Johann Kuhnau

Johann Kuhnau (Geising, 1660 – Leipzig, 1722) was a German composer, organist and music theorist, and the immediate predecessor of Bach as Thomaskantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig. His significance lies in helping us understand German music of the late Baroque, both through his keyboard works and his sacred cantatas, and through his example as a learned musician.

His family came from Bohemia, from where they had emigrated during the Counter-Reformation for reasons of Protestant faith. The original surname was Kuhn, and Johann adopted the form "Kuhnau" after settling in Leipzig; his brothers Andreas and Gottfried, who were also musicians, adopted it too, although the rest of the family kept Kuhn. Around 1670 he moved to Dresden to study, probably with the support of a musician relative at the court, and there he received organ lessons and became familiar with Italian and French, the languages of court circles. After an outbreak of plague he returned to Geising and, shortly afterwards, continued his training at the Johanneum in Zittau, where he eventually served as acting cantor and organist on the deaths of his teachers.

In 1682 he began studying law at the University of Leipzig, and in 1684 he was appointed organist of the Thomaskirche. In the following years he combined the post with legal practice, which he pursued successfully, and with an intensive publishing activity: he published his keyboard collections, which were his most popular music, and wrote the satirical novel Der musicalische Quack-Salber. In 1701 he succeeded Johann Schelle as Thomaskantor, the peak of his career. The post was demanding, as it included teaching at the school, directing music in several churches in the city and at the university, and overseeing the organs and the municipal musicians. His final years were marked by poor health and by the deterioration of the situation at the Thomasschule, whose singers were drifting towards the opera in Leipzig. The arrival of Telemann, who founded a rival collegium musicum and obtained permission to write music for the Thomaskirche, undermined his authority, though he could not prevent it.

His legacy rests above all on the Biblische Historien, six keyboard sonatas in which each sonata, of several movements, is preceded by a description of an episode from the Old Testament, with Italian subtitles guiding the emotional expression. His suites from the two parts of the Neue Clavier-Übung follow the scheme of prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue. His sonata in B flat, appended to the second part, is the first of its kind published in Germany, though not the first in absolute terms, as was once believed. His cantatas, of which only a part survives, anticipate Bach's in formal structure, and his novel is a valuable testimony to German Baroque musical and social life. He was also the teacher of Graupner and Heinichen, and Mattheson and Scheibe placed him among the great German composers of his time.