Will Schutz

The Heinrich Schütz Complete Recording with the Dresdner Kammerchor under Hans-Christoph Rademann has set new artistic and editorial standards. Now the third of three box sets is being released. It encompasses Volumes 15 to 20 of the Complete Recording. A worthy conclusion to this award-winning series.

A stunning collection of some of the greatest sacred music ever written. From the great Lamentations of Byrd, Tallis and Palestrina, the listener is taken on a remarkable spiritual journey through Bach’s great St Matthew Passion, Purcell’s moving and bleak funeral music for Queen Mary, and Handel radiant Messiah. Pergolesi’s masterful setting of the Stabat Mater and Telemann’s Passions-Oratorium are also to be found here, along with Haydn’s Stabat Mater and his dark and intense masterpiece Die sieben letzen Worte, or The Seven Last Words of our Saviour from the Cross. Finally, Allegri’s hauntingly beautiful Miserere opens this collection – a work that was copied from memory after one hearing by the child Mozart. Prior to that moment the work had only been heard in the Vatican.

By 1648, Heinrich Schuetz was both a survivor and a relic of his own past glory. The 63-year-old devout Lutheran had survived the religious slaughter of the Thirty Years War, which had killed more than half of the musicians of his German world. Surely the most influential composer of German history, he had also outlasted his own impact on the next generation of German composers, patrons, and audiences, who unjustly regarded his music as outdated. Who knows how he felt about his growing isolation, but it's interesting that he chose to compose one of his grandest and greatest accomplishments - the Geistliche Chormusik 1648, op. 11 - in the antiquated contrapuntal style of Renaissance vocal polyphony, the prima prattica, rather than the operatic Italianate seconda prattica he himself had introduced to German music.

If a primary aim of a major issue celebrating a composer's tercentenary is—as it must be—to reveal the extent of his genius, Archive have triumphantly succeeded with this set. The name of Schütz, not so long ago generally classed simply as a predecessor of Bach, is still only gradually becoming accepted by the musical public at large as belonging to the same circle of the elect; but with nine major works and several smaller ones already in the gramophone catalogues (even if not all the performances are ideal) his greatness is now more easily recognisable. The present recording of the complete Psalmen Davids of 1619—the magnificent collection he wrote in his early thirties after his appointment as musical director to the Elector of Saxony—represents a landmark.

The first complete recording of works by Heinrich Schütz with the Dresdner Kammerchor under Hans-Christoph Rademann has set artistic and editorial benchmarks. The first eight instalments of the complete recording, containing among others the Geistliche Chor-Music 1648, the Italian Madrigals and the Psalms of David, are now being released in an 11 CD boxed set. The recordings have been supplemented with an Arthaus film entitled Heinrich Schütz. Der Vater der deutschen Musik which is a documentary by Jörg Kobel, with the assistance of Hans-Christoph Rademann, about the life and work of Heinrich Schütz.

Paul Goodwin’s A Christmas Collection (his debut disc with the Academy of Ancient Music) offers an anthology of Schütz’s shorter dialogues and motets by way of an alternative to the composer’s own Christmas Oratorio. Anyone who has ever endured that drily austere work will be pleasantly surprised by the rich textures and vocal expressivity of much of the music here, and by the dramatic wit, say, of the little Annunciation scene, ‘Sei gegrüsset Maria’, for male alto Angel and soprano Mary, in which the mother-to-be can’t help interrupting her heavenly visitor, first in sheer amazement, then in her eagerness to confirm her unblemished virgin state.

The 2nd book of these Symphoniae, written in the dark years of the devastating 30 Years War and published in 1647, stands among his central body of works and holds many affecting and beautiful moments. The British recording being reviewed here presents the 2nd book in its order of publication, which is not structured as a coherent work end-to-end work but rather is organized by range and number of soloists, indicating that each of the symphoniae is a single piece standing on its own. Book II starts with the symphoniae for solo voice, works its way down the vocal range from soprano to bass, then proceeds on to the duets and trios and concluding with a few more ambitious works for a full set of vocal soloists.

…This is the best you will ever hear of the "Spiritual Choir-Music of Heinrich Schuetz (1585-1672). This one-disk performance is a selection of ten of the 49 motets in Schuetz's 1648 opus, interspersed with six quite distinct selections from the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte of 1636. The two sources are radically different; the earlier works are in the operatic 'secunda prattica' style of Monteverdi, sung by soloists over decorated basso continuo; the later works are superbly old-fashioned choral polyphony of the 'prima prattica' of composers dead before Schuetz was born. As a concert listening experience, the combination is highly effective, offering a variety and sprightliness that a through-reading of the complete Geistliche Chormusic can't provide.