Johann Schein and the birth of the Baroque

Ever wonder why Baroque was invented?  It may be that it was dinner music; that's why Johann Schein composed it.  He lived in Weimar in the sixteenth century, at the very beginning of the Baroque age, at the inflection point where music was beginning to be composed for more than just religious ceremonies.

He made his living from religious music as Kapellmeister the at Weimar, writing works like this:



But he was perhaps the first non-Italian composer to write in the new style.  This is his most famous work, and is unmistakeably Baroque.