(b Strasbourg, c1485; d Berne, 1541). German organist and composer. He studied the organ with Paul Hofhaimer from 1498 until about 1500 at the expense of the Elector of Saxony. Until 1508 he was employed at the electoral court in Torgau, first as ‘Meister Pauls Knabe’ and later as an organist. He was probably in Basle some time after this, and met the Amerbach family. In 1514 he was appointed organist in the collegiate church of St Nicolas in Fribourg. Because of his Protestant leanings, which he had expressed in a poem before 1522, he was expelled from Fribourg at the end of 1530. After unsuccessful attempts to find a post in Strasbourg and Basle, Kotter settled in Berne, where, at least after 1534, he earned his living as a schoolmaster. In 1538 he was appointed schoolmaster in Konstanz, but without formally taking up this post he returned to Berne in the same year.
Kotter played a considerable part in the planning and copying of three keyboard tablatures that belonged to the Basle humanist and lawyer Bonifacius Amerbach (1495–1562) (ed. in SMd, vi, 1967). A large part of the first of these is in Kotter’s own hand. The tablatures include some compositions of his own as well as arrangements by him of vocal settings by Barbireau, Hofhaimer, Isaac, Johannes Martini, Sermisy and other composers. A further composition by Kotter is contained in Fridolin Sicher’s organ tablature (ed. in SMd, viii, 1992, 78), and it is possible that Leonhard Kleber’s organ tablature contains some arrangements by him. Kotter’s compositions show him to have been an accomplished musician, able to combine technical skill with musical inventiveness. His freely composed pieces merit special attention as early examples of an individual instrumental style. It is probable that Amerbach’s three tablatures were intended primarily for the clavichord.
W. Merian: Die Tabulaturen des Organisten Hans Kotter (Leipzig, 1916/R) [incl. edns of some pieces]
W. Merian: ‘Bonifacius Amerbach und Hans Kotter’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, xvi (1917), 141–206
W. Gurlitt: ‘Johannes Kotter und sein Freiburger Tabulaturbuch von 1513’, Elsass-Lothringisches Jb, xix (1941), 216–37
H.J. Marx: ‘Der Tabulatur-Codex des Basler Humanisten Bonifacius Amerbach’, Musik und Geschichte/Music and History: Leo Schrade zum sechzigsten Geburtstag (Cologne, 1963), 50–70
M. Schuler: ‘Ein Beitrag zur Biographie Hans Kotters’, Mf, xxii (1969), 197–200
MANFRED SCHULER