Bernhard Joachim Hagen

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Bernhard Joachim Hagen (April 1720 in or near Hamburg (?) – 9 December 1787 in Ansbach) was a German composer, lutenist and violinist. He was the last important composer of lute music in 18th-century Germany.

Little is known about his youth, but he grew up in a musical family; his brother Peter Albrecht Hagen (also called Peter Albert van Hagen, 1714 - 12 September 1777) studied the violin with Francesco Geminiani, learned to play the lute and organ, and was an organist in Rotterdam. There are several transcriptions of Geminiani's violin works for lute by J.B. Hagen extant.

The younger Bernhard Joachim Hagen must have learned to play lute and violin early too, for in 1737 he was already employed as an assistant to Bayreuth violin virtuoso and Kapellmeister Johann Pfeiffer; later he was listed officially as a court violinist. He kept this position at the Bayreuth and since 1769 at the Ansbach court until his death. Adam Falckenhagen and Charles Durant (Karol Duranowski), also called to the Bayreuth court by Wilhelmine of Bayreuth, may have further trained him in playing the lute.

In 1745, Hagen married Anna Fikentscher (born in Bayreuth; died 22 May 1789 in Ansbach). During 1760/1761 he visited his brother in Rotterdam and there gave five concerts from November till March.

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