Johann Melchior Caesar

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Johann Melchior Caesar (* around 1648 in Zabern ; † October 18, 1692 in Augsburg ) was a German composer.

Life

Johann Melchior Caesar was a son of Hans Niclaus Kayser and Anna Maria Bilthauer. His father worked as a sacristan in Zabern. According to the parish list of Zabern, he attended the Latin school there in 1652 and sang as a choirboy in the collegiate church. He received his first music lessons from schoolmaster Urban Ludwig Murschhauser, whose son Franz Xaver (1663-1738) worked as a church musician in Munich.

From 1663 Caesar attended the University of Würzburg. Here, under the guidance of Philipp Friedrich Buchner and Tobias Richter, he dealt extensively with the Würzburg court and cathedral music. In 1667 he received a position as court and cathedral music director with Cardinal-Prince-Bishop Friedrich Landgrave of Hesse in Breslau for a wage of 125 thalers with the usual accidents. In 1679 he succeeded Johann Steger in Würzburg as court and cathedral music director of Peter Philipp von Dernbach . In 1668 he worked as the cathedral music director in Augsburg . There he was supported in particular by Johann Rudolph Graf Fugger von Kirchberg and Weißenhorn, for whom he often took over the direction of the table music as a visitor.

After Caesar, who was married to Marie Eleonore Jonist, Johann Michael Galley followed as cathedral musician after his death.

Works

Caesar wrote numerous church music works. In his masses, offerings , psalms and hymns, he worked in the Baroque style with choral pieces accompanied by orchestras. He designed the melodies and declamation of the chords in a popular way and wanted to achieve a more direct effect on the listener than artistic effects. With short sonatas and ritornelas for violins, he succeeds in creating works that are tonally and architecturally balanced. He worked on some polyphonic pieces in the style of the Reservata .

Unusually, Caesar wrote in the forewords of his pieces that he was adhering to the liturgy, with which he presumably spoke out against too much secularization in baroque church music. However, influences of Italian music can also be found in his works. For the secular piece “Wend-Unmuth” he worked in a style that Valentin Rathgeber later adopted in his “Augsburger Tafelkonfekt”.

Caesar was regarded by contemporaries as a respected artist, whom WC Prinz counted among the “newer and more famous composers”. Another sign of his fame is that Johann Jakob Lotter was still publishing his works in Augsburg in the 18th century.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Caesar, Johann Melchior
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1648
PLACE OF BIRTH Babble
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1692
Place of death augsburg