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First Name

 Daniel

Middle Name

 Gottlob

Last Name

 Türk

Birth Year

 0

Death Year

 0000

Biography

 (b Claussnitz, nr Chemnitz, 10 Aug 1750; d Halle, 26 Aug 1813). German theorist and composer. His father, Daniel Türcke, was an instrumentalist in the service of Count Schönburg; he was also secretary to the local mining authority and the owner of a hosiery business. The boy was trained at an early age for the hosiery firm, received his first music lessons from his father and learnt several wind instruments with his father’s colleagues. At the Dresden Kreuzschule he received thorough musical education under the Kantor G.A. Homilius, a former pupil of Bach and teacher of J.A. Hiller and J.F. Reichardt. In 1772 he enrolled at the University of Leipzig, but continued his music studies under the guidance of Hiller, to whom Homilius had recommended him. He played the first violin in Hiller’s ‘popular concerts’ and made his first attempts at composition (two symphonies and a cantata, all now lost). Under Hiller’s direction he came to know the latest songs, cantatas and Singspiele, and felt Hiller’s formative influence as a teacher and, above all, as a choirmaster. At the same time he took keyboard (clavichord) lessons in Leipzig from J.W. Hässler, a pupil of J.C. Kittel and therefore also in the tradition of J.S. Bach. He was taught according to C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch and introduced to that composer’s keyboard style. While still at Leipzig he decided to devote himself wholly to music. In 1774, on Hiller’s recommendation, Türk became Kantor at the Ulrichskirche in Halle, where he was also expected to teach general subjects at the Lutheran Gymnasium. He worked in that city without interruption until his death, and soon became the generally acknowledged leader in Halle’s musical life, which he restored to a remarkable degree after the decline due to the Seven Years War (1756–63). At the beginning of his tenure there he composed four symphonies, a large choral work and four cantatas, but none of these works was either published or performed. In 1776, however, Breitkopf took over the distribution of his first collection of keyboard sonatas (for clavichord), which was dedicated to Count Schönburg and contained a list of no fewer than 347 subscribers. From then on keyboard music formed the central part of his output; apart from numerous new editions, a further 14 collections had appeared by 1808, among which those containing genre pieces enjoyed the greatest popularity because of their suitability as teaching pieces. In 1779 Türk became director of music at Halle University, lecturing on theory and composition. After receiving a doctorate honoris causa and being promoted to professor of music in 1808, he lectured on music history as well. During his lectures he frequently conducted performances by the Stadtsingechor (at that time under his direction) of many of the works discussed. From the early 1780s he embarked on extensive concert activities and gave performances, notably of Singspiele and operas, in the ‘Weekly Concerts’ which he directed. He married in 1783. These years also saw the production of a considerable number of cantatas, lieder and other vocal works. Of some 20 sacred and secular cantatas, he published only two, in keyboard arrangements. Only four are written in the old form of the church cantata; the remainder belong to the more recent ‘verse cantata’ form (without recitative) often described by Türk as ‘chorales’ even though they were written for solo voices with alternating chorus and instrumental accompaniment. Most are occasional pieces, but his oratorio-like Christmas cantata Die Hirten bey der Krippe zu Bethlehem was long performed in the Berlin Singakademie by C.F. Zelter. In 1787 Türk was appointed organist and musical director of the Marktkirche (Liebfrauenkirche), the principal church in Halle (the position earlier held by W.F. Bach). This appointment, which he held until his death, enabled him to give up teaching at the Gymnasium and to devote himself entirely to his musical work. In the same year his book Von den wichtigsten Pflichten eines Organisten appeared, the first of the fundamental theoretical works which were to occupy him for the greater part of his life and secure his long-lived reputation as an outstandingly thorough and scholarly teacher. With this Beytrag zur Verbesserung der musikalischen Liturgie, as the work was sub-titled, he hit on a subject of great topical interest in view of the increasing decline in the importance of ecclesiastical matters, including church music, in the face of the Enlightenment. His treatise was one of the first steps towards reform. Only two years later his Clavierschule appeared. This, too, was carefully prepared and based on years of experience and a thorough knowledge of the relevant literature. Like its important precursors by C.P.E. Bach and F.W. Marpurg, it was written for the clavichord, but it exceeds these works in its range and thoroughness. If his Clavierschule is the last textbook of that first generation of teaching manuals of keyboard instruments before the era of the pianoforte, his Kurze Anweisung zum Generalbassspielen of 1791 and 1800 occupies a similar position in the declining tradition of thoroughbass. Through the interest and efforts of his pupil, friend and successor J.F. Naue this work underwent a fifth edition some 50 years after it first appeared, thus lasting longer than all his other theoretical works. Beethoven used it in 1808, together with extracts from writings by C.P.E. Bach, J.J. Fux and J.G. Albrechtsberger, as teaching material for the Archduke Rudolph. Around 1799 Türk was working on a Violinschule, which, however, was never completed. His last theoretical work to appear in print was the comprehensive Anleitung zu Temperaturberechnungen, written with the most scrupulous scientific exactitude (it was printed by 1806 but, owing to the political situation, did not appear until 1808). In it he described in terms readily comprehensible to specialist and layman alike all the systems of equal, unequal and approximately equal temperament in use at the time, and subjected them to close critical examination without, however, pronouncing in favour of any particular one. Stimulated by Hiller’s Handel performances in Berlin and Leipzig Türk directed Messiah (in Mozart’s arrangement) and Judas Maccabaeus from 1803, and thus founded the Halle Handel tradition. He enjoyed an intimate and stimulating friendship with J.F. Reichardt, who lived nearby in Giebichenstein, and a good rapport with the citizens and students of Halle, who had made possible the great upsurge in the musical life of the city under his direction. He wrote, anonymously, for the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and other journals. His last years, saddened through the French occupation of Halle and by his wife’s death in 1808, were brightened by his work with his most important pupil, the ballad composer Carl Loewe, who had joined his choir in 1810 and whom he took into his house to instruct intensively in all branches of music. The 72-page auction catalogue of Türk’s extraordinarily comprehensive library (1816/R) bears witness to his wide reading and great scholarship, and the long article in Gerber’s Lexikon (1792) reflects an almost unbounded admiration from his contemporaries. Bibliography Erwin R. Jacobi. Türk