PRAETORIUS, MICHAEL. - Composer and music theorist, b. 15 Feb. 1571 at Kreuzburg (Thuringia), d. 15 Feb. 1621 at Wolfenbüttel (Brunswick). He was organist (from 1604), chapel master and secretary to the Duke of Brunswick at Lüneburg, and held the title of prior of Ringelheim.
Numerous are the collections of his compositions that were printed (especially to be remembered are the nine parts of Musae Sioniae, 1244 songs [Wolfenbüttel 1605-10]); but his principal work is the treatise Syntagma musicum, in 3 vols. The first, in 2 parts (I, Wolfenbüttel 1614; II, Wittenberg 1615), written in Latin with interpolations of German, contains a historical excursus on ancient music, with the secular instruments pertaining to it, and on church music. The second, also in 2 parts (I, Wolfenbüttel 1619; II, ibid. 1620), written in German, is the most important repertory for the history of the musical instruments of his time, also because it is enriched with 42 precious plates reproducing the instruments themselves in groups and families (it was reprinted in facsimile with an introduction by W. Gurlitt [Kassel 1920] as vol. XIII of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung). The third (Wolfenbüttel 1619), containing theories and examples of musical composition, precious for the history of solmization, of notation (ligatures, proportions), on the tactus, on the basso continuo, etc., (reprinted by E. Bernoulli in 1916).
Bibliography3 works
Luisa Cervelli