Biography
Samuel Scheidt's foremost achievement took shape with his "Tabulatura Nova" of 1624. That collection introduced the first keyboard music printed in open score anywhere in Germany, discarding the note-name tabulation and six-line staves then standard in both Germany and England. He spent the greater part of his life working in Halle, Germany, remaining there through the Thirty Years' War, enduring extended periods of poverty, and confronting the plague years of the 1630s. Appointed court Kapellmeister in 1609, he held the post until 1620 and resumed its duties in 1638. Scheidt knew and collaborated with both Shein and Schutz; together the three stood as Germany's principal musical figures in the opening decades of the Baroque era. Beyond the "Tabulatura Nova," he left more than one hundred four-part chorales for organ and over one hundred five-voice madrigals on sacred texts, as well as arrangements of numerous mass movements and instrumental dances scored for four or five instruments, with pairings introduced only on occasion.