Bokemeyer, Heinrich

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Bokemeyer, Heinrich

Bokemeyer, Heinrich, German music theorist and composer; b. Immensen, near Lehrte, Lower Saxony, March 1679; d. Wolfenbüttel, Dec. 7, 1751. He attended the St. Martin’s and St. Catherine’s Church School in Braunschweig, and in 1702 went to the Univ. of Helmstedt. Returning to Braunschweig in 1704, he served as cantor at St. Martin’s; concurrently studied composition with Georg Oesterreich. In 1712 he became cantor in Husum, and in 1717 he repaired to Wolfenbüttel, where in 1720 he became cantor at the ducal palace. He was a founding member of Mizler’s Societät der Musikalischen Wissenschaften of Leipzig. Few of his compositions are extant, but several of his theoretical treatises survive. He collected a large music library. See H. Kummerling, Katalog der Sammlung Bokemeyer (Kas-sel, 1970).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire