Sigmund Hemmel

Sigmund Hemmel was a German composer and singer active at the ducal court of Stuttgart, in the Duchy of Württemberg, during the second half of the sixteenth century. His importance lies in being one of the first musicians of note at that court after the Reformation, and in having left a polyphonic psalter that enjoyed considerable circulation in German Protestant circles.

Hemmel is first documented in 1544 as a tenor in the Stuttgart Hofkapelle, earning 30 florins, under Duke Ulrich VI. His successor, Duke Christoph, appointed him Hofkapellmeister. For a time the court records describe him interchangeably as either Kapellmeister or singer, although his salary did not change. Between 1554 and 1555 he gave up the post of Kapellmeister in order to have more time for composition, and remained as a singer; in the records he usually appears as a tenor, although in 1559–1560 he is described as an alto.

The court moved to Tübingen in autumn 1564 because of the plague, and it is believed that Hemmel died towards the end of that year, probably in Tübingen and a victim of the epidemic. A payment to his widow in January 1565 for a polished stone slab from his work table supports this hypothesis. His complete psalter, Der gantz Psalter Davids, was prepared for printing by members of the chapel and published posthumously in Tübingen in 1569. It is known that he worked on it chiefly between 1561 and 1564, and that he was able to finish it only shortly before his death.

The body of works securely attributed to him in the Stuttgart choirbooks shows a command of all sacred genres and of the contrapuntal techniques in use until the mid-century. He employed the cantus firmus with varying degrees of strictness, from motets in which the accompanying voices are independent of the plainchant, to pieces in which the cantus firmus is imitated at the fifth, and also counterpoint of melodically independent voices. In his Mass on the melody Ker wider Glück mit Freuden he combines features of the pseudo-polyphony of the mid-sixteenth century.

His psalter aimed to help the congregation understand the liturgy. He frequently chose texts from the Bonn hymnal of 1561, and preferred the psalms of the Augsburg Anabaptists, which number 98 in the volume, alongside others by Dachstein, Waldis and Greiter. Where no prior melody existed, he turned to Protestant hymns whose structure suited the text. Together with Johannes Heugel's psalms set to Burkhard Waldis's psalter, it is considered the first completely polyphonic German psalter, and its contrapuntal tradition links it with that of Johann Walter.