Johann Friedrich Doles

Full biography Johann Friedrich Doles

Johann Friedrich Doles was a prominent German composer and musician who lived between 1715 and 1797. He is best known for his compositions of Protestant church music, including cantatas, chorales, and organ music. He was also a copyist, and is known to have copied Johann Sebastian Bach's works. In fact, he was a student of Bach and may have even used some of Bach's methods in his own teachings and works.

Doles was born in Schmiedeberg, Saxony and studied at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where he eventually became a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. After Bach's death in 1750, Doles succeeded him as the Thomaskantor, one of the most prestigious musical positions in Germany at the time. There, he continued to compose and conduct a large number of works for the Protestant church, many of which have survived to this day.

In addition to his musical accomplishments, Doles also had a reputation as a skilled teacher. He wrote a manuscript treatise on singing that some scholars believe may have preserved some of Bach's own methods. His students included some prominent musicians of the time, such as composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and musicologist Ernst Ludwig Gerber.

Doles was also a pioneer of the keyboard sonata, and wrote six keyboard sonatas that have been published by Brilliant Classics. He met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Leipzig , who wrote a 3-part canon for him.

Johann Friedrich Doles died in 1797 in Lübeck , leaving behind a legacy as an important composer and teacher in German music history.