The 250th Anniversary of the Death of Georg Philipp Telemann

Thursday, June 22, 2017

In 2017 all roads lead to Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who died 250 years ago on 25 June. This major anniversary has set in motion numerous projects. At the end of last year, the cities in which Telemann lived and worked—including Magdeburg, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Hildesheim, Leipzig, Żary, Pszczyna, Eisenach, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, and Paris—came together to form a “Telemann-Cities-Network.” Through this network, small communities and large metropolises have been working side-by-side throughout the year as they present concerts, workshops, and other events centered on their own connections to Telemann and his music. A diversity of musical offerings, ranging from historically-informed performances to jazz and hip-hop arrangements of Telemann’s works, will celebrate the life and oeuvre of one of the most prolific and cosmopolitan figures of the Baroque era. A complete schedule of events is available here.

Telemann is high on the list of composers whose works appear most frequently in the RISM online catalog. Excluding anonymous records and records of collections, Telemann comes in 9th place on this list with 5,493 records in the catalog, directly behind Johann Sebastian Bach (6,634) and Johann Adolf Hasse (5,639) and followed by his godchild, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (4,170).

Many of the manuscripts of Telemann’s works are accessible in digitized form; there are at present 973 links to digitized versions of these manuscripts in the RISM online catalog. The libraries that offer the largest collections of digitized manuscripts include the University and State Library Darmstadt (D-DS, 334 manuscripts), the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (D-Dl, 326 manuscripts), and the Berlin State Library (D-B, 181 manuscripts). Telemann manuscripts that are currently being added to digital collections include the autographs from the Berlin State Library as well as the manuscript collection of the Adjuvantenarchiv Goldbach, which is presently located in the University Archive of the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar (D-WRha).

Image: March (TWV 50:43), autograph, D-F Ms.Ff.Mus. 1588, (RISM ID no. 4500004844)

Translated by Vivian Tompkins (intern, summer 2017).

Category: Musical anniversaries