Gallus Dressler (16 October 1533 – 1580/9) was a German composer and music theorist who served as Kantor in the church school at

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river. Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...

. Though a few of his works have remained in the choral repertoire, he is best known for his theoretical writings, especially his ''Praecepta musicae poeticae'' (MS, 1563), which contains some of the earliest detailed description of the compositional process of the Renaissance

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 preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

Life

Dressler was born in Nebra in Thuringia, but probably received most of his musical education in the Netherlands. He seems particularly influenced by

Clemens non papa Jacobus Clemens non Papa (also Jacques Clément or Jacob Clemens non Papa) ( – 1555 or 1556) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance based for most of his life in Flanders. He was a prolific composer in many of the current styles, and w ...

, and a perusal of the musical examples he cites in his theoretical writings shows that he was strongly influenced by the Franco-Flemish generation immediately following

Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

. After a brief tenure at Jena in 1558, Dressler succeeded

Martin Agricola Martin Agricola (6 January 1486 – 10 June 1556) was a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist. Biography Agricola was born in Świebodzin, a town in Western Poland, and took the name Agricola later in life, a common practic ...

as Kantor of the church school in

, where most of his career was spent. His compositions were almost entirely in the genre of the Latin

, largely ignoring the

Lutheran chorale A Lutheran chorale is a musical setting of a Lutheran hymn, intended to be sung by a congregation in a German Protestant church service. The typical four-part setting of a chorale, in which the sopranos (and the congregation) sing the melody ...

, though he is noted for some of the first German-language motets. Dressler studied at

Wittenberg Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is the fourth-largest town in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. It is situated on the River Elbe, north of Leipzig and south-west of the reunified German ...

, receiving the master's degree in 1570, and was closely associated with the

Philippists The Philippists formed a party in early Lutheranism. Their opponents were called Gnesio-Lutherans. Before Luther's death ''Philippists'' was the designation usually applied in the latter half of the sixteenth century to the followers of Phi ...

. In fact, when the more orthodox wing of Lutheranism became ascendant in Magdeburg, Dressler left for a position in Anhalt.

''Praecepta musicae poeticae''

Dressler's chief contribution comes to us in this unpublished manuscript, which from its organization and tone may have been his notes for teaching composition classes. As such it is one of the first sources to give in detail a practical approach to the composition of the Renaissance

. Dressler's explication of musica poetica can be summarized in two principles: the application of the rhetorical principles of exordium, medio, and finis to the structure of a motet, and the application of the grammatical principle of a "clausula" (sentence) to smaller musical units demarcated by cadences. The modal aspect of Dressler's musical poetics agrees in principle with that of Pietro Pontio and other contemporary theorists, but Dressler takes it a step further by teaching the use of the principal cadences of the given

musical mode In music theory, the term mode or ''modus'' is used in a number of distinct senses, depending on context. Its most common use may be described as a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic and harmonic behaviors. It ...

(cadences to the final and dominant degrees) to assert stability in the exordium and the finis, and cadences to other degree during the medio to provide contrast and interest. Dressler's treatise also includes a brief but perceptive sketch in which he identifies four phases in the history of Renaissance music: the

John Dunstaple John Dunstaple (or Dunstable; – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance periods. The central proponent of the ''Contenance angloise'' style (), Dunstaple was ...

Guillaume Dufay Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397 – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of h ...

generation,

, the post-Josquin generation (dominated, in his mind, by

), and Dressler's own contemporaries.Dressler, Gallus. ''Praecepta musicae poeticae'', MS, 1563. The Latin text as published by Bernhard Engelke in ''Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Land Magdeburg'', XLIX-L (1914-1915) is available online through Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum, but it is somewhat flawed. A new critical text and English translation by Robert Forgacs was published in 2007 by the University of Illinois Press.

References

External links

*
''Praecepta musicae poeticae'' from Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (Engelke's transcription)
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dressler, Gallus 1533 births 1580s deaths People from Nebra (Unstrut) German music theorists 16th-century German composers 16th-century writers in Latin