Joachim Burmeister

Joachim Burmeister (ca. 1566 in Lüneburg – 5 May 1629 in Rostock) was a north German poet, composer and music theorist.

He was the oldest of five children born to a beadworker and townsman of Lüneburg. His brother Anton (d. 1634) became the cantor of St. Michael's Church in Lüneburg, following Christian Praetorius.

Burmeister attended the University of Rostock, where he received the Master's degree and became cantor of the Rostock Gymnasium (Schoale Rostochiensis Collega Classicus).

Works

• 1601 published a collection of four-voiced psalms.
• 1605 published in Rostock a German-language comedy titled "Christ Revealed" (Χριστὸς πεφασμένος, der geoffenbarte Christus, Comödia), available online.
• 1606 published "Musica poetica," in which he explains his musical-rhetorical figure theory.
• 1609 issued "Musica Mathematica" by Heinrich Brucaeus (1531–1593) under the title "Musica theorica".

References

• Joachim Burmeister, Musica poetica (1606) augmentée des plus excellentes remarques tirées de Hypomnematum musicae poeticae (1599) et de Musica autoschédiastikè (1601), introduction, Latin text and French translation, notes and lexicon by Agathe Sueur and Pascal Dubreuil, Wavre, Mardaga, 2007. Preview of this book online
• Martin Ruhnke: Joachim Burmeister: ein Beitrag zur Musiklehre um 1600. Bärenreiter-Verl., Kassel 1955. Schriften des Landesinstituts für Musikforschung, Kiel, Bd.5.
• Arrey von Dommer, Wilhelm Scherer: Burmeister, Joachim. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Band 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, S. 628 f.
• Hans-Heinrich Unger: Burmeister, Joachim. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, S. 54.
• Ralf Böckmann: Burmeister, Joachim. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Band 32, Nordhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88309-615-5 (Gekürzte Onlinefassung).