Johann Jacob Prinner

Johann Jacob Prinner, also known as Preiner, was an Austrian composer, organist, poet and music theorist, born around 1624, possibly in Münzbach, and died in Vienna on 18 March 1694. His vernacular vocal works and his writings on instrumental technique make him significant in seventeenth-century Austria.

His training included a period in Italy, where he is recorded as having studied in Siena in 1651. He is probably the same person as a J. J. Preiner who served as organist of the abbey church of Kremsmünster in Upper Austria between July 1652 and September 1659, though this cannot be stated with absolute certainty. Towards the end of 1670, J. H. Schmelzer praised him as a composer, organist and poet, and described him as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Eggenberg in Graz. When the prince dismissed his musicians, Schmelzer proposed Prinner as successor to Biber in Kroměříž, but the post went to P. J. Vejvanovský. Even so, the survival of suites by him in Kroměříž, one dated 1676, suggests that he may have stayed there for some time.

In 1680 he petitioned Emperor Leopold I to be appointed chamber servant to Archduchess Maria Antonia in Vienna, to whom he reportedly had taught the harpsichord. The request was granted. When the archduchess moved to Bavaria in 1685 on her marriage to Elector Maximilian Manuel, Prinner remained in Vienna, where he received an annual pension of 420 florins from the imperial court until his death.

His vocal legacy consists of 47 arias for soprano and basso continuo, simple in style and close to the Viennese popular song, some with texts in dialect that he probably wrote himself. In his suites he added introductory and concluding movements, as well as a gavotte or air between the sarabande and the gigue, showing French influence. His treatise Musicalischer Schlissl sets out his theoretical principles; its most valuable part is the section on string instrument technique, in which he recommended holding the violin under the chin and criticised resting it against the chest. His sections on counterpoint and rhetorical figures follow Christoph Bernhard's treatise closely, sometimes word for word. Prinner criticised the Austrian preference for foreign artists.