Faber, Nicolaus (i) [Schmidt, Nickel]

(b c1490; d Leipzig, 1554). German printer. Records show that he

became a citizen of Leipzig on 5 October 1510. His printing and
publishing business, begun in 1521, included a book bindery and a
retail bookshop. Since no publications bearing his name are dated
later than 1545, he probably devoted the last years of his life to the
sale rather than to the printing of books. After his death the firm
was taken over by his son, Lorenz, but apparently with little
success.
One of the first Protestants in Leipzig, Faber maintained close
business ties with Georg Rhau in Wittenberg. His book production
was largely confined to school texts and grammars and theological
writings, beginning with the works by Reformation authors and
later turning to those of the Catholic Church. In music he is known
for a single publication, Melodiae Prudentianae et in Virgilium
magna ex parte nuper natae (1533), which contains four-voice
metric settings by Lucas Hordisch and Sebastian Forster of hymns
by the 4th-century Latin poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius. Simple
note-against-note settings of antique metres, often of Horatian
odes (see Ode (ii)), were fairly frequent in Germany in the early
16th century and showed the influence of the contemporary
humanistic movement. The quantitative rhythms of the hymns in
this collection are notated in semibreves and minims with no
general time signature; one note is allotted to each syllable of the
text. The metric scheme is indicated at the beginning of each
setting. The music is printed in choirbook format, using the oldfashioned system of block printing. Faber published the complete
texts in a separate volume, Aurelii Prudentii liber
kathemerinon (1533), since only the first strophe was given with
the melodies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MGG1 (H.C. Wolff)
A. Kirchhoff: Die Entwicklung des Buchhandels in Leipzig bis
in das zweite Jahrzehnt nach Einfhrung der
Reformation (Leipzig,1885)

R. von Liliencron: Die horazischen Metren in deutschen

Kompositionen des 16. Jahrhunderts,VMw, iii (1887), 2691
H. Riemann: Notenschrift und Notendruck, Festschrift zur
50jhrigen Jubelfeier des Bestehens der Firma C.G. Rder
Leipzig(Leipzig, 1896), appx, 188
H. Springer: Die musikalischen Blockdrucke des 15. und 16.
Jahrhunderts, IMusSCR I: Basle 1906, 3747
O. Clemen: Melodiae Prudentianae, Leipzig 1533, ZMw, x
(19278), 10627
H. Jentsch: Nickel Schmidt (Nicolaus Faber) und Michael
Blum, zwei Leipziger Drucker der
Reformationszeit (Wolfenbttel,1928)
J. Benzing: Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im
deutschen Sprachgebiet (Wiesbaden, 1963, 2/1982), 262
MARIE LOUISE GLLNER