ADAMO of FULDA. — Music theorist and composer, b. in 1445, d. shortly after 1517. Around 1490 he was at the Benedictine abbey of Vormbach near Passavia; in 1501 at the court chapel of Turgovia; in 1502 a teacher at the University of Wittenberg; in 1517 at the court chapel of Altenburg. He was probably a Benedictine monk in the monastery of Fulda.
As a theorist, in his treatise De Musica (4 parts, 45 chapters), written around 1490, he provided one of the most systematic presentations of the doctrines professed in the German milieu of the time. As a composer, he was among the greatest Germans of his age. He left numerous works, almost all of them religious in genre (psalms, antiphons, hymns, spiritual songs), in counterpoint upon plainchant melodies, as was the old custom, though not without some affinity with the style of his Flemish contemporaries, especially J. Obrecht.
Studies: A. W. Ambros, Gesch. d. Musik, II and III, Lipsia 1868; H. Riemann, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, II, ibid. 1911–13. Gastone Rossi Doria