Johann Jakob Löwe von Eisenach

Johann Jakob Löwe von Eisenach was born in Vienna, where he was baptised on 31 July 1629, and died in Lüneburg in early September 1703. A German composer, he belonged to an old Thuringian family whose members used variants of the surname such as Lebe, Lew, Löw or Leo. He signed himself «Löw von Eysenach», although since Gerber the form «Löwe» has become established in the literature. The «von Eisenach» is not a noble title: it derives from his father, Johann Lewe, a resident of the Saxon electoral court in Vienna and a native of Eisenach.

According to Walther, his training combined virtuosos of the Viennese imperial court and of other courts, as well as a stay in Italy. A dedicatory poem names Bertali, Piscator, Giovanni Valentini and Verdina as models or teachers, although no further details are known with certainty. In 1652 Schütz took him in at Dresden so that he could perfect his craft, and shortly afterwards he entered the service of the Altenburg court for six months. Thanks to Schütz's recommendation, Schütz having almost acted as a second father to him, in 1655 he was appointed Kapellmeister to Augustus the Younger in Wolfenbüttel, and later held the same post at Zeitz under Maurice of Saxony (1663–1665). These two posts were his most fruitful period as a composer. He had to leave Zeitz in 1665 because of disagreements with the Konzertmeister Clemens Thieme.

Afterwards he spent several years without a stable post; he probably stayed in Jena and unsuccessfully applied for positions in Brandenburg and Frankfurt. In 1678 he appears in the records of the Johanniskirche in Hanau, where three of his children were born between 1678 and 1681, although the post he held there is unknown. In 1683 he accepted the poorly paid position of organist at the churches of St Nicholas and St Mary in Lüneburg, leaving no mark on the city's musical life. His final years were marked by poverty, as his letters show.

His legacy rests chiefly on instrumental music and on song. His suites of 1658 include a freely formed introductory sinfonia, which he called «Synfonia», a notable novelty for its time. His Sonaten, Canzonen und Capriccen (1664) follow a style close to the Italian canzona, which he had come to know in Vienna. His songs show the influence of Italian arias and canzonettas, and he remained aloof from the popular tendency of the Hamburg school. Printz described him as a distinguished musician in the canonic style, although his collection of canons of 1665 has been lost.