Over the decades, Heyden developed a great reputation as a scholar, devoted to studies and writing on education, theology, and music.

[4] In 1524 he published Adversus Hypocritas Calumniatores, super falso sibi inustam haereseos nota, also a theological tract.

[5] His Formulae immediately became an important work, used as a phrase book between German-, Polish-, and Hungarian-speaking students at the University of Krakow.

Heyden's De arte canendi, its third and final edition completed in Nuremberg in 1540, is said to have "had a greater impact on modern scholarship than any other writing on mensuration and tactus from the 15th or 16th century.

"[3] A collection of secular songs, it has been described as a "treatise on singing technique aimed at the growing number of amateur musicians who wished to improve their skills.

[9][10] Notably, Heyden is said to have "adopted a horror fusae position at a time when Italian musicians were writing pieces a note nere under the signature of C."[9] Indeed, the treatise is said to have "influenced many twentieth-century scholars to believe that the tactus of the sixteenth century represented an unvarying beat.