Julius August Philipp Spitta (7 December 1841 – 13 April 1894) was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He was born in Wechold, near Hoya, and his father was also called Philipp Spitta (1801–1859); he was a theologian and wrote the Protestant collection of hymns entitled Psalter und Harfe. As a child, he learnt the piano, organ, and composition. He studied theology and classical phi...
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Julius August Philipp Spitta (7 December 1841 – 13 April 1894) was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He was born in Wechold, near Hoya, and his father was also called Philipp Spitta (1801–1859); he was a theologian and wrote the Protestant collection of hymns entitled Psalter und Harfe. As a child, he learnt the piano, organ, and composition. He studied theology and classical philology at the University of Göttingen from 1860, graduating in 1864 with a Ph.D. for a dissertation on Tacitus (Der Satzbau bei Tacitus, 1866). While at university, he composed, wrote a biography of Robert Schumann, and became friends with Johannes Brahms. He became a teacher of Greek and Latin in, successively, Reval, Sondershausen, and Leipzig, while pursuing his interest in and lecturing on music history in general and Johann Sebastian Bach in particular.
His Bach study began to be published in 1873, and was followed by an appointment as...
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