In the decades between 1720 and 1760, long regarded by musicologists as having been dominated by J S Bach, it was—if we return to the information from the time—not Bach but Telemann who held the predominant position in German musical history. Much of this influence was due to his own ability to promote himself and all his considerable musical activity, whether in his official function as Kantor (in a number of musical centres), as a promoter and organizer of concerts, a publisher of music, a theorist, or simply as an enormously prolific composer of a wide variety of music, ranging from sacred cantatas to operas, concertos to secular songs.