Martin Agricola

Martin Agricola (* January 6, 1486 in Schwiebus, † June 10, 1556 in Magdeburg ) (actually: Sore, Sohr or Sorre ) was a German music theorist, music teacher and composer of the Renaissance.

Life

Agricola was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, the son of a wealthy farmer and enjoyed an education. Initially, he worked on the family farm. From 1510 he traveled through the eastern room. During this period he acquired a self-taught on the basis of his musical knowledge. The stations of his journey are unknown, probably belonged to Frankfurt ( Oder) and Leipzig to them.

1519 Agricola was in Magdeburg as a music teacher down. As put by the Reformation shortly thereafter in the city, Agricola joined her. As part of the launch of the new creed, the various music schools were merged into a single urban institution, was used as the cantor Agricola 1525. In addition to his teaching objectives Agricola sought mainly about giving the new Protestant movement has its own church music. In 1528, he published a short deudsche Musica (Musica Choralis Deudsch ), a popular guide to music lessons. As more textbooks Musica Musica Figuralis Deudsch and followed instrumentalis deudsch ( 1529), especially the latter stands out as research on musical instruments and one of the most important works of early organ customer from Agricola's work.

The city council and music publishers Georg Rhau from Wittenberg was a close friend of Agricola. He published his theoretical work, the valuable contributions to the transition from the old to the new system contained the notation. Many musical terms such as scale, clef or beat were coined by Agricola.

Agricola was the first, which is four parts of Martin Luther's hymn A Mighty Fortress is our God set to music.

The city of Magdeburg has a street named ( Martin Agricola Street) after him.