Christoph Birkmann (10 January 1703 – 11 March 1771) was a German theologian and minister. A pupil of

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...

, he has been identified as the author of the texts of several

Bach cantata The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas ( German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest ca ...

Career

Born in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

, Birkmann received some musical training. He spent a year at the

University of Altdorf The University of Altdorf () was a university in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, a small town outside the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. It was founded in 1578 and received university privileges in 1622 and was closed in 1809 by Maximilian I Joseph of Ba ...

before studying theology and mathematics at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

from 1724 to 1727. Birkmann was ordained in 1732 and became minister of St Egidien's Church in Nuremberg. He died there.

Birkmann and Bach

In 1728 Birkmann published a yearbook of cantata texts in Nuremberg. Birkmann organised the material for the liturgical year of 1728/29, but it was drawn from texts used in the church music at Leipzig during his stay there. Some are known to have been set by Bach, who was working in Leipzig from 1723. The fact that other librettists, such as

Picander Christian Friedrich Henrici (January 14, 1700 – May 10, 1764), writing under the pen name Picander, was a German poet and librettist for many of the cantatas which Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Leipzig. Henrici was born in Stolpen. He stu ...

, are featured obscured Birkmann's creative contribution to the collection.A Cantata-Text Cycle of 1728 from Nuremberg: a Preliminary Report on a Discovery relating to J. S. Bach’s so-called 'Third Annual Cantata Cycle'
by Christine Blanken, published in Understanding Bach, 10, 9–30 © Bach Network UK 2015 However, according to research by Christine Blanken, published in the ''

Bach-Jahrbuch The ''Bach-Jahrbuch'' ("Bach yearbook" or according to the publication's website "Bach Annals") is an annual publication related to the composer Bach. It is published in German by the Neue Bachgesellschaft in Leipzig. It is the most respected pub ...

'' in 2015, Birkmann was in all probability one of Bach's librettists, his texts including the well-known solo cantata ''Ich habe genug'', BWV 82 (1727). The

International Music Score Library Project The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a subscription-based digital library of public-domain music scores. The project, which uses MediaWiki softwar ...

has recognised Birkmann as the librettist for eight Bach cantatas in total. There is also evidence that Birkmann took part either as a singer or instrumentalist in performances directed by Bach.

Literature

References

External links

*
Texts by Christoph Birkmann
gso.gbv.de * https://imslp.org/wiki/Birkmann,_Christoph/Librettist {{DEFAULTSORT:Birkmann, Christoph 18th-century German writers 18th-century German male writers 18th-century German Protestant theologians 1703 births 1771 deaths Clergy from Nuremberg German cantata librettists Leipzig University alumni