Johann Theile´s Musikalisches Kunstbuch of 1691, is a kind of early cross between the Musical Offering and the Art of Fugue, containing as it does a large number of different musical forms, mostly canonic or at least rigourously contrapuntal.
Johann Theile (1646-1724) was a pupil of Heinrich Schütz: he worked variously in Lübeck, Stettin (now Szczecin), Hamburg, Wolfenbüttel, and Berlin. He was primarily a composer of church music to German and Latin texts: a couple of rather fine sonatas have survived.
