Biography
Johannes C. A. Zahn was the son of Eschenbach teacher and cantor Johannes Zahn. Between 1832 and 1837 he attended the Nuremberg high school, and studied afterwards in Berlin to obtain his degree in theology in 1841. After attending the Predigerseminar in Munich, he became a house teacher for the residence of Gustav Schulze, a prominent merchant.
In 1847 he was named teacher and prefect of the Royal Schullehrer Seminar in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, and became its head in 1854.
Johannes Zahn dedicated himself particularly to the recovery and critical revision of melodies and hymns developed during and after the Reformation, which he started publishing in 1889, in Gütersloh. The classification system he developed is still used by hymnologists worldwide, in the form Zahn ###, where the number represents the location of the melody or hymn in Zahn's anthology.
Zahn also contributed articles to journals like Siona, Hymnologie, and Euterpe.
Zahn also composed hymns, and is known for writing the original melody Dein König kommt in niedern Hüllen, number 14 in the Evangelisches Gesangbuch still in use in Lutheran German churches.
Read more about this topic: Johannes Zahn
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)