Melchior Franck

Melchior Franck was the youngest of a group of prolific German composers working generally in Saxony and N. Bavaria around 1600. Two other names from this group are Seth Calvisius and Christoph Demantius. Protestantism, and a tendency to write in a more conservative idiom are unifying factors.
Franck was born in 1579 in Zittau, Saxony, but his first known employment around 1600 was in Augsburg in the South. Shortly after that he was music teacher at St. Egidien’s Church in Nuremberg, and in 1603 he became Kapellmeister to Prince Johann Casimir in Coburg, a position he retained for the rest of his life.
In 1632 Imperial troops under Wallenstein occupied Coburg and Prince Casimir died the following year. Franck’s activities were severely curtailed and he died in Coburg six years later, around age 60.
During his working years Franck was a prolific composer completing 40 collections of motets . . . 600 in all, and 13 collections of secular works. This attractive polyphonic Lied about the benefits of mining is a slight sampling of the genius of Melchior Franck.