SCHEIN'S OCCASIONAL MUSIC AND THE SOCIAL ORDER IN 1620S LEIPZIG

Extract

In the early seventeenth century many Lutheran composers produced music in printed pamphlets for weddings, funerals and other ceremonies. Johann Hermann Schein, Thomas-Kantor in Leipzig, said that he composed and performed pieces for ‘various occasions’, admitting that some had been ‘completed in haste’. At least eighty-eight pieces by Schein survive in pamphlets from his tenure of the Thomas-Kantorate between 1616 and 1630, and more such pieces are known to be lost. Other musicians in Leipzig such as Georg Engelmann and Samuel Michael wrote occasional pieces at a lesser rate, as did students from the university. And this repertory of occasional music was but part of the vast quantity of printed ephemera from the period, including thousands of poems, sermons and orations.