Little is known about Melchior Franck’s early life. We do know that his father was a painter.

He excelled in counterpoint, and had a lot of influence on his contemporaries. Franck worked at Augsburg, en briefly in Nürnberg. When he was in Nürnberg, he met Hans Leo Hassler, who influenced him very much. In 1603 he became Kapellmeister to the Duke of Coburg. Franck’s musical output was enormous: he wrote more than 1400 compositions, vocal as well as instrumental, religious as wel as secular. His music is always expressive and often relatively simple. This simplicity possibly explains the popularity of his compositions.