Gallus Dressler

Gallus Dressler (16 October 1533 – 1580/9) was a German composer and music theorist who served as Kantor in the church school at Magdeburg. Though a few of his works have remained in the choral repertoire, he is best known for his theoretical writings, especially his Praecepta musicae poeticae (MS, 1563), which contains some of the earliest detailed description of the compositional process of the Renaissance motet.

Life

Dressler was born in Nebra in Thuringia, but probably received most of his musical education in the Netherlands. He seems particularly influenced by Clemens non papa, and a perusal of the musical examples he cites in his theoretical writings shows that he was strongly influenced by the Franco-Flemish generation immediately following Josquin des Prez.

After a brief tenure at Jena in 1558, Dressler succeeded Martin Agricola as Kantor of the church school in Magdeburg, where most of his career was spent. His compositions were almost entirely in the genre of the Latin motet, largely ignoring the Lutheran chorale, though he is noted for some of the first German-language motets.