Agricola, composer to the King of Prussia, known through his theoretical works.
Müthel, of Riga.
Kirnberger, court musician at Berlin. "He loved his art with a fervor at once enthusiastic and sincere," says Forkel. "Not only has he informed us in detail as to Bach's methods of teaching composition, but the musical world is still his debtor for the first logical system of harmony, founded upon the works of his master. The first of these sources of information is his book, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes; the second, Grundsätze zum Gebrauch der Harmonie. He furthered the interests of musical art by other treatises as well as by his compositions. Particularly charming are his works for the clavecin. Princess Amelia of Prussia was one of his pupils."
Kittel, organist at Erfurt. He was the only one of Bach's pupils still living at the time Forkel, himself an organist and the director of music at the University of Göttingen, wrote his Ueber J.S. Bach's Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (Leipzig, 1802). [The Life, Art, and Works of J.S. Bach.]
Forkel was intimately associated with Wilhelm Friedemann and Philipp Emanuel Bach, and with Agricola, Kirnberger, and several others of Sebastian Bach's illustrious pupils. He collaborated with Schicht, a man of education and a distinguished harmonist, who later became Cantor of St. Thomas's Church. With him Forkel undertook the publication of works by Bach for organ and for clavecin, an enterprise to which frequent allusion is made in his book. Forkel had accumulated a fine musical library; with the aid of this and of that of the University of Göttingen he was enabled to procure a considerable amount of material for his Geschichte der Musik [History of Music], which was to comprise six volumes; of which, however, only the first two appeared.
Forkel reserved for the last volume of this compilation the memoranda concerning Bach and his works; but "foreseeing the impossibility of completing during his life this veritable encyclopædia of music, he appears, at least in his book upon the life and works of Bach, to have been desirous of losing no time in rendering to that great man a sincere and merited tribute of homage and gratitude...."
Kittel (1732-1802) was Rinck's teacher; the latter relates that his master invariably ended his conversations upon Bach with the words Ein sehr frommer Mann, "a very good man."
Dr. Fétis, of Brussels, while teaching me the principles of counterpoint and fugue, often spoke of Rinck, whom he had visited; of Kittel, his musical father, and of their great common ancestor, Sebastian Bach. Rinck, when asked the cause of his neglect of the fugue form, would reply: "Bach is a Colossus, dominating the musical world; one can hope to follow him in his domain only at a distance, for he has exhausted all resources, and is inimitable in what he has done. I have always considered that if one is to succeed in composing something worthy of being heard and approved, one's attention must be turned in another direction."
Poor Rinck!