Hammerschmidt, Andreas (1611, 1675)

Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611-1675) was a German composer and organist of Bohemian birth. He is the most representative composer of mid-17th-century German church music. Like other composers of his time and place, he suffered greatly from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, and so his first known composition is a prayer of thanksgiving for a Saxon victory. He lived in Freiberg after 1635, and after 1639 in Zittau, where he died.



As an organist he was expected to compose and perform vocal music at the organ and thus, he became a very prolific and extremely popular composer of the style. His output consists mostly of sacred vocal works: he published more than 400 of them in 14 collections, all more or less adhering to the concertato principle.