Johann Kuhnau
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Johann Kuhnau was a German polymath, known primarily as a composer today. He was also active as a novelist, translator, lawyer, and music theorist, and was able to combine these activities with his duties in his official post as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, which he occupied for 21 years. Much of his music, including operas, masses, and other large-scale vocal works, is lost. His reputation today rests on his Biblical Sonatas, a set of programmatic keyboard sonatas published in 1700, in which each sonata depicted in detail a particular story from the Bible. After his death, Kuhnau was succeeded as Thomaskantor by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Kuhnau's portrait, from a hand-colored 1689 edition of his Neue Clavier-Übung, erster Theil
Engraving of frontispiece of Musicalische Vorstellung einiger biblischer Historien, the "Six Biblical Sconatas" published by Kuhnau and printed by Immanuel Tietze in 1710. In an idealised music room, the lady can be seen on the right playing a house organ with the motto Dum ludo alludo, a bible by the wall behind. On the left is a clavichord, concealing the tail of a harpsichord.
Title page of Kuhnau's satirical novel Der musicalische Quack-Salber
Georg Philipp Telemann
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Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. He is one of the most prolific composers in history, at least in terms of surviving oeuvre. Telemann was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time, and he was compared favourably both to his friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who made Telemann the godfather and namesake of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, and to George Frideric Handel, whom Telemann also knew personally.
Magdeburg, Telemann's birthplace, in the early 18th century. Some 50 years before Telemann's birth the city was sacked and had to be rebuilt.
Telemann c. 1745, engraving by Georg Lichtensteger