Nicolaus Adam Strungk

• Illustration — Original manuscript of Strungk's Laudate Pueri Nicolaus Adam was the son of the organist Delphin Strungk. He studied organ under his father, then at the University of Helmstedt. From 1660 he studied violin with Nathanael Schnittelbach, performing for the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, and Kaiser Leopold I in Vienna. From 1665 he was chamber musician in the service of Prince Johann Friedrich in Hanover. In 1679 Strungk became director of the Hamburger Ratsmusik. In 1688 he succeeded Christian Ritter as deputy Kapellmeister and organist in Dresden, where in 1693 he succeeded Christoph Bernhard as Hofkapellmeister. He left after three years, in 1696, to take up directorship of the Leipzig Opera. He died of fever („am hitzigen Fieber“) a few years later. His fourth daughter, Dorothea Christine Lachs, was a noted poet and author of the libretto to Telemann's Germanicus.

Strunck's surviving keyboard compositions, two ricercars and seven capriccios, were composed in Rome and Vienna between 1683 and 1686. They were written in a strictly contrapuntal style with two or three sections, each having a different subject. He also composed cantates. Strungk composed several operas for Hamburg and Leipzig: • Der glückselig steigende Sejanus (1678) • Der unglückselig fallende Sejanus (1678) • Die liebreiche, durch Tugend und Schönheit erhöhte Esther (1680) • David oder Der königliche Sclave (1680) • Die drei Töchter Cekrops (1680) • Alceste (Hamburg, 1680) (possibly by Johann Wolfgang Franck) • Semele (1681) • Theseus (1683) • Semiramis (1683) • Florette (1683) • Jupiter und Alcmena (Leipzig, 1696) • Phocas (Leipzig, 1696) • Pyrrhus und Demetrius (Leipzig, 1696) • Orion (Leipzig, 1697) • Scipio und Hannibal (Leipzig, 1698) • Ixion (Leipzig, 1699) • Agrippina (Leipzig, 1699) • Erechtheus (Leipzig, 1700)

Nicolaus Adam Strungk is recorded as composer, conductor, court chapel master, violinist and opera director.