Matteis, Nicola (i)

Matteis, Nicola (i)

Peter Walls

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.18087
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

(b Naples; d Colkirk, Norfolk, after 1713). Italian violinist, guitarist and composer. He was resident in
England; it seems that he arrived there in about 1670. According to Roger North (on whom we are
dependent for details of Matteis’s life) ‘his circumstances were low, and it was say’d that he travelled thro’
Germany on foot with his violin under a full coat at his back’. He must have been living virtually unnoticed
in London for some years by the time John Evelyn first heard him play at a private music meeting in
November 1674. Evelyn’s reaction was one of amazement:

I heard that stupendious Violin Signor Nicholao (with other rare Musitians) whom certainly never
mortal man Exceeded on that instrument: he had a stroak so sweete, & made it speake like the
Voice of a man; & when he pleased, like a Consort of severall Instruments: he did wonders upon a
Note: was an excellent composer also … nothing approch’d the Violin in Nicholas hand: he seem’d
to be spirtato’d & plaied such ravishing things on a ground as astonish’d us all.

Matteis seems quickly to have consolidated this reputation for virtuosity – though, according to North, his
progress in society was impeded at first by his arrogant manner (‘no person must whisper while he played,
which sort of attention had not bin the fashion at court’). He engaged in a contest with Michel Farinel,
who, when he heard Matteis, simply stood stock still and stared at him.

An advertisement in the London Gazette announcing the publication of Matteis’s Arie diverse per il violino
(1676) also indicated his willingness to teach ‘such as desire to learn Composition, or to Play upon the
Violin’ and mentioned the availability in manuscript of second treble and viola (tenor) parts. According to
North, the compositions delighted the aged John Jenkins, who played through the G major suite at the
beginning of the second part, and ‘pulling off his spectacles, clapt his hand on the book and declared he
had never heard so good a peice of musick, in all his life’.

In November 1678 a pass was issued for Matteis to go to France. He was back in London within 12 months
when Evelyn again heard him play. Apart from being a first-rate violinist, Matteis was also (according to
North) ‘a consummate master’ on the five-course guitar and ‘had the force upon it to stand in consort
against an harpsichord’. About 1680, he published Le false consonanse della musica followed in 1682 by an
English-language edition, The False Consonances of Music. This is an important ground-breaking treatise
on thorough-bass realization for the guitar (though Matteis several times stressed the applicability of his
instructions to other continuo instruments and included some general advice on performance and
composition).

The third and fourth parts of the Ayres for the Violin appeared in 1685 and ran to a second edition two years
later (this time with the addition of a supplementary volume of optional second violin parts). The
pedagogical strain evident in the earlier volumes is even more pronounced here. Matteis has two tables of

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e
contents, the first for ‘the most easy Ayres in y Book that may be play’d with the Flute as well as the
e th
Violin’ and the second for ‘y Passages & Ayres a little harder to practice upon the Violin, w double stops
and divisions’. The double stops and a few flourishes are marked in hollow dotted notation indicating that
they may be left out by less advanced players. The 1685 edition includes a piece for solo violin in imitation
of a trumpet (Arie è passaggi ad immatione [sic] della trombetta); in the 1687 edition this reappeared as a trio
actually for trumpets, with new titles: Concerto di trombe a tre trombette con violini e flauti in the first treble
part and Arie è passaggi per trè trombette in the second treble part. It has been suggested that this piece may
originate from a lost manuscript concerto for three trumpets with recorders, strings and continuo.

Matteis was active as a teacher and, according to North, had ‘many scollars’. He was to have joined Purcell,
Draghi, Keller and Finger on the staff of the proposed Royal Academy (1695). In 1696 John Walsh (i)
advertised ‘A Collection of new Songs set by Mr Nicola Matteis made purposely for the use of his Scholars’.
Again, the compositions were being recommended as studies. Matteis is named in advertisements in the
London Gazette (and on a broadsheet copy of the poem) as the composer of the now-lost 1696 St Cecilia Day
Ode Assist, assist! You mighty sons of art. This ode was repeated a few days after its London première at a St
Cecilia Day celebration in Oxford (for which Matteis was named as a steward) and again at a public concert
in the York Buildings in January 1697. From about 1698 Matteis seems to have been less active as a violinist
and composer and it was his son, Nicola Matteis (ii), who came into prominence. Nothing reliable is heard
of Matteis after this date and he may, in fact, have died about 1700. He features as one of the imagined
writers in Thomas Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living (1702). Roger North claimed that Matteis lived
with a woman ‘as one that was marryed’ and that they had a child and moved to a great house where the
violinist dissipated his by-now considerable wealth and undermined his health in extravagant living. This
has led to some misunderstanding since it has been assumed that North was alluding to a marriage in 1700
to the widow, Susanna Timperley. But the recent discovery (by Simon Jones) of her will in Vienna proves
that it was the younger Nicola Matteis (ii) who became her husband. The confusion must have arisen very
early since The London Post reported in January 1700 that ‘Signor Nicolao, the famous Italian Musician, is
married to one Madam Timperley …’ (Despite the younger Matteis's growing reputation, it seems unlikely
that he would be described in quite these terms at this time.) Matteis's works were still very much in
demand. Roger published five books of Les Solos de Nicolas Mathys (Amsterdam, 1702) and in the following
year, Walsh brought out a new edition of the first two parts of the Ayrs together with a second treble parts
(presumably those mentioned in the advertisement for the original publication) to complement those
published earlier for volumes 3 and 4. According to North, Matteis may have died about 1700.

Matteis was clearly an extraordinary violinist and a key figure in the development of violin playing in
England. North informs us that he held his violin very low on his chest (‘against his short ribs’ or ‘almost
against his girdle’), used a long bow and ‘touched his devision with the very point’. He added ‘I have found
very few that will beleeve it possible he could performe as he did in that posture’. He introduced the
thumb-on-stick bow grip to England. The extent of his influence can be inferred from John Lenton’s
Gentleman’s Diversion (1693), in which players are warned off placing the violin ‘as low as the Girdle, which
is a mongrel sort of way used by some in imitation of the Italians’.

North praised Matteis both for his eloquent cantabile (his ‘arcata’) and for the range of staccato bowings in
his vocabulary. The four volumes of solo violin music reveal a great deal about the aspects of his
performance that so impressed the English. Matteis claimed to have ‘tried to accommodate the musical

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Matteis, Nicola (i)

tastes of the inhabitants of this country, though not to so great an extent as to separate myself too much
from the Italian school’. As Tilmouth has demonstrated (in what remains the most substantial study of
Matteis), there is stylistically a new wind blowing through his works. The division mentality is displaced by
the sweep and sponaneity of the Italian school and the variety of bowings far exceeds anything else in
English sources. His harmonic language is spiced with dissonance and the music ranges from buoyant
dance-based compositions to a more learned style. The ‘Passagio rotto’ and ‘Fantasia’ in A minor (both
‘senza basso’) from book two (a prelude and fugue) demonstrate both an advanced violin technique and a
truly impressive command of well-structured contrapuntal writing. The added second violin parts for the
Ayres are not, on the whole, of very great interest. But a few genuine ensemble pieces survive in manuscript
(GB-Ob), including a splendid D minor ground for three violins which, with its robust rhythms and
dissonances, seem like the work of an Italian who has assimilated something of English taste.

Works

Instrumental

Arie diverse … preludy, alemande, sarabande, correnti, gighe, fantasie, minuite ed altre toccate a due corde, libro primo,
libro secondo, vn, b (London, 1676)

as Ayrs … Preludes, Allmands, Sarabands, Courantes, Gigues, Divisions and Double Compositions, 1st Part, and Other Ayrs,
2nd Part (London, 2/c1679)

MS 2nd tr pt, GB-Lbl; as Senr Nicola’s 1st and 2nd Book’s of Aire’s in 3 Parts … the 2nd Treble Part Never Being Printed
Before (London, 2/1703)

Ayres … Preludes, Fuges, Allmands, Sarabands, Courants, Gigues, Fancies, Divisions, and Likewise Other Passages,
Introductions and Fuges for Single and Double Stops, with Divisions Somewhat More Artificial, 3rd and 4th Parts, vn, b
(London, 1685)

as Other Ayrs and Pieces, 4th Part, and The 2nd Treble of the 3rd and 4th Parts (London, 2/1687) [incl. trio, 3 tpt, ed. P.
Holman (London, 1982)]

Songs arr. fl, bc (1699), see VOCAL

Solo, A, vn secundo, bc (London, 1704)

Other inst music, F-Pn, GB-En, Lbl, Ob

Vocal

When e’er I gaze on Sylvia’s face (P. Motteux), 1v, bc (London, 1692)

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Matteis, Nicola (i)

Assist, assist! You mighty sons of art (ode), St Cecilia’s Day, London and Oxford, 1696, lost

A Collection of New Songs, bk 1, 1v, bc (1696)

with airs, vn, bc

A Collection of New Songs, bk 2, 1v, hpd/theorbo/b viol (London, 1699)

most also arr. fl, bc

4 5
Songs in 1699 , 1699 , and numerous 18th-century anthologies

Theoretical works

Le false consonanse della musica per poter apprendere a toccar da se medesimo la chitarra sopra la parte (London, c1680;
Eng. trans., 1682/R)

Bibliography
BurneyH

R. North: The Musicall Grammarian (MSS, c1726–8); ed. M. Chan and J.C. Kassler (Cambridge, 1990); selections ed. J.
Wilson in Roger North on Music (London, 1959)

M. Tilmouth: ‘The Royal Academies of 1695’, ML, 38 (1957), 327–34

G.A. Proctor: The Works of Nicola Matteis, Sr. (diss., U. of Rochester, 1960) [incl. thematic catalogue of extant works]

M. Tilmouth: ‘Nicola Matteis’, MQ, 46 (1960), 22–40

M. Tilmouth: ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Published in London and the Provinces (1660–1719)’,
RMARC, 1 (1961/R)

S. Garnsey: ‘The Use of Hand-Plucked Instruments in the Continuo Body: Nicola Matteis’, ML, 47 (1966), 135–40

J. Congleton: ‘“The False Consonances of Musick”: Nicola Matteis' Instructions for the Playing of a True Bass upon the
Guitarre’, EMc, 9 (1981), 463–9

M. Mabbett: ‘Italian Musicians in Restoration England’, ML, 67 (1986), 237–47

S. Plank: ‘A Song in Imitation of Bach's Manner’, Bach: Quarterly Journal of the Riemanschneider Bach Institute, 17
(1986), 16–23

P. Downey: ‘What Samuel Pepys Heard on 3rd February 1681: English Trumpet Style under the Later Stuart Monarchs’,
EMc, 18 (1990), 417–28
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Matteis, Nicola (i)

P. Walls: ‘The Influence of the Italian Violin School in 17th-Century England’, EMc, 18 (1990), 575–87

P. Holman: ‘English Trumpets: a Response’, EMc, 19 (1991), 443–4

A. Pinnock and B. Wood: ‘A Counterblast on English Trumpets’, EMc, 19 (1991), 436–43

See also

Ornaments, §5(i): Italy, 1650–1750: Sources

More on this topic

Matteis, Nicola (fl. c. 1670–c. 1698), violinist and composer <http://oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/
9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-67967> in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://
oxforddnb.com>

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