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Johann Georg Schott was a German composer. He studied at Marburg, and from 1594 in Heidelberg, probably at the instigation of Nicolaus Rosthius, with whom he had lodged for three months late in 1590 and early in 1591. Later he entered the service of the Count of Nassau in Ottweiler (Saar), and rose to the position of an imperial notary and town clerk in Butzbach. In 1610 he described himself as ‘Director musices’ in charge of the collegium musicum there. Schott’s last years coincided with a period when the city was at its most prosperous: in 1609 it became the seat of a branch of the Hessian line, the sole regent of which was Landgrave Philipp (1609-1693), an extremely cultured prince.
Johann Georg Schott’s only printed work, Psalmen und Gesangbuch darinn die geistlichen Lieder D.M. Lutheri und anderer Christen begrieffen, zu 4 Stimmen. Contrapunkts weiss … gesetzet (Frankfurt, 1603 [RISM, B/VIII 160306]) belongs, as its title indicates, to the Lutheran chorale-book tradition established by Lucas Osiander; with its 196 four-voice settings it is one of the largest extant collections. Among the versions of the psalms of Middle and High German origin in the first part, there are 20 rhyming paraphrases from Johannes Magdeburg’s Psalter Davids gesangsweis (Frankfurt, 1565, lost). Nearly all Schott’s settings are based on existing tunes.
Three works by Johann Georg Schott in manuscript are no longer extant: two, for eight voices, were written ‘in honorem Ludovici Hassiae Landgraf’ – Paraphrasis brevis et perspicua super psalmum xlv (a wedding motet), and Acclamatio musicalis (cited in J. Steuber: Catalogi und Nachrichten von der Marburger und Giessener Bibliothek, D-GI); the third, Das neugeborne Kindelein, is known from an old Butzbach music list. |
