The rhetorical term “peroration” here gives away the origins of Mattheson’s conception of formal processes. His attempts to relate ideas from the realm of rhetoric directly to music have been much maligned, in particular his infamous analysis of an aria by Benedetto Marcello.88 But if we look beyond Mattheson’s unwieldy imposition of the parts of an oration onto his model aria, his approach offers an intriguing perspective on early eighteenth-century strategies of temporal disposition.