Peter Eichmann

Peter Eichmann (Brandenburg an der Havel, 1561 – Stargard, Pomerania, 12 June 1623) was a German theorist, teacher and composer of the period that closes the Renaissance. His importance lies chiefly in his didactic treatises, which differ from the school singing manuals customary in the German-speaking world both in their subject matter and in the way they treat it. He was also a direct ancestor of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Eichmann taught at the municipal school in Stargard from 1588 and, by around 1596, was already working as cantor in that town. In 1600 he published in Stettin the Oratio de divina origine atque utilitate multiplici … artis musicae, in which he sought to demonstrate the divine origin of music and its miraculous properties, drawing on biblical testimony and the writings of Boethius.

His second treatise, Praecepta musicae practicae sive Elementa artis canendi (Stettin, 1604), deals with the elementary rules of singing, as well as with keys and modes. Eichmann held that music fulfilled its function of moving the listener, ordering people's lives and drawing them closer to God only when it was performed well, and therefore singers had to master both the theoretical foundations and the practice of performance. To help memorise the keys he drew on hymns and on well-known motets by Lassus. His system of keys included fourteen chromatic steps, and in it one finds the beginnings of the division of the black keys between D and E and between G and A.

Among his musical examples he included four bicinia by Lassus, five pieces by Joachim Belitz, his predecessor at the Stargard school, and four bicinia of his own together with one piece in cantional style. In the preface he urged that pupils practise not only the Sunday hymn but also Italian madrigals and French chansons during the first days of the week.

Eichmann is remembered today for his attempt to unite theory, pedagogy and devotion in school music teaching, and for a proposed system of keys that anticipates later changes in the notation of the keyboard.