Christoph Demantius

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Johann Christoph Demantius (15 December 1567 – 20 April 1643) was a German composer,

His next post, one he held for the rest of his life, was as Kantor to Freiberg Cathedral. While he was able to keep his position, the Thirty Years' War was disruptive to his life, and most of his children, of four different marriages, died due to the hardships imposed by the war.^[1]

Works

Demantius was a hugely prolific composer, though many of his works have been lost. Stylistically he was a successor to

His motets are of a late Renaissance type, and all Lutheran; some are in German and others Latin. They are conservative in that they avoid some of the Italian Baroque innovations such as the concertato style and the basso continuo, both of which were becoming widely used in Germany by 1610; but he also created a highly individual musical language using traditional forms and means, quite distinct from the Palestrinian polyphony adopted by the other composers of the time commonly regarded as "conservative."

He also wrote secular music, both vocal and instrumental, including

As a music theoretician he is famous for compiling the first dictionary of musical terms in the German language. He also published a textbook for teaching music in school, Forma musices, in 1592, at Bautzen.^[2]

References and further reading

• Walter Blankenburg, "Christoph Demantius". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
  ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• Walter Blankenburg/Dorothea Schröder: "Christoph Demantius", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 3, 2007), (subscription access) Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
• ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• ISBN 0-393-09745-5

External links

• Free scores by Christoph Demantius in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Christoph Demantius at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)