Johann Nikolaus Forkel
Encyclopedia
Johann Nikolaus Forkel was a German
Germany
Germany , 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...

 musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, musicologist and music theorist
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

.

Biography

He was born at Meeder
Meeder
Meeder is a municipality in the district of Coburg in Bavaria in Germany....

 in Coburg
Coburg
Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...

. He was the son of a cobbler, and received early musical training, especially in keyboard playing, from Johann Heinrich Schulthesius, who was the local Kantor. In other aspects of his music education he was self-taught, especially in regards to theory. As a teenager he served as a singer in Lüneburg
Lüneburg
Lüneburg is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner suburbs...

, and studied law for two years at the University of Göttingen; he remained associated with the University for more than fifty years, where he held varied positions, including instructor of music theory, organist, keyboard teacher, and eventually director of all music at the university. In 1787 he received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the institution.

Forkel is often regarded as the founder of Historical Musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

, for it is with him that the study of music history and theory became an academic discipline with rigorous standards of scholarship.

He was an enthusiastic admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann 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...

, whose music he did much to popularize. He also wrote the first biography of Bach (in 1802), one which is of particular value today, as he was still able to correspond directly with Bach's sons Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
right|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...

 and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, was a German composer and performer...

, and thereby obtained much valuable information that would otherwise have been lost.

His library, which was accumulated with care and discrimination at a time when rare books were cheap, forms a valuable portion of the Berlin State Library
Berlin State Library
The Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive...

 and also of the library of the Königliche Institut für Kirchenmusik.

He died at Göttingen.

Selected works



The last is his other most important work. He also wrote a Dictionary of Musical Literature, which is full of valuable material.

To his musical compositions, which are numerous, little interest is to be attached today. However it is worth noting that he wrote variations on the English national anthem "God Save the King" for the clavichord, and that Georg Joseph Vogler
Georg Joseph Vogler
Georg Joseph Vogler, also known as Abbé Vogler , was a German composer, organist, teacher and theorist.Vogler was born at Pleichach in Würzburg...

 wrote a sharp criticism on them, which appeared at Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in 1793 together with a set of variations as he conceived they ought to be written.

External links

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