Background
Sebastiani was born in Weimar.
Sebastiani was born in Weimar.
He became Kantor at Königsberg cathedral in 1661, and court Kapellmeister from 1663 to 1679. He died in Königsberg. He is the first composer who introduce chorale into oratorio passion.
Within the Street Matthew Passion, Sebastiani includes eight different chorale melodies and introduces thirteen chorale verses.
This work is a development from the style of Heinrich Schütz which includes recitatives and arias but avoids a dramatic operatic idiom, and marks an intermediate position between Schütz and Bach such as those of Johann Theile and Johann Valentin Meder. Two violins accompany Christ, who is a bass, Evangelist, who is a tenor, Judas, as an alto, and the other minor characters with higher pitched interjections.
Four viols accompany Evangelist, Judas and the other characters. In 1672, he published a collection entitled Erster Theil der Pamass-Blumen, oder Geist -und Weltlich Lieder.