Johann Schop

Johann Schop was a German violinist, composer, and civic musician whose birth date and birthplace are not securely established; modern references generally place his birth around 1590. He entered the Wolfenbüttel court ensemble in 1614 and joined the musical establishment of King Christian IV in Copenhagen the following year. By 1621 he was serving Hamburg as a municipal violinist, later directing the city's Ratsmusik. Contemporary and later testimony recognized him as an exceptional violin virtuoso as well as a composer of demanding instrumental and vocal music.

Schop collaborated with the Lutheran pastor-poet Johann Rist by providing melodies for Rist's devotional collections. ERMUNTRE DICH appeared with Rist's Christmas hymn in Himlische Lieder in 1641, originally in a more rhythmically varied triple-meter form. Johann Crüger revised the melody for Praxis Pietatis Melica in 1648, and Johann Sebastian Bach later supplied the influential four-part setting heard in the Christmas Oratorio.

Schop also wrote WERDE MUNTER, later used by Bach in Cantata BWV 147 and associated in English with Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. That is a different melody and should not be confused with ERMUNTRE DICH. Schop died in Hamburg in 1667, leaving an important body of early Baroque instrumental music and several durable Lutheran chorale tunes.