Composer · 1696–1760
Ernst Gottlieb Baron
Biography
Ernst Gottlieb Baron
(b Breslau, 17 Feb 1696; d Berlin, 12 April 1760). German lutenist, composer and writer on music.
Neither Baron’s life nor his works have as yet been fully explored by scholars. His father Michael was a maker of gold lace and expected his son to follow in his footsteps. The younger Baron showed an inclination towards music in his youth, however, and later made it his profession. He first studied the lute from about 1710 with a Bohemian named Kohott (not to be confused with the later Karl von Kahaut). In Breslau he attended the Elisabeth Gymnasium, and from there went in 1715 to Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and law at the university for four years.