Georg Philipp Telemann

Born 24 March 1681, Telemann taught himself music against his family's wishes, enrolled at Leipzig to study law, then abandoned it for composition. He climbed through posts in Leipzig, Sorau, Eisenach, and Frankfurt before landing in Hamburg in 1721 as musical director of the city's five main churches. His first wife died within two years of marriage; his second ran up gambling debts, cheated, and left. Through it all he poured out music — French, Italian, German, even Polish-inflected — educating organists with 48 chorale preludes and 20 modal fugues, writing for 500 hymns, bridging late Baro…