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Born: May 9, 1709 - Memmingen, Swabia, Bavaria, Germany
Died: June 25/July 6, 1785 - St Petersburg, Russia |
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Jacob [Jakob] von Stählin [Staehlin] was a German historian and writer on music. He was educated at the Lateinschule in Memmingen and after 1728 at the Gymnasium in Zittau; here he also studied privately with a certain Montallegro, an Italian master of fireworks display. In 1732 he entered Universität Leipzig, and during this period became a friend of J.S. Bach's sons, playing flute duets with them, and also took part as flautist in the performances of the Collegium Musicum under J.S. Bach’s direction. He was also a member of the circle surrounding the most famous literary critic of the day, Johann Christoph Gottsched.
Jacob von Stählin's career as fireworks designer and professor of poetry and rhetoric took him in 1735 to Russia, where he held numerous positions in St Petersburg and at the imperial court. He edited a fortnightly German-language journal in St Petersburg, where he reported extensively on court activities and introduced a wide variety of materials related to the German Enlightenment.
His valuable Nachrichten von der Musik in Russland (published in J. Haigold’s Beylagen zum neuveranderten Russland, Riga and Leipzig, 1769-1770) was the first study of Russian music, theater, and dance.. |
