Johann Samuel Welter

Johann Samuel Welter (born August 27, 1650 in Obersontheim , † July 27, 1720 in Schwäbisch Hall ) was a German composer .

Live and act

Johann Samuel Welter was born on August 27, 1650 in Obersontheim as the son of an organist and forester . “Because of a feeling of good temper” he received lessons in singing and playing the violin from the age of nine. He attended grammar school in Schwäbisch Hall, after which he learned from his brother Johann Welter, who worked as a “city musician ” and trombonist in Nuremberg .

Probably in 1668 he entered the service of Count Joachim Albrecht von Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, a "great lover of music", as organist and chancellor. Welter's first known compositions were written in Kirchberg : they were printed in Schwäbisch Hall in 1674 as “Musicalische Gesüthsbelustigung”. He seems to have already made a name for himself there, because the young musician was appointed organist of the main church of St. Michael and thus the successor to Georg Wolfgang Druckermüller , who died in 1675 , who had also earned a high reputation as a musician and composer. He held this office for 45 years until he died on July 28, 1720 at the age of 70 from a "weak stomach". He had 16 children from three marriages, but only five of them survived.

The imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall had slowly recovered from the afflictions of the Thirty Years' War and developed a lively musical life. The council took a keen interest in promoting sacred music. Welter's main task was the musical arrangement of the services. In addition, he had to supervise the school choir of the grammar school and give music lessons to particularly gifted boys. Part of his job was also the preparation of compositions. Welter left a total of around 400 pieces when he died. Most of them have been lost; the work edition published in 1993 still contains eleven cantatas, two "Magnificat" and eleven hymns. They paint only a fragmentary picture of the work of a musician who, in his time, gained a reputation that reached far beyond the region and refused honorable appointments to Berlin , Frankfurt am Main , Augsburg and Coburg . Today music historians refer to him as one of the most important choral composers between Hieronymus Praetorius and Johann Sebastian Bach .

literature

• Andreas Traub (Ed.): Johann Samuel Welter (1650-1720): The spiritual work. Cantatas, Magnificat, hymns . Monuments of Music in Baden-Württemberg , Volume 1. Munich 1993, ISBN 3-921946-40-9 .
• Andreas Traub / Rainer Bayreuther: Johann Samuel Welter (1650–1720) . In: Rainer Bayreuther / Nikolai Ott (eds.): Choir composers in Württemberg , Esslingen a. a .: Helbling 2019, ISBN 9783862274185 , pp. 24–31.

Web links

• Works by and about Johann Samuel Welter in the catalog of the German National Library