Christian Erbach

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christian Erbach (the elder; * around 1570 in Gau-Algesheim near Bingen ; † between June 9 and 14, 1635 in Augsburg ) was a German composer and organist during the transition from the Renaissance to the early Baroque .

Live and act

No information has been passed on about Christian Erbach's early years or his apprenticeship. 19th century music historians have suspected that he was studying in Venice, but there is no evidence for this. One of his first teachers was probably Johannes Wigand, Ludirector in Erbach's hometown, but no source is known for this either. His earliest documented mention is the publication of a five-part litany in the second book of the Thesaurus litaniarum the Augsburg musician Georg Victorinus in 1596. Around this time, Erbach has been from Augsburg Bankiers- and merchant family Fugger promoted the organist at the royal chapel of the Fugger it in the 1590s. In 1600 he dedicated his first book of Modi sacri to his patron Markus Fugger the Younger (1564–1614) ; this also contained a Votum nuptiale , composed for his wedding to Maria Salome von Königsegg on November 16, 1598. The dedication preface of this book also allows further conclusions to be drawn about Erbach's relationship to the Fugger family and their support. After Markus Fugger's death in 1614, Erbach stopped working at the court orchestra.

When Hans Leo Haßler left Augsburg in 1602, Erbach gradually took over several of his offices, such as the post of organist at the collegiate monastery of St. Moritz on March 27 and the office of organist in the imperial city of Augsburg on June 11, which was responsible for the management the local town piper was connected. A serious illness in Erbach is documented for 1603; In the following years he gradually expanded his activities for Augsburg. His contract with the city was extended in 1609, 1614 and 1620. When he was appointed as the successor to Erasmus Mayr as the Augsburg cathedral organist on February 26, 1625, he gave up his service at the collegiate church of St. Moritz; At the cathedral there was a collaboration with Gregor Aichinger . When Swedish troops occupied Augsburg in the course of the Thirty Years War in 1632, Christian Erbach had to vacate his seat on the city's Grand Council, and his financial situation deteriorated considerably. For lack of money he was dismissed from the office of cathedral organist on June 9, 1635; the composer died shortly afterwards and was buried in Augsburg on June 14th. On September 7th of that year his widow received the last quarterly payment. His successor as Augsburg cathedral organist was Wolfgang Agricola for about a year.

His son Christian Erbach the Younger (* 1603 in Augsburg, † September 1645 there) had his training at the Jesuit high school in Augsburg and at the University of Dillingen and worked from 1636 to 1645 as the Augsburg cathedral organist. Only a few motets of his compositions are known.

meaning

Christian Erbach had greater importance for music in southern Germany in the first third of the 17th century because of his work as a teacher to a large number of students who founded an influential school for organists in southern Germany. Of these students, Johann Klemm is the best known. In addition, his work as an expert on organ building was of some importance. Of his compositional work, that for keyboard instruments has the greatest weight; These include, in that order, the approximately 150 Toccatas , Canzones and Ricercare . The toccatas are based on Venetian models and show the typical passages, sometimes with a contrapuntal middle section. The canzones are based on the canzones for ensembles, but also contain occasional toccata-like elements. His Introit compositions are also similar to the Toccatas. The Ricercare von Erbach often use several topics, usually two that contrast each other, sometimes up to four topics. There are certain similarities between the themes of this instrumental music by Erbach and the musical themes for keyboard instruments by other contemporary composers, such as Johann Ulrich Steigleder in Stuttgart and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck in Amsterdam .

Just as Erbach's instrumental music is partly based on Venetian models, his vocal music is partly based on the double-choir works by Andrea Gabrieli ; through them there was a certain establishment of polychoralism in southern Germany. Erbach's choral works enjoyed general appreciation, which is evident from the frequency with which they are included in collective prints of the late 16th and 17th centuries and are mentioned in inventories of that time. “With his work, Christian Erbach has broken through and expanded the mostly modest standard repertoire of his time in terms of composition, as well as summarizing the reception traditions of Italian music in an exemplary manner” (Christoph Hust in the MGG source).

Works

  • Vocal compositions
    • Collection Modi sacri sive Cantus musici for four to ten voices, Augsburg 1600
    • Collection Mele sive Cantiones sacrae for four to six voices, Augsburg 1603
    • Collection Modorum sacrorum sive Cantionum for four to nine voices, Liber 2, Augsburg 1604
    • Collection Modorum sacrorum tripertitorum for five voices, three parts, Dillingen 1606
    • Collection Sacrorum cantionum for four to five voices, Liber 3, Augsburg 1611
    • Eight different sacred German songs with four voices, Augsburg without a year
    • Missae ad praecipuos dies festos accomodatae , Erfurt 1630
    • Missa paschali to five voices
    • Officium pro fidelibus defunctis to five votes
    • 3 antiphons to six voices
    • Gloria patri to five votes
    • 2 litanies of five votes
    • 44 motets with four to five voices
    • Litany of six votes
    • Gloria patri to four votes
    • 25 motets with four to eight voices
    • 1 spiritual song with five voices
    • 1 Italian madrigal of six parts
    • 5 Magnificat cycles
    • many more vocal works in collective prints
  • Instrumental compositions
    • Canzona La Paglia to five votes
    • About 150 toccatas, canzones and ricercare in several sources

Discography

  • Organ works: Magnificat of the 2nd Vespers on Pentecost; Canzone in the 2nd, 4th & 8th tone; Ricercare in the 7th & 9th tone; Toccata in the 7th tone (on the Motette label)

Literature (selection)

  • J. Vleugels: For the care of Catholic church music in Württemberg from 1500 to 1650 , Kassel 1930
  • O. Origin: The choir order of 1616 at Augsburg Cathedral. A contribution to the question of performance practice. In: Festschrift G. Adler, Vienna 1930, pages 137–142
  • R. Schaal: For music maintenance in the collegiate monastery St. Moritz in Augsburg. In: Die Musikforschung No. 7, 1954, pages 1–24
  • A. Gottron: Christian Erbach (1570–1635), a famous Gau-Algesheim composer. In: 600 years city of Gau-Algesheim, edited by A. Ph. Brück, Gau-Algesheim 1955, pages 98-109
  • SH Sharpe: An Introduction to the Keyboard Works of Christian Erbach (1573–1635) , dissertation at Bloomington University Indiana 1961
  • WK Haldeman: The Vocal Compositions of Christian Erbach (c1570–1635) , 2 volumes, dissertation at the University of Rochester / New York 1962
  • A. Gottron: Christian Erbach as a vocal composer. In: Communications from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Mittelrheinische Musikgeschichte No. 1, 1985, issue 9, page 73 and following
  • DL Brattain: The Organ Ricercars of Hans Leo Hassler and Christian Erbach , dissertation at Columbus University, Ohio 1979
  • Ms. W. Riedel: Christian Erbach. On the 350th anniversary of the death of the master from Gau-Algesheim. In: Heimat-Jahrbuch Landkreis Mainz-Bingen No. 29, 1985, pages 110-114
  • A. Beer: Gregor Aichinger and Christian Erbach as organ appraisers in Feuchtwangen. In: Musik in Bayern No. 39, 1989, pages 75–82
  • R. Charteris: A New Source of Late Renaissance Sacred Vocal Music. In: Festschrift J. Steele, edited by W. Drake, Stuyvesant / New York 1997, pp. 197-231
  • A. Edler: Genres of Music for Keyboard Instruments , Part 1, From the Beginnings to 1750 , Laaber 1997 (= Handbook of Musical Genres No. 7 Part 1)

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ The Music in Past and Present (MGG), Person Part Volume 6, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Basel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1116-0
  2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 3: Elsbeth - Haitink. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1980, ISBN 3-451-18053-7 .
  3. ↑ Lexicon of the Organ, edited by Hermann Josef Busch and Matthias Geuting, 2nd edition, Laaber Verlag Laaber 2008, ISBN 978-3-89007-508-2
personal data
SURNAME Erbach, Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Erbbach, Christian; Erbacher, Christian; Ernbacher, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and organist of the early baroque
DATE OF BIRTH around 1570
PLACE OF BIRTH Gau-Algesheim near Bingen am Rhein
DATE OF DEATH June 1635
Place of death augsburg