Although we are now unlikely to share the opinion of his contemporaries, who put him above J. S. Bach and not below G. F. Handel, he was indeed one of the most prominent German musicians of his time. His creative and business activity is remarkable: a composer who is said to have created as many works as Bach and Handel combined, Telemann is also known as a poet, a talented organizer who created and directed orchestras in Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, helped to open Germany’s first public concert
more
Although we are now unlikely to share the opinion of his contemporaries, who put him above J. S. Bach and not below G. F. Handel, he was indeed one of the most prominent German musicians of his time. His creative and business activity is remarkable: a composer who is said to have created as many works as Bach and Handel combined, Telemann is also known as a poet, a talented organizer who created and directed orchestras in Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, helped to open Germany’s first public concert hall, and founded one of the first German music magazines. This is not a complete list of the activities in which he has succeeded. In this vitality and business acumen, Teleman is a man of the Age of Enlightenment, of Voltaire and Beaumarchet. From an early age, success in his work was accompanied by overcoming obstacles. The very study of music, the choice of her profession at first met with the resistance of his mother. Being generally a well-educated man (he studied at the University of Leipzig), Teleman, however, did not receive a systematic musical education. But this was more than compensated by the thirst for knowledge and the ability to assimilate them creatively, which marked his life up to a very old age. He showed a lively sociability and interest in everything extraordinary and great that Germany was then famous for. Among his friends are such figures as J. S. Bach and his son F. E. Bach (by the way, the godson of Teleman), Handel, not to mention the less significant but major musicians. Teleman’s attention to foreign national styles was not limited to the most valued Italian and French. Hearing Polish folklore in Silesia during the years of Kapelmeistership, he admired its “barbaric beauty” and wrote a number of “Polish” works. At the age of 80-84 years he created some of his best works, striking courage and novelty. Probably, there was no significant area of creativity of the time, past which would pass Teleman. In each case, he worked hard. Thus, his pen owns more than 40 operas, 44 oratorios (passive), more than 20 annual cycles of spiritual cantatas, more than 700 songs, about 600 orchestral suites, many fugues and various chamber and instrumental music. Unfortunately, much of this legacy is now lost. Handel was astonished: "Teleman writes a church play as fast as a letter." At the same time, he was a great worker who believed that in music, "this inexhaustible science, you can not go far without hard work." In each genre, he was able not only to show high professionalism, but also to say his own, sometimes innovative word. He was able to combine opposites. So, striving in art (in the development of melody, harmony), in his expression, "to reach the very depths", he, however, was very concerned about the comprehensibility, accessibility of his music to the ordinary listener. He who knows how to be useful to many does better than he who writes for a few. The composer combined the "serious" style with the "light", the tragic with the comic, and although we will not find Bach's heights in his works (as one of the musicians noted, "he did not sing for eternity"), there are many attractive things in them. In particular, they captured the composer's rare comic gift and his inexhaustible ingenuity - especially in the depiction by music of a variety of phenomena up to the croaking of frogs, the transmission of the gait of a lame or the hustle on the stock exchange. In the work of Teleman intertwined features of the Baroque and the so-called gallant style with its clarity, pleasantness, touching. Although Teleman spent most of his life in various cities of Germany (longer than others in Hamburg, where he served as a cantor and music director), his lifetime fame went far beyond the borders of the country, reaching Russia. But in the future, the composer’s music was forgotten for many years. The real revival began, perhaps, only in the 60s of our century, as evidenced by the tireless activity of the Teleman Society in the city of his childhood Magdeburg.