Johann Gottlieb Preller, or
Breller, (9 March 1727 - 21 March 1786), was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
cantor,
composerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, and
land surveyorSee Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...
.
He was born in Oberroßla, (now part of
ApoldaApolda is a town in central Thuringia, Germany, the capital of the Weimarer Land district. It is situated in the center of the triangle Weimar - Jena - Naumburg near the river Ilm, c. 15 km east by north from Weimar, on the main line of railway from Berlin via Halle, to...
,
ThuringiaThe Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
). Nothing is known of his musical training. He may have been a pupil of
Johann Nicolaus MempelJohann Nicolaus Mempel was a German musician.He was born in Heyda . From 1740 to his death, he was cantor in Apolda...
in Apolda, which is inferred from the common authorship of the
Mempell-Preller-Handschrift, a manuscript collection of
organThe pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
and
keyboardA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
works by
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. He studied from 1750 at the University of Jena and in 1753 or 1754 was appointed cantor in
DortmundDortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, where he founded a
collegium musicumThe Collegium Musicum was one of several types of musical societies that arose in German and German-Swiss cities and towns during the Reformation and thrived into the mid-18th century...
.
