Georg Philipp Telemann
Compositeur
Georg Philipp Telemann was the Leipzig city council’s preferred candidate for the post of cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, which became vacant in 1722. When he withdrew his application, they had to make do with a “lesser” candidate: Johann Sebastian Bach. Telemann made a career for himself as Hamburg’s municipal music director – and through his music all over Europe.
Georg Philipp Telemann, born in Magdeburg in 1681, was self-taught: “In all this, mere nature has been my teacher, without the slightest instruction.” Even as a child, he played several instruments “without realising that there were notes in the world”, later mastering the piano, organ, violin, recorder and flute, oboe, chalumeau (the forerunner of the clarinet), viola da gamba, double bass and trombone. He received the foundation for his comprehensive humanistic education as a pupil at the Gymnasium in Hildesheim. He then went to Leipzig to study law at the request of his mother. He had a setting of a psalm in his luggage, which his room-mate discovered and sent to the mayor of Leipzig. The mayor immediately commissioned him to write a cantata every fortnight for the church service in the Thomaskirche. Telemann soon also took over the management of the Leipzig opera house, where he worked as a composer, conductor, director and even as a singer. Here he founded the “Collegium musicum”, which Johann Sebastian Bach continued to lead years later, and also became cantor at the Neue Kirche – only at this point did he give up his law studies. In 1705, Telemann became court kapellmeister to Count Erdmann von Promnitz in Sorau, which is now in Poland (Żary). The musician’s next position was at the court in Eisenach in 1707, where he made the acquaintance of Bach and became godfather to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Telemann was then appointed municipal church music director of the city of Frankfurt in 1712 before moving to Hamburg nine years later, where he remained municipal music director and cantor of the five main churches until the end of his long life. This period was only interrupted in 1737, when the composer took a leave of absence at the age of 56 to follow a call to Paris, where he was also hailed as the greatest musician of his time. Telemann left behind an enormous oeuvre of over 1000 sacred and countless secular cantatas, around 1500 instrumental works, over 45 passions and around 40 operas. He was probably the most prolific composer of all time.
