Johann Kirnberger
Encyclopedia
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
) was a musician, composer (primarily of fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
s), and music theorist
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
. A pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, he became a violinist at the court of Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
in 1751. He was the music director to the Prussian Princess Anna Amalia
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia was Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. She was one of ten surviving children of King Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.-Background:...
from 1758 until his death. Kirnberger greatly admired J.S. Bach, and sought to secure the publication of all of Bach's chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
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").
He 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
Well temperament
Well temperament is a type of tempered tuning described in 20th-century music theory. The term is modelled on the German word wohltemperiert which appears in the title of J.S. Bach's famous composition, The Well-Tempered Clavier...
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
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
(see schisma
Schisma
In music, the schisma is the ratio between a Pythagorean comma and a syntonic comma and equals 32805:32768, which is 1.9537 cents...
).
External links
More information, including full text, of Kirnberger's Grundsätze des Generalbasses (178?) in the University of North Texas Music Library Virtual Rare Book Room- Larry Schou: The Kirnberger Chorales, The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance