In Magdeburg, Georg Philipp Telemann came into the world as the child of a Lutheran deacon whose death in 1685 left his widow to bring up their three offspring without assistance. Although the boy displayed extraordinary musical gifts from an early age, strict Puritan Lutherans temporarily swayed his mother against permitting such a career, warning her that he would amount to nothing more than “a clown, a tightrope walker or a marmot-trainer.” Defying her initial prohibition, Telemann practiced in secret until she finally consented, sending him for instruction with the esteemed Kantor Benedict Christiani at the Old City School. Apart from a few rudimentary sessions in tablature notation, he remained entirely self-taught yet mastered the flute, violin, viola da gamba, oboe, trombone, double bass, and an array of keyboard instruments.
From childhood onward Telemann composed prolifically, completing the opera Sigismundus by the time he turned twelve. Relocated to Zellerfeld in 1694, he later resolved at twenty to pursue legal studies in Leipzig; however, an encounter in Halle with the sixteen-year-old Georg Friedrich Handel evidently redirected him toward music once more. He began supplying cantatas to a Leipzig church and swiftly attained local renown. Appointed director of the Leipzig Opera in 1702, he created four operas expressly for that ensemble during the ensuing three years. The opening phase of his professional life was characterized by pronounced contrasts both in circumstance and in personal fortune. After assuming the post of Kapellmeister in Sorau (now within Poland) in 1705, he remained only three years before transferring to the court at Eisenach, where he served from 1708 to 1712. In 1712 he took up duties in Frankfurt as Kapellmeister at the Church of the Barefoot Friars and as municipal music director. His marriage to Amalie Eberlin in 1709 ended tragically when she died in childbirth within the first year. He wed Maria Katharina Textor in 1714; her compulsive gambling became so ruinous that Hamburg residents organized a public subscription to rescue the couple from insolvency, and years later she deserted him for a Swedish military officer.
Telemann’s opera Der geduldige Socrates received its premiere in Hamburg in 1721. That same year the city’s authorities named him Kantor of the Johanneum and musical director of its principal churches, thereby obliging him to furnish two cantatas each Sunday, a fresh Passion setting every year, and music for numerous liturgical and civic occasions. He discharged these responsibilities with ease and, in 1722, additionally accepted leadership of the Hamburg Opera, retaining the post until the theater closed in 1738.
Among the earliest composers to manage the publication of his own works, Telemann personally prepared and marketed at least forty early editions. Several of these prints enjoyed considerable success and disseminated his reputation across Europe; Der Getreue Musik Meister (1728), Musique de Table (or Tafelmusik, 1733), and the 6 Concerts et 6 Suites (1734) circulated widely during his lifetime. From the 1740s until roughly 1755 he largely curtailed new composition in favor of theoretical inquiry. During the mid-1750s he produced numerous oratorios, among them Donnerode (1756), Das befreite Israel (1759), and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfährt Jesu (1760). His lengthy life concluded in 1767 at the age of eighty-six.
In his own era Telemann was regarded as Germany’s foremost composer, and his stature endured for a period thereafter, yet it ultimately yielded before the rising preeminence of his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. His vast catalogue, possibly the largest created by any classical composer, encompasses portions of at least thirty-one cantata cycles together with operas, concertos, oratorios, songs, civic and sacred pieces, passions, orchestral suites, and extensive chamber music. Although many scores have vanished, the majority survive, their sheer quantity posing challenges for both scholars and performers. Renewed interest did not emerge until the 1920s, after which it expanded rapidly; in the twenty-first century more of Telemann’s music is performed, recognized, and examined than at any previous moment.
