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20 differing from that of the followers of Lully, who were a little disdainful of expressive power in the orchestra, and were always disposed to sacrifice it to the primacy of the voice. He believed, as did his admirer and commentator, Mattheson, that one can express the feelings by means of the orchestra alone.

He was, moreover, a true master of recitative; one might say that he created the German recitative. He attached extreme importance to it, saying that the expression in recitative often gave the intelligent composer much more trouble than the invention of the air. He sought to note with exactitude, accent, punctuation, the living breath itself, without sacrificing anything of the musical beauty. His Recitative arioso takes an intermediate place between the oratorical recitative of the French, and the recitative secco of the Italians, and was one of the models for the recitative of J. S.