Martin Köler

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Martin Köler (c. 1620-1703 or 1704) was a 17th Century German composer. By 1661 he belonged, under the name ‘Musophilus’, to the well-known poetic academy, the Elbschwanenorden. On 2 May 1663 he succeeded Johann Jakob Löwe von Eisenach as Kapellmeister at the court in Wolfenbüttel, but in April 1667 the chapel was dissolved. He may have been the Coler who was Kapellmeister in Bayreuth in May 1671 and who was succeeded by Johann Philipp Krieger a short time later. In 1675 he was temporary head of the court chapel at Gottorf, Schleswig, following the dismissal of Theile, and he remained in Schleswig until 1681. He possibly served also as Kapellmeister in Brunswick and Lüneburg. Köler was one of the many minor composers in the Hamburg area who wrote songs to texts by Johann Rist and his disciples. He composed all the music for Rist's Neue hochheilige Passions-Andachten and contributed music to Georg Heinrich Weber's Abgewechselte Liebesflammen. He may well be the ‘M.C.’ who composed songs for Caspar von Stieler's Die geharnschte Venus; but Vetter thought it possible that two different composers with the initials ‘M.C.’, one of them Köler, contributed to this work, since while some pieces are subtle, expressive lieder blending text and music satisfactorily, others are simply mechanical declamations. The sacred concertos in Exercitia vocis (RISM 16677) are his most important works. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may a

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