Johann Philipp Schönfeld

Johann Philipp Schönfeld (born Strasbourg, 1742 – died Strasbourg, 5 January 1790) was a composer and conductor born in Alsace, and a figure in the musical life of Strasbourg in the second half of the eighteenth century. His profile is of particular interest because he combined an initial training in theology with a musical career that developed largely in court and municipal settings.

He studied at the Protestant Gymnasium in his native city and received his first music lessons from J. F. Brück. By around 1770 he was working as steward and tutor to the Münchhausen family in Brunswick. During these years he presented himself as an amateur and published three collections of songs. In August 1777 he took up the post of deputy Kapellmeister at the New Church in Strasbourg. In 1779 the town council granted him leave with a small allowance to travel to Italy, and on his return he became Kapellmeister at the same church and, from 1781, director of the municipal concerts, working in collaboration with Ignaz Pleyel. His 1787 plans to reorganise these concerts were left in abeyance by the French Revolution.

The critic Schubart regarded him above all as a composer of vocal music, praising his choice of poems but faulting his writing as overly harsh and his expression as affected. According to Fétis, he left several operas in manuscript, although only one stage work is known: the musical comedy Das Milchmädchen und die zween Jäger. His surviving output consists chiefly of songs and a few sacred cantatas, such as Gelobet seyst du, Herr, while other works have been lost.