AMERBACH, ELIAS NICOLAUS. – Musician, born in Naumburg around 1530, died in Leipzig in 1597. Organist at the church of St Thomas in Leipzig (1560), he belonged, together with B. Schmidt, G. Woltz, and others, to the group of organists who embellished their compositions, in the final decades of the sixteenth century and part of the seventeenth, with vocal-derived coloratura and ornamentation.
He is the author of two collections of organ music entitled: Orgel oder Instrument-Tabulatur (1571) and Ein neu künstlich Tabulaturbuch.
BIBL.: Elly Schmidt, Lasse's Werke in den Orgeltabulaturen von B. Schmidt u. E. N. A. (Diss. Gottling 1923; R. Wustmann, in Sammelbände der Intern. Musik-Gesellschaft, XI, 1.