Everything about Melchior Franck totally explained
Melchior Franck (c.
1579 –
June 1,
1639) was a
German composer of the late
Renaissance and early
Baroque eras. He was a hugely prolific composer of
Protestant church music, especially
motets, and assisted in bringing the stylistic innovations of the
Venetian School north across the
Alps into Germany.
Life
Details of his early life are sparse, as is common for composers of the time. He was born in
Zittau, and possibly studied with
Christoph Demantius there, and also later with
Adam Gumpelzhaimer in
Augsburg. By
1601 he was in
Nuremberg, as a music teacher; there he met
Hans Leo Hassler, and learned from him both the
Venetian polychoral style and the
polyphonic style of the high Renaissance, both of which he incorporated into his own composition.
In
1602 he took a position as Kapellmeister in
Coburg to Prince
Johann Casimir, and he remained in Coburg for the rest of his life. For the earlier portion of this time, the situation was ideal for him; he was supported by his patron, and had the resources necessary to carry on his composing. Unfortunately the
Thirty Years' War devastated the region around Coburg; in addition to the military depredations, the
typhus brought by the armies depopulated the entire region and ruined the economy. Franck was fortunate in being able to make a living throughout this terrible period as a musician, unlike his contemporary at
Halle,
Samuel Scheidt, who lost his Kapellmeister post. Unfortunately, though, Franck's wife and two of his children died.
Works
Franck was a popular composer, and wrote an enormous amount of music, including more than 40 books of
motets for a total of over 600 motets alone; in addition he wrote secular songs, including
quodlibets, psalm settings,
bicinia,
tricinia, instrumental dances and numerous miscellaneous pieces.
His motets are varied in style. Many are
chorale motets, an exclusively
Protestant variation of the motet, and these are written in
German. Almost all use the late Renaissance idiom of
Lassus, with carefully controlled
dissonance and smoothly flowing
polyphony. Some are simple and
homophonic, and pay unusually close attention to text setting (interestingly, this was also a trend in the music of the concurrent
Catholic Counter-Reformation, and represented a reaction against the music of the previous generations). Others are written in the
polychoral style related to the Venetian practice, with the important difference that there's no spatial separation of the choirs: the antiphonal parts are all within the group. However the most unusual is a collection from
1602 called
Contrapuncti, which are early examples of
fugues. They are strictly contrapuntal, and include
real answers; occasionally the points of imitation use
stretto. Each successive point of imitation uses as its text the successive verse of the chorale being set.
Even though most of his motets use frankly Renaissance contrapuntal idiom, he often used the
basso continuo, a relatively recent innovation of the early Baroque, and also used instrumental doublings of the vocal parts.
Franck was a conservative composer who was contemporary with the more famous, and much more progressive,
Heinrich Schütz; however his works were popular and often reprinted during his lifetime.
Further Information
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