intention he stated early on — in the preface to the Banchetto musicale — to publish alternately music for use in worship and social gatherings. The contrast between the two kinds of music can be quite extreme. While some of his sacred music uses the most sophisticated techniques of the Italian madrigal for a devotional purpose, such as the motet Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen setting verses from Psalm 84, several of his secular collections include such things as drinking songs of a surprising simplicity and humor. Some of his works attain an expressive intensity matched in Germany only by those of Schütz, for example the spectacular Fontana d'Israel or Israel's Brünnlein (1623), in which Schein declared his intent to exhaust the possibilities of German word-painting "in the style of the Italian madrigal." Possibly his most famous collection was his only collection of instrumental music, the Banchetto musicale (Musical banquet) (1617) which contains twenty separate variation suites; they are among the earliest, and most perfect, representatives of the form. Most likely they were composed as dinner music for the courts of Weissenfels and Weimar, and were intended to be performed on viols. They consist of dances: a pavan-galliard (a normal early Baroque pair), a courante, and then an allemande-tripla. Each suite in the Banchetto is unified by mode as well as by theme. Published works Sacred vocal Cymbalum Sionium (1615) Opella nova, geistlicher Concerten (1618) Fontana d'Israel, Israelis Brünnlein (1623) Opella nova, ander Theil, geistlicher Concerten (1626) Cantional oder Gesangbuch Augspurgischer Confession (1627, 1645) Secular vocal Venus Kräntzlein (1609) Musica boscareccia (1621, and several portions published later) Diletti pastorali, Hirten Lust (1624) Studenten-Schmauss (1626) So da, mein liebes Brüderlein (1626) Instrumental Banchetto musicale (1617) References Sources Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. Article "Johann Hermann Schein," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. External links 1586 births 1630 deaths 16th-century German people 17th-century German people 17th-century classical composers 17th-century hymnwriters Classical composers of church music German Baroque composers German male classical composers German Lutheran hymnwriters Musicians from Leipzig Thomaskantors Ore Mountains 17th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Germany 17th-century male musicians