Thomas Selle facts for kids
Thomas Selle (born March 23, 1599 – died July 2, 1663) was an important German composer from the 1600s. He wrote music in the Baroque style, which was popular during his time.
Contents
Early Life and Career
Not much is known about Thomas Selle's early life. He was born in 1599. We know he went to the University of Leipzig in 1622. It's thought he studied at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where he might have learned from famous musicians like Sethus Calvisius.
By 1624, Selle was teaching at a Latin school in Heide. Just one year later, he became a headmaster in Wesselburen. While in Wesselburen, he got married to Anna Weihe. He also prepared many of his non-religious songs to be printed.
Moving to Itzehoe
In 1634, Selle and his wife moved to Itzehoe. There, Selle became a Kantor, which means he was in charge of music for the church and city. This was a very respected job. He became known as a composer and also wrote his own song lyrics. During this time, he became good friends with Johann Rist, who wrote words for music (a librettist). Selle's reputation as a composer grew a lot.
Life in Hamburg
In 1641, Selle was offered a big job as the Kantor at the Johanneum school in Hamburg. He got the job without even applying! Hamburg was a very important city. It had not been badly damaged by the Thirty Years' War. It was also a busy port city with lots of trade and cultural exchange. Hamburg was becoming a rich and important city for culture and politics.
Selle had many musical resources in Hamburg. He provided music for the main Protestant churches and even the Catholic cathedral. He was in charge of music for church services and for big city celebrations. For these events, he wrote grand pieces like "Vivat Hamburgum," which showed how powerful and grand his music could be.
Improving Music in Hamburg
Selle wanted to provide the best music possible for Hamburg's wealthy citizens. He wrote to the city council asking for more professional musicians. His requests were approved! He got at least 20 instrumentalists and new organs for all the churches. This meant his large musical pieces could be performed in many places with "eight singers, eleven choir instrumentalists, and eight council musicians."
Because he got more musicians, Selle changed his older music to fit the new, larger groups. He helped to reorganize Protestant church music in Hamburg. This led to a very successful time for music in the city.
Selle also taught music to the older students at the Johanneum. He was one of the first Kantors to let others teach Latin, so he could focus only on music lessons. He even wrote a book called Anleitung zur Singekunst (Introduction to the Art of Singing), which taught people how to read music and sing. This book showed that Selle was a reformer and wanted new ways of understanding music.
Just before he died in 1663, Thomas Selle gave all his musical works to the Hamburg City Library. This collection includes 281 of his pieces.
Thomas Selle's Music Collection
Selle's main collection of works is called Opera omnia. In this collection, he gathered his sacred (religious) compositions from his time in Hamburg. He also included most of the pieces he had published before. He wrote a special introduction for music lovers. This collection does not include his non-religious or instrumental music.
It seems Selle planned to publish all his works together when he moved to Hamburg. The last entry in his collection was made on his birthday, March 23, 1663. He signed it himself, showing it was truly his work.
The Opera omnia originally had 16 volumes. Today, it has 20 volumes because some parts were bound separately later. Many people, likely Selle's students, helped write out the 281 works. These copies were made from the original performance music, which is now lost. Selle also copied these pieces into a special German organ tablature notation. This tablature is the main source for his 281 works.
Selle organized his Opera omnia into seven books:
- Four books contain Latin works.
- Three books contain German works.
The first book of Latin works is almost the same as the only collection Selle published while in Hamburg in 1646. This supports the idea that he planned to publish all his works systematically.
Types of Music in the Collection
The seven books are generally divided by the type of music. For example, the third Latin book has his largest Latin compositions. Here, Selle added big instrumental sections and used multiple choirs to create strong contrasts. The fourth Latin book mostly has solo pieces and pieces in the motet style (a type of choral music).
The first German book, called Erste Theil Teutscher Geistlicher Concerten, Madrigalien und Motetten, contains different types of music, but all from his Hamburg period. This includes his important gospel dialogues. The third and largest German book has 74 choral settings, many of which are grand, multi-part concertos based on Protestant hymns.
The Histories
Four important pieces called "histories" are also part of the Opera omnia. These include:
- The St. Matthew Passion
- The St. John Passion (with and without extra musical parts)
- The Resurrection History
These Passions show how Selle used new musical styles. For example, in his St. Matthew Passion, written in 1642, Selle was one of the first composers to use the new figured bass. This was a big change in how music was written.
Selle also made his characters in the Passions more distinct. He used different instruments to accompany them. For example, violins played for Jesus, and lower violas played for the evangelist (the narrator). In the St. John Passion, he used specific instruments to represent characters even more. Flutes were used for Peter, and horns for Pilate. The St. John Passion also used the modern recitative style from Italian music, which sounds more like speaking.
The St. John Passion is also important because it includes "intermedia." These are extra musical sections added into the story. This work is often seen as one of the first examples of an oratorio passion, which is a large musical work based on a religious story.
Selle also set many parts of the Gospel to music for the Hamburg churches. This included stories from the birth of Christ, parables, miracles, and the Passion and Resurrection stories.
Why Selle is Not Well Known Today
Even though Thomas Selle was very important in his time, he is almost unknown today. This is mainly because of how his Opera omnia was recorded. The main source of his 281 works was written in German organ tablature. This made it much harder for people to perform his music in later centuries compared to printed scores.
Because of this, his large collection of music was only properly cataloged in the early 1990s. Many music manuscripts from the Hamburg State Library had been moved during World War II and then returned after 1990. So, the first collection of his music could only be published in 1999, for his 400th birthday. Since 2015, a project at the University of Hamburg has been working to make his music available to more people through a digital edition.
Editions
- 6 geistliche Konzerte (6 Sacred Concertos), edited by A. Egidi, Berlin 1929
- Passion nach dem Evangelisten Johannes mit Intermedien (Passion According to the Evangelist John with Intermedia), edited by R. Gerber, Wolfenbüttel 1933
See also
In Spanish: Thomas Selle para niños
