1681–1767 · Baroque
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) was a German Baroque composer, Kapellmeister and music critic; the most productive decades of his career came during his years in Hamburg. He wrote vocal, instrumental and theatrical music, published his own scores and ran public concerts. Players know him today through chamber sonatas for two instruments at different levels of difficulty.
Telemann was born in Magdeburg, into a family with long-standing ties to university education. His father Heinrich served as a deacon at the Church of the Holy Spirit and died in 1685, when his son was four. Of six children in the family, only Georg Philipp and his elder brother Heinrich Matthias survived to adulthood; Heinrich Matthias later became a Lutheran pastor in Wormstedt near Apolda and died in 1746.
He attended the old town's gymnasium and the cathedral school, where subjects included Latin, rhetoric and German literature, and he was already writing verse in several languages. He took part in Magdeburg's musical life and learned the violin, flute and harpsichord. From the age of ten he made his first attempts at composing under the cantor Benedikt Christiani; a brief spell of keyboard lessons with a local organist, based on tablature rather than staff notation, left him unsatisfied. After that he taught himself, copying out scores by Christiani and other composers, which led him to write his own arias, motets and instrumental pieces.
At twelve he wrote his first opera, Sigismundus, to a libretto by Christian Heinrich Postel. His mother, a widow since 1685, together with relatives took away his instruments and forbade him from music. For a while he went on composing secretly at night and playing borrowed instruments in out-of-the-way places, until at the end of 1693 or the beginning of 1694 she sent him to a school near Zellerfeld, away from music.
In Zellerfeld Telemann's new tutor was Caspar Calvör, a theologian, historian, mathematician and writer who was himself keenly interested in music; he persuaded his pupil not to abandon composing and spent four years teaching him music theory. Telemann wrote choral pieces almost every week, along with arias and instrumental works.
In 1697 he entered the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim, where under its rector, Johann Christoph Losius, he taught himself most of his further musical education: clavichord, organ, violin, viola da gamba, baroque flute, oboe, double bass and trombone. Losius had him write songs for school plays, and Father Theodor Crispen allowed him to perform German cantatas at the Catholic church of the monastery of St Godhart. Visits to Hanover and Brunswick, with their exemplary opera houses and court chapels, introduced him to the newest French and Italian theatrical style and to Italian vocal music by Corelli, Caldara and Steffani. He still graduated third among a hundred and fifty pupils.
Having finished school in 1701, Telemann briefly returned to Magdeburg and then, at his mother's insistence, entered Leipzig University — a city that mattered for its musical life. On the way there, in Halle, he met the sixteen-year-old Georg Friedrich Handel, and the two remained friends for life.
In Leipzig one of his psalms was performed at St Thomas's church and pleased the mayor, Franz Conrad Romanus, who invited him to prepare two cantatas a month for the church and later supported him further; after this Telemann decided to devote himself entirely to music. A year after enrolling he gathered forty student musicians into an amateur orchestra, the Collegium musicum. From 1702 he directed productions at the city's opera house and remained its chief composer until it closed in 1720, playing continuo and occasionally singing. He then also became organist of St Thomas's, besting the elderly Johann Kuhnau; despite their differing tastes, Telemann acknowledged Kuhnau's influence on his command of counterpoint, but tension between them possibly led him to leave the post early. He travelled twice from Leipzig to Berlin, and in 1704 became music director and organist of the university church.
In 1704, according to his own autobiography, Count Erdmann von Promnitz invited Telemann to become Kapellmeister at his court in Sorau (now Żary in Poland); he took up the post in June 1705. The count had recently returned from Italy and France as an admirer of French instrumental music and saw in Telemann a successor to Lully and Campra, and under this influence Telemann began composing in the French style. On journeys to Kraków and Pszczyna he heard Polish and Moravian folk music, which charmed him with what he called its rough beauty. In Sorau he grew close to the poet Erdmann Neumeister, who became godfather to Telemann's first daughter in 1711 and whom Telemann himself later recommended for the post of chief pastor at St James's church in Hamburg. In early 1706 the invasion of Charles XII's Swedish troops forced Telemann to flee Sorau for Frankfurt an der Oder, and he could not return until June.
On 24 December 1708 Telemann became Kapellmeister of the newly formed court of Duke Johann Wilhelm of Saxe-Eisenach, and its secretary the following August. During his Eisenach years he wrote several complete annual cycles of church cantatas, numerous masses, psalms and other sacred works, serenades to his own texts, dozens of German and Italian cantatas, and much instrumental music, including orchestral concertos; by his own account his trio sonatas were the most successful of all. In Eisenach he apparently met Johann Sebastian Bach, whose cousin was court organist there, and in 1714 he became godfather to Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1709 he took leave to return to Sorau and marry Amalie Louise Juliane Eberlin, daughter of the composer Daniel Eberlin; fifteen months later, in January 1711, she died after giving birth to a daughter.
By the end of 1711 Telemann had, it seems, grown weary of court life, complaining of the workload, the courtiers' indifference to music and how easily one could fall out of favour. Even a lucrative offer from the Dresden court did not stop him seeking greater artistic freedom, and he secured the posts of city director of music and Kapellmeister at the Barfüßerkirche in Frankfurt am Main, arriving there in 1712. His former patron, the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, granted him the title of an absentee Kapellmeister. His duties included providing music for two churches, composing for civic occasions, giving private lessons to schoolchildren of his choosing and overseeing singing at the parish school. In 1713 he revived the Collegium musicum under the Frauenstein society, beginning weekly and later fortnightly concerts that started Frankfurt's regular concert life.
On 28 August 1714 Telemann married the sixteen-year-old Maria Catharina Textor, whose father was a clerk of the Frankfurt council; the marriage produced eight sons and a daughter, none of whom became musicians, and it also brought him Frankfurt citizenship. From 1715 he began publishing his own compositions, issuing four collections of instrumental music over the next three years. In 1716 and 1717 he was offered posts as Kapellmeister in Gotha and at the Ernestine Saxon courts, but stayed in Frankfurt, using the offers to win a higher salary. In 1719, at the Dresden wedding of the Saxon crown prince, he heard operas by Lotti, Heinichen and Schmidt and the violinist Francesco Maria Veracini, and dedicated a violin concerto to his friend, the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel.
On 10 July 1721 the free city of Hamburg invited Telemann to become cantor of the Johanneum and music director of its five principal churches; Hamburg audiences already knew his music, having heard his Brockes Passion and the opera Der geduldige Socrates. He took up the post on 17 September 1721.
In Hamburg began the most productive phase of his career: he had to provide two cantatas every Sunday and a new Passion for Lent, music for civic ceremonies and an annual Kapitänsmusik for the city militia, and as cantor he taught pupils four days a week. He again took charge of the Collegium musicum, launching a weekly public concert series in November 1721 that grew so popular it moved to larger premises in 1724. From 1722 he also ran the Gänsemarkt opera, but falling audiences forced him to close it in 1738.
The public concerts and operas drew disapproval from some church officials, though the city council, itself among the regular concertgoers, did not side with them. Telemann fought for years for the right to print and sell the texts of his annual Passions, finally securing it in 1757. In 1722, after the death of the Leipzig cantor Johann Kuhnau, Leipzig's council unanimously chose Telemann as his successor, but he used the offer to obtain a higher salary in Hamburg and turned the Leipzig post down.
Alongside his Hamburg post Telemann held two further appointments: from 1723 to 1726 he was absentee Kapellmeister to the Bayreuth court, and from 1725 to 1730 correspondent to the Eisenach court, reporting musical news from northern Europe. His second marriage was meanwhile failing: his wife ran up large gambling debts that his Hamburg friends helped him settle, and in 1736 she left their home.
From 1725 Telemann pursued an ambitious programme of publishing his own music, issuing forty-three editions over the next fifteen years, almost all under his own name; he engraved the plates himself and handled advertising and subscriptions, and by 1728 kept agents in a whole string of cities — Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Leipzig, Jena and Nürnberg. In the autumn of 1737 he accepted a long-standing invitation from Parisian musicians and stayed in the city until the end of May 1738, partly to counter unauthorised reprints of his works. In Paris he obtained his own twenty-year royal publishing privilege, there printed a collection of canonic duets and several new string quartets, and won the admiration of Michel Blavet, Jean-Pierre Guignon and Antoine Forqueray. Apart from this journey, he appears to have spent his whole life in German-speaking lands.
In 1739 Telemann became the sixth member of the learned society founded by Lorenz Mizler, though he later resigned from it. In 1740 he put up for sale the engraved plates of forty-four of his publications, meaning to devote his remaining years to theoretical writing; his output fell sharply between 1740 and 1755, even though he kept up his Hamburg duties. In these years he took up gardening and corresponded with younger Berlin composers, and after his eldest son Andreas died in 1755 he took charge of raising his grandson Georg Michael. That same year, at seventy-four, he turned with renewed energy to composing sacred oratorios.
Telemann's health was generally strong, though in May 1730 he suffered a severe attack and later took the waters at Pyrmont several times. By the age of eighty he was complaining of weak legs and failing eyesight, and scribes increasingly took over from his unsteady hand in his scores; even so, in 1765 the elderly composer engaged a visitor, W. J. Hertel, in an animated discussion of music theory. Telemann died in his Hamburg flat on the evening of 25 June 1767; he was buried on 29 June in the cemetery of the monastery of St John, which no longer survives, and a memorial plaque now marks his memory before the Hamburg town hall.
Telemann wrote music in almost every genre of his time: operas, church cantatas and Passions, orchestral suites and concertos, and an enormous amount of chamber music for the most varied instruments and combinations. By his own account, his trio sonatas were the most successful of all with the public. His musical language drew on French instrumental music, Italian vocal writing and folk music he heard in Poland and Moravia. Among Telemann's instrumental works are also sonatas without bass — pieces for two melodic instruments with no keyboard accompaniment. He wrote much of his music for playing at home, and generally avoided technical extremes so that it could be played as widely as possible. As a young man he taught himself the violin, flute, oboe and viola da gamba among other instruments, and that range shows in his music — he wrote just as fluently for strings as for wind instruments.
The scores on this site belong to exactly this layer of Telemann's legacy: they are sonatas for two instruments without orchestra and without a separate bass part — a genre represented among his works by the collection Sonates sans basse. Such pieces give players the rare chance to perform Telemann's music as a duo, without accompaniment, hearing both melodic lines at once. The Première sonate en duo and Seconde sonate en duo are written for two instruments, and the Sonatas for two recorders for a pair of recorders.
The three pieces on the site suit different levels: the Première sonate en duo and Seconde sonate en duo suit players who have finished the beginner stage, while the Sonatas for two recorders are for intermediate players. It makes sense to start with the first two pieces before moving to the more demanding recorder sonata. Playing a duet teaches you to listen to your partner, hold your own tempo independently of the other part, and come in exactly on time — skills that are hard to develop playing alone. The simple texture of the Sonate en duo makes it a good first experience of playing together, whether with a teacher or with another student.