Telemann: The entrepreneurial spirit

Prolific, multi-skilled and an innovator, it’s not hard to imagine baroque composer George Philipp Telemann succeeding in the music business today.

Read the Limelight article by Sally Melhuish on 12 June, 2025

“But what a lot of trouble I caused myself with this opera!
A multitude of musical enemies came to my mother to tell her that I would become a conjurer, tightrope walker, minstrel or trainer of guinea pigs etc., if I didn’t put an end to my music soon.
Thus said, thus done! They took away all my scores and instruments, and robbed me of half of my life.”

– George Philipp Telemann

After composing his opera Sigismundo at the age of 12, George Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) was already wrestling with external expectations and his creativity within.

Bowing to his mother’s pressure, and with all thoughts of a career in music behind him, Telemann set off “with the greatest reluctance” to study law at the University of Leipzig in 1701.

Journeying through Halle on his way to Leipzig, Telemann made the acquaintance of a young man named Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1759), who had enrolled at the University in Halle to study law.

It was a remarkable meeting of brilliance and the beginning of a life-long friendship. Writing in one of his three autobiographical essays, Telemann noted that “from my acquaintance with Handel, I again sucked in so much of the poison of music as nearly overset all my resolutions” (1740).

However, he “persevered in the plan prescribed by [his] mother”, until being surrounded by “music of all kinds, which, although much worse than my own, again led me into temptation”, finally receiving his mother’s blessing to compose.

One can imagine Telemann achieving great success in today’s world. He was the most famous composer in Germany in his day, and his popular style attracted special praise for not composing like Bach. A prolific composer of more than 3,000 works and an uncanny sense of musical trends, Telemann absorbed and sampled music from throughout Europe and boasted that he could compose in the “Italian, French, English, Scottish and Polish styles”.

Telemann was also at the forefront of printing technology and was a brilliant publisher, promoter and distributor of his own publications. His skill on 11 instruments gave him the ability to understand “each instrument and what suits it best”.

Telemann’s entrepreneurial flair extended to selling his compositions through subscriptions, often publishing them one movement at a time to entice subscribers into buying the following issues to complete the entire work (for example, Der getreue Music-Meister, issued weekly during 1728-9).

There was widespread interest in one of Telemann’s best-known collections of compositions, Musique de table (Hamburg, 1733), with 185 subscribers from France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Among the subscribers listed in the publication were royalty, court officials, ambassadors, clergymen and military officers. Professions of lower social status were not specified, but these included musicians, including Handel (then in London), Johann Joachim Quantz and Johann Georg Pisendel from Dresden and Michel Blavet from Paris.

“This work will hopefully make me famous one day”, wrote Telemann to a friend as he composed this collection of orchestral suites, concerti, quartets, trios and sonatas.

Handel was clearly impressed by his friend’s latest work – he pilfered multiple snippets from the collection to use in his own compositions. One of Handel’s most famous compositions, Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, owes its glorious opening to Concerto in F major, TWV 53:F1. Far from considering it plagiarism, Telemann felt honoured by the citation.

Telemann’s popularity faded in the early 19th century, just as the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was being reappraised and his genius acknowledged. It was a rebalancing of opinion from 1723 when the Leipzig City Council announced the new director of music for Leipzig’s churches: “since the best man [Telemann] could not be obtained, a mediocre one [Bach] will have to be accepted”.

Telemann left an extraordinary legacy in volume and variety of compositions, his influence throughout Europe through his publishing business, and the high regard in which he was held by critics and colleagues.

On his death at the age of 87, Telemann’s friend Johann Heinrich Rolle (1716-1785) spoke for many of his contemporaries when he wrote to Telemann’s son, Georg Michael: “For how many years would music in Germany perchance have remained miserable and pathetic had there arisen no Telemann, who by his divine genius and through his exceedingly great industry lifted music out of darkness and gave it a completely different and new impetus?”

Salut! Baroque presents The Entrepreneur on Friday 18 July, 7.30pm, at Wesley Church Canberra, and on Sunday 20 July, 3pm, in the Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music.