Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Hassler (born October 26, 1564, Nürnberg [Germany]—died June 8, 1612, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]) was an outstanding German composer notable for his creative expansion of several musical styles.

Hassler studied with his father, the organist Isaak Hassler (d. 1591). After mastering the imitative techniques of Orlando di Lasso and the fashionable polychoral style of the Venetians, he traveled to Venice in 1584 to study organ playing and composition with Andrea Gabrieli. The light, elegant secular music of Orazio Vecchi, Baldassare Donato, and Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi and the keyboard works of the Venetian school soon attracted him. In 1585 he returned to Germany as organist to the Fugger banking family of Augsburg. Hassler and his brothers Kaspar and Jakob were granted titles of nobility in 1595 by Emperor Rudolf II. In 1600 he was appointed director of music for the city of Augsburg and in 1601 for Nürnberg. He moved to Dresden in 1608 to become the court organist for Christian II, elector of Saxony.

Hassler’s style is a fusion of German counterpoint and Italian form. His Madrigali (1596), though avoiding the harmonic experiments of such 16th-century madrigalists as Luca Marenzio, are considered to be among the finest of their time. His instrumental compositions and his church music—Protestant and Roman Catholic—were widely imitated. His German songs owe much to the homophonic dance rhythms of Gastoldi. The best-known collection of these songs is the Lustgarten (1601; “Pleasure Garden”), which contains the charming “Mein Gemüt ist mir verwirret.” This tune reappears in Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion under the title “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.”

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