Let me first ask a question: “Are you familiar with the music of Michael Praetorius?” You are probably thinking to yourself, “Of course I’m familiar with his music: that’s a rather absurd question.” Then I ask you a second question, “With what pieces of Praetorius are you familiar?” Well, you immediately think of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” (Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen), and then you probably pause a moment. You may each know a few other works, but the fact remains that to most of us Praetorius’ fame is based largely on one single short choral piece. This is rather unique in the whole history of music. There are instances of a composer known for a single large orchestral work or an opera. For example, what other works of Paul Dukas come casually to mind besides the Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Dukas is a “one work” composer because of neglect, but at least he is represented by a piece of some dimensions. Michael Praetorius’ reputation is largely based on one single brief little composition. There is a contributing factor to our neglect of Praetorius in that the complete works have been available for only a comparatively short time. The complete edition was finished just before the second world war, so that it is not widely available, and I suppose we can be forgiven for not yet having a Praetorius festival. But the time is now ripe for the performance of more and more of his music and an appraisal of his stature as a composer. What did this “famous unknown” produce, and is his music worthy of performance? Is all comparable in interest to the “Rose” piece, or is that simply a “fluke”? Should we lift him out of the musicological footnotes? Where should he stand in the literature of music, and of church music in particular?

Let us first see just what Praetorius produced as a composer and writer on music. Musicologists have always known of his encyclopedic survey of music, the Syntagma musicum,and most dictionary articles to this day are largely confined to a discussion of that scholarly work, with painfully brief mention of the composer’s music. (This is even true of the new Grove’s Dictionary,1954.) I will speak of that theoretical work later, but it is the neglect of any but the most casual mention of his music which is unforgivable in the histories and dictionaries.

The works in the complete edition, edited by Blume, are arranged in the chronological order in which they were published in Praetorius’ own lifetime. This very much simplifies our approach to his music since we can see fairly easily the “growth pattern” of his musical style. His style falls into two general periods: the first is dominated by typical sixteenth-century choral technique, and the second shows the emergence of the baroque. The first period is dominated by the style which university music departments like to call “modal counterpoint,” a style largely diatonic, unaccompanied, imitative, and modal. The second period shows a remarkable change of style. There is, first of all, more emphasis on harmony, both in the use of more purely homophonic passages and in a more harmonically conceived counterpoint. In this second period there is also a remarkable use of instruments both in accompanying the choral writing and in independent instrumental passages

Praetorius’ first period we can easily fix as being through the publications of the year 1607. (This period also should include the Latin motets and masses of 1611, which probably were written much earlier than the date of publication.) The second, or later, period includes the publications of the years 1613 through 1621. The published music of the years between 1607 and 1613 varies in style, some works showing close alliance to the sixteenth century and some showing tendencies towards the baroque. It is clearly a period of transition in his stylistic development, and not a true “middle period” in the sense of Beethoven’s middle period, for example.

One can hardly help noting something of a parallel between the lifetimes of Beethoven and Praetorius in their positions at points of transition between major periods in music history, with Beethoven between classicism and romanticism and Praetorius between renaissance and baroque. It would be difficult to say to which man this complete stylistic change was the more soul-searching problem, though the cleavage between classicism and romanticism could hardly have been greater than the vast change taking place in Praetorius’ lifetime. Both men succeeded in solving the problem, and history has yet to decide whether the influence of Praetorius on the succeeding century was as extensive as that of Beethoven on the romantic century.

Now let us turn to the specific question of Praetorius’ historical and musical significance. I would like to consider this under two headings for the sake of clarity. First, the significance of his theoretical work, the Syntagma musicum,and second, the significance of his compositions to history and as music.

First, then, what is Praetorius’ place as a theorist and scholar as represented by his monumental Syntagma musicum? The immediate answer that a musicologist will give is, of course, that it is one of the major sources for our modern knowledge of the state of music in the Renaissance and even for certain details of even earlier periods. Volume One is essentially a history of church music; Volume Two is an encyclopedic survey of instruments; and Volumes Three and Four were to have dealt with aspects of theory, though the fourth volume was apparently never completed. It is the first two volumes that are of particular interest to the church musician. Volume One contains a detailed history of church music plus a study of ancient music. Unfortunately Volume One has not been reprinted in modern edition, though several copies of the original edition are extant. The new edition of Grove’s Dictionary describes the volume in sufficient detail to make one realize how necessary a reprint of that volume should be to the modern scholar.

Volume Two, at the moment, is of greater interest to us because it is available in a facsimile edition published in 1929 by the Praetorius authority, Wilibald Gurlitt. Since its publication in facsimile the volume has been literally a mine of information to the historian. Let us briefly look at some of the aspects of the facsimile to better appreciate Praetorius as a scholar.

First of all, here is a somewhat free translation of the title page of Volume Two. It will give you an idea of the contents of the book just as Praetorius intended for his readers of 1619:

The second volume of the Syntagma musicum by Michael Praetorius of Creuzburg, DE ORGANOGRAPHIA, in which there is pleasant and charming reading matter, useful and necessary not only for the organist, instrumentalist, organ builder, and instrument maker, as well as all devoted to the Muses, but also useful and necessary for Philosophers, Philologists, and Historians; (and this is namely the following:—) the nomenclature, intonation, and character of all instruments old and new, foreign, barbarian, rustic, and unknown instruments, as well as native, artistic, pleasant, and well-known instruments, together with accurate cuts and drawings of the same; and then also a clear description of old and new organs as to manual and pedal clavier, bellows, specification and many a type of stop, and also how regal and clavicembalo are accurately and easily tuned; and what one considers in building an organ; as well as an appended extensive list of illustrations. Printed at Wolfenbuettel by Elias Holwein, etc., etc. Author’s edition. Anno Christi, 1619.

I think we may safely say that, as a title page, this is at least adequate. The cuts and illustrations that Praetorius appends to the book are the source of a multitude of illustrations of old instruments that find their way into almost all modern dictionaries and histories. These pictures and the factual information in the text make the book very possibly the most important source for the period. Within the limits of this paper we cannot mention too many details, but one single area of information might suffice to illustrate its significance, namely, the state of the organ about 1600.

Between pages 161 and 203 (42 pages) Praetorius prints detailed stop lists of some two dozen organs in use in Northern Germany at the time. Even a cursory examination of these stop lists provides some amazing information; large three-manual organs with full pedal were in use in Danzig, Hamburg, and Luebeck, to mention just three familiar cities, and there are several other three-manual specifications as well. The number of stops in these three-manual instruments varies from about thirty to about fifty-five. In the general type of stop list, they resemble our more extreme modern baroque revival instruments. In details these instruments are sometimes even more surprising. For example, I might simply mention the frequency with which the tremulant occurs in these specifications, a rather startling fact in the light of arguments as to whether one should or should not use the tremulant in some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale preludes, some one hundred years later!

From this brief mention of Praetorius’ significance as a scholar we now turn to our second point, namely, the significance of his music to history and to musical literature.

Let us first look at Praetorius’ significance in the instrumental field. Certainly the church musician is interested in Praetorius as an organ composer, and you will perhaps be interested also in his works outside the area of church music.

Praetorius’ independent instrumental music consists of the following: (1) nine organ pieces of the “organ hymn” type, that is, immediate predecessors of the chorale prelude; (2) a single set of variations for organ; (3) an extensive collection of bicinia and tricinia, designed to be either played or sung; (4) a collection of dances for ensemble instruments; and (5) instrumental “symphonies” in some of the later choral works. In addition to these we might mention that he frequently refers, in the prefaces to his choral publications, to the possibility of doing the choral works either unaccompanied or with voices and instruments, or with instruments alone without voices, or on the organ. Apparently Praetorius expected much of the choral music to be arranged for instrumental performance, and such a flexibility of medium is not at all abnormal in the Renaissance and the early Baroque Period.

Apart from actual instrumental music, we should also mention some of the composer’s projected works which unfortunately did not materialize. In the preface to Part Seven of the Muses of Zion(1609; Vol. 7) Praetorius mentions plans to publish toccatas, fugues, fantasies, organ hymns or psalms, “. . . should he live on a bit longer.” The composer did live on for twelve years after this publication, but the projected works did not appear, except for six Latin organ hymns included in one of the publications of 1611 (Hymnodia Sionia; Vol. 12, pp. 7, 45, 46, 147, 240, 254).

Of the instrumental music outlined above, the dance pieces and the instrumental “symphonies” are important to our knowledge of the emergence of certain aspects of the baroque. The collection of dance pieces, published in 1612 under the title Terpsichore,is valuable to the early history of the suite. The dances are arranged by type instead of in a given order, as became the practice later. All the dances are French types. They were probably intended simply for entertainment, music for the Duke of Brunswick, to whom Praetorius was Kapellmeister. Interestingly enough, this collection is Praetorius’ only venture into the realm of secular music, though in the introduction to the publication he mentions intending to produce similar collections of Italian and English dances. They never appeared, however.

The instrumental “symphonies” in the later choral works indicate on the one hand an important influence from renaissance Venice and on the other hand the very beginning of the baroque ensemble—or if you like, orchestral—development in Germany which was to culminate in Johann Sebastian Bach some one hundred years later. These “symphonies” are simply brief instrumental preludes in extended choral pieces. So far as I know, this is the first use of the instrumental “symphonia” in German music, and the only antecedent of the practice is to be found in Venice in the later years of the sixteenth century.

The corpus of organ music by Praetorius includes the nine organ hymns, the solitary set of variations, and the bicinia and tricinia.

The bicinia and tricinia are the most immediately interesting of the organ works for the listener. They are short pieces in two or three parts based on German chorale melodies and are very much like the chorale prelude in technique of composition. In general these pieces make one think distantly of Bach’s Little Organ Book: in the case of both Bach and Praetorius the chorale melodies are treated imaginatively within the limits of very brief little pieces. Praetorius’ bicinia are two-voiced, and are either to be sung by two descant singers (i.e., boy sopranos) or to be played on the organ on two keyboards. This manner of performance is specifically stated by the composer himself in the original introduction to the volume (Vol. 9, p. VIII). The tricinia are to be performed by the organist doing the middle part, the two outer parts being sung by individual singers, creating an interesting and unique sort of sacred chamber music.

The organ hymns, or “psalms,” as Praetorius calls them, are extended pieces based on either a Latin plainsong melody or a German chorale. In the six Latin organ hymns (Vol. 12; see above) the plainsong melody is treated as a cantus firmus, whereas the three based on German chorales (Vol. 7, pp. 263–304) handle the chorale melody with imagination and are musically more interesting than the plainsong-based pieces. The most important of the three German organ hymns is the one based on “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” (I might here call attention to the excellent scholarly edition by Dr. Fleischer, published by Concordia.) The imitative motet principle is the dominant structural technique in this work, as with the other German organ hymns, with each successive phrase of the original chorale melody becoming the subject of a point of imitation. This is, of course, one of the major chorale prelude types throughout the development of that form. We need only call to mind the monumental Aus tiefer Noth of Bach to see an example of the same technique as used by the Eisenach master. These three German organ hymns of Praetorius, interestingly enough, antedate by some fifteen years the chorale preludes of Samuel Scheidt’s Tabulatura nova of 1624, which one usually thinks of as representing the beginning of the true German chorale prelude.

The set of variations on “Now Praise the Lord, O My Soul,” is much less imaginative than the organ hymns. It is characterized by a great deal of mechanical passage work that shows a rather obvious influence of Sweelinck or of the English virginalists.

Now let us turn to the significance of the choral music. I don’t believe I need mention how little is available in modern edition for practical performance. Looking casually through the standard catalogs one finds several versions of “Lo, How a Rose,” and there are about a half dozen or so other similar short pieces available. Peters Edition recently brought out what is probably the most important piece so far available, namely the cantatalike work Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern, which originally appeared in the Puericinium of 1621 (Vol. 19, p. 94). It is a fine example of Praetorius’ later style, showing the emergence of the true baroque. The setting is for double chorus with independent instrumental accompaniment of strings and winds.

We might ask why there is not more of his choral music available. Is it because the music is not worthy of a hearing, or is it because of sheer neglect? I am afraid it is mainly for the last reason—neglect. Of course the complete edition was only recently finished, the last volumes dating from 1936 to 1940 (the edition was begun about 1929). With the difficulties in Europe intervening about 1940, the set has not been generally available to scholars until the last few years, so that publishers will now begin to make up for time lost and improve our acquaintance with Michael Praetorius with at least a few more practical editions.

As an introduction to a somewhat more detailed discussion of the choral music let me put into words two questions which I am sure are crossing your minds: (1) Is the choral music of interest to an audience, or is it only of musicological interest? and (2) What is its historical place, particularly in the development of church music?

As to the first question, whether the choral music has “audience appeal,” the answer is decidedly in the affirmative. For example, if we simply take the pieces similar to “Lo, How a Rose,” we find three volumes full of similar compositions, or about seven hundred such works. Some of those pieces are original with Praetorius (like “Lo, How a Rose”), and others are settings of familiar chorales such as Ein’ feste Burg or the Vater Unser. Almost all are set in the same quasi-chorale style, but with great imagination within the limits of that simple idiom.

Among his later works are many large cantatalike works which could very well take their place alongside the cantatas of Bach musically as well as in their usefulness and appropriateness to the various seasons of the year. The Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern mentioned above is one of those. Another one, perhaps even more interesting, is the lovely Singet und klinget, based on the melody Joseph, lieber Joseph mein, which some of you may know in the nineteenth-century setting by Johannes Brahms for alto voice with viola and piano (Opus 91). And these works are just samples, more or less at random, of the many treasures waiting to be discovered in Praetorius’ choral works. One is almost reminded, though perhaps in a lesser degree, of the rediscovery of Bach’s choral works in the nineteenth century. It seems to me that here is actually a composer of major stature who, for all practical purposes, is completely unknown to us today. One can perhaps hope that by the time we are ready to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth in 1972 our composer will have taken his proper musical place in church literature.

As to the second question stated just above, the historical significance of his choral music in the development of church music, even a superficial survey of his choral compositions discovers some remarkable aspects. Praetorius seems to be the exact figure in whose music the baroque style emerges in the development of German music. His earlier choral music is under the obvious influence of men such as Orlandus Lassus, the Spaniard Victoria, or the Italian Marenzio. In point of fact, Praetorius actually mentions the influence of these three men in one of his prefaces (cf. Vol. 9, p. ix). The later style has its origin in the influence of Venice and the brilliant Venetian style, and also the influence of the experiments in dramatic music in Italy at the turn of the century. The works of the transitional middle years show an influence which seems to be that of Johann Walter.

Now, to better understand his historical significance, let us turn to a survey of his musical production. Most of Praetorius’ works were published within his own lifetime, and this situation is largely due to his fortunate position as Kapellmeister to the Duke of Brunswick at Wolfenbuettel. Praetorius’ publications appeared in about the order in which they were composed, and the complete edition of Blume follows the order of original publication. Hence, one need only casually to glance through the complete edition to see something of the growth and change of style throughout the entire compass of his work from the earliest published compositions of 1605 to the Puericinium of the year of his death, 1621.

The first four volumes of the Muses of Zion (1605–07; Volumes 1 through 4, complete edition) contain motets in a typical sixteenth-century style, unaccompanied, in modal counterpoint, with the imitative principle dominant. (The texts are in German.) The influence here is probably that of Orlandus Lassus mainly. As pointed out before, the composer himself actually mentions this influence, as well as that of Victoria and Marenzio (Muses of Zion, Part IX; Vol. 9, p. ix). To have a composer be so kind to the later historian is a situation almost unheard of in music history. One suspects that Praetorius, being a scholar and historian himself, probably realized—or at least hoped—that posterity might be interested in his music.

In Part Five of the Muses of Zion (1607; Vol. 5) we already begin to see hints of a new influence, which crystallizes in Parts Six through Eight of the Muses of Zion (1609–10; Vols. 6–8). This is the influence of the German chorale and seems possibly to be the influence specifically of Johann Walter, as already suggested earlier in this paper. Practically all the pieces in Parts Six through Eight are set in choralelike style, a remarkable change from the contrapuntal idiom of the earlier works.

Part Nine of the Muses of Zion (1610; Vol. 9) contains the bicinia and tricinia about which we have already spoken. In the light of historical considerations one can perhaps see the significance of these pieces occurring at this point in Praetorius’ development. A change was taking place in the composer’s thinking, with the function of the chorale for the German church composer becoming more and more significant in the composing of new music.

The tenth through thirteenth volumes of the complete edition interrupt our convenient chronological sequence. There is reason to believe that these works were written much earlier than the actual dates of publication. Volume Ten contains “Motets and Latin Psalms of the Muses of Zion,” with a publication date of 1607, which clearly places that collection with the earlier period, and the style of the music is of the Orlandus Lassus character. Volumes Eleven through Thirteen contain various Latin works in a similar style, all published in 1611 but probably actually written about 1607 or earlier. Volume Fourteen contains Latin works also, but with certain features which point to their dating from the earlier part of the transitional period, probably from somewhere in the neighborhood of 1607 or 1608. This volume is a collection of Latin Magnificats, but with interpolated passages in German in a curious style that is a mixture of the German chorale style and the Italian secular madrigal style. (Cf. the influence of Marenzio!)

Volume Fifteen contains the collection of dances which looks forward to the instrumental suite, as already mentioned.

The Urania of 1613 (Vol. 16) marks the beginning of the later period. The contents of Urania consist of polychoral settings of German chorales for two, three, or four choruses. The settings are essentially homophonic but seem to be allied to the massive choral effect of Venetian polyphony as much as to the influence of the chorale. There are aspects of the music itself which point to this influence, such as the sense for color in the alternating of the choruses and then their joining in “tutti” passages. If additional evidence were needed, there is concrete and specific evidence of this Venetian influence in the composer’s own introduction to the volume. Praetorius has been speaking about the problem of keeping the two or more choirs together when separated at some distance. He mentions the practice in Italy of using a basso continuo to keep the choirs together and goes on to say that this practice is to be seen in the “previously unheard” concerti and motets of the “splendid composer and organist Giovanni Gabrieli.” (Vol. 16, p. xiv)

With the Polyhymnia of 1619 (Vol. 17) the baroque style emerges even more fully. Here we have independent instrumental accompaniments and the use of figured bass throughout. (N. B.: Heading the title page are the words Bassus-generalis, seu continuus.) Besides the instrumental innovations, the contrapuntal lines now become more typically baroque than renaissance, with the more obviously instrumental-type lines characteristic of the newer period. All of the works in this volume, moreover, are extended, cantatalike compositions which show a probable acquaintance with the early dramatic experiments of Monteverdi and the Florentine composers.

I might remark parenthetically here that these later works make one think remarkably of Praetorius’ younger contemporary, Heinrich Schütz, and make one wonder to just what extent the younger German may have been influenced by the older man. One usually considers Schütz’s stylistic source to have been mainly from Italy.

To return to the Polyhymnia of 1619, we might cite as an example of the form and style of this collection the Wachet auf! ruft uns die Stimme (Vol. 17, pp. 192–228). It is set for four choruses, though the fourth chorus appears only near the very end, and choruses one and two are in only two parts and, stylistically, seem intended for solo voices. In addition to the vocal parts there is a remarkably full orchestra consisting of strings, two “cornets,” and four trombones. The cornet parts are elaborately virtuoso in style, rather like the baroque trumpet parts in Bach or Handel. The piece is in three movements, the first being preceded by a brief orchestral introduction leading directly into the opening chorus. An orchestral introduction is quite common in these works and often is a completely independent short movement by itself. The figured bass, or continuo, is present throughout the entire piece. The chorale melody is treated freely and imaginatively, and in some ways even more freely than is true of the Bach cantatas. Certainly the Wachet auf and all Praetorius’ later comparable works are true cantatas in all but name.

Pieces in the remaining three volumes are comparable to the Wachet auf. We might call attention to some particularly interesting examples in these last volumes. (1) “Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death” (Polyhymnia exercitatrix; Vol. 18, pp. 44–53): this is a single-movement work and not as extended as the Wachet auf but uses instrumental accompaniment, and its choral parts are even more typically baroque than in that above-mentioned composition. A casual glance at a page calls to mind a page of a Bach cantata. (2) Singet und klinget (Puericinium, 1621; Volume 19, p. 30). This is a cantatalike work after the manner of the Wachet auf, in three movements with instruments. The melody on which the composition is based is the familiar Joseph, lieber Joseph mein mentioned earlier (cf. Brahms). (3) Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern (Ibid.; Vol. 19, p. 94): This is the work recently published by Peters Edition. In every sense of the word it is a true cantata. There are movements and an independent instrumental accompaniment. Moreover, Praetorius here begins to make a distinction in print betwen the full chorus and the solo voice, indicating the full chorus with the word omnes and the solo voice with either solus or voce. This innovation results in something like the coloristic effect of the solo quartet versus the chorus in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis!

The final volume of the complete edition (Vol. 20) contains miscellaneous works, not necessarily all of the last period. The most remarkable work here is the 116th Psalm, published posthumously in 1623. It is not quite as advanced stylistically as the works mentioned before: the instruments largely double the voices, and the Italian influence in the vocal writing is too obviously newly acquired and not yet assimilated. The influence seems to be that of Monteverdi, and several passages are suspiciously like the madrigal-type choruses in that composer’s Orfeo. It probably dates from Praetorius’ first contact with the Italian dramatic influence, and that would place it somewhere between 1613 and 1619.

To sum up the significance of Praetorius in history: it would seem that a reappraisal is in order for the beginnings of the German baroque. We have usually conventionally ascribed to Schütz and Scheidt the origins of the baroque in Germany; to Schütz the emergence of baroque church music and to Scheidt the foundation for baroque organ music. It would begin to seem that quite possibly both men owed their ideas in surprisingly large measure to Michael Praetorius. We can perhaps hope that by the time of Praetorius’ four-hundredth anniversary (1972) we can do justice to his place in the development of music and particularly that of church music.

M P C
Michael Praetorius Creuzburgensis

Born, 1572, at Creuzburg (hence, Creuzburgensis)
Died, 1621, at Wolfenbuettel, as Kapellmeister to the Duke of Brunswick

CHORAL COMPOSITIONS (keyed to the complete works, Fr. Blume, ed.)

1. Motet-style works (motets, masses, etc.; German or Latin text; typical 16th-century influence)
     Vols. 1–4 (1605–07)—German texts
     Vols. 10–12 (1607 and 1611)—Latin texts (origin before 1607?)
2. Motet-style works (German and/or Latin text; mixed influence)
     Vols. 5 and 14 (1607 and 1611, resp.; origin ca. 1607?)
3. Transitional works using chorales
     Vols. 6, 7, 8—homophonic chorale settings (1609–10),
       (Ex.: “Lo, How a Rose”—Vol. 6)
4. Later style: elaborate chorale treatments, or cantatalike works.
     Vol. 16—polychoral chorale settings
     Vol. 18—baroque-type motets using chorales; instruments
     Vols. 17, 19, 20—cantatalike works using instruments;
       chorale subject material

INSTRUMENTAL COMPOSITIONS (cf. the complete works)

1. Ensemble
     Vol.15—dances
2. Organ music
     Six Latin organ hymns; volume 12 (1611; but probably dating
     from ca. 1607), pp. 7, 45, 46, 147, 240, 254
     Bicinia and tricinia, Vol. 9 (1610)
     Three German organ hymns and variations: Vol. 7 (1609)

MODERN EDITIONS, outside complete works:

1. Organ
   1. Complete organ music: ed. Gurlitt, 1929 (out of print)
   2. “A Mighty Fortress,” ed. Fleischer, Concordia
   3. Miscellaneous examples in Peters’ Alte Meister publications
2. Choral
   1. Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern. Peters
   2. Miscellaneous short choruses, G. Schirmer, Carl Fischer, etc.

Washington University, St.
Louis, Mo.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume V (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1959). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.