Opening a forgotten cabinet: Johann Heinrich Buttstett's Musicalische Clavier-Kunst und Vorraths-Kammer (1713)

Abstract

Johann Heinrich Buttstett (also Buttstedt, Buttstädt; 1666-1727) was a prominent central German organist, composer, and theorist who, by the second decade of the 18th century, had achieved a fair degree of popularity and, indeed, notoriety. Having studied with Johann Pachelbel, Buttstett was thoroughly entrenched in the often conservative central German compositional style.

Today, Buttstett is most well-known for the heated theoretical debate he entered into with Johann Mattheson. In his Ut, mi, sol, re, fa, la, tota musica et harmonia aeterna (ca. 1715), Buttsett took Mattheson to task on virtually every idea presented in Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (1713). Mattheson responded in kind in 1717 with his Das beschütze Orchestre, and lines between traditional, quite conservative music theory (Buttstett) and evolving theoretical currents of the 18th century (Mattheson) were clearly drawn. In his generation, Johann Heinrich Buttstett was a strong advocate for returning to well-established musical ideas of the past.

In 1713, Buttstett published what was to be the first of a series of keyboard music collections. For unknown reasons, the Musicalische Clavier=Kunst und Vorraths=Kammer would be the only collection to enter into print, although other works have been transmitted through manuscript copies (including chorale preludes and a variety of free works). In the preface to this collection, Buttstett discusses the very ideas of music theory that he would later invoke in his argument against Johann Mattheson. This collection thus stands as an important testament to Buttstett’s varied art.

No significant study of Johann Heinrich Buttstett has ever been written in the English language, and with the exception of Ernst Ziller’s 1934 (revised 1971) biography of Buttstett and Klaus Beckmann’s modern edition, there is virtually no mention of Buttstett’s Musicalische Clavier=Kunst und Vorraths=Kammer in academic literature. This document will seek to remedy these deficiencies and shed some light on this interesting publication.