Staden, Johann

(b Nuremberg, bap. 2 July 1581; d Nuremberg, bur. 15 Nov 1634). German composer and organist. He was a distinguished and versatile composer, and one of the outstanding German musicians of his day. In his later years he was the leading musician in Nuremberg and established the so-called Nuremberg school of the 17th century. He was the father of Sigmund Theophil Staden.

1. Life.

Staden's father married Elisabeth Löbele as his second wife in December 1574, and Johann was born of this marriage. The year of his birth is given on his portrait (see illustration) as 1581; the Nuremberg baptismal records show that a son called Johannes was born on 2 July to Hans and Elisabeth Starnn, this surname undoubtedly being a scribal error for ‘Staden’. Doppelmayr wrote that Staden had become celebrated as an organist in Nuremberg by the age of 18. This reputation, and perhaps also experience as an assistant organist at one of the Nuremberg churches, led to his first traceable appointment, as court organist at Bayreuth; he is described thus in the Nuremberg city record of his marriage on 16 April 1604. After a big fire at Bayreuth in 1605, Margrave Christian moved his court to Kulmbach, where it remained until 1610. The only traces of Staden during these years are the baptismal records of his children and the dedications of his works. Three baptisms at Kulmbach in 1606, 1607 and 1608 identify him as court organist. The dedications of his Neue teutsche Lieder (1609) and Neue teutsche geistliche Gesäng (1609) are signed from Kulmbach and that of his Venus Kräntzlein from Bayreuth on 1 May 1610.

Staden must soon have returned to Nuremberg, for a daughter was baptized there on 10 January 1611. After the death of H.L. Hassler in June 1612, Staden took over his post as court organist in Dresden until late 1613 or early 1614. He was back in Nuremberg in 1614 and 1615 for the baptisms of two more daughters, but his name does not appear in the city records until 1616, when he dedicated a work to the city council, and the council promised him the next organist's post to become vacant. That occurred on 20 June 1616 at the Spitalkirche, and on 19 November of the same year Staden moved to St Lorenz to succeed Kaspar Hassler as organist. In 1618 he was appointed organist of St Sebaldus, the most important musical position in Nuremberg, which he held for the rest of his life.

That Staden had a wide reputation as an organist is suggested by Margrave Christian's invitation to him in 1618 to join Michael Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Schütz in testing a new organ at Bayreuth. As Nuremberg's leading musician he was often asked by the city council to judge new music that composers dedicated to the city. Among such works passed on to him were the second part of Schein's Opella nova (1626), Melchior Franck's Suspirium Germaniae (1628) and Scheidt's second set of Geistliche Concerten (1634); the letters of dedication of these three works are in the Nuremberg Staatsarchiv (Rechnungsbelege nos.702 and 783; those of Scheidt and Schein ed. in Zirnbauer, 1959). With great devotion and energy Staden established the direction that the so-called Nuremberg school was to take during the rest of the 17th century. Among his pupils were J.E. Kindermann, two lesser Nurembergers, Paul Grimmschneider and Daniel Dietel, and probably David Schedlich. A teacher-pupil tradition runs uninterruptedly from Staden and Kindermann through Schwemmer and G.C. Wecker to Johann Krieger and Johann Pachelbel at the beginning of the next century.

Staden also taught his four sons. They included not only Sigmund Theophil Staden, but two others who wrote some music: Johann (1606–27) by whom there are two pieces in his father's Hauss-Music (RISM 1628⁶ and 1634⁴, both reprinted in 1646⁵); and Adam (1614–59), who is known by three funeral songs (D-Nst) and who wrote the texts of two of them as well as those of five other pieces, two by his brother Sigmund Theophil and three by Schedlich.

2. Works.

About half of Staden's extant works have survived in incomplete form. Except for some instrumental pieces in two manuscripts, his music exists in printed partbooks (without bar-lines and with traces of mensural notation such as ligatures and blackened notes). His first printed work was Neue teutsche Lieder (1606), which was soon followed by two other collections of polyphonic secular songs, Neue teutsche Lieder (1609) and Venus Kräntzlein (1610); all three have instrumental pieces appended. Closely related stylistically to these secular works are the various collections of sacred songs: Neue teutsche geistliche Gesäng (1609), Drey christliche Betgesäng (1622), the four parts of Hauss-Music (1623–8), Musicalischer Freuden- und Andachtswecker (1630), the 12 strophic songs in Hertzens Andachten (1631) and the 12 songs appended to his son S.T. Staden's new edition of Hassler's Kirchen Gesäng (1637). These collections provide a total of 65 secular and 180 sacred polyphonic songs by Staden. His models, as for other composers of the Nuremberg school such as H.C. Haiden, Melchior Franck and Johannes Jeep, were the songs of Leonhard Lechner and especially H.L. Hassler (Neue teutsche Gesäng, 1596, and Lustgarten, 1601). Most of Staden's songs are in four parts (though many are in three or five parts), all are without basso continuo, and, as Staden wrote in the foreword to volume iv of his Hauss-Music, they can also be performed on instruments. The style is predominantly note-against-note, but one does find imitative counterpoint, especially in Venus Kräntzlein. The texts are by earlier and contemporary poets, including Staden himself; chorale texts are rare. The songs are distinguished by folklike melodies and simple rhythms.

Staden published no further secular vocal music after leaving the Bayreuth court about 1610. His principle sacred works are a mixture of old and new styles: some motets without basso continuo, some with continuo as well as other instruments, and choral and solo concertos. His first major work, Harmoniae sacrae (1616), contains all these types and is of considerable historical interest. The first 21 pieces are five- to eight-part motets without continuo, modelled after Lassus; an appendix consists of six pieces for two to five voices with continuo (some also have other instrumental parts) in the style of Lodovico Viadana's Cento concerti ecclesiastici (1602). Furthermore, the eighth partbook has all the parts in open score for the organist, which appears to be the earliest German instance of this Italian practice. Along with Aichinger's Cantiones (1607–9), Michael Praetorius's Urano-Chorodia (1613), the first part of Schein's Opella nova (1618) and Schütz's Psalmen (1619), Staden's Harmoniae sacrae offers some of the earliest sacred concertos in Germany; through it he introduced to Nuremberg an obligatory basso continuo (in the style of Viadana), independent instrumental accompaniment, the solo concerto and the modern score. Nevertheless, the basic style is still that of the motet; melodically and harmonically there is no trace of the seconda pratica anywhere in Staden's output. Other collections that can be grouped stylistically with Harmoniae sacrae are Harmoniarum sacrarum continuatio (1621), which also contains open scores, Harmoniae novae sacrarum cantionum (1628, ‘cum & sine Basso ad Organum’) and Harmoniae variatae sacrarum cantionum (1632), though the continuo part of all three is usually a basso seguente.

Staden's first major work with German texts is Kirchen-Music (1625–6), which contains several examples of concerted writing for solo voices, chorus and mixed vocal and instrumental groups. Volume i makes extensive use of chorale texts, whose melodies often serve as cantus firmi in the manner of the chorale motets of Senfl and Heinrich Finck a century earlier; in general, however, chorales play a lesser role in Staden's music. The texts of volume ii are psalms and other biblical verse, usually set in concerto style. The careful attention to declamation and pictorial aspects of the texts makes Kirchen-Music Staden's most expressive work. The basso continuo partbook of volume ii contains his well-known ‘brief and simple introduction’ to ‘basso ad organum’ (see Arnold, 100ff, and the foreword to edn of vol.i, DTB, xii, Jg.vii/1, p.xlii). He added nothing to the theories of Viadana, Agazzari and Michael Praetorius, but he provided a clear summary of these earlier writings and showed his thorough understanding of the various types of basso continuo (see Eggebrecht). His Hertzens Andachten (1631) and Geistliche Music-Klang (1633) also contain solo concertos, and his lost Davids Harpffe (1643) probably did so too. With his Hertzentrosts-Musica (1630) he introduced the solo continuo song to Nuremberg, and along with Schein and Melchior Franck he was an early composer of motet dialogues, two of which appear in Hauss-Music (1628).

Staden's instrumental music, with Hassler's Lustgarten as its model, ranks with that of Haussmann and Franck as among the most important in the Germany of his time. In addition to the instrumental pieces appended to his collections of secular songs of 1606, 1609 and 1610 and five pieces in a manuscript tablature, there are three printed collections by him, which appeared in 1618, 1625 and 1643 respectively. This gives a total of 196 pieces, many of which were probably written for a Nuremberg Musikkränzlein, a group of amateur performers (see Nagel, 1895, and Martin). The pieces include many and various dance movements, not grouped by key, as well as sinfonias, sonatas (which are among the first published German examples of the form), intradas, canzonas and fantasias. Occasionally one finds a thematic relation between single pieces.

To sum up, Staden was one of Germany's earliest exponents of the concertato style (both choral and solo) and the continuo. But his maxim, according to Herbst and Walther, was: ‘the Italians do not know everything, the Germans can also do something’. And indeed his output shows neither a complete surrender to, nor a stubborn evasion of, new Italian styles, forms and textures, including those based on the continuo, such as concertato, monody and recitative. Instead his works reveal a conservative interpolation of these elements with the German traditions of syllabic treatment of the text, unadventurous harmony and counterpoint and the dominating sacred songs with their restricted melodic flow and limited forms.

WORKS

printed works published in Nuremberg, unless otherwise stated

Editions: J. Staden: Ausgewählte Werke, i, ed. E. Schmitz, DTB, xii, Jg.vii/1 (1906) [S i]J. Staden: Ausgewählte Werke, ii, ed. E. Schmitz, DTB, xiv, Jg.viii/1 (1907) [S ii]Chorbuch, ed. F. Jöde (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin, 1927–31) [J]

sacred vocal

secular vocal

instrumental

WRITINGS

Letter, 4 Dec 1626, Nuremberg, Staatsarchiv

Kurz und einfältig Bericht, see Kirchen-Music, ii (1626)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WaltherML

J.A. Herbst: Musica moderna prattica (Frankfurt, 1653, 2/1658)

J.G. Doppelmayr: Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern (Nuremberg, 1730)

R. Eitner: ‘Johann Staden: eine Bio- und Bibliographie’, MMg, xv (1883), 101–6, 119–24

W. Nagel: ‘Die Nürnberger Musikgesellschaft (1588–1629)’, MMg, xxvii (1895), 1–11

W. Nagel: ‘Zur Biographie Johann Stadens und seiner Söhne’, MMg, xxix (1897), 53–61

A. Werner: ‘Samuel und Gottfried Scheidt’, SIMG, i (1899–1900), 401–45

E. Schmitz: Introduction to DTB, xii, Jg.vii/1 (1906/R)

F.T. Arnold: The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-bass (London, 1931/R), 100ff

H. Eggebrecht: ‘Arten des Generalbasses im frühen und mittleren 17. Jahrhundert’, AMw, xiv (1957), 61–82

U. Martin: ‘Die Nürnberger Musikgesellschaften’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, xlix (1959), 185–225

H. Zirnbauer: Der Notenbestand der Reichstädtischen Nürnbergischen Ratsmusik (Nuremberg, 1959)

H. Zirnbauer: ‘Lucas Friedrich Behaim’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, i (1960), 330–51

F. Blume: ‘Die Handschrift T 131 der New York Public Library’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962), 51–66

O. Mischiati: ‘L’intavolatura d’organo tedesca della Biblioteca nazionale di Torino’, L’organo, iv (1963), 1–154

S.B. Collins: Johann Staden: his Life and Times (diss., U. of Texas, 1987)

HAROLD E. SAMUEL