Waisselius, Matthaeus (EN)

Waisselius, Waissel, Matthaeus, *before 1540 (?) Bartenstein (now Bartoszyce) in East Prussia, †1602 Kaliningrad (?), German lutenist and composer, Lutheran clergyman. Waisselius may be identical with the student identified as “Matthaeus Waiszel Borussus,” who matriculated in the summer of 1553 at the University of Frankfurt (Oder); he certainly enrolled in the theological faculty of the University of Kaliningrad on 1 February 1560 or 1561 (the lost Kaliningrad archives are variously cited). Between 1565 and 1570, he travelled through Germany and Italy, where, among other things, he learned to play the lute. In 1573, he became rector of the school in Schippenbeil (now Sępopol), and from 1574 to 1587, he was parish priest in Langheim near Rastenburg (now Łąkajny Kąt near Kętrzyn). In 1591 and 1592, he stayed in Frankfurt (Oder), overseeing the printing of his tablatures, and towards the end of his life, he probably settled in Kaliningrad, where he published two works: Summa doctrinae sacrae (1596) and Chronica alter preussischer (…) Historien (1599). His son, Matthaeus (*Langheim), was an instrumentalist in Riga in 1598, and in 1616–19, he belonged to the princely chapel in Kaliningrad.

Waisselius’s collections contain all the genres characteristic of 16^th-century lute music. Two preambles from 1573 (one adopted from P. Phalèse’s 1571 collected edition) are polyphonic, while imitative textures dominate in eight from the Tabulatura allerley… monophonic runs intertwine with chords, and in two fantasias from 1573 (one also from Phalèse’s edition) and four from the Lautenbuch…. The 1573 collection features intavolations of works most frequently used by other lutenists in the 16^th century: four motets (including one arrangement by V. Bakfark), four madrigals, ten chansons (including one arrangement by Benedict de Drusin), and four lieder (religious and secular). In Lautenbuch…, the selection of vocal patterns is more uniform: eight German villanelles (including six by J. Regnart), six canzonettas by O. Vecchi, and two anonymous Neapolitans. Dances are present in all of Waisselius’s collections. Galliards, often titled with incipits from popular Italian songs, are the most numerous: 10 in 1573, 15 in the Lautenbuch…, and 24 in the Tabulatura allerley…. The latter collection also includes four galliards paired with pavanes, reprinted from other collections, similarly to seven branles, to which Waisselius likely added four of his own. There are also eight padoanas, unusual in that they begin in two measures, following the pavane pattern, transition into triple measure, and in one of them, duple meter returns. Three-measure padoanas, twice as fast as galliards and saltarellas, were introduced by Waisselius in his 1573 collection as the second element of the suites, between the passamezzo and saltarello. Four such cycles, whose importance is emphasised throughout the suite’s history, are based on the passamezzo antico pattern, and in the saltarello, between the variations based on this pattern, a section based on only three chords built on the fourth, fifth, and first degrees of mode is inserted; numerous variations based on this short combination constitute the fourth movements of the cycle, called Le represe; this movement is absent from the four subsequent cycles, which are variations on the moderno pattern and three-part individual patterns. Cycles composed of passamezzo, saltarella, and Le represe (some being extended reprints from other collections) were also included by Waisselius in Tabulatura allerley… (8) and in Lautenbuch… (4). In all his printed works, Waisselius included 55 Deudtsche Tentze, always consisting of a two-beat section and its transformation into three-beat (Sprung); in the Tabulatura guter…, which contains only eight such dances, he added a second lute part, tuned a fourth lower. His Polnische Tentze (written exclusively in two-beat) are of particular importance for the history of Polish music, as Waisselius, raised and working in Prussia, certainly had contact with the melodies in their authentic form.

All of Waisselius’s collections are designed for the 6-choir lute. The Lautenbuch… also contains extensive instructions, including fingering for both the right and left hands.

Literature: O. Körte Laute und Lautenmusik bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1901; J. Dieckmann Die in deutscher Lautentabulatur überlieferten Tänze des 16. Jahrhunderts, Kassel 1931; H.P. Kosack Geschichte der Laute und Lautenmusik in Preussen, Kassel 1935 (contains a thematic catalogue of all Waisselius’s prints); H. Grimm Meister der Renaissancemusik an der Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) 1942; W. Boetticher Studien zur solistischen Lautenpraxis des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1943; K. Scheit Ce que nous enseignent les traités de luth des environs de 1600, in: Le luth et sa musique, ed. J. Jacquot, Paris 1958, 2^nd ed. 1976; R. Hudson Chordal Aspects of the Italian Dance Style 1500–1650 and D.A. Smith The Instructions in Matthaeus Waisselius’s „Lautenbuch”, “Journal of the Lute Society of America” III, 1970 and VIII, 1975; H. Radke Zur Spieltechnik der deutschen Lautenisten des 16. Jahrhunderts, “Acta Musicologica” LII, 1980; K.P. Koch Matthaeus Waisselius, Valentin Haussmann und Georg Neumark. Drei Beispiele für den Umgang mit polnischer Musik um 1600, “Jahrbuch fur deutsche und osteuropäische Volkskunde” XXXVII, 1994.