Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer, among the most prolific in Western music, credited with several thousand works spanning opera, church cantatas, oratorios, orchestral suites, concertos and chamber music. Largely self-taught, he matriculated at the University of Leipzig to study law before turning fully to music, and there founded a Collegium Musicum. He held court and municipal posts at Sorau, Eisenach and Frankfurt am Main before settling in 1721 as music director of Hamburg's principal churches and the Johanneum, a position he held for the rest of his life. A friend of Bach and Handel, he also ran a music-publishing enterprise and wrote three autobiographies documenting his career.