Johann Gottfried Walther

Johann Gottfried Walther
(b Erfurt, 18 Sept 1684; d Weimar, 23 March 1748). German organist, composer, theorist and lexicographer.

His father was Johann Stephan Walther, an Erfurt fabric maker; his mother, Martha Dorothea, née Lämmerhirt, was a close relative of J.S. Bach’s family. Walther’s autobiography was published in Mattheson's Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte. His education began at the age of four with private instruction; in 1691 he entered the lower school of Erfurt. Organ lessons were begun with Johann Bernhard Bach, organist of the Kaufmannskirche, and continued with his successor, Johann Andreas Kretschmar. Walther said he learnt in less than a year to sing well enough to become a soloist in church music performances. According to Walther, his teacher was Jakob Adlung, but he probably meant David Adlung, the father of Jakob. The latter, born in 1699, became a friend of Walther in the early 1720s and later a prominent Erfurt organist and theorist.

In 1697 Walther went to the Ratsgymnasium where he received a humanistic education. In summer 1702 he obtained his first position as an organist at the Thomaskirche in Erfurt. He entered the University of Erfurt to attend lectures in philosophy and law, but soon decided to devote himself entirely to music. He began a lifelong study of music theory, reading the treatises of Werckmeister, Fludd and Kircher, and for a brief period he studied composition with Buttstett. In autumn 1703 he started to travel, going first to Frankfurt (probably to the book fair) and Darmstadt. The following autumn he went to Magdeburg and also to Halberstadt, where he met Andreas Werckmeister, one of the most distinguished names in German music at that time, an organist and a writer of major works on music theory. Werckmeister was sympathetic to young Walther, presented him with a gift of Baryphonus’s treatise Pleiades musicae (Halberstadt, 1615), and subsequently corresponded regularly and sent him music, including the keyboard works of Buxtehude. In Halberstadt Walther also visited his friend Johann Graff, who had been a student of Johann Pachelbel in Erfurt. In 1706 he went to Nuremberg to study with Pachelbel’s son Wilhelm Hieronymus, whom he had known during their childhood together in Erfurt.

Walther’s years of apprenticeship ended on 29 July 1707 when he was appointed organist at the Stadtkirche (St Peter und St Paul), Weimar, a post he retained until his death. Immediately upon coming to Weimar he was made the music teacher of Prince Johann Ernst, nephew of the reigning Duke Wilhelm Ernst; the former was a gifted musician, and after he had returned from the University of Utrecht in 1713, Walther also taught him composition. Walther dedicated his manuscript treatise Praecepta der musicalischen Composition (1708) to Johann Ernst, and the prince’s early death in 1715 was a severe loss to Walther.