View source for Johann Nikolaus Forkel

{{short description|German musicologist (1749–1818)}}
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{{Infobox  academic
| image      = Johann Nikolaus Forkel.jpg
| caption    = Forkel in a 1813 engraving by [[Carl Traugott Riedel]]
| birth_name =  Johann Nikolaus Forkel 
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1749|02|22|df=y}}
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1818|03|20|1749|02|22|df=yes}}
}}

'''Johann Nikolaus Forkel''' (22 February 1749 – 20 March 1818) was a German [[musicologist]] and [[music theory|music theorist]], generally regarded as among the founders of modern musicology.<ref name="Grove">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Stauffer |first=George B. |year=2001 |encyclopedia=[[Grove Music Online]] |title=Forkel, Johann Nicolaus |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09979 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009979 }}</ref> His publications include the two-volume ''Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik'' (''General History of Music''), among the first attempts at a history of Western music and the "ground-breaking music bibliography" ''Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik''.<ref name="Grove"/>{{efn|Forkel's original intention to cover a global history of music (in both the history and bibliography) was unrealizd. The musicologist Vanessa Agnew explains that "the best we are left with are references to non-Western music in Forkel's music bibliography and some stray comments in the universal history."{{sfn|Agnew|2008|p=181}}}} He also authored ''[[Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work]]'', the first substantial survey on the life and works of [[Johann Sebastian Bach]].

==Biography==
He was born at [[Meeder]] in [[Coburg]] in the [[Holy Roman Empire]] on 22 February 1749.<ref name="Grove"/> He was the son of a cobbler, and received early musical training, especially in keyboard playing, from Johann Heinrich Schulthesius, who was the local Kantor. In other aspects of his music education he was self-taught, especially in regards to theory. As a teenager he served as a singer in [[Lüneburg]], and studied law for two years at the [[University of Göttingen]]; he remained associated with the university for more than fifty years, where he held varied positions, including instructor of music theory, organist, keyboard teacher, and eventually director of all music at the university.  In 1787 he received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the institution.

Forkel is often regarded as the founder of Historical [[Musicology]], for it is with him that the study of music history and theory became an academic discipline with rigorous standards of scholarship.

He was an enthusiastic admirer of [[Johann Sebastian Bach]], whose music he did much to popularize. He also wrote the first biography of Bach (in 1802),<ref name="Terry2011pxii">Forkel/Terry 1920/2011, p. xii</ref> one which is of particular value today, as he was still able to correspond directly with Bach's sons [[Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach]] and [[Wilhelm Friedemann Bach]], and thereby obtained much valuable information that would otherwise have been lost.

His library, which was accumulated with care and discrimination at a time when rare books were cheap, forms a valuable portion of the [[Berlin State Library]] and also of the library of the Königliche Institut für Kirchenmusik<!-- [where are those books now?] [mostly reprinted in the 1960s in German, not all trans into English]-->.

He died at Göttingen.

==Selected works==
Forkel's writings include:
*''Über die Theorie der Musik'' (Göttingen, 1777)
*''Musikalisch kritische Bibliothek'' (Gotha, 1778)
*''Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik'' (Leipzig, 1788, 1801)<ref>[http://num-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr:8080/view/authors/Forkel,_Johann_Nikolaus.html ''Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik'' (Leipzig, 1788, 1801)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090328100358/http://num-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr:8080/view/authors/Forkel,_Johann_Nikolaus.html |date=28 March 2009 }} at Universities of Strasbourg Digital Library</ref>
*''Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik: oder, Anleitung zur Kenntniss musikalischer Bücher, welche von den ältesten bis auf die neusten Zeiten bey den Griechen, Römern und den meisten neuern europäischen Nationen sind geschrieben worden; systematisch geordnet, und nach Veranlassung mit Anmerkungen und Urtheilen begleitet'' (Leipzig 1792), known in English as ''Dictionary of Musical Literature''
*''[[Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke]]. Für patriotische Verehrer echter musikalischer Kunst'' (Leipzig, 1802)<ref name="Terry2011pxii" />

To his musical compositions, which are numerous, little interest is to be attached today. However, he wrote variations on "[[God Save the King]]" for the clavichord, and that [[Georg Joseph Vogler]] wrote a sharp criticism on them, which appeared at [[Frankfurt]] in 1793 together with a set of variations as he conceived they ought to be written.

==References==
===Notes===
{{noteslist}}

===Citations===
{{reflist}}

===Sources===
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Forkel, Johann Nikolaus|volume=10|page=666}}
* {{cite journal |last=Agnew |first=Vanessa |date=Winter 2008 |title=Listening to Others: Eighteenth-Century Encounters in Polynesia and Their Reception in German Musical Thought |journal=[[Eighteenth-Century Studies]] |volume=41 |issue=2 Special Issue: Dangerous Liaisons in the South Pacific |pages=165–188 |jstor=30053534 }}
{{Gutenberg|no= 35041|name= Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work }}, translation by [[Charles Sanford Terry (historian)|Charles Sanford Terry]] of ''Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke'' by Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1802). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe. 1920 (e-version: 2011).

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
*{{Wikisourcelang-inline|de|Johann Nikolaus Forkel}}
*{{IMSLP|id=Forkel, Johann Nikolaus}}
*{{DNB-Portal|118809962}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=37425| name=Johann Nikolaus Forkel}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Johann Nikolaus Forkel}}
* {{Librivox author |id=8691}}

{{Johann Sebastian Bach}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Forkel, Johann Nikolaus}}
[[Category:1749 births]]
[[Category:1818 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century German male musicians]]
[[Category:German Classical-period composers]]
[[Category:German male classical composers]]
[[Category:German music historians]]
[[Category:19th-century German musicologists]]
[[Category:German music theorists]]
[[Category:German biographers]]
[[Category:German male biographers]]
[[Category:Bach scholars]]
[[Category:People from Coburg (district)]]
[[Category:18th-century German composers]]
[[Category:18th-century German scholars]]