Music journalism is often quick with spectacular attributions, but anyone who is regarded as the undisputed household god by professional and amateur choristers should say something to even the most culturally distant, generally educated student: Heinrich Schütz was already considered the “best composer in these countries” during his lifetime, even the “ancestor of the German music”, even if his works seemed to have been forgotten for almost two centuries afterwards. Indisputably, he was the first composer to create music on German soil that was not only useful or pleasing to the court and clergy, but also stood for itself. The fact that Schütz also had them printed testifies to self-confidence in the best sense of the word as an independent artist.
Born into a wealthy Thuringian family in 1585, the Köstritz innkeeper’s son grew up in the Ore Mountains near Chemnitz and later in Weißenfels, then in Electoral Saxony, where he later set up his retirement home – until he died at the almost biblical age of 87 at the time. He owed his career to one of his father’s hotel guests who happened to be passing through: The Hessian Landgrave Moritz brought the 13-year-old to his court in Kassel as a choirboy and, after his voice broke, paid for him to study for several years with the Venetian grandmaster Giovanni Gabrieli. From 1609 to 1612, his friend Schütz learned in detail the Italian madrigal technique and multiple choirs from him – several choirs sing from different parts of the room and thus literally surround the listener with music – which may have been the main inspiration for his main works and at their time in German lands were unprecedented.
Nevertheless, Gabrieli’s successor was an Italian: Claudio Monteverdi. So the Thuringian returned to Hesse, but in 1615 the Saxon Elector Johann Georg stole from the landgrave, who had not only dutifully financed his education but also the study trip, which led to serious diplomatic complications. From then on, Heinrich Schütz was allowed to call himself Hofkapellmeister in Dresden and laid down the majority of his work there, much of which is believed to have been lost. For example, only the text of the scenic composition “Dafne”, which was performed at a festivity at Hartenfels Castle in Torgau in 1627 and is therefore considered the first German opera, has survived employer had died and his son had a gracious understanding. He retained his title of “Hofkapellmeister”.
Heinrich Schütz lived mainly in what is now Central Germany, an area that was already considered the cultural center of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and which is still at the forefront of Schütz’s care today. Be it at the music festival of the same name, with the Saxon boys’ choirs, but also with countless small choirs, to which “Sagittarius”, as Schütz called himself in Latin (“Sagitta” is the old Roman word for “arrow”), left a multitude of choral compositions that fill 28 CDs in the multi-award-winning Schütz complete recording by the Dresdner Kammerchor conducted by Hans-Christoph Rademann, some of which are also easily accessible to amateurs.
Apart from his stays in Venice and several brief guest engagements at the Danish court, Schütz remained loyal to an inhospitable and unpeaceful area. Armed conflicts in his own country shaped a large part of his life. Schütz experienced the entire Thirty Years’ War first-hand as a time of cruelty, existential fears – and cultural decline: his Dresden court orchestra was cut back more and more, which not least demanded compositional flexibility from Schütz. Several poignant laments are handed down in his letters, forewords and compositions. Many of his works – above all the Psalms of David or the Geistliche Chormusik 1648 – reflect his very own experiences in the immediate vicinity of epidemics, death and terrible atrocities. In those torturous times, however, it was Schütz above all who, despite his experiences, was able to convey hope with his music – to courtiers as well as to simple churchgoers. This is all the more astonishing since, despite all his fame, he was employed throughout his professional life, survived almost all of his family members and died alone 350 years ago.
Nevertheless, he immortalized himself in German cultural memory with a music that quoted the Italian achievements of the “concerting style”, but found its own way of interpreting the text and at the same time – with the combination of madrigal and basso continuo construction – developed a style that baroque successor was to shape melodically and harmonically for decades to come. It was always his artistic concern to place the music in the service of the literal statement, to musically interpret the meaning of Luther’s translation of the Bible. This proximity to language, which characterizes the wealth of images and emotions in his music, creates a vitality that immediately spreads to the listener.
Even if Heinrich Schütz was only rediscovered 200 years later by Franz Liszt and his contemporaries, since then no one has been able to avoid him, until today. And anyone who has heard the 119th Psalm – Schütz’s last surviving work – known as the “Swan Song” knows: There is no better way to die. 350 years ago, on November 6th of the Julian calendar and November 16th, 1672 of the Gregorian calendar in use in Protestant Saxony since 1700, his time had come in Dresden. The “Sagittarius” – long live him! |with tk
On November 26, a special exhibition “Christmas traditions from the Ore Mountains” will open in the Heinrich-Schütz-Haus in Bad Köstritz, asking which of them Heinrich Schütz might have already experienced. Until the end of January 2023, it will be open Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. and on weekends and public holidays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. » heinrich-schuetz-haus.de
You can hear the choral cycle “Schwanengesang” by Heinrich Schütz by following this link: www.freiepresse.de/schuetz350