Severus Gastorius (1646-1682) was a cantor in

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and larg ...

. The son of a Weimar school teacher, Severus was born with the family name Bauchspiess (later Latinised to Gastorius) in Oettern, near

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

. In 1667, he started studying at the

University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The un ...

. From 1670, he deputized for cantor Andreas Zöll in Jena and married his daughter the following year. Gastorius assumed Zöll's position after his death in 1677. One of his friends,

Samuel Rodigast Samuel Rodigast (19 October 1649 – 19 March 1708) was a German teacher and hymnwriter. He is remembered as the author of the hymn "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan". Life Rodigast was born in Gröben near Jena. After attending the Gymnasium in ...

, wrote the hymn "

Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan "" (What God Ordains Is Always Good) is a Lutheran hymn written by the pietist German poet and schoolmaster Samuel Rodigast in 1675. The melody has been attributed to the cantor Severus Gastorius. An earlier hymn with the same title was written i ...

" for Gastorius when he was sick (to cheer him up as Rodigast writes in his dedication). Even before he recovered, Gastorius set it to music based on a melody by

Werner Fabricius Fabricius Werner (1633-1679), an organist and composer of note, was born April 10, 1633, at Itzehoe, Holstein. As a boy he studied music under his father, Albert Fabricius, organist in Flensburg, and Paul Moth, the Cantor there. He went to the Gym ...

. The cantor's students sang it every week at Gastorius' door, on his request, as well as when they returned home. The hymn became widely known in Germany. Gastorius was buried on 8 May 1682 in Jena's Johanniskirche cemetery. Gastorius had requested that the hymn "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" be sung at his funeral. Gastorius is also credited with composing music for the funeral

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

''Du aber gehe hin bis das Ende komme''. It was sung at the funeral of the Jena professor of medicine Johann Arnold Friderici on 2 June 1672.Arne zur Nieden, "Severus Gastorius (1646–1682)"
Forschungsstelle für Personalschriften, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz. Retrieved 13 September 2012.

References

The article is largely based on Wikipedia's Swedish version.

External links

Bibliography

* Reinhold Jauernig, ''Severus Gastorius'', in: 8, 1963, p. 163 et seq. * Siegfried Fornaçon, ''Werke von Severus Gastorius'', in: Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 8, 1963, p. 165-171. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gastorius, Severus German Protestant hymnwriters German classical composers German male classical composers German male singers 1647 births 1682 deaths 17th-century classical composers 17th-century hymnwriters 17th-century male musicians