Jakob Adlung

Jakob Adlung, or Adelung, (14 January 1699 – 5 July 1762) was a German organist, teacher, instrument maker, music historian, composer and music theorist. Biography He was born in Bindersleben, near Erfurt, to David Adlung, an organist and his first teacher, and the former Dorothea Elisabetha Meuerin, from Tondorf. He attended the St. Andreas lower school in Erfurt from 1711, moving on to the Erfurt Gymnasium in 1713, during which time he lived in the household of Christian Reichardt, who also taught him organ. He studied philosophy, philology, and theology at the University of Jena from 1723 to 1726, where he studied the organ further with Johann Nikolaus Bach. At this time, he became friends with Johann Gottfried Walther in Weimar, and borrowed his works on music theory; he later wrote some books on the subject, most of which were destroyed, along with his house, in a fire in 1736. He returned to Erfurt in 1737 where he succeeded Johann Heinrich Buttstedt as organist of the Prediger church after the former’s death, a post he retained for the rest of his life. He was also professor of languages at the Erfurt Gymnasium and taught, by his own estimate, 218 organ students and 284 lang