»… to rescue the science of music«

August Friedrich Christoph Kollmann (1756–1829) and his works were undisputed among his contemporaries. Charles Burney himself described Kollmann’s Theory of Composition as a work of extraordinary quality, although Matthew Peter King thought it was a confusing ‘spiderweb system’. A decisive factor is the choice of the term ‘a science of music’: on the basis of an empirical method and of an expanded system based on that of Kirnberger, Kollmann sought to secure for his writings on music and for their author, who considered himself an expert mediator, nothing less than the highest position in the developing science of music.