Johann Heugel

From then on, his place of residence remained the city of Kassel, apart from the journeys and campaigns of his employers, Landgraves Philip I and Wilhelm IV , who had to accompany the Heugel. In doing so, he surely got to know the field preacher and writer Burkhard Waldis , whose German adaptation of the psalms of the Old Testament was set to music by the Kapellmeister in four to five-part movements into old age.

There were frequent changes of stay between the residences in Kassel and Marburg, but trips to Heidelberg are also documented. In 1553 Heugel's wife Margarita brought their son Johannto the world, to whom the composer gave a good education. Since then, at the latest, he has also been working as a construction clerk for the city of Kassel (the fee of 40 guilders that the musician had previously received as a trumpeter was canceled for unknown reasons). So Heugel documented construction activities and paid off the craftsmen. He was not only on the road for the city in this activity, but z. B. from 1559 also for Landgraves Philipp and Wilhelm IV .: During the renovation of the Kassel City Palace he was one of the three top directors. Presumably he was already in charge of construction in 1538 for a new school building in the Kassel "Freiheit".

During one of the stays in Marburg, Johann Heugel left his nine-year-old son to the scholar Justus Vultejus , a good friend of his father's, for training and education. Vultejus came from Wetter, and the composer Heugel dedicated a composition to him in gratitude for his concern for his son. The Heugel died in old age in Kassel (?) At the beginning of 1585. The son died in 1601 as a senior magistrate on Rheinfels near St. Goar, his mother Margarita Heugel survived him by 11 years.

In 1605 the Heugels are named in the register of houses in the city of Kassel as owners of two houses. The first, a narrow two-story house in Mittelgasse, belonged to the composer's widow. The larger one was at Sack 4 at the corner of Steinweg; The widow Johann Heugels junior, Anna, the daughter-in-law of the master, is named as the owner. Both houses were destroyed in 1943. It can be assumed that Johann Heugel sen. initially lived in the larger house with his wife and children, as the family also had to accommodate and feed the chapel boys. The band consisted of six adult men and four to six boys who were used as sopranos or altos. A few instrumentalists were added if necessary.

Johann Heugel is the earliest Hessian composer whose works have been left in writing. He brought the Kassel court orchestra, which experienced its first heyday under his direction, to the European level. It was the forerunner of today's Kassel State Orchestra. There are around four to five hundred secular and sacred compositions, almost exclusively vocal works, from the three to five-part motet to eight to ten-part double choirs to a 12-part “Te Deum “In the part books written by Heugel himself in the manuscript department of the Murhard Library and State Library of Kassel - today Kassel University Library- be kept. The number of works alone is remarkable. Only a few composers of this period left behind a more extensive oeuvre. Unfortunately, some of the part books were lost before World War II . Another is considered a war loss. Apart from the value represented by Heugel's own compositions, the part books contain works by the most important composers of his time.

During his lifetime, Heugel was a famous man in Western Europe. A contemporary poem by a master's degree from Wittenberg names him fifth among the composers who have become famous for sacred music, ahead of Isaak and Stoltzer. Heugel was forgotten after his death, because at the end of the 16th century the Flemish style of music, the imitative- contrapuntalThe way of composition, called “prima pratica”, has been replaced in favor of a largely homophonic and more catchy style influenced by Italian folk music, the “seconda pratica”. This is what the scientists working on Heugel agree on. That alone cannot be the reason, however, because it can be established that no clear dividing line can be drawn between the two directions and that Heugel also used homophonic ways of composing very early on. In 1539 he wrote the 8-part Consolamini double choir predominantly homophonic and with the use of the later popular echo effects, which it was long assumed that Heinrich Schütz brought them back from Italy. The fact that Heugel did not try very hard to publish his works during his lifetime may also have contributed to this, and in particular the fact that his melodies often seem to be written more for instruments than for vocals - similar to Bach's later work, in which one can also notice a very instrumental melody in the vocal parts. So at first glance they seem very brittle and bulky and are difficult to sing. Heugel's focus, however, remained on the Flemish style, the polyphonic, imitative counterpoint, particularly in his sacred works. The musicologist wrote at the beginning of the 20th centuryWilibald Nagel gave a damning verdict on Heugel: "However, he had no talent that exceeded a respectable average." This judgment was only called into question from the middle of the 20th century: It is regrettable that “it was not possible to clear things up with such unqualified statements as those previously made about Heugel. Heugel's underestimation has many reasons. The most important is that the researchers did not know Heugel's work from making music or sounding, but only from the autograph notes. [...] But a number of unjustly forgotten composers of the 16th and 17th centuries suffer from this illness caused by the hasty judgment of some musicologists, who, unfortunately, all too positivist musicology have quickly branded 'minor masters' ”wrote Konrad Ruhland. Some of the court orchestra's works were performed for the first time in over 400 years in 2012 by the choirs con forza Kreuzberg and Echo 36 and the saxophone ensemble Kunst der Pause under the direction of Horst Zimmermann. And in 2013, due to Zimmermann's initiative, the city of Kassel remembered the composer and honored him by naming a path. This runs on the bastions of the former city palace from Steinweg to Rondell (a remnant of the medieval fortifications of the city), where Johann Heugel went in and out.