SENFL, LUDWIG

Outstanding church composer of Renaissance Germany; b. Zürich, Switzerland, c. 1490; d. Munich, before or during 1556. He was Heinrich isaak's pupil and assistant at Augsburg, and he sang in the court chapel of Maximilian I. After Isaak died in 1517, Senfl succeeded him as chamber composer, remaining at Augsburg after Maximilian's death in 1519. From 1523 until the 1540s he was associated with the Bavarian court in Munich. While there his fame grew so rapidly that one writer referred to him as the prince of all German music, and in a letter to him on Oct. 4, 1530, Martin Luther praised him highly. When Isaak left his monumental work Choralis Constantinus unfinished at his death, Senfl completed the St. Ursula sequence, and then supervised the editing and copying of the entire collection. His own works include seven Masses, motets, Magnificats, and numerous lieder.

Bibliography: Sämtliche Werke, 7 v. (Wolfenbüttel, Ger. 1949–62). h. isaak, Choralis Constantinus: Book III, ed. l. cuyler (Ann Arbor 1950) 15–23. g. reese, Music in the Renaissance (rev. ed. New York 1959). a. geering, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 12:498–516. m. bente, Neue Wege der Quellenkritik und die Biographie Ludwig Senfls: Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des Reformationszeitalters (Ph.D. diss. Tübingen, 1968); The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. s. sadie (New York 1980). j. c. griesheimer, The Antiphon-, Responsory-, and Psalm-Motets of Ludwig Senfl (Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, 1990). d. m. randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge 1996). n. slonimsky, ed., Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York 1992).

[l. j. wagner]