Biography
Adolf Karl Kunzen, also Adolph, Carl , Kuntzen (born September 22, 1720 in Wittenberg , † July 11, 1781 in Lübeck) was a German organist and composer.
Kunzen was born the son of the organist Johann Paul Kunzen (1696–1757) and his wife Dorothea (née Selner; † 1765) in Wittenberg . Kunzen received musical training from his father, which Jakob Wilhelm Lustig continued in Hamburg. He was soon considered a musical boy wonder and went on concert tours to Holland and England. He played the violin for the Danish royal couple in Aurich in August 1728. During his employment as concertmaster (from 1749) with Duke Christian Ludwig II of Mecklenburg (-Schwerin) , he occasionally wrote compositions. After he became Kapellmeister in 1752 , he leftSchwerin due to disputes and then went to London. When his father died in Lübeck as an organist and foreman at the Marienkirche , he took over his position in 1757 and thus moved to the top of the music scene in the Hanseatic city.
Read full biography ↓
Kunzen had been a Freemason since 1745; initially accepted into the Hamburg Absalom Lodge , he became a member of the St. George Lodge in November 1745 .
After a stroke paralyzed his right hand in 1772, he was succeeded by Johann Wilhelm Cornelius v. Until his death in 1781 . Königslöw (1745–1833) added as an adjunct .
Kunzen was married to Charlotte, b. Auberg from Bremen . The couple had two children, Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen (1761–1817) and Louise Friederica Ulrica (1765–1839), who was court singer in Ludwigslust .
Kunzen left behind an extensive, largely handwritten oeuvre for which there is still no binding list. His works from the time he was active in Schwerin reveal an independence that invigorates the artistic environment. Like his father, he composed a series of important five-part oratorios on biblical stories, including Israel's idolatry in the desert (1758), Absalon (1761) and Goliath , for the cycle of public concerts, the evening music , which has been firmly established at the Marienkirche at least since Dietrich Buxtehude(1762). In them the large choirs stand out, which are characterized by their dramatically lively expression and revealing structure as well as the combination of the masses. The influence of George Frideric Handel is unmistakable, whose oratorios Kunzen probably got to know in London. The instrumental works of the Schwerin and London years pay homage to the gallant and sensitive style that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had shaped as a pioneering composer. Kunzen was firmly rooted in the tradition of Lübeck's musical life, but also gave it new impulses by being the first to regularly perform works by foreign composers and to provide support to the concert enthusiast.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.