Paul Hallmann von Strachwitz
Paul Hallmann von Strachwitz
Genres: 17th century, german
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About Paul Hallmann von Strachwitz
Paul Hallmann (Born: August 11, 1600 - Friedland Died: January 11, 1650 - Breslau) was a German composer. He was a member of the Kapelle of Duke Georg Rudolph at Liegnitz (Legnica). Described as a ‘gentleman from Strachwitz, near Liegnitz’, he became, through the duke’s admiration for him, a member of the nobility on January 31, 1624, and he was nominated to the princely council in 1632. Of the sacred works Paul Hallmann wrote for the Protestant ducal court, 14 were formerly kept in the celebrated Biblioteca Rudolphina at Liegnitz. Owing to the scattering of this collection during World War II, some of them disappeared and the rest remained incomplete. Scholz, who knew the Rudolphina before the war, divided Hallmann's works into three groups. The first comprises three masses, a Kyrie and a Magnificat. The five-part mass consists of Kyrie, Gloria and Sanctus, the first movement in Greek, the other two in German. The two six-part masses are both in Latin and both in the form of the missa brevis; one is based on the motet Jerusalem gaude by Jacobus Handl (150 of whose works were in the Rudolphina). According to Scholz no connection with the 5th tone is recognizable in the Magnificat; it was possibly heard, in accordance with alternatim practice, in the even-numbered verses: Hallmann set only the odd-numbered ones. The second category of works consists of four-part harmonizations of melodies, three of which - A solis ortu cardine, Christum wir sollen loben schon and Was fürchtst du Feind Herodesz sehr - are all based on the same Christmas melody. Hallmann’s most interesting music is found in the four motets that make up the third element in his output. Even so, his relatively simple four-part setting of Siehe wie fein und lieblich is inferior to settings of this text by Hammerschmidt and Schütz. An eight-part funeral motet, without continuo, Ich habe Lust abzuscheiden, is a substantially grander and indeed moving work. Hallmann’s most modern piece is Wer sich wider die Obrigkeit setzet, a five-part concertato with instruments. It includes some expressive word-setting especially at the words ‘Gebet dem Kaiser was des Kaisers, und Gott was Gottes ist’, as though during the Thirty Years War which badly affected Liegnitz between 1627 and 1635 the composer wanted to underline the altercation between the Catholic emperor and the Protestant duke. The text of the only Latin work in this group, Da pacem Domine, is also appropriate to a time of war.
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