to Walker, Kuhnau would not have refrained from pointing out the similarities between “his” Fundamenta and Walther’s Praecepta.[77] Yet in light of a common source between the two sources, the letter could also be understood as Kuhnau merely judging the value of Walther’s compilation of music-theoretical materials. Indeed, Walther’s treatise takes part in the common practice of excerpting from others’ works, as Kuhnau too apparently did when borrowing from Printz and Bernhard (as in Mus. ms. theor. 1595).

After Bernhard, one is tempted to see Printz as perhaps the most widely received and most influential German-speaking music theorist in the second half of the seventeenth century. Yet Printz’s theories are somewhat inaccessible today because they are embedded within the genre of the satirical novel. Should the Fundamenta and its related sources indeed be in essence a synopsis of selections from Printz’s now-lost fourth volume, then it would seem that the problem of accessibility to Printz’s theories was already recognized around the turn of the century and to a certain extent solved through the omission of unnecessary ornamental material. This “purging” of anecdotal “baggage” with the intent of focusing on core concepts can be seen in the volume D-B Mus. ms. theor. 1038 from the Österreich-Bokemeyer Collection,[78] which contains various compiled excerpts from Printz’s Phrynis. Perhaps the Fundamenta’s condensed nature was its primary attraction for Österreich, being the reason he preferred it to the fourth part of the Phrynis.[79]

Contrapuntal Theory vs. Thoroughbass in the Early Eighteenth Century

As is the case with many treatises around 1700, the Fundamenta and its partially concordant sources document a phase of both theoretical development and reorientation of foundational concepts in compositional pedagogy. One particular strength of the treatise lies in its extensive descriptions of clausulae and cadences in relationship to modal teachings based primarily on Printz. Yet hints of the modes’ coming demise can already be seen, for example when Phrygian is understood in terms of Dorian, or when the modal system is opened up to include any transposition.[80] Such points could be understood as early manifestations of a critical, “progressive” music theory of the sort that Heinichen, a Kuhnau pupil, formulated in a polemic in his 1711 treatise: “And with such a [thoroughbass-centered] method it is also not necessary to instruct one’s pupils in the discant, tenor, or fistulating [i.e., contrived] clausulae and other unnecessary things.”[81] It is not difficult to read Heinichen’s commentary as a critique of his teacher’s Kuhnau’s instruction, in which thoroughbass did not receive enough emphasis in Heinichen’s opinion.

In contrast, the following is one of the few direct descriptions of Kuhnau’s instruction, found in Walther’s biography of Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758) from his Lexicon. Walther wrote that Fasch “learned the first fundamenta of music, especially in thoroughbass, from the departed Herr Kuhnau in Leipzig; he solidified his knowledge of composition with Herrn Capellmeister Graupner [...].[82] Here we learn that Kuhnau did indeed teach thoroughbass, yet it was probably not yet the tool of central importance for conveying basic concepts in the craft of composition that it would later become with Heinichen and others. Moreover, it was the case that not all pupils at this time received instruction in keyboard playing (which was essential for thoroughbass practice), since this had to be paid for separately.[83]

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a composition was still legitimized above all through its conformity with standard contrapuntal principles. The foundation remained the teaching of intervallic progressions, expanded to include new rules and licenses. A composition’s ultimate legitimization came through the dictates and numerous licenses of the traditional teachings of intervallic progression, as Jean-Philippe Rameau’s restoration attempts reveal.[84] The ongoing didactic significance of traditional intervallic thinking is witnessed by the fact that both the Fundamenta and the first part of Mus. ms. theor. 1595 both include portions from Bernhard’s Ausführlicher Bericht. Thus one can establish that, regarding the relationship between “vocal contexts” and thoroughbass for the pivotal time at the beginning of the eighteenth century (to which the Fundamenta belongs), the field of composition does not necessarily seem separate from thoroughbass, but to a certain point and in certain styles composition can operate relatively independently from thoroughbass.

It would be anachronistic to judge the Fundamenta by Heinichen’s standards, which would view a preference for purely contrapuntal explanatory models over thoroughbass as inferior. That is, such a view would be to project a later pedagogical tradition backwards onto the turn from the seventeenth to eighteenth century.

At the same time one must also consider that, in setting priorities between thoroughbass-centered and “vocally-oriented” and “counterpoint-focused” instruction, we are dealing not only with a generational divide but also with the question of educational milieu.[85] Institutions like the Thomasschule belonged squarely to the tradition of Lutheran Lateinschulen in which keyboard lessons and individual instruction were not offered to all pupils, but where daily communal singing in the service was of central importance. In such settings, a pedagogical tradition developed that could seamlessly tie in with the vocal basis of musica modulatoria. The beginning chapters of the Fundamenta and the Verfaßung cover precisely this sort of material in their introductory chapters in an impressive manner. Early adopters of thoroughbass as a compositional tool, like Werckmeister and Friedrich Erhard Niedt, intended their instruction primarily for “handcraft-oriented” organists who presumably learned music-theoretical concepts in a more physical manner at the keyboard than through vocal music.

It was first in the 1720’s that central and northern Germany witnessed a stronger influence of practical compositional instruction based on thoroughbass accompaniment. This led to compositional instruction’s increasing reliance on thoroughbass, as seen in the first “popular” thoroughbass treatises such as those by Johann Mattheson (who helped popularize Niedt’s theories), Georg Philipp Telemann, and David Kellner.

Nevertheless, traditional modes of explanation remained in force far into the eighteenth century, as can be seen in the writings of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel,[86] Georg Friedrich Kauffmann,[87] and the canonic experiments of Christoph Graupner show.[88] Yet their reception was increasingly restricted to an audience of experts.