Music History Monday: Conrad Paumann

We mark the death on January 24, 1473 – 549 years ago today – of the German organist, lutenist, and composer Conrad Paumann, in Munich at the age of 63. Lest I be accused of dredging up an utterly unknown musician in order to come up with a topic on an otherwise topic-shy day, let us establish the following. Born circa 1410, by the year 1447, when the 37-year-old Paumann was appointed the official organist for the city of Nuremburg, he was considered the greatest organist in all of the German speaking lands, a position Johann Sebastian Bach would occupy some 275 years later. In that year of 1447, the poet Hans Rosenplüt (1400-1460) praised Paumann as being “master of all masters” as both an instrumentalist and as a composer. According to the unimpeachable musicologist and Bach scholar Christoff Wolff: “Despite his very limited surviving output, Paumann must be considered the leading figure in 15th-century German instrumental music, known internationally not only as a virtuoso but also as a composer.” Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – hundreds of years after his death – Paumann was still remembered as the greatest organist of his time. Writing in his Lectiones antiquae, published between 1601 and 1604, the Dutch historian Henricus Canisius (1562-1610) called Paumann “the very best organist of his time.” Johannes Staindl, writing in his Chronicon generale (that is, “General Chronicle”) of 1763, asserted that Paumann was: “in all musical arts the most expert and the most famous.” Conrad Paumann might be forgotten today but that’s not his fault; time and memory are – as we all known – fickle. See the full transcription and links to the videos mentioned on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/61600601 See the latest Great Courses On Sale at https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/sale/