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Johann Nikolaus Forkel (22 February 1749 – 20 March 1818) was a German musicologist and music theorist, generally regarded as among the founders of modern musicology. His publications include the two-volume Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (General History of Music), among the first attempts at a history of Western music and the "ground-breaking music bibliography" Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik. He also authored Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work, the first substantial survey on the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Bach liked to play the Viola, an instrument which put him, as it were, in the middle of the harmony in a position from which he could hear and enjoy it on both sides.
A man of rigid uprightness, sincerely religious; steeped in his art, earnest and grave, yet not lacking naive humour; ever hospitable and generous, and yet shrewd and cautious; pugnacious when his art was slighted or his rights were infringed; generous in the extreme to his wife and children, and eager to give the latter advantages which he had never known himself; a lover of sound theology, and of a piety as deep as it was unpretentious—such were the qualities of one who towers above all other masters of music in moral grandeur.