Johann Friedrich Agricola
German composer
Johann Friedrich Agricola (4 January 1720 – 2 December 1774) was a German composer, organist, singer, pedagogue, and writer on music. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Flavio Anicio Olibrio.
Biography
Agricola was born in Dobitschen, Thuringia.
Leipzig
While a student of law at Leipzig (1738–41) he studied music under Johann Sebastian Bach.
Berlin
In 1741 Agricola went to Berlin, where he studied musical composition under Johann Joachim Quantz. He was soon generally recognized as one of the most skillful organists of his time. The success of his comic opera, Il filosofo convinto in amore, performed at Potsdam in 1750, led to an appointment as court composer to Frederick the Great. In 1759, on the death of Carl Heinrich Graun, he was appointed conductor of the royal orchestra. He married the noted court operatic soprano Benedetta Emilia Molteni, despite the king's prohibition of court employees marrying each other. Because of this trespass, the king reduced Molteni's and Agricola's combined salaries to a single annual salary of 1,000 Thalers (Agricola's annual salary alone had been 1,500 Thalers).
The public source identifies “Johann Friedrich Agricola” as german composer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Johann, Friedrich and Agricola.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q60965. VIAF identifies the subject as 17328243. The Library of Congress control number is nr88002629. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1720, 1774, 1738 and 1741.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johann Friedrich Agricola” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.