Caspar Othmayr

Caspar Othmayr (Othmarus, Gasparus) was born in Amberg on 12 March 1515 and died in Nuremberg on 4 February 1553. A German composer of the generation placed between Senfl, Stoltzer and Johann Walter on the one hand, and Leonhard Schroeter, Gallus Dressler and Joachim a Burck on the other, his name frequently appears in studies of Lutheran polyphony and the German Renaissance song. His parents, Niclas and Margarethe Othmayr, were both from Amberg, but the parish registers have been lost, so neither the profession nor the social standing of his father is known.

As a young man he sang in the chapel of the future Elector Friedrich II and studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he matriculated in 1533 and obtained the degrees of bachelor, licentiate and master of arts between 1534 and 1536, while still serving in the electoral chapel under the direction of Lorenz Lemlin. Of the following ten years little is known; he is presumed to have lived in Regensburg, although this cannot be verified. In 1543 he took charge of the Latin school at the monastery of Heilsbronn, where he married Anna, daughter of the administrator, Johannes Hartung, a copyist of the so-called Heilsbronner Chorbücher.

His ecclesiastical career was marked by the pursuit of financial stability. He obtained a canonry at St Gumbert's in Ansbach in 1547, although the minority of Margrave Georg Friedrich delayed the necessary dispensation. When the provost Leonhard Keller died in 1548, he applied to succeed him, but a rival, the student Wilhelm Bürkle, backed by the Ansbach town council, contested the post, and the dispute reached the Imperial Supreme Court. Othmayr fell ill, was treated at the hospital in Heilsbronn in Nuremberg, and died there. He was buried in the Church of the Holy Cross in Ansbach.

His output, of some 230 compositions, covers the principal genres of sacred and secular vocal music, with the exception of the mass; his instrumental music is limited to two dances in four voices. He published most of his work in his own collections, although his German songs also survive in numerous manuscript copies scattered across the German-speaking world and as far as Copenhagen and Lille. Notable among them are the Cantilenae aliquot elegantes ac piae and the Epitaphium D. Martini Lutheri of 1546, in which the German songs follow the model of the Protestant Tenorlied while the Latin motets adopt a style after Josquin. The Tricinia of 1549, composed for the training of Christian youth, reflect his work as a teacher.

His most distinctive work is the Symbola illustrissimorum virorum, music set to the mottoes of influential figures, in which Renaissance subjective expression, the political assertion of its subjects and a commercial purpose are combined, all sanctioned by a religious intention. For his quality and variety, Othmayr is today regarded as the most important and versatile German composer of his generation.