He was born in Amsterdam. Nothing is known of his teachers, but he established himself as a distinguished virtuoso on the viola da gamba. As a composer his work represents an early synthesis of French, German and Italian styles.

It seems that Schenck spent the earlier part of his career in Amsterdam where his compositions included music for a Dutch Singspiel, Bacchus Ceres en Venus, from which songs were published in 1687, as well as works for his own instrument.

Enjoying a wide reputation as a performer, in about 1696 he moved to Düsseldorf to the court of the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm, known as Jan Wellem, who ruled there from 1679 until his death in 1716, establishing a court that aimed to rival the artistic magnificence of Versailles.

Schenck is presumed to have continued in the service of the Elector until the latter’s death in 1716. Thereafter the electoral court moved to Mannheim, followed by a number of the Düsseldorf musicians, who formed the nucleus of a musical establishment that was to win its own unchallenged reputation, as the century went on.

Doubts as to the date of Schenck’s death, presumably in Düsseldorf, come from the lack of any mention of his death in Protestant church records in the city.

He is mentioned in a document by the court cabinet secretary Rapparini in 1709, but by 1717 his name had disappeared from the list of court opera musicians then compiled.

As Karl Heniz Pauls points out in his edition of the present work (Das Erbe deutscher Musik, Band 44, 1956), with his article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, the principal source of the information here included, no reference to Schenck has yet been found in the deaths recorded in parish and cemetery records in Amsterdam, in the absence of any general register until 1750.