Bendeler, Johann Philipp

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Bendeler, Johann Philipp

Bendeler, Johann Philipp, German organ theorist; b. Riethnordhausen, near Erfurt (baptized), Nov. 20, 1654; d. Quedlinburg, Dec. 26, 1709. He went to Qued-linburg in 1681 as an instructor at the Gymnasium there, and in 1687 added the duties of cantor, which post he held for the rest of his life. As an organ theorist he belongs, with Werckmeister, to the middle German group whose ideas were realized in the organs of Arp Schnitger. His most important work is Organopoeia (c. 1690; reprinted in 1739 as Orgelbaukunst; facsimile ed., Amsterdam, 1972), a treatise on organ building. Other works are Collegium Musicum de Compositione (mentioned in Mattheson’s Ehrenpforte), Melopeia practica (1686), and Aerarium melopoeticum (1688). In addition, he wrote two books on mathematics.

Bibliography

C. Mahrenholz, Die Berechnung der Orgelpfeifenmen-suren (Kassel, 1938).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire