Sebastian Virdung

Sebastian Virdung (Grop) was a German music theorist and composer, born around 1465 in Amberg, although his birth date and place are only probable, and he is known to have been still alive after 1511. He is of interest above all for his treatise Musica getutscht, one of the first printed works in the West devoted exclusively to musical instruments and their practice, and one of the earliest writings on music in the vernacular.

Virdung's life moved between chapel music and the Church. Around 1486 he studied law in Heidelberg while singing as a contralto in the chapel of Count Palatine Philip, although there is no record that he obtained any degree. By around 1489 he was already a priest and held an ecclesiastical benefice granted by the Elector. After an accusation of slander in 1490, he preserved his reputation and, from about 1505, worked in the chapel of Duke Ulrich in Stuttgart. In January 1507 he was succentor of Constance Cathedral, where he was responsible for teaching singing and counterpoint to the choirboys, and in January 1508 he was dismissed for his erratic and negligent conduct towards the boys.

In 1510 he attempted to finance a much more extensive work in German, the Ein deutsche Musica, which was never published and whose manuscript has not survived. In its place, the abridged version Musica getutscht appeared in Basel in 1511, arranged as a dialogue between himself and his friend Andreas Silvanus, probably Andreas Waldner. The book classifies instruments into strings, winds and percussion, includes keyboard, lute and recorder tablatures, and illustrates instruments in common use, although its woodcuts do not always aim at technical accuracy. Virdung also engaged in a polemic with Arnolt Schlick, who responded harshly in 1512, so his death must have occurred between those dates and around 1517.

Virdung's legacy lies in the influence of his treatise: it went through a second edition and spawned several derivative works in various languages, among them Othmar Luscinius's Musurgia and Martin Agricola's Musica instrumentalis deudsch. His own compositions, four secular songs and one sacred lied, are examples of the Tenorlied type and are today a valuable source for understanding German music at the beginning of the sixteenth century.