Johann Ernst Eberlin

Johann Ernst Eberlin (27 March 1702 – 19 June 1762) was a German composer and organist whose works bridge the baroque and classical eras. He was a composer of church organ and choral music. Marpurg claims he wrote as much and as rapidly as Alessandro Scarlatti and Georg Philipp Telemann, a claim also repeated by Leopold Mozart - though Eberlin did not live nearly as long as either of those two composers. Biography Eberlin’s first musical training began in 1712 at the Jesuit Gymnasium of St. Salvator in Augsburg. His teachers there were Georg Egger and Balthasar Siberer, who taught him how to play the organ. He began his university education in 1721 at the Benedictine University in Salzburg where he studied law, but from 1723 turned to music. His first breakthrough was in 1727 when he became the organist for Count Leopold von Firmian (then Archbishop of Salzburg). He reached the peak of his career when he was the organist for Archbishop Andreas Jakob von Dietrichstein. By 1749 he held the posts of Hof- und Domkapellmeister (Court and Cathedral chapel master) simultaneously, an achievement which his successors Michael Haydn, Leopold Mozart, and Mozart himself were not to match. Despi