Baroque · Germany and Central Europe
1585 – 1672
Köstritz - Dresden
Review
He studied in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli and returned years later to meet Monteverdi. He was a chapel teacher at the Dresden court for more than half a century, even in the worst years of the Thirty Years War.
He adapted the Italian style to the German language and to the Lutheran liturgy. His opera Dafne (1627), today lost, was the first in German. It's Bach's great predecessor.
Main works
- Italian Madrigales op. 1 (1611)
- Psalmen Davids (1619)
- Symphoniae sacrae (1629, 1647, 1650)
- Musikalische Exequien (1636)
- The seven words of Christ on the cross (c. 1645)
- Geistliche Chormusik (1648)
- History of Christmas (1664)
- Passions according to Matthew, Luke and John (1665- 1666)
