Martin Agricola (6 January 1486 – 10 June 1556) was a German composer of

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the T ...

and a music theorist.

Biography

Agricola was born in

Świebodzin Świebodzin (; szl, Świybodzin; german: Schwiebus) is a town in western Poland with 21,736 inhabitants (2019). It is the capital of Świebodzin County. Since the Local Government Reorganization Act of 1998, Świebodzin has been part of Lubusz ...

, a town in Western Poland, and took the name Agricola later in life, a common practice among Lutherans often meant to emphasize humble, peasant origins. From 1524 until his death, he lived in the German city of Magdeburg, where he was a teacher or cantor in the Protestant school.

Georg Rhau Georg Rhau (Rhaw) (1488 – 6 August 1548) was a German publisher and composer. He was one of the most significant music printers in Germany in the first half of the 16th century, during the early period of the Protestant Reformation. He was prin ...

, a publisher and senator in

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north ...

, was Agricola's close friend and publisher. Agricola's theoretical writing was valuable in expounding the change from the old to the new system of musical notation. His ''Musica instrumentalis deudsch'' (English: ''German Instrumental Music''), published in 1528, 1530, 1532 and 1542, and then heavily revised in 1545, was one of the most important early works in

organology Organology (from Ancient Greek () 'instrument' and (), 'the study of') is the science of musical instruments and their classifications. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how ...

and on the elements of music. Agricola was the first to

harmonize In music, harmonization is the chordal accompaniment to a line or melody: "Using chords and melodies together, making harmony by stacking scale tones as triads". A harmonized scale can be created by using each note of a musical scale as a r ...

in four parts Martin Luther's famous

chorale Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale: * Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of " Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one of the ...

, " Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (English: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God".

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;Attribution *

Biography

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Further reading