Life
Johann Adolf Scheibe was born in Leipzig as the son of Johann Scheibe (c. 1675 – 1748), an organ builder, and started keyboard lessons at the age of six. In 1725, he began studying law and philosophy at Leipzig University, and in the course of his studies he encountered the professor of rhetoric and poetry Johann Christoph Gottsched, whose aesthetic theories deeply influenced Scheibe. Gottsched's writings, which were primarily targeted toward the reform of German poetry and drama, greatly informed Scheibe's formulation of his philosophy of music. Due to financial difficulties, Scheibe was unable to finish his university studies, and devoted himself instead to a largely self-taught career in music. In 1729 he applied unsuccessfully for the post of organist at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was the cantor. Scheibe was active in the musical scene of Leipzig until 1735. In 1736, he moved to Hamburg where he made influential friends including Johann Mattheson and Georg Philipp Telemann. Encouraged by both, Scheibe published the magazine "Der Critische Musikus" between 1737 and 1740. The magazine received widespread attention and remains significant today for its discussion of significant contemporary composers. In 1739, MargraveLiterary work
Scheibe a biography of Baron Ludvig Holberg, whose works on natural and common law remained significant for 200 years. He published a collected edition of the "Critische Musikus" in 1745. His other large works are the "Treatise on the Age and Origin of Music" (1754) and "On Musical Composition" (1773).Commentary on his contemporaries
Scheibe held Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Frideric Handel as the finest composers of keyboard music, citing structure and ornamentation as of primary importance. He considered Bach to be the finest contemporary player of the organ, harpsichord and clavichord, incomparable to all except Handel. Bach's Italian Concerto (BWV 971), published in 1735, was for Scheibe a perfect example of a well-constructed concerto. Scheibe's often-quoted objections to the music of Bach derive from an anonymous letter from 1737 in the ''Critischer Musikus''. Scheibe blamed Bach's music for being "bombastic". Johann Abraham Birnbaum, a professor in rhetoric at Leipzig, defended Bach on that occasion. The quarrel between Scheibe and Birnbaum was a very long and significant one. According to Scheibe Bach's music was artificial and confusing in style, and the notation of such elaborate ornaments (rather than leaving ornamentation to the performer, as was customary) obscured the melody and harmony. Rather than a clear division between melody and accompaniment, Bach made all voices equal in his brand of polyphony, which Scheibe felt made the music overloaded, unnatural and oppressed. In Albert Schweitzer's famous book on Bach, Schweitzer describes Scheibe as the literary champion of a distinctively German style of music, one that would break away from the Italian models. The Italian influence was toward artifice and complexity. The German impulse was toward naturalness and simplicity, to Scheibe's way of thinking. This theory made it "impossible for him to do justice to Bach," Schweitzer wrote. Bach was much too complicated, and thus too Italian, for his taste. Although of course acknowledging Bach's talents, he did conclude that Bach, tragically, had fallen "from the natural to the artificial, and from the lofty to the obscure ... one wonders at the painful labor of it all, that nevertheless comes to nothing, since it is at variance with reason." This led to an exchange between Scheibe and Johann Abraham Birnbaum (1702–1748), an admirer of Bach and professor of rhetoric at the University of Leipzig. The exchange did Bach's reputation some good, because Scheibe's prickly tone "everywhere stimulated sympathy for Bach." Scheibe believed that musical talent was inborn, and that the musician could express emotions only by subjecting himself to their influence by the force of his imagination. In numerous published treatises and essays, Scheibe explored the nature of taste, melody, expression, and musical invention, and defended a nationalist conception of musical style. His theories, which were advanced for his time, were based on rational principles, purity of expression, the imitation of nature, and the application of the rhetorical arts to the processes of musical creation.Musical works
Scheibe composed concertos, sinfonias, sonatas, suites, partitas and incidental music. His vocal music includes operas, cantatas, oratorios, chorales, mass sections, songs and odes.See also
* List of Danish composersReferences
*''This article was initially translated from the Danish Wikipedia.''Further reading
*External links
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