Gallus Dressler (1533 – 1580/9) was a German composer
and music theorist who served as Kantor in the church
school at Magdeburg. Though a few of his works have
remained in the choral repertoire, he is best known for
his theoretical writings, especially his Praecepta
musicae poeticae (MS, 1563), which contains some of the
earliest detailed description of the compositional
process of the Renaissance motet. He was born in Nebra
in Thuringia, but probably received most of his musical
education in ...(+)
Gallus Dressler (1533 – 1580/9) was a German composer
and music theorist who served as Kantor in the church
school at Magdeburg. Though a few of his works have
remained in the choral repertoire, he is best known for
his theoretical writings, especially his Praecepta
musicae poeticae (MS, 1563), which contains some of the
earliest detailed description of the compositional
process of the Renaissance motet. He was born in Nebra
in Thuringia, but probably received most of his musical
education in the Netherlands. He seems particularly
influenced by Clemens non papa, and a perusal of the
musical examples he cites in his theoretical writings
shows that he was strongly influenced by the
Franco-Flemish generation immediately following Josquin
des Prez.
After a brief tenure at Jena in 1558, Dressler
succeeded Martin Agricola as Kantor of the church
school in Magdeburg, where most of his career was
spent. His compositions were almost entirely in the
genre of the Latin motet, largely ignoring the Lutheran
chorale, though he is noted for some of the first
German-language motets.
Dressler studied at Wittenberg, receiving the master's
degree in 1570, and was closely associated with the
Philippists. In fact, when the more orthodox wing of
Lutheranism became ascendant in Magdeburg, Dressler
left for a position in Anhalt. His chief contribution
is in the form of the unpublished manuscript, which
from its organization and tone may have been his notes
for teaching composition classes. As such it is one of
the first sources to give in detail a practical
approach to the composition of the Renaissance motet.
Dressler's explication of musica poetica can be
summarized in two principles: the application of the
rhetorical principles of exordium, medio, and finis to
the structure of a motet, and the application of the
grammatical principle of a "clausula" (sentence) to
smaller musical units demarcated by cadences.
The modal aspect of Dressler's musical poetics agrees
in principle with that of Pietro Pontio and other
contemporary theorists, but Dressler takes it a step
further by teaching the use of the principal cadences
of the given musical mode (cadences to the final and
dominant degrees) to assert stability in the exordium
and the finis, and cadences to other degree during the
medio to provide contrast and interest.
Dressler's treatise also includes a brief but
perceptive sketch in which he identifies four phases in
the history of Renaissance music: the John
Dunstaple/Guillaume Dufay generation, Josquin des Prez,
the post-Josquin generation (dominated, in his mind, by
Clemens non papa), and Dressler's own
contemporaries.
The Latin text as published by Bernhard Engelke in
Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Land Magdeburg,
XLIX-L (1914-1915) is available online through
Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum, but it is somewhat
flawed. A new critical text and English translation by
Robert Forgacs was published in 2007 by the University
of Illinois Press.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallus_Dressler)
Although originally written for Chorus (SATB), I
created this arrangement of the Canzona in G Major
"Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden" (Praise the Lord, all ye
nations) for Woodwind Quartet (Flute, Oboe, English
Horn & Bassoon).
SHEET MUSIC