Johann Erasmus Kindermann
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Johann Erasmus Kindermann (29 March 1616 – 14 April 1655) was a German
Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
organist An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ (music), organ. An organist may play organ repertoire, solo organ works, play with an musical ensemble, ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumentalist, instrumental ...
and
composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...
. He was the most important composer of the Nuremberg school in the first half of the 17th century.


Life

Kindermann was born in Nuremberg and studied music from an early age; at 15 he already had a job performing at Sunday afternoon concerts at the Frauenkirche (he sang bass and played violin). His main teacher was Johann Staden. In 1634/35 the city officials granted Kindermann permission and money to travel to Italy to study new music. Nothing is known about his stay in Italy; he may have visited
Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
like several other Nuremberg composers (
Hans Leo Hassler Hans Leo Hassler (in German, Hans Leo Haßler) (baptised 26 October 1564 – 8 June 1612) was a German composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, elder brother of lesser known composer Jakob Hassler. He was born in N ...
, Johann Philipp Krieger). In January 1636 the city council ordered Kindermann back to take the position of second organist of the Frauenkirche. In 1640 he was employed as organist at Schwäbisch-Hall, but quit the same year to become organist of the Egidienkirche, the third most important position of its kind in Nuremberg after St. Sebald and St. Lorenz. Kindermann stayed in Nuremberg for the rest of his life, and became one of the most famous musicians of the city and its most acclaimed teacher. His pupils included Augustin Pfleger, and also Heinrich Schwemmer and Georg Caspar Wecker, both of whom tutored the last generation of the Nuremberg school, which included the Krieger brothers and, most importantly,
Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel (also Bachelbel; baptised – buried 9 March 1706) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secularity, secular music, and ...
. Kindermann was also instrumental in spreading new music in Nuremberg and south Germany, publishing not only several collections of his own music, but also works by
Giacomo Carissimi (Gian) Giacomo Carissimi (; baptized 18 April 160512 January 1674) was an Italian composer and music teacher. He is one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque or, more accurately, the Roman School of music. Carissimi established the ...
,
Girolamo Frescobaldi Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (; also Gerolamo, Girolimo, and Geronimo Alissandro; September 15831 March 1643) was an Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player. Born in the Duchy of Ferrara, he was one of the most important composers of ke ...
and Tarquinio Merula.


Works

Most of Kindermann's surviving works are vocal pieces that reflect the transition from older forms to the more modern use of
concertato Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a ''genre'' or a ''style'' of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from It ...
techniques and
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 ...
and explore a variety of techniques from
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 ...
s for choir without instruments to concertos for solo voices after Schütz's sectional concertos, recitative and dialogue experiments (some of which look up to late Baroque works - for example, by using unprepared dissonance in the recitative ''Dum tot carminibus'' for tenor and continuo). Some two hundred songs survive, on diverse texts:
homophonic Homophony and Homophonic are from the Greek language, Greek ὁμόφωνος (''homóphōnos''), literally 'same sounding,' from ὁμός (''homós''), "same" and φωνή (''phōnē''), "sound". It may refer to: *Homophones − words with the s ...
settings of brief poetic texts, songs for one or two voices and continuo with instrumental
ritornello A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Renaissance music and Baroque music for orchestra or chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century ...
s, etc. Several manuscript pieces are important precursors to later church cantatas and belong to the earliest large-scale Nuremberg vocal music to have contrasting solo and choral movements. Of the keyboard music, ''Harmonia Organica'' (1645) is the most important collection, not only in the musical sense but also in the history of music printing, as it is perhaps the earliest engraved German music. It consists of 25
contrapuntal In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous Part (music), musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and Pitch contour, melodic contour. The term ...
pieces. The first fourteen are preludes, 15-20 measures long, with no imitative idiom present, each starting with all voices together. The first six cover all church modes (one prelude for both authentic and plagal modes); the next six repeat this series transposing it down a fifth. The rest of the pieces of the collection are titled ''fuga'': some are genuine fugues, others are based on chorale melodies and use them in a variety of ways, sometimes one phrase is answering another, other times the second phrase may be used for an interlude, etc. There is one remarkable triple fugue on chorale melodies, and an early example of chorale fugue (i.e. fugue on the first phrase of the chorale melody), a model which would later be extensively used by central German composers and, most importantly,
Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel (also Bachelbel; baptised – buried 9 March 1706) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secularity, secular music, and ...
and J.S. Bach. The final piece of ''Harmonia Organica'' is a
Magnificat The Magnificat (Latin for "y soulmagnifies he Lord) is a canticle, also known as the Song of Mary or Canticle of Mary, and in the Byzantine Rite as the Ode of the Theotokos (). Its Western name derives from the incipit of its Latin text. This ...
setting, which begins and ends with a full-fledged improvisatory, free section. Different verses are treated differently: some as
cantus firmus In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect trea ...
in one of the voices, one as a fugue, one as an echo, etc. Other surviving keyboard music by Kindermann includes a number of dances for the harpsichord. Kindermann's most important chamber music is perhaps the collection ''Canzoni, sonatae'' (1653), which includes one of the earliest, if not the earliest, use of
scordatura Scordatura (; literally, Italian for "discord", or "mistuning") is a Musical tuning, tuning of a string instrument that is different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual Chord (music), chords ...
in Germany. The pieces of the collection may be seen as precursors to Biber's work; all consist of several contrasting sections, as in similar works by Frescobaldi. Much of the other chamber music, for wind and string instruments, is modelled after Staden's pieces. There is also evidence of lost chamber music collections.


References

* Hans Tischler, Willi Apel. "The History of Keyboard Music to 1700". 1972 Indiana University Press. * Harold E. Samuel. "Johann Erasmus Kindermann", ''
Grove Music Online ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...
'', ed. L. Macy
grovemusic.com
.


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kindermann, Johann Erasmus 1616 births 1655 deaths 17th-century German classical composers German Baroque composers German male classical composers German classical organists Musicians from Nuremberg Organists and composers in the South German tradition Pupils of Johann Staden 17th-century German male musicians German male classical organists