11 Facts About Andreas Hammerschmidt

Andreas Hammerschmidt was a German Bohemian composer and organist of the early to middle Baroque era.

Andreas Hammerschmidt was one of the most significant and popular composers of sacred music in Germany in the middle 17th century.

Andreas Hammerschmidt was born in Brux to a Saxon father and a Bohemian mother.

In 1626 the family had to flee Bohemia, during the Thirty Years' War, after it had become Catholic; they settled in Freiberg, Saxony, where Andreas must have received his musical education.

Andreas Hammerschmidt left Freiberg in 1633, through his mentor Stephan Otto, taking a post as organist for Count Rudolf von Bunau in Weesenstein, but returned to Freiberg the next year as an organist.

Andreas Hammerschmidt was married shortly after his return there, and of his six children three died in infancy.

Andreas Hammerschmidt seems to have profited well from his activities as a musician and civic leader, and evidently lived in some luxury, having a house in town as well as a country estate.

Andreas Hammerschmidt wrote motets, concertos and arias, and almost all of his output is sacred vocal music in the concertato style.

Indeed, Andreas Hammerschmidt represents the second generation of composers who distilled a native German Baroque tradition out of forms and styles imported from Italy.

Over 400 works by Andreas Hammerschmidt survive, in a total of 14 separate collections.

Andreas Hammerschmidt wrote these pieces for Sundays and church feast days; their structure and intent foreshadowed the later German church cantata, as exemplified most famously by Johann Sebastian Bach.