Background
Georg Muffat was born in Megève, Duchy of Savoy (now in France), and was of Scottish descent.
Georg Muffat was born in Megève, Duchy of Savoy (now in France), and was of Scottish descent.
He studied in Paris between 1663 and 1669, where his teacher is often assumed to have been Jean Baptiste Lully. I avidly pursued this style which was flowering in Paris at the time under the most famous Jean Baptiste Lully." This is ambiguous (in all of the languages in which it was printed) as to whether the style was flourishing under Lully, or that Muffat studied under Lully. Later, he studied law in Ingolstadt, afterwards settling in Vienna.
He is most well known for the remarkably articulate and informative performance directions printed along with his collections of string pieces Florilegium Primum and Florilegium Secundum (First and Second Bouquets) in 1695 and 1698. This assumption is largely based on the statement "Foreign six years. In any case, the style which the young Muffat learned was unequivocally Lullian and it remains likely that he had at least some contact with the man himself.
After leaving Paris, he became an organist in Molsheim and Sélestat.
He could not get an official appointment, so he travelled to Prague in 1677, then to Salzburg, where he worked for the archbishop for some ten years. From 1690 to his death, he was Kapellmeister to the bishop of Passau.
Toccata prima.
(No book number given, no publication date given. 95 pages)