Paumann, Conrad (c. 1410–1473)

German composer and organist. He travelled widely through France, Italy, Germany, and Austria as an organist and is believed to have invented a form of lute tablature. His treatise, Fundamentum organisandi/Principles of Composition (1452), gives examples of the ornamentation of chant, with keyboard arrangements of chants and secular melodies.

Paumann was born in Nuremberg. Blind from birth, he was educated by the Grundherr family of Nuremberg, learnt the organ and composition, and was organist at St Sebald's Church in the 1440s. In 1450 he was appointed organist to Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria at Munich, and retained the post for the rest of his life. Few of his compositions survive, probably because he could not write them down.

Works Organ music and song organ arrangement of monophonic (without harmony) and polyphonic pieces; the German song ‘Wiplich figur’.