(b Thuringia, c1620; d Arnstadt, 1701). German composer, viol player and teacher. He was the outstanding member of a dynasty of Thuringian musicians. Drese is first heard of in Merseburg as collaborator and cathedral musician. By 1648 he was serving as director of music to Duke Wilhelm IV of Saxe-Weimar at Weimar and played a major part in rebuilding the court musical establishment there after the ravages of the Thirty Years War. The musical life at the court benefited from his visits to Warsaw before 1649 to study with Marco Scacchi (returning via Jena), to Dresden in 1652 and 1656 to study with Schütz and to examine the court musical establishment and in 1653 to Regensburg and Coburg. An inventory of the Weimar court music that he compiled in 1662 shows that he played an important part in transmitting Italian musical traditions in particular from region to region. Duke Wilhelm’s death the same year led to the dismissal of the court musicians and after applying unsuccessfully for a post to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, Drese referred to himself as being ‘without a position for some time’. But already by 1663, he went, possibly via Darmstadt, to Jena, where he served the court of Duke Bernhard as Kapellmeister and private secretary and the town as mayor. He strengthened the court musical establishment with some of the musicians who had previously served under his direction at Weimar. He also maintained his connections with Weimar by working there as well as at Jena as a director of operatic and other theatre music. He also had connections with Jena University: for example, he wrote a work to celebrate the duke’s installation as rector of the university, and in 1677 a ‘sacred comedy’ by him on Christ’s resurrection caused a scandal at a student performance; both works are now lost. He was also active as a teacher; Christian Demelius was one of his numerous pupils.
After Duke Bernhard’s death in 1678, Drese moved to Arnstadt to become Kapellmeister to the Count of Schwarzburg and he remained there until his death. There he came into close contact with musicians of the Bach family and others who, like himself, were outstanding viol players. This move caused a decisive change in his life. Whereas he had previously been concerned chiefly with secular music-making, including uninhibited theatre music, he now became a devout advocate of the Pietism of Philipp Jakob Spener. The conventicles of Pietist sympathizers that met in his house aroused the disfavour of their intolerant opponents, and so Drese (who described himself in 1697 as ‘a loyal old Saxon servant approaching the grave’) found that his last years were tinged with bitterness.
Most of Drese’s music is lost, including many works listed in his inventory of 1662 (D-WRtl) and in the Erlebach catalogue (D-RUl). Most of his surviving music awaits proper investigation, as does his influence on his contemporaries; in this respect it is unfortunate that among his lost works is a treatise on music. The motet Wie seelig sind die Toten was composed ‘as the result of Invention having given advantage to Music and to the Trumpet’ (title-page). The trumpet invention was (according to Downey) the development of the single Slide trumpet. The musical invention was a form of dramatic dialogue that radically expanded techniques found in Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien (1636). The Pietism of his last years is foreshadowed to some extent in the melodies that he contributed to collections of sacred verse in the 1650s. His chorale Seelenbräutigam, which was printed in a Darmstadt songbook of 1698, is very well known as Jesu, geh’ voran: this text was later written to it by Zinzendorf.
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Erster Theil etlicher neuen Balletten, Capriccien, Couranten und Sarabanden, 1–3 va, bc (Jena, 1645) |
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Trauer- und Begräbnüslied (Wie seelig sind die Toten), 6vv, 5–6 slide tpt, timp, bc, 2 July 1648 (Erfurt, 1648) |
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Flos passiones oder geistliche Creutz-Bluhme (Jena, 1666) |
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Erster Theil etlicher Allemanden, Couranten, Sarabanden, Balletten, Intraden und Arien (Jena, 1672) |
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Several songs in M. Franck: Friedensdankfest (Coburg, 1650); 14 songs, 1v, bc, 16573 |
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Seelenbräutigam, chorale (Darmstadt, 1698) |
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Trauermusik auf Rat Michel. Wirth, D-STOm |
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Das Himmelreich ist gleich einen König, 4vv, 5 va, org, S-Uu |
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Allemande, courante, a 4, D-Kl |
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Lost: 10 concs., formerly NO; 12 motets, 4–5vv, listed in Erlebach catalogue, Rudolstadt; 14 motets, 4–13vv, some with 2 insts; funeral motets; 1 aria; 3 hunting songs; Theatralische Vorstellung; Adam und Eva (op), 1676; Die erhöhte Dienstbarkeit, Weimar, 1697; 7 dance movts, a 4; treatise on music theory: all listed in Drese catalogue, Weimar |
BlumeEK
WinterfeldEK
A. Aber: Die Pflege der Musik unter den Wettinern (Bückeburg and Leipzig, 1921)
E.W. Böhme: Die frühdeutsche Oper in Thüringen (Stadtroda, 1931/R)
H. Koch: ‘Adam Drese, ein thüringischer Komponist’, Thüringisch Fähnlein, iv/10 (1935)
P. Downey: ‘Adam Drese's 1648 Funeral Music and the Invention of the Slide Trumpet’, Irish Musical Studies, i, ed. G. Gillen and H.M. White (Dublin, 1990), 200–17
G. KRAFT/PETER DOWNEY