Unlike divisions of the octave into 19, 31 or 53 steps, which can be considered as being derived from ancient Greek intervals (the greater and lesser diesis and the syntonic comma), division into 34 steps did not arise 'naturally' out of older music theory, although Cyriakus Schneegass proposed a meantone system with 34 divisions based in effect on half a chromatic semitone (the difference between a major third and a minor third, 25/24 or 70.67 cents).
Of his hymns, the song In dir ist Freude in allem Leide (1598) on a melody by Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi is still in the Protestant hymnal (EG 398).
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He came from a peasant family and experienced a youth shaped by military turmoil during the Smalcaldic War, with the siege of Gotha by the Elector Augustus of Saxony.
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Evidence of his life can be found again in 1573, when he took his first ministry as the fifth Protestant pastor at St. Blasius Church in Friedrichroda.