Johann Jakob Wolleb

Johann Jakob Wolleb (Basel, 1613 – Basel, 1667) was a Swiss composer, music theorist and theologian who worked in his native city, where for decades he held the post of university music professor. His career is of particular interest because it combines, in a single path, the religious training, musical teaching and liturgical practice typical of seventeenth-century Protestant Switzerland.

He studied theology in Basel and Geneva. Between 1634 and 1638 he served as assistant at St Peter's Church in Basel, and from 1638 until his death he was vicar of St Elizabeth's. Between 1637 and 1641 he also served as acting professor of rhetoric at the university. In 1642 he was elected to the post of music professor, a position created in 1577 that was combined with that of cathedral organist; Wolleb was its second holder, succeeding Samuel Mareschall. He retired in 1649, but was re-elected in 1650 and kept the post until shortly before his death, when he handed it over to his son, also named Johann Jakob. The duties of the office were first defined in 1649: rehearsing singing with philosophy students, paying particular attention to psalmody, playing the organ in the cathedral on Sundays, and providing music at public graduation ceremonies.

His teaching gave rise to a treatise on music theory, Rudimenta musices figuralis (Basel, 1642), intended so that the basic rules would suffice for the learner. He also prepared a new edition of the psalter that Mareschall had published in 1606, updated in 1660. His most notable contribution, however, is the so-called Gonzenbach Hymnal, the Vollständiges Gesangbuch (Basel, 1659), in which the hymns place the melody of the cantus firmus in the tenor voice.