It was not until the beginning of the century next ensuing, that German opera began to take root and grow. The beginning was made in the free city of Hamburg, which was at that time the richest and most independent city of Germany, and, being remote from the centers of political disturbance, it suffered less from the thirty years' war than most other parts of the country. The prime mover here was Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739), born at Weissenfels, near Leipsic, and educated at the Thomas School. His attention had been directed to dramatic music early, and at the age of nineteen he was commissioned to write a pastoral, "_Ismene_," for the court of Brunswick. The success of this gained him another libretto, "_Basilius_," also composed with success. He removed to Hamburg in 1694, and for forty years remained a favorite with the public, composing for that theater no less than 116 operas, of which the first, "Irene," was produced in 1697. In 1700 he opened a series of popular concerts, the prototypes of the star combinations of the present day. In these entertainments the greatest virtuosi were heard, the most popular and best singers, and the newest and best music. His direction of the opera did not begin until 1703; here also he proved himself a master. The place of this composer in the history of art is mainly an adventitious one, depending upon the chronological circumstance of his preceding others in the same field, rather than upon the more important reason of his having set a style, or established an ideal, for later masters. His operas subsided into farce, the serious element being almost wholly lacking, and, according to Riemann, the last of them shows no improvement over the first. Their only merit is that they are not imitations of the Italian nor upon mythological subjects, but from common life. In his later life he devoted himself to the composition of church music, in which department he accomplished notable, if somewhat conventional, success. The Hamburg theater furnished a field for another somewhat famous figure in musical history, that of Johann Mattheson, a singularly versatile and gifted man, a native of that city (1681-1764). After a liberal education, in which his musical taste and talent became distinguished at an early age, he appeared on the stage as singer, and in one of his own operas, after singing his role upon the stage, came back into the orchestra in order to conduct from the harpsichord the performance, until his role required him again upon the stage. Indeed, it was this eccentricity which occasioned a quarrel between him and Haendel, who resented the implication that he himself was incapable of carrying on the performance. Mattheson composed a large number of works, including many church cantatas of the style made more celebrated in the works of Sebastian Bach, later, the intention of these works having been to render the church services more interesting by affording the