Johann Georg Ebeling was born on July 8, 1637, at Lüneburg, the son of a printer, Georg Ebeling, and his wife, Angela nee Lüdeckens. Few details are known about the personal life of this short-lived 17th-century German cantor. He attended the Latin school in his native city and then studied theology at the university in Helmstedt from 1658 until 1660. In 1662 he succeeded Johann Crüger as cantor of St. Nikolaikirche in Berlin, where Paul Gerhardt was pastor, and became a faculty member of the Graues Kloster Gymnasium. Six years later he became associate director of music and professor of Greek and poetry at the Carolinen Gymnasium at Stettin, where he also served as cantor of the school. He was married three times: to Anna Maria Bolmeyer (d. 1669), with whom he had two sons and a daughter; to Sophie Pahl, who died shortly after their wedding; and to Sophie Kuntz, daughter of the cantor at Stettin. She died of a fever just two days before Ebeling’s death on December 4, 1676. As a composer of about 150 hymn tunes and arranger of many polyphonic settings, he published the following work, which set the texts of Paul Gerhardt: Pauli Gerhardi Geistliche Andachten (1667).

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