St. Gertrude’s Chapel, Hamburg

by Frederick K. Gable

St. Gertrude’s Chapel (shown in a 1830 engraving at right) was built in the late fourteenth century by the Bruderschaft of St. Gertrude, listed in 1356 as one of eighteen charitable fraternities associated with the Jakobikirche in Hamburg. Like similar orders throughout Europe, the fraternity promoted good works through financial support of the church and participation in its religious activities. Members could thereby improve their reputation in the city and increase their chances of gaining salvation. St. Gertrude’s Fraternity was chiefly devoted to caring for the poor and the sick, especially persons afflicted with leprosy. The chapel land was originally known as “der wüste Kirchof” (the desolate churchyard) and “platea leprosorum” (place of the lepers).

In 1391 the fraternity began construction of the chapel, probably assisted by a guild of masons known as the “Mauerleute.” Its first stage was an octagonal Gothic-domed structure, twenty-five feet on a side, completed in 1399. This octagonal shape resembled other burial buildings and pilgrimage chapels fashionable in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Northern Europe often named for St. George or St. Gertrude of Nivelles, a seventh century abbess. Since the chapel stood within the parish of the Jacobikirche, regular masses in addition to funerals were conducted there by the priests of that church until the Reformation.

In the fifteenth century the building’s size was increased by adding a chancel area to the east side of the octagon and attaching two small wings on the north and south sides of the domed area. The Mason’s Guild owned the north wing. No precise information about the dates of these additions has survived, but they seem to have existed by 1500, when the chapel assumed its final size and shape. During this same period, the burial of the dead, including the making of coffins, became the chief activity of the chapel, supported by the fraternity. Poor women were given lodging in little houses nearby in exchange for assistance with burial preparations.

After the Reformation reached Hamburg in 1528-29, regular church services were no longer held in the chapel, but the burial work and other charitable activities of the fraternity continued. In 1578 renovation work began so the building could be used for Protestant services. This was completed in 1580, and the chapel was dedicated for the second time by Jakob Kröger, a pastor of the Jacobikirche. From this time on, the Jacobi pastors conducted regular preaching services there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the chapel functioning as a church for the poor, administered by the Jacobikirche. This also meant that the organist of the larger church, Jacob Prætorius I (to 1586) and Hieronymus Prætorius (from 1586 to 1629), served at St. Gertrude’s Chapel.

After a fire in June 1606, the chapel underwent extensive renovation and was refurnished with a new pulpit, clock, seats, and organ. The following April it was dedicated for the third time in the festival service that will be recreated in Magnificat’s concerts.

From 1697 until the middle of the eighteenth century St. Gertrude’s Chapel enjoyed a lively musical life and was especially important as a site for Passion performances in Hamburg. Although its musical importance declined after 1800, the building was kept in good condition until the great Hamburg fire of 1842, when it burned during the evening of May 7th.

Despite repeated proposals to rebuild the chapel, the ruins were finally cleared away and it was never rebuilt. The name of St. Gertrude was transferred to a large church built between 1882 and 1885 in another area of the city. The chapel’s former site near the Jacobikirche in central Hamburg is now a small park and children’s playground called the Gertrudenkirchhof.

Forgotten Composers Brought to Life in Magnificat's Concerts

Magnificat’s first concerts feature music by composers that are obscure even by Magnificat standards. The four composers whose polyphonic works are featured on the program are hardly household names, but each was a significant composer during his lifetime. The compositions on the Magnificat program demonstrate that the high regard of their contemporaries was well deserved.

Pierre Bonhomme (Latinized Bonomius) was a Flemish composer who lived most of his life in Liège. In addition to several published volumes, his works appear in many manuscripts and his elegant contrapuntal writing seems to have been much admired. The Motet In nomine Jesu appears in a collection published in Frankfurt in 1603 and was dedicated to Ferdinand of Bavaria. Bonhomme’s style most closely resembles the Roman compostions of Soriano and the Nanino brothers, whom he may have encountered during the time he spent in Rome in the early 1590s.

Jakob Handl, who often used the Latinized version of his name, Jacobus Gallus, on publications was born as Jakob Petelin in 1550 in Reifnitz, Carniola (now Ribnica), Slovenia. He left Slovenia in his youth, was probably educated in a Cistercian monastery, and travelled widely across Central Europe. He was a member of the Viennese court chapel in 1574, and was choirmaster (Kapellmeister) to the bishop of Olomouc, Moravia between 1579 (or 1580) and 1585. From 1585 to his death in 1591 he worked in Prague as organist to the church sv. Jan na Zábradlí.

His most notable work is the six part Opus musicum, 1577, a collection of motets from which the motet Magnificat will be performing was drawn. An excellent article about Handl (Gallus) is available online at Goldberg Magazine.

From that article:

That the music of Gallus immediately met with very great success is attested by the number of mentions of his work throughout the 17th century. Publications in anthologies, manuscript dissemination of the work, references to the composer in treatises on composition: it seems that in Bohemia, but above all in Saxony and Silesia, for nearly half a century Gallus’s compositions continued to be sung. One has only to glance through the anthologies of Bodenschatz, Schade, Calvisius, Grimm or Praetorius to be convinced of it. Gallus was one of the virtually obligatory references in places in Central and North Germany where there was an attempt to define the conditions of a “well composed” piece of music, that is to say conforming to the rules of counterpoint while being expressive as to the perception of the text’s meaning. The evidence of the manuscripts is no less eloquent: numerous motets and unpublished Masses were copied and preserved in Wroclaw, Legnica, Zwickau or Görlitz, which indicates the importance of this region of Europe for the diffusion of Gallus’s work. Some few works then cross into the 1650s, seeming no longer to quit the polyphonic repertoire, and among these is the motet for Good Friday, Ecce quomodo moritur justus, of which more than fifteen or so sources have been preserved. At the end of the 17th century Gallus is still mentioned by the French composer and theoretician Sébastien de Brossard, whose immense collection of musical manuscripts and prints was to form the core of King Louis XIV’s musical library: in the margin of his catalogue Brossard notes, in reference to the Moralia, that the music of it is “among the most excellent of that time”... After a relative eclipse in the 18th century (except for some manuscripts of the motet Ecce quomodo still being re-copied), Gallus’s compositions returned in force in the following century, where they followed the renewal of interest in the old polyphonists caused by the various musical societies in Europe in favour of religious music for unaccompanied choir.

Arnold Grothusius (sometimes written Gothausen, or Gorothusio) was the cantor of Helmstedt. The Missa Deus misereatur nostri that Magnificat will perform was published in Helmstedt in 1588. It is a parody mass based on a Lasso motet and was falsely attributed to Lasso in several publications. It is included (with attribution to Grothusius) in the new Lasso complete works collection.

Hieronymus Praetorius spent almost his entire life in his native Hamburg. He studied organ with his father, Jacob Praetorius, also a composer), and later studied in Hamburg with Hinrich thor Molen and in Köln with Albinus Walran. His first position was as organist at Erfurt from 1580 to 1582, when he returned to Hamburg as assistant organist to his father at the Jacobikirche (with the chapel of St Gertrud); on his father’s death in 1586 he became first organist, and he held this post until his death. In 1596 he took part in an organ examination in Gröningen where he met Michael Praetorius and Hans Leo Hassler. It was most likely his only contact with composers of polychoral works and it may have been through them that he became acquainted with the music of the contemporary Italian Venetian School. The two works by Praetorius on Magnificat’s program reflect the Italian polychoral style.

There is a good article about Praetorius online here.

Praetorius was the name of a distinguished family, or possibly two families, of musicians in Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries. In Germany in the early modern period it became a fashion that educated people called "Schulze" or "Schultheiß", which means "Mayor", put their name into the Latin language = "Praetorius". The Latin word "Praetor" means "going ahead". It was a title of high officials (Praetor urbanus).

* Anton Praetorius (1560–1613), protestant pastor, fighter against the persecution of witches and against torture.
* Bartholomaeus Praetorius (c.1590;–3 August 1623), composer and cornettist.
* Michael Praetorius (c.1571–1621), composer, music theorist, and organist, was the most famous member of the family.
* Hieronymus Praetorius (1560–1629), composer and organist. He was not related to Michael.
* Jacob Praetorius (c.1530–1586), composer and organist, was the father of Hieronymus.
* Jacob Praetorius (1586–1651), composer, organist and teacher, was the son of Hieronymus.
* Christoph Praetorius (died 1609), composer, was the uncle of Michael.
* Franz Praetorius (1847-1927), semitist and hebraist.

[Thanks to Wikipedia for the information about the Praetorius family.]

Magnificat Welcomes Back Old Friends for New Season

First Season Veterans Martin Hummel, Neal Rogers, The Whole Noyse, and members of Sex Chordæ Return for 16th Season Opener

Magnificat's first set of concerts will be a homecoming for many of the musicians who performed in our first season. In fact eight of the performers in this month's concert of music from Hamburg participated in a set of concerts of music by Heinrich Schütz in 1992 that was on both the Magnificat and San Francisco Early Music Society Series.

We are pleased to welcome back Martin Hummel for he first concerts in Magnificat's new season. Martin first sang with Magnificat in our first season - way back in December of 1992, when he sang the Evangelist role in the Schütz Christmas Story. He was back in 1994 for Schütz' Resurrection Story and reprised both pieces in 2001 (Christmas) and 2004 (Resurrection).

I first met Martin when he was a teenager. I had shared a stand with his brother Cornelius at the Aspen Music Festival in 1980. I went to Germany at Christmastime that year to work with Karlheinz Stockhausen on a piece he was transcribing for cello (this was before my baroque cello days) and while there I stayed with the Hummel family in Würzburg. Martin charmed us all singing German folksongs and accompanying himself on a guitar.

Another returning veteran of that first Magnificat season is Neal Rogers, who sang the some of the first self-produced Magnificat concerts in 1991 and all three sets in our first season. Neal went on to sing many seasons with Magnificat and also sang many concerts with me when I conducted the California Bach Society. He moved to Southern California for several years but is back in the area and we're glad he can join us for this set.

The Whole Noyse also performed in the Schütz concerts in the first season and have appeared with Magnificat many times since. Well known to Bay Area audiences, the Whole Noyse celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2006. Over the past two decades they have established themselves as one of the Bay Area's leading early music ensembles. They have made repeated appearances on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series and have been presented by early music societies of Vancouver, BC, and San Diego, California, as well as in numerous other venues. They have performed in a dozen different Magnificat programs over the years and it is a pleasure to have them back for another set.

The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols had not yet formed at the time of those Schütz perfomances in 1992, but two members of the ensemble, John Dornenburg and Julie Jeffrey played in the concerts. Since John formed Sex Chordæ they have performed widely including appearance at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, and on the San Francisco Early Music Society, San Jose Chamber Music Society, Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, and Gualala Arts concert series and have recorded three excellent CDs. John has of course also appeared frequently playing viol and violone with Magnificat.

Magnificat regular David Tayler was also on board for that Schütz concert in our first season. It seems like only yesterday…