Acquiring a Mixed Taste: Telemann as “Great Partisan of French Music”

This chapter focuses on Telemann’s interest in the French style, starting from his teens through old age—an interest reflected in numerous suites, sonatas, concertos, cantatas, and operas. Telemann’s involvement with the French style is most vividly documented by his overture-suites, a repertory that also offers some unusually rich expressions of the mixed taste. This blend of stylistic purity and heterogeneity helps explains the music’s great popularity among the composer’s contemporaries, for in this sense it could hardly be more “German” in expression.

This chapter focuses on Telemann’s interest in the French style, starting from his teens through old age—an interest reflected in numerous suites, sonatas, concertos, cantatas, and operas. Telemann’s involvement with the French style is most vividly documented by his overture-suites, a repertory that also offers some unusually rich expressions of the mixed taste. This blend of stylistic purity and heterogeneity helps explains the music’s great popularity among the composer’s contemporaries, for in this sense it could hardly be more “German” in expression.