Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), born Michael Schultze in Creuzburg, Thuringia, was a leading German composer, organist, and theorist of the early Baroque. The son of a Lutheran pastor, he studied at Frankfurt (Oder) and served as organist there before joining the court of Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg at Wolfenbüttel in 1592/93, rising to Kapellmeister in 1604.

A remarkably versatile composer, Praetorius published over 1,000 works. His monumental Musae Sioniae (1605–1610, nine parts) contains hundreds of Lutheran chorale settings for 2–16 voices, while other collections provided Latin liturgical music. From 1613 he also worked (mostly absentee) for the Dresden court of Elector John George I, where exposure to Venetian polychoral style—especially Giovanni Gabrieli—profoundly influenced his later music. His grand polychoral concertos and festive works reached a pinnacle of splendor, earning acclaim at events such as the 1614 Naumburg Princes’ Convention and the 1617 imperial visit to Dresden. He collaborated closely with Heinrich Schütz during these years.

Praetorius’s only surviving secular collection, Terpsichore (1612), preserves over 300 French instrumental dances and remains his best-known work today. His famous chorale harmonization of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (“Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”) and the Christmas motet “En natus est Emanuel” both appeared in 1609.

His influential treatise Syntagma Musicum (1614–1620) is a major source on late Renaissance and early Baroque performance practice and instrumentation. Falling ill by 1620, Praetorius died in Wolfenbüttel on his 50th birthday, 15 February 1621.