Georg Philipp Telemann

Self-taught on most of the instruments he played, Georg Philipp Telemann worked through posts at Leipzig, Sorau, Eisenach and Frankfurt before taking Hamburg's senior musical offices in 1721 — the music of five principal churches, and the city's opera as well. German counterpoint, Italian rhythmic drive, French dance and the Polish and Moravian folk playing he heard as a young man in Silesia all enter his music, sometimes within a single movement. His works include Tafelmusik and the Paris Quartets, and one of the earliest concertos written for the viola. He published his own editions and wrote for amateurs. He stood godfather to Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was given his names. He died in Hamburg in 1767, in his eighty-seventh year. He was born at Magdeburg in March 1681 and went up to Leipzig in 1701 to read law, turning to music there and founding a student Collegium Musicum; the Sorau post he took in 1705 under Count Erdmann II of Promnitz ended amid political unrest in 1706 according to the Telemann Foundation, while the Reclam chronology published by Henle dates his Sorau tenure to 1705–1708. The Hamburg duties included church cantatas and teaching at the Johanneum; his eyesight deteriorated in his later years.