Hieronymus Praetorius
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Hieronymus Praetorius (10 August 1560 – 27 January 1629) was a Northern
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
whose polychoral motets in 8 to 20 voices are intricate and vividly expressive. Some of his organ music survives in the Visby Orgel-Tabulatur, which dates from 1611. (He was not related to the prolific Michael Praetorius, known as a theorist and for '' Terpsichore'', but the large Praetorius family tree produced many distinguished musicians during the 16th and 17th centuries.)


Life

He was born in Hamburg and spent most of his life there. He studied organ with his father ( Jacob Praetorius, the elder (1520-1586), also a composer), before moving to Cologne for further study. In 1580 he became organist in
Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits in ...
but remained there only two years. After returning to Hamburg in 1582 he worked with his father as assistant organist at Sankt Jacobi, becoming principal organist in 1586 when his father died, a post he retained until his own death 43 years later. His son, Jacob, was born that same year, and was also destined to become a composer. In 1596 Hieronymus visited
Gröningen Gröningen () is a town in the Börde district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It lies approx. 40 km south-west of Magdeburg, and 10 km east of Halberstadt. It has 3.621 inhabitants (December 2015). Gröningen is part of the ''Verbandsgemein ...
where he met Michael Praetorius and Hans Leo Hassler; presumably he became acquainted with their music and, through them, the music of the contemporary Venetian School.


Music and influence

Praetorius wrote Masses and ten settings of the Magnificat in addition to the mostly Latin polychoral motets. Much of his music uses voices divided into several groups, probably the first of its kind in Northern Germany in polychoral style; choir sizes range from 8 to 20, with the voices divided into two, three or four groups. Praetorius must have had sophisticated musicians at his disposal, considering both the amount and the difficulty of music he wrote for these ensembles. While progressive in writing in the Venetian style, he was conservative in using Latin and avoiding the
basso continuo Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...
, which was eagerly adopted by many other contemporary German composers. Most of his vocal music is ''
a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...
''. Praetorius was also the first composer to compile a collection of four-part German chorales with organ accompaniment, a sound which was to become a standard in Protestant churches for several centuries. The music in the collection was compiled from four churches in Hamburg; 21 of the 88 settings are of his own composition. Some of his organ compositions survive, including nine settings of the Magnificat, which are in a highly
contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
cantus firmus style. In addition to these settings, numerous anonymous pieces in north German collections of the time are now attributed with reasonable certainty to Hieronymus Praetorius.


External links

*


References and further reading

*Article "Hieronymus Praetorius," in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. * Manfred Bukofzer, ''Music in the Baroque Era''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. {{DEFAULTSORT:Praetorius, Hieronymus 1560 births 1629 deaths 17th-century classical composers Renaissance composers German Baroque composers German male classical composers German classical organists German male organists Musicians from Hamburg Organists and composers in the North German tradition 17th-century male musicians Hieronymus Praetorius Male classical organists