Georg Friedrich Lingke

Georg Friedrich Lingke (c. 1697–1777) was a German nobleman, amateur musician and theorist whose importance rests above all on the treatises he wrote on questions of harmonic practice. He lived and died in the Weissenfels area, in what is now the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where he owned the estate of Nöbeditz. He served as mining councillor for the Kingdom of Poland-Saxony.

According to the musician J. A. Hiller, who wrote the preface to his Kurze Musiklehre, Lingke belonged to the group of amateurs who reflected on musical truths and studied theory without distinguishing himself especially as a performer. He is credited with playing the lute and harpsichord, and he maintained contact with the virtuoso trumpeter J. E. Altenburg, whom he consulted on questions of musical practice. In 1742 he was elected the eighth member of Mizler's Societät der Musikalischen Wissenschaften, a society of theorists and composers that included J. S. Bach, Handel and Telemann. He was one of the few non-professionals admitted to this select circle.

Much of his work deals with elementary notions of music theory, such as the major and minor scales, their origin and their relationships within a tonal hierarchy. Among his writings, the Uibungs-Wahrheiten (c. 1750) are considered the most informative. Besides basic theory and a brief commentary on basso continuo, he set out ideas of interest to Baroque aesthetics, namely a theory of the affections based on intervals and scales. Elsewhere he debated whether melody or harmony takes precedence in composition, a question popularised by Rameau, an advocate of harmony, and Mattheson, an advocate of melody. Lingke argued that neither precedes the other, but that both arise simultaneously when composing. This position, simple, rational and practical, does not seem to have been raised among his contemporaries.