Johann Philipp Kirnberger (also ''Kernberg''; 24 April 1721, Saalfeld – 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. He studied the organ with Johann Peter Kellner and Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, and starting in 1738 he studied with the violinist Meil in Sondershausen, 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 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). 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.

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
"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