Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Hassler (baptized August 17, 1562 – June 8, 1612) was a German composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was born in Nuremberg and died in Frankfurt am Main.

Style

Hassler was one of the first to bring the innovations of the Venetian style across the Alps. While musicians of the stature of Lassus had been working in Germany for years, they represented the older school, the prima prattica, the fully developed and refined Renaissance style of polyphony; in Italy new trends were emerging which were to define what was later called the Baroque era. Musicians such as Hassler, and later Schütz, carried the concertato style, the polychoral idea, and the freely emotional expression of the Venetians into the German culture, creating the first and most important Baroque development outside of Italy.

Related Topics:
Prima prattica - Polyphony - Concertato

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Hassler's sacred music is both for the Roman Catholic church and the Lutheran. Stylistically, his earlier music is more progressive than his later: he uses polychoral techniques, textural contrasts and occasional chromaticism in the music he wrote after coming back from Italy; but most of his later religious music is conservative, using linear polyphony in the manner of Palestrina. His secular music—madrigals, canzonette, and songs among the vocal, and ricercars, canzonas, introits and toccatas among the instrumental—show many of the advanced techniques of the Gabrielis in Italy, but with a somewhat more restrained character, and always attentive to craftsmanship and beauty of sound.

Related Topics:
Lutheran - Polychoral - Chromaticism - Palestrina - Madrigals - Canzonette - Ricercar - Canzona - Introit - Toccata

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