Biography
Walther earned recognition as an organist, composer, and lexicographer while maintaining a cousin relationship with J.S. Bach, thereby receiving both an extensive musical inheritance and abundant sources of information. Although his roughly ninety sacred vocal compositions and one hundred chorale preludes never ranked among the period’s masterpieces, the works display the refined stylistic variety typical of German practice. He served as organist at St. Thomas’ church in Erfurt before undertaking travels across Germany expressly to gather material on theoretical principles, performance customs, and leading musicians. These investigations, supplemented by books, manuscripts, and pieces forwarded by colleagues and instructors, allowed him to produce the “Musicalisches Lexicon,” the first substantial German-language dictionary devoted to music. The volume contained approximately three thousand entries, more than two hundred of which supplied biographical accounts. It continues to function as a significant reference for musicologists and lexicographers, although its full potential has yet to be realized. In the “Lexicon” Walther recorded details on musical conditions, compositional procedures, theoretical concepts, and practical methods up to his own day. Evaluating the work’s importance demands close attention to the broader history and development of musical lexicography. His theoretical treatise “Praecepta der musicalischen Composition” surveyed the foundational elements of musical creation, among them notation and scales, together with the craft of composition as it existed in mid-Baroque Germany. The treatise also treats assonance and dissonance, chords, tonal relations, counterpoint, and the technique of setting words to music.