Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) : his relationship to Carl Heinrich Graun and the Berlin circle

The history of music in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century is best understood within the context of the social, cultural and intellectual history of the German people during this period.The intellectual coming of age of the middle classes during the first decades of the century occurred as a result of growing confidence in the establishment of a national spoken and literary language. In a gradual progression of liberation and purification, the German language broke away from the dominant voices and cultures of its closest neighbours, leading to the crystalization of a clearly indigenous culture later in the century. Few other art forms followed this development more closely and indeed benefitted more from it than music.At the beginning of the century German music, and German culture in general, was still very much subjected to vassalage to foreign powers. Only in its church music, however, could a small but distinctly native voice be detected. With the growth of literary confidence, in particular in devotional poetry, music received considerable creative impetus. The figure who most closely followed these linguistic and literary developments is Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).The object of this thesis is to place in its proper context the highly influential musical personality of Telemann, in particular through a study of his relationship to a younger generation of composers and theorists: the 'Berlin Circle'. In a detailed study of the composer's relationship to Carl Heinrich Graun(1703 or 1704-1759), the court Capellmeister at Berlin, the association between words and music, between musical and literary languages, will be discussed and, furthermore, they will be seen to be interdependent