Schütz, Heinrich (1585, 1672)

Heinrich Schütz (1585 - 1672) served as a choirboy and studied music with the court Kapellmeister in Kassel. Thereafter the Landgrave of Kassel paid for his studies in Venice with G.Gabrieli.



He then became Kapellmeister in Dresden at the request of Elector Johann Georg I. There he was responsible for providing music for major court ceremonies, whether religious or political. He also had to keep the Kapelle adequately staffed and supervise the musical education of the choirboys. Except for a brief stay at the court of the Prince of Denmark, he remained in Dresden for the rest of his career.



In 1619 Schütz published his first collection of sacred music, the Psalmen Davids, dedicated to the elector, and later that year he married Magdalena Wildeck.



She died in 1625, leaving Schütz with two daughters whom he placed in the care of their maternal grandmother; he never remarried.



Schütz was the greatest German composer of the 17th century and the first of international stature.



His output was almost exclusively sacred; he set mainly biblical texts and wrote little chorale-based music.



His early works explore a variety of styles and genres: the polychoral Psalmen Davids (1619) are notable for their contrasting textures and sonorities, while the Cantiones sacrae (1625) present a wide range of motet settings, from the polyphonic to the concertato.



Later, he exploited the Italian concertato idiom to the full, notably in the three books of Symphoniae sacrae (1629, 1647, 1650), which give equal weight to voices and instruments.



His two sets of Kleine geistliche Konzerte (1636, 1639), written after the Thirty Years War and for limited forces, emphasize the meaning of the text, combining principles of monody and counterpoint to create powerful and expressive declamation.



Schütz's late works are dominated by the oratorical pieces and by the three unaccompanied dramatic Passions, said to be the last great examples of the genre.



His music, largely to German texts, constitutes the ultimate realization of Luther's endeavours to establish the vernacular as a literary and liturgical language, and embodies the Protestant and humanistic concept of musica poetica in perhaps its most perfect form.