Telemann’s complex relationship with the musical past encompassed a healthy respect for the works of previous generations (Lully, Corelli, and others), ambivalence about “ancient” music that was marked by impoverished melodies and contrapuntal excesses, and disdain for Ancients who rejected whatever was new. This chapter addresses yet another perspective, of a composer at pains to bring outmoded musical idioms into a meaningful dialogue with more modern ones. Two works in particular, church cantatas that Telemann composed in Frankfurt am Main, demonstrate how such juxtapositions can serve as rhetorically powerful tools for communicating a theological message. Whereas Sehet an die Exempel der Alten (TVWV 1:1259) cleverly caricatures music of the mid-seventeenth century, the striking dialogue cantata Erhöre mich, wenn ich rufe (TVWV 1:459) casts a doubting, disconsolate Christian as a musical Ancient and the consoling Jesus as a Modern, an opposition vividly highlighted by text, musical style, and instrumentation. That Telemann’s reminiscences of the musical past are not cut of a purely nostalgic or ironic cloth but instead offer a productive dialogue with the musical present – one articulating an enlightened awareness of the divide between historical and present-day consciousnesses – may be read as evidence of the composer‘s extraordinary capacity for aesthetic and theological reflection.

This chapter takes Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s baptismal certificate as a point of departure for exploring how Johann Sebastian Bach’s personal and professional relationships during the Weimar years can help illuminate his otherwise poorly documented musical interests in March 1714. He and his first wife, Maria Barbara, selected two musicians – Georg Philipp Telemann and Adam Immanuel Weldig – to stand as godfathers to their newborn son. This move signaled friendship and trust in each man’s potential to guide the future of the next generation of Bach family musicians. Telemann, Weldig, and J. S. Bach were all young men at the time of the baptism, enjoying blooming musical careers. Weldig was engaged at the musically adventurous court of Weißenfels, while Telemann, working in Frankfurt am Main, was a highly prized musical guest at the Weimar ducal courts. Bach was actively engaged both with the repertories performed at Weißenfels and the latest Italianate instrumental styles represented by Telemann’s music. Using Bach’s Cantata BWV 54 (Widerstehe doch der Sünde) as a case study, I show how such diversity is reflected in the way Bach’s and Telemann’s compositions are in dialog with contemporary musical language and, at times, with each other.