Re: Re: Werckmeister.3

Ah, yes, Manuel, I see the attribution o Bartholdi.

For a bit more of Werckmeister flavor, here are his own words from Chapter 34
of "Musical Temperament" (1691):

"In short, it is all confused. Good organ builders are despised and the
bunglers receive in some pieces, shelter, and consolation. A reasonable man
who by chance gets a hold of the author's thesis or the abusing writings
should confront then with my Orgel-Probe. He will see how too much is
happening to me and how my good intentions are misunderstood and slandered
against all reasoning. I am amazed how envy disavows that which the eyes can
see, the ears can hear, and the hands can hold, and thus dares to suppress
the truth.

"I confess once more that I am sincerely sorry that I have to think of the
dead in my writings as I will gladly endure, as a Christian, with patience,
the calumny poured upon me. Only because the dead, as mentioned, still has
some followers to whom poison has been administered with a mother's milk, and
who have these writing's in their hands and thereby always still try to
slander and insult me wherein the foreword of this my thesis is directed.
Thus I could have had a connection through which to defend my honorable name,
to defend the truth, and to free myself from further calumnies.

"I would prefer that the slanderous writings were brought into open print so
that one himself can be much better answerable against that; for the secret
envious still stings more maliciously than the public enemies; for then the
whole world could also recognize the contained poison, absurdities, and
affects so much better and it would not even be necessary that one refutes
the whole nonsense for the vices and the rudeness contained therein would
stand completely naked anyway."

Quite an environment, no? Somehow Kirnberger was totally squelched as
"old-fashioned" even though he offers so much in his writings as a theorist.
Johann Walther was squelched for reasons that still remain unclear. If
Werckmeister was so sure that it was only through his writings that he would
be vindicated, why hasn't he been translated? I continue to quote the
translation of an Oberlin sophomore in 1967. It is not in distribution at
this time. I hope that it opens a reader's imagination to other
possibilities and probabilities than that imparted by institutionalized music
education. No one is immune, because the institutionalized education is
valuable in itself.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM