Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/127

Rh my intentions of settling down quietly at last," he says, "triumphed over my curiosity."

"Settling down quietly…" But for Telemann quietness was quite a relative term. He was entrusted with the direction of the musical education given at the Gymnasium and the Johanneum (singing and history of music, lectures being given almost daily).—He had to provide music for the five principal churches in Hamburg, not counting the cathedral, the Dom, where Mattheson ruled. He was musical director of the Hamburg Opera, which had greatly declined, but was put on its feet again in 1722. The post was no sinecure. The cliques which favoured the various singers were almost as violent as at the London Opera-house under Händel; and the battles of the pen were no less scurrilous. They did not spare Telemann, who saw his conjugal misfortunes unveiled, and his wife's inclination for Swedish officers. His musical invention does not seem to have suffered thereby, for a whole series of operas, comic and otherwise, dates from this period, and all are sparkling with invention and good humour.

But this was by no means enough for him; as soon as he arrived in Hamburg he had founded a Collegium Musicum and public concerts. Despite the city elders, who wanted to forbid the Cantor to allow his music to be played in a public tavern and to produce therein operas and comedies and other "entertainments inciting to luxury," he persisted and had his way. The concerts which he founded