Johann Philipp Krieger

Johann Philipp Krieger (also Kriger, Krüger, Krugl, and Giovanni Filippo Kriegher; baptised 27 February 1649; died 7 February 1725) was a German Baroque composer and organist. He was the elder brother of Johann Krieger. Life Early years The Krieger brothers came from a Nuremberg family of rugmakers. According to Johann Mattheson’s Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte, Johann Philipp started studying keyboard playing at age 8, with Johann Drechsel (a pupil of the celebrated Johann Jakob Froberger) and other instruments at around the same time, with Gabriel Schütz. He was apparently a gifted student, displaying absolute pitch and a feeling for keyboard music: according to Mattheson, already after a year of studies he was able to impress large audiences and was composing attractive arias. Johann Philipp soon left Nuremberg for Copenhagen, where he spent some four or five years, studying organ playing with Johann Schröder, the royal organist, and composition with Kaspar Förster. The precise dates of his stay in Copenhagen are unknown: Mattheson reports 1665 to 1670, but Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, author of a 1730 biographical volume on famous residents of Nuremberg, claimed Johann Philipp stay