Johann Christoph Demantius (15 December 1567 – 20 April 1643) was a German composer, music theorist, writer and poet. He was an exact contemporary of Monteverdi, and represented a transitional phase in German Lutheran music from the polyphonic Renaissance style to the early Baroque.
Life
He was born in Reichenberg (now Liberec, in the Czech Republic, north of Prague near the border with Germany), and probably received his early training there, though little information is available about his early life. By the early 1590s he was in Bautzen, where he wrote a school textbook, and in 1593 he received a degree from the University of Wittenberg. In 1594 he moved to Leipzig, and in 1597 he acquired the post of Kantor at Zittau, where he probably taught the young Melchior Franck.
His next post, one he held for the rest of his life, was as Kantor to Freiberg Cathedral. While he was able to keep his position, the Thirty Years' War was disruptive to his life, and most of his children, of four different marriages, died due to the hardships imposed by the war.
In the realm of sacred music Demantius wrote motets, masses, Magnificat settings, psalm settings, hymns, and a splendid setting of the St. John Passion, one of the most significant passion settings of the late Renaissance. This work, for six voices, is considered to be the last in the development of the German motet passion; those composed later were to be of the more dramatic kind, culminating in the St John Passion of J.S. Bach. Demantius's setting includes a setting of Isaiah chapter 53 in addition to the usual text from the Gospel of St. John.