Johann Philipp Kirnberger (also ''Kernberg''; 24 April 1721,

Saalfeld Saalfeld () is a town in Germany, capital of the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia. It is best known internationally as the ancestral seat of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha branch of the Saxon House of Wettin. Geography The town is situated ...

– 27 July 1783, Berlin) was a musician, composer (primarily of

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

s) and

music theorist Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the " rudiments", that ...

. He studied the organ with

Johann Peter Kellner Johann Peter Kellner (variants: Keller, Kelner; 28 September 1705 – 19 April 1772) was a German pipe organ, organist and composer. He was the father of Johann Christoph Kellner. Biography He was born in Gräfenroda, Thuringia, and was intended ...

and Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, and starting in 1738 he studied with the violinist Meil in

Sondershausen Sondershausen () is a town in Thuringia, central Germany, capital of the Kyffhäuserkreis district, situated about 50 km (30 mi) north of Erfurt. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Schernberg was merged with Sondershausen. Until 1918 i ...

, but most significant is the time he spent from 1739 until 1741 (with breaks) studying performance and composition with

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety ...

."Johann Philipp Kirnberger (Composer, Music Theorist, Violin, Copyist, Bach's Pupil)"
Bach Cantatas website Between 1741 and 1751 Kirnberger lived and worked in Poland for powerful magnates including Lubomirski, Poninski, and Rzewuski before ending up at the Benedictine Cloister in

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

(then part of Poland). He spent much time collecting Polish national dances and compiled them in his treatise . Kirnberger played a significant role in the intellectual and cultural exchange between Germany and Poland in the mid-18th century. Kirnberger became a violinist at the court of

Frederick the Great Frederick II (; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled ''King in Prussia'', declaring himself ''King of Prussia'' after annexing Royal Prussia ...

in 1751. He was the music director to the Prussian Princess Anna Amalia from 1758 until his death. Kirnberger greatly admired

, deeming him "the greatest of all composers". Kirnberger sought to secure the publication of all of Bach's

chorale A chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale: * Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of " Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one o ...

settings, which finally appeared after Kirnberger's death; see Kirnberger chorale preludes (BWV 690–713). Many of Bach's manuscripts have been preserved in Kirnberger's library (the "Kirnberger collection"). Kirnberger is known today primarily for his theoretical work ''Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik'' (''The Art of Strict Composition in Music'', 1774, 1779). The well-tempered tuning systems known as "Kirnberger II" and "Kirnberger III" are associated with his name (see Kirnberger temperament), as is a rational version of

equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or Musical tuning#Tuning systems, tuning system that approximates Just intonation, just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into steps such that the ratio of the frequency, frequencie ...

(see

schisma In music, the schisma (also spelled ''skhisma'') is the interval between the syntonic comma (81:80) and the Pythagorean comma which is slightly larger. It equals or ≈ 1.00113, which corresponds to 1.9537 cents (). It may also ...

). One of his most familiar compositions is ''Fuga in C-dur für Orgel'' ("Fanfare" Fugue), which was formerly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach and then to his son

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788), also formerly spelled Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German composer and musician of the Baroque and Classical period. He was the fifth ch ...

References

External links

* More information, including full text, of Kirnberger'
''Grundsätze des Generalbasses'' (178?)
in the University of North Texas Music Library Virtual Rare Book Room *

University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance The School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD) is the undergraduate and graduate school for the performing arts of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. The school was founded in 1880 as the Ann Arbor School of Music ...

"18th Century Quotations Relating to J.S. Bach's Temperament"
by Willem Kroesbergen and Andrew J. Cruickshank, Cape Town, October 2015 * , Mark Rich (organ), Wicks organ, Bethel Lutheran Church, Rochester, Minnesota {{DEFAULTSORT:Kirnberger, Johann Philipp 1721 births 1783 deaths People from Saalfeld German male classical composers German Classical-period composers German music theorists Pupils of Johann Sebastian Bach 18th-century German classical composers 18th-century German male musicians