Jacob Meiland

Jacob Meiland (also Jakob Meyland or Mayland) was a German composer born in Senftenberg, in Lower Lusatia, around 1542, and who died in Hechingen, in Württemberg, at the end of December 1577. His career, brief and constrained by fragile health, unfolded within the Lutheran milieu of southern and central Germany, and he is remembered today above all for his sacred music in Latin and German and for his secular songs.

Around 1550 he entered the Hofkapelle in Dresden as a boy chorister, where he is presumed to have received instruction first from Johann Walter and later from Matthaeus Le Maistre, until 1554. In 1558 he matriculated at the University of Leipzig. He later travelled to Flanders to broaden his musical knowledge; there is no documentary evidence of a possible stay in Italy. After a brief period in Nuremberg, in 1563 he joined the newly established Kantorei of the Lutheran margrave Georg Friedrich of Brandenburg-Ansbach, of which he became director at the end of 1564. Shortly afterwards a Hofkapelle was founded, and its first direction was likewise entrusted to him. During his years in Ansbach he frequently travelled to Saxony, Württemberg and Bavaria in search of singers and, probably, of contacts with prominent personalities.

In 1572 he left Ansbach, possibly for reasons of health, and settled in Frankfurt. Persistent ailments prevented him from securing a permanent post, and he lived in straitened circumstances until 1576. He then moved to the court at Celle, although it is unclear whether he ever held a position there. His final appointment was as Kapellmeister to Count Eitel Friedrich of Hohenzollern in Hechingen, which he took up on 17 July 1577 and where he died less than six months later.

Despite the brevity of his career, Meiland was a prolific and highly respected author, with a solid humanist education. His music circulated widely, both in print and in manuscript. Influenced above all by Clemens non Papa and, to a lesser extent, by Lasso, he cultivated chiefly the Latin motet, although he also excelled in Passion music and the secular song. His three German Passions, responsorial in type and heirs to the tradition of Walter, are historically significant: he was the first to depart from the customary use of fauxbourdon in the turbae, derived from the liturgical intonation of the Passion, which broadened the dramatic potential of the form. His two collections of German songs for four and five voices (1569–1575) rank among the most important of the genre before Hans Leo Hassler's Lustgarten (1601).