Johann Philipp Krieger

Johann Philipp Krieger (also Kriger, Krüger, Krugl, and Giovanni Filippo Kriegher; 25 February 1649 – 7 February 1725) was a German Baroque composer and organist. He was the elder brother of Johann Krieger.

The Krieger brothers came from a Nuremberg family of rugmakers. According to Johann Mattheson's Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte, Johann Philipp started studying keyboard playing at age 8, with Johann Drechsel (a pupil of the celebrated Johann Jakob Froberger) and other instruments at around the same time, with Gabriel Schütz. He was apparently a gifted student, displaying absolute pitch and a feeling for keyboard music: according to Mattheson, already after a year of studies he was able to impress large audiences and was composing attractive arias. Johann Philipp soon left Nuremberg for Copenhagen, where he spent some four or five years, studying organ playing with Johann Schröder, the royal organist, and composition with Kaspar Förster. The precise dates of his stay in Copenhagen are unknown: Mattheson reports 1665 to 1670, but Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, author of a 1730 biographical volume on famous residents of Nuremberg, claimed Johann Philipp stayed in Copenhagen between 1663 and 1667. During his stay, whenever it occurred, Johann Philipp was offered an invitation to become organist in Christiania (now Oslo, Norway), which he declined.

Mattheson and Doppelmayr also differ on the details of Johann Philipp's subsequent career. He and his brother evidently spent some time in Zeitz, studying composition, and also went to Bayreuth, where Johann Philipp became court organist, and then rose to the rank of Kapellmeister, Johann succeeding him as court organist. However, the precise dates are again unknown. Doppelmayr gives 1669–70 for the Bayreuth stay, while Mattheson confusingly reports that Johann Philipp was at Zeitz in 1670–71, and at Bayreuth in 1670–72. Research has shown that the civic records of Zeitz contain no mention of either brother, and Bayreuth records list Johann Philipp as court organist in 1673, complicating the matter further.

...
Wikipedia