Johann Sebastiani

Johann Sebastiani (* September 30, 1622 in Weimar, † 1683 in Königsberg ) was a composer of church music, stage works, as well as spiritual and secular songs. According to Georg Christoph Pisanski to Sebastiani held for study purposes on in Italy. Starting no later than 1653 - possibly earlier - he lived in Königsberg, where he became in 1661 the Elector of Brandenburg bestallt Kapellmeister.

Work

Sebastiani's work includes, among other

• An oratorio Passion according to Matthew 26, 1-12,
• The Parnaßblumen (...) called two-volume collection of sacred and secular polyphonic chants and unanimity basso songs on poems by Gertraud Moller,
• At least one complete cantata cycle ( lost),
• The stage work Pastorello musicale ( Verliebtes pastoral ) as earliest surviving evidence of the employment of a composer north of the Alps with the then- new genre of opera.

Many of the works of Johann Sebastiani, who had been kept in the Königsberg library are missing since the Second World War, including the vintage of church cantatas, the Sebastiani mentioned in the preface to his St. Matthew Passion. The Pastorello musicale has been in Vilnius rediscovered in 2001 by the Leipzig musicologist Michael Maul and reissued .. Johann Mattheson mentioned Sebastiani in The Perfect Capellmeister and quoted a song from the collection Parnaßblumen as an example of the melismatic notation in chamber style.