Samuel Scheidt

Organist of the Moritzkirche; one of the early German Baroque “three S's”

When people in Halle speak of the city's music, they think first of Handel. But a century before him, the city already had an organ master of its own — Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654), born in Halle and died in Halle, who played at the Moritzkirche, the mother church of the city's salt workers.

The salt workers' mother church

Halle has produced salt for a thousand years, and the Halloren who evaporated it had a church of their own: the Moritzkirche, founded in the twelfth century and late Gothic in its present form — called “the key work of late Gothic architecture in central Germany” — and Lutheran since 1542. Scheidt played the organ there. The city was built on salt, the salt workers worshipped in their own church, and the man at the organ bench would go on to be written into the history of music.

North, and back again

Scheidt traveled north to Amsterdam to study under Sweelinck, then returned to the organ bench of his hometown. In 1624, his Tabulatura nova appeared, a landmark in the history of organ music; later generations counted him among the early German Baroque's “three S's.”

Salt and organ

When it comes to Halle's own church music, Scheidt predates Handel by a century. Handel left Halle at eighteen; Scheidt's life, by contrast, began in this city and ended in it as well.

Halle has made salt for a thousand years and is known as the salt city; Jesus called his disciples “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). Four hundred years ago, the salt workers sang in the Moritzkirche while Scheidt played for them; today, we sing in Chinese in that same city. The organ and the tunes have both changed, but it is the same God being praised.

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