Thomas Selle

However, considering his claim from around 1643 in the Kurtze doch gründliche anleitung zur Singekunst (A brief but thorough introduction to the art of singing) of “having been motivated by the late Mr. Seth Calvisius” (“aus antrieb des sel[igen] H[errn] Sethi Calvisij”) in applying himself to the art of chanting, he is assumed to be an alumnus of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where he would have been student of Sethus Calvisius († 1615) and perhaps also Johann Hermann Schein († 1630).

As well as making his mark as the poet of his own lyrics, by publishing numerous print collections of sacred and secular music, he also gained recognition as a composer.

Hamburg had survived the destruction of the Thirty Years' War relatively unscathed and had an increasingly strategic position as a port, and, as a result of foreign trade, also a lively cultural exchange.

March 1663 (symbolically Selle's birthday) and entails a signature, commented with scribebat propriâ manû (written in his own hand), providing a strong case for authorship and authenticity.

[7] These parts, Selle had again transcribed into a fair copy in the German organ tablature notation, which therefore constitutes the hierarchically superior main source of the 281 works.

In addition, the manuscript version of the Liber primus must be significantly older than the other parts, since it is the only section of the Opera omnia in Selle's own hand – apart from corrections, indices and the preface.

The seven books themselves are roughly divided generically E.g. in the Liber tertius (which contains exclusively pre-published pieces from prints dating from 1630, 1633 and 1635) one finds the largest-scale Latin compositions.

Here Selle inserted colossal ritornellos in alternatim, polychoral writing into those pre-existing, quite complex concertos with just few voices in order to create strong dynamic contrast.

The Erste Theil Teutscher Geistlicher Concerten, Madrigalien und Motetten (first part of German, sacred concertos, madrigals and motets) is, as the title already gives away, quite heterogeneous, though it only contains music from Selle's Hamburg period, including the pioneering (gospel-) dialogues.

Selle übernimmt für seine Matthäuspassion zwar den Passionston aus der responsorialen Matthäuspassion von Heinrich Grimm, die wiederum auf die erste deutschsprachige responsoriale Passion von Johann Walter zurückgeht, doch das äußere Gewand seiner Vertonung ändert sich grundlegend.

The characterization occurs even more extensively in the St. John Passion through a semantically specific instrumental accompaniment (such as the assignment of the pastorally connoted flutes to the role of Peter, the shepherd of Christianity, or 'lordly' horns to Pilate).

[11] The fact that Selle is almost completely unknown today as a composer runs counter to the significance of his office and the musical conceptual influence he had (especially in the field of dialogues and histories) on later generations.

This happened in the course of many other surveys of music manuscripts from the Hamburger Staatsbibliothek, which had originally been evacuated during the Second World War, then transported as loot to the Soviet Union and gradually returned after the fall of the Iron Curtain after 1990.

Since 2015 the DFG-funded research projects at the University of Hamburg is the prime mover in making the composer accessible again to a wider public through the digital critical edition of the Opera omnia.