author
Johann Nikolaus Forkel
1749–1818
A pioneering music scholar and gifted keyboard player, he helped shape the way later generations studied music history. He is still widely remembered for writing one of the earliest full biographies of Johann Sebastian Bach.
1 Audiobook
Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work
by Johann Nikolaus Forkel
About the author
Born in Meeder in 1749, Johann Nikolaus Forkel became a German musician, theorist, and scholar who is often described as one of the founders of modern musicology. After beginning studies in law, he built his career in Göttingen, where he served as organist at the university church and later as the university's musical director.
Forkel wrote across several areas of music scholarship, including theory, bibliography, and history. His major works include the two-volume Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, an early large-scale history of Western music, and Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke from 1802, the first substantial biography of J. S. Bach.
He died in Göttingen in 1818, but his influence lasted well beyond his lifetime. For listeners and readers today, he remains an important link between the musical world of the eighteenth century and the serious historical study of music that followed.