Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722)
- Feria I. Nativitatis Christi. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern
à 2 Corni grandi, 2 Violini, 2 Viole, 2 Canti, A. T. B. e Cont.
Performers: Johannes Hoefflin (1932-2017, tenor); Boys’ Choir of the
Gymnasium Eppendorf;
Instrumental-Ensemble; Gottfried Wolters
(1910-1989, conductor)
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German composer, keyboard player and music theorist. His intelligence
and musical talent were evident early on, so he was sent to study in
Dresden in 1670. By 1671, he was a chorister at the Kreuzkirche, where
he attracted the attention of the Kapellmeister Vincenzo Albrici.
Another member of the Kreuzkirche staff, Erhard Titius, who had become
cantor at Zittau, invited Kuhnau to continue his education at the
prestigious Johanneum school there. After Titius died in 1682, Kuhnau
filled in as cantor. He then moved to Leipzig, matriculated in law at
the university, and after an unsuccessful application in 1682, won the
post of organist at Thomaskirche in 1684. He published his law thesis in
1688 and began to practice. In 1689, he married and eventually had
eight children. Before the turn of the century, he published all his
keyboard music, built up his renown as an organist, and engaged in
literary and linguistic scholarship. When the Thomaskantor Johann
Schelle died on 10 March 1701, the authorities quickly elected Kuhnau as
his successor, and he took up his new and prestigious post in April
1701. His career as cantor was not without difficulties. The growing
Leipzig opera drew promising young singers away from enrolling at
Thomasschule. Then, in 1701, Georg Philipp Telemann arrived in Leipzig
to study law and immediately founded his Collegium Musicum, which also
attracted some of Kuhnau’s students, and Telemann even inveigled the
mayor, going over Kuhnau’s head, to allow himself to compose for
Thomaskirche. Frequent illness troubled Kuhnau during this period, and
in 1703, he learned that the city council had inquired of Telemann
whether he might wish to succeed Kuhnau should he die. In the end, such
intrigues counted as mere annoyances, and Kuhnau’s career at
Thomaskirche was generally characterized by the esteem of Germany’s best
musicians. Johann Kuhnau was a major figure in German music at the turn
of the 18th century, and the immediate predecessor of Johann Sebastian
Bach as cantor of Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Although Kuhnau composed at
least 62 church cantatas, 14 Latin motets, a Magnificat, a passion
according to St. Mark, and 2 masses, this considerable body of sacred
music remained unpublished, and his single opera and a few other early
stage pieces are lost, so he influenced his contemporaries principally
through his published keyboard music: 14 suites, 2 preludes, 2 fugues, a
toccata, and 14 sonatas, including the famous Biblical Sonatas for
harpsichord (1700, Leipzig). Unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, he exhibited
all the various talents and interests that the Leipzig city council
evidently desired in the Thomaskantor: Kuhnau was not only an esteemed
composer and organist but also had built a distinguished law career,
translated scholarly works from French and Italian into German, learned
mathematics, Greek, and Hebrew, and had written a satirical novel, 'Der
musicalische Quack-Salber'. These self-motivated studies allowed him to
carry out the multifarious teaching, administrative, and musical duties
of his post with distinction. Much information about Kuhnau’s life comes
from his autobiography published in Johann Mattheson’s collection,
'Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte' (1740).
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