 This taxonomy of emotions and the mechanistic description of their functioning will prove important to the so-called Affektenlehre, or doctrine of the affections, the eighteenth century view that a piece of music should arouse a specific emotion in the listener. Affektenlehre theorists believed that this goal could be achieved through the use of specific musical devices, each associated with a given emotion. The German composer Johann Mattheson may be considered the most prominent representative of this tradition. He explicitly endorses Descartes’ theory of emotions in his treatise Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Mattheson 1739: I, iii, §51).