Join Chamber Singers for an evening of beautiful music and musicology as they present The Telemann Project on Monday, October 23 at 7 p.m. in the Kemp Recital Hall. This School of Music event is a lecture-recital featuring instrumental works and the cantata, Singet dem Herrn. This event is free and open to the public.
Chamber Singers presents The Telemann Project, October 23
Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer who wrote a variety of vocal and instrumental works. Telemann was a multi-instrumentalist and almost completely self-taught in music. To his family, music was not a notable profession, and he spent his childhood being forced to study subjects other than music and was forbidden to play his instruments or further his musical knowledge. After leaving school at Zellerfeld, Telemann was sent to the Gymnasium Andreanum at Hildesheim. There, his teachers allowed him to learn a variety of instruments, compose, and perform.
Due to his family’s disapproval of his career aspirations, Telemann went to the University of Leipzig to study law. His time studying law was short lived and after finally securing a blessing from his mother to pursue music, Telemann began writing music for the church and courts.
Wherever he went, Telemann was a powerful force in that city’s musical life. In Eisenach, Telemann created his largest quantity of music, writing annual cycles of church cantatas, sonatas and concertos, opera, and numerous other works.
Telemann was the driving force behind the late Baroque and the early Classical styles. Strongly influenced by French, Italian, German and the occasional Polish styles, he incorporated these styles in the music he was encouraged to write by the church and courts he was employed by. A muscian always at the forefront of new music, he is one of the least known composers of this era however he set the stage for composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.
To hear more about the life and music of Georg Philipp Telemann and to experience the glory his music, come see The Telemann Project.
