The year of birth 1556 of Johannes Nucius, actually Johannes Nüßler, is not absolutely certain. All important personal details come from the respective prefaces to his printed works, whereby his place of birth, Görlitz, was stated by himself in the edition of his motets (1591). The preface to his ''Musices poeticae'' of December 1612 states that he had been working on music for 42 years, but this does not give a definite year of birth. Strictly speaking, the year 1556 repeatedly mentioned in the general literature is a guess. According to his own statement, he was a pupil of Johann Winckler from Mittweida at the ''Görlitz Gymnasium Augustum'' who worked in Görlitz from 1573 to 1582. Even 40 years later, the composer was still praising Winckler's teaching, which, as he explained in the preface, gave him the foundations for his Musices poeticae. The composer's good knowledge of Latin also indicates a sound humanistic education. Nucius entered the Cistercian abbey of Rauden in Upper Silesia around 1586, which indicates a later year of birth, as it was rather unusual for a novice to enter a monastery at the age of 30. He was ordained a deacon shortly afterwards.
As early as 1591, he was elected abbot of Himmelwitz, a smaller subsidiary foundation of the Rauden monastery. In 1598, he delegated many of his administrative tasks to one of his priors in order to gain more time for composing and writing. During this time, he wrote his second book of motets, dedicated to Leubuss Abbot Matthäus Rudolph, which was published together with the second edition of his first book of motets in 1609 by Nicolaus Sartorius (1605-1670) in Liegnitz. The masses that were also composed during this time have not survived, as they were not printed. The treatise Musices poeticae, which was significant for the theory of composition in the 17th century, was published in 1613. During a fire at the monastery on June 22, 1617, not only the church and more than half of the buildings were destroyed, but also the entire music collection, including some of Nucius' works and the second part of the manuscript of the aforementioned treatise. One of the consequences of the fire was that Nucius was heavily involved in the reconstruction of the church and monastery in the last two years of his life.
Johannes Nucius died seriously ill and blind on March 25, 1620 in Himmelwitz and was buried in the abbey church he had built. A memorial plaque commemorates him in the place where he died.
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Note: Translated from a German version of Wikimedia into English.
