Paumann, Conrad
Paumann, Conrad
Paumann, Conrad , significant German organist and composer; b. Nuremberg, between 1410 and 1415; d. Munich, Jan. 24, 1473. He was blind from birth. Through the patronage of Ulrich Grundherr, and later his son Paul Grundherr, he was able to obtain instruction in music. By 1446 he was appointed organist at St. Sebald in Nuremberg, and in 1447 he became town organist. In 1450 he was called to Munich to serve as court organist to Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria. He won great renown as an organist, and traveled to Austria and Italy. He also achieved mastery as a player on the harp, the lute, and the recorder, being particularly noted for his improvisations. Some of his extant works have been pubi, in Das Erbe deutscher Musik, Ist series (1958); see also the Fundamentum organisandi magistri Conradi Pau-manns ceci de Nurenberga anno 1452 as ed. by W. Apel in Keyboard Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, I (1963).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire