Musicologist Walter Blankenburg has observed that Praetorius (1571-1621) was “the most versatile and wide-ranging German composer of his generation and one of the most prolific, especially of works based on Protestant hymns.”
But Praetorius also wrote settings of pre-Reformation melodies, including the chant tune we know as Conditor alme siderum, and which we have been singing during Advent as our Sequence hymn, “Creator of the stars of night.”
The hymn originally included six stanzas; here is the first stanza sung with Praetorius’s harmonization by Ensemble Nobiles, a group of singers who met while singing in the St. Thomas Boys Choir in Leipzig. This is the opening track of their Advent/Christmas/Epiphany album called Bis willekommen (“Be welcome”), which also includes the setting of Conditor alme siderum by Tomás Luis de Victoria.