Stählin, Jacob von

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Stählin, Jacob von

Stählin, Jacob von, German music historian; b. Memmingen, May 10, 1709; d. St. Petersburg, July 6, 1785. He was educated at the Memmingen Lateinschule, the Zittau Gymnasium, and the Univ. of Leipzig; while in Leipzig, he became a friend of Bach. In 1735 he went to Russia, where he worked as a fireworks director and as a teacher of poetry and rhetoric; he held various posts at the imperial court in St. Petersburg. His valuable Nachrichten von der Musik in Russland (publ. in J. Haigold’s Beylagen zum neuveranderten Russland, Riga and Leipzig, 1769–70) was the first study of Russian music, theater, and dance.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire