|
Sixt Dietrich was an excellent German composer. He was at the Freiburg University, and went in 1517 to Strassburg, becoming a schoolmaster at the cathedral school of Konstanz in 1518 (or 1517). He became chaplain to the Holy Cross there in 1522. About 1535 he seems to have inherited some money, and to have renewed his own studies in music and other things, entering the university of Wittenberg in 1540. He keenly supported the Reformation cause and mixed in the Reformers' circles at Basle, Strasbourg, Ulm and Wittenberg, where he lectured. He returned to Konstanz, but before the city was overrun by Emperor Charles V and reclaimed for Catholicism, he fled to St Gallen, where he died two months afterwards.
Sixt Dietrichg wrote both Latin music (Magnificats, hymns, motets) for Catholic use and sacred Liederfor the Lutherans, and contributed to Ott's second secular songbook. He published Epicedion Thomae Sporeri in 5 parts in 1534; a first book of Magnificats in 1535; 36 Antiphons (Witt. 1541); and Novum opus musicum (Witt. 1545). Five of his compositions are in the Dodecachordon. (Q.-L.). Like many of his generation (including Senfl) he could write in an earnest and distinguished Franco-Flemish manner, but his chorale settings in Georg Rhau's 1544 collection are chordal, with regular cadences and little counterpoint, looking forward to a later epoch. |
