German composer and organist (1585?1672)
Heinrich Schutz
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Born
| 18 October [
O.S.
8 October] 1585
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Died
| 6 November 1672
(1672-11-06)
(aged 87)
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Works
| List of compositions
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Heinrich Schutz
(
German:
[??t?s]
; 18 October [
O.S.
8 October] 1585
[1]
– 6 November 1672
[2]
) was a German early
Baroque
composer
and
organist
, generally regarded as the most important German composer before
Johann Sebastian Bach
and one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the
Renaissance
into the early
Baroque
. Most of his surviving music was written for the
Lutheran
church, primarily for the
Electoral Chapel
in Dresden. He wrote what is traditionally considered the first German
opera
,
Dafne
, performed at
Torgau
in 1627, the music of which has since been lost, along with nearly all of his ceremonial and theatrical scores. Schutz was a prolific composer, with more than 500 surviving works.
He is commemorated as a musician in the
Calendar of Saints
of some North American Lutheran churches on 28 July with
Johann Sebastian Bach
and
George Frideric Handel
.
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Schutz was born in
Kostritz
, the eldest son of Christoph Schutz and Euphrosyne Bieger.
In 1590 the family moved to
Weißenfels
, where his father managed the inn "Zum guldenen Ring". His father eventually served as
burgomaster
in Weißenfels, and in 1615 purchased another inn known as both "Zur guldenen Sackpfeife" and "Zum guldenen Esel", which he renamed "Zum Schutzen".
While Schutz was living with his parents, his musical talents were discovered by Landgrave
Moritz von Hessen-Kassel
in 1598 during an overnight stay in Christoph Schutz's inn. Upon hearing young Heinrich sing, the landgrave requested that his parents allow the boy to be sent to his noble court for further education and instruction. His parents initially resisted the offer, but after much correspondence they took Heinrich to the landgrave's seat at
Kassel
in August 1599.
After being a choirboy, Schutz studied law at
Marburg
before going to
Venice
from 1609 to 1612 to study music with
Giovanni Gabrieli
. Gabrieli is the only person Schutz ever called his teacher. He inherited a ring from Gabrieli shortly before the latter's death. He was subsequently organist at Kassel from 1613 to 1615.
Career
[
edit
]
After a prolonged negotiation between the landgrave and the elector, Schutz moved to
Dresden
in 1615 to work as court
composer
to the
Elector
of
Saxony
. In 1619 Schutz married Magdalena Wildeck (born 1601). She bore two daughters before her death in 1625: Anna Justina in 1621 and Euphrosyne in 1623.
In Dresden Schutz sowed the seeds of what is now the
Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden
, but left there on several occasions; in 1628 he went to Venice again, where he may have met
Claudio Monteverdi
. In 1633 he was invited to
Copenhagen
to compose the music for wedding festivities there, returning to Dresden in 1635. He again conducted an extended visit to Denmark in 1641, due to the devastation of the Electoral court. The
Thirty Years' War
ended in 1648, and he again became more active in Dresden. In 1655, the year his daughter Euphrosyne died, he accepted an
ex officio
post as Kapellmeister at
Wolfenbuttel
.
Schutz's Dresden compositions during the Thirty Years' War were, by necessity of the times, smaller-scale than the often massive earlier works; this period produced much of his most charming music. After the war, Schutz again wrote larger-scale compositions culminating in the 1660s, when he composed the greatest Passionmusic before Bach.
[3]
His pupils
included
Heinrich Albert
,
Christoph Bernhard
,
Anton Colander
,
Constantin Christian Dedekind
,
Carlo Farina
,
Johann Wilhelm Furchheim
,
Johann Kaspar Horn
,
Caspar Kittel
,
Christoph Kittel
,
Johann Klemm
,
Adam Krieger
,
Johann Jakob Loewe
(or Lowe),
Johann Nauwach
,
David Pohle
,
Philipp Stolle
,
Johann Theile
,
Clemens Thieme
,
Johann Vierdanck
,
Matthias Weckmann
,
Friedrich Werner
, and
Friedrich von Westhoff
.
[4]
[5]
(See:
List of music students by teacher: R to S#Heinrich Schutz
.)
Later life
[
edit
]
Schutz moved back to Weißenfels, in a retirement he had to beg for, to live with his sister (the house is now a museum of his life), but the Electoral Court often called him back to Dresden. He died in Dresden of a
stroke
in 1672 at age 87.
[6]
He was buried in the old Dresden Frauenkirche, but his tomb was destroyed in 1727 when the church was torn down to build the new
Dresden Frauenkirche
. (His longtime house on the same square has been reconstructed in the same style and is an apartment building with hotel rooms and a restaurant.)
Style
[
edit
]
Schutz's compositions show the influence of Gabrieli (most notably in Schutz's use of
polychoral
and
concertato
styles) and Monteverdi. The influence of the
Netherlandish
composers of the 16th century is also prominent in his work. His best-known works are sacred, ranging from solo voice with instrumental accompaniment to
a cappella
choral music. Representative works include his
Psalmen Davids
(Psalms of David, Opus 2),
Cantiones sacrae
(Opus 4), three books of
Symphoniae sacrae
,
Die sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz
(
The seven words of Jesus Christ on the Cross
), three
Passion
settings, and the
Christmas Story
. Schutz's music, while in the most progressive styles early in his career, eventually grew simple and almost austere, culminating in his late Passion settings. Practical considerations were certainly responsible for part of this change: the
Thirty Years' War
devastated Germany's musical infrastructure, and it was no longer practical or even possible to put on the gigantic works in the
Venetian
style of his earlier period.
Schutz's composition "Es steh Gott auf" (SWV 356) is in many respects comparable to Monteverdi.
[7]
His funeral music "
Musikalische Exequien
" (1636) for his noble friend Heinrich Posthumus of Reuss is considered a masterpiece, and is known today as the first German Requiem. Schutz was equally fluent in Latin and Germanic styles.
Schutz was one of the last composers to write in a
modal
style. His
harmonies
often result from the
contrapuntal
alignment of voices rather than from any sense of "harmonic motion"; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strong
tonal
pull when approaching
cadences
. His music includes a great deal of
imitation
, but structured in such a way that the successive voices do not necessarily enter after the same number of
beats
or at predictable intervallic distances. This contrasts sharply with the manner of his contemporary
Johann Hermann Schein
and
Samuel Scheidt
, whose counterpoint usually flows in regularly spaced entries. Schutz's writing often includes intense
dissonances
caused by the contrapuntal motion of voices moving in correct individual linear motion but resulting in startling harmonies. Above all, his music displays extreme sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text, which is often conveyed using special technical figures drawn from
musica poetica
, themselves drawn from or created in analogy to the verbal figures of
classical rhetoric
. As noted above, Schutz's style became simpler in his later works, which make less frequent use of the kind of distantly related chords and licences found in such pieces as "Was hast du verwirket" (SWV 307) from
Kleine geistliche Konzerte II
.
Beyond the early book of madrigals, almost no
secular
music by Schutz has survived, save for a few domestic songs (
arien
) and occasional commemorative items (such as
Wie wenn der Adler sich aus seiner Klippe schwingt
(SWV 434), and no purely instrumental music at all (unless one counts the short instrumental movement, "
sinfonia
", that encloses the dialogue of
Die sieben Worte
), even though he had a reputation as one of Germany's finest organists.
Schutz was of great importance in bringing new musical ideas to Germany from Italy, and thus had a large influence on the German music which was to follow. The style of the
North German organ school
derives largely from Schutz (as well as from the Dutchman
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
); a century later this music culminated in the work of
J.S. Bach
. After Bach, the most important composers Schutz influenced were
Anton Webern
and
Brahms
, who studied his work.
Works
[
edit
]
The following are major published works; most of these contain multiple pieces of music; single published works are also listed in the
complete work list
, including major works such as the
Seven Last Words
, and the Passions (according to Matthew, Luke, and John). Over 500 individual pieces by Schutz survive.
- Il primo libro de madrigali
(first book of
madrigals
) (opus 1,
Venice
, 1611)
- Psalmen Davids
(Book 1) (opus 2,
Dresden
, 1619)
- Historia der ... Aufferstehung ...
(The Resurrection) (opus 3, Dresden, 1623)
- Cantiones sacrae
(opus 4,
Freiberg
, 1625)
- Becker Psalter
(opus 5, Freiberg, 1628, revised 1661)
- Symphoniae sacrae
(Book 1) (opus 6, Venice, 1629)
- Musikalische Exequien
(opus 7, Dresden, 1636)
- Kleine geistliche Konzerte
(Book 1) (opus 8,
Leipzig
, 1636)
- Kleine geistliche Konzerte
(Book 2) (opus 9,
Leipzig
, 1639)
- Symphoniae sacrae (Book 2) (opus 10, Dresden, 1647)
- Geistliche Chor-Music
(opus 11, Dresden, 1648)
- Symphoniae sacrae (Book 3) (opus 12, Dresden, 1650)
- Zwolf geistliche Gesange
(opus 13, Dresden, 1657)
- Historia der ... Geburt ... Jesu Christi
(
Christmas Story
; Dresden, 1664)
- Lukas-Passion
(The Passion According to St. Luke) (Dresden, 1665)
- Johannes-Passion
(The Passion According to St. John) (Dresden, 1666)
- Matthaus-Passion
(The Passion According to St. Matthew) (Dresden, 1666)
- Konigs und Propheten 119er Psalm ...
(Psalm 119, Psalm 100, and
German Magnificat
: "Swan Song") (opus ultimum, Dresden, 1671)
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
Gregory S. Johnston (ed.),
A Heinrich Schutz Reader: Letters and Documents in Translation
, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 85.
- ^
Joshua Rifkin, et al. "
Schutz, Heinrich
." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 8 October 2013.
- ^
Cummings, Robert.
"Heinrich Schutz"
.
allmusic.com
. Retrieved
8 February
2016
.
- ^
David Mason Greene Greene's biographical encyclopedia of composers p. 115 "When the elector finally let him go, Schutz managed to wrest from him money to permit his pupil and protege Matthias Weckmann to study in Hamburg for three years with Jakob Praetorius. He remained in the Danish court for two years, "
- ^
The encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church
Julius Bodensieck, Lutheran World Federation. 1965. "The most eminent among his pupils were H. Albert, M. Weckmann, D. Pohle, Chr. Bernhard, JJ Loewe, A. Krieger, J. Theile."
- ^
"Heinrich Schutz 1585?1672"
(in German). Internationale Heinrich-Schutz-Gesellschaft e. V. Archived from
the original
on 31 May 2016
. Retrieved
10 August
2017
.
- ^
Gerald Drebes: ‘‘Schutz, Monteverdi und die ?Vollkommenheit der Musik“ ? ?Es steh Gott auf“ aus den ?Symphoniae sacrae“ II (1647)‘‘. In: ‘‘Schutz-Jahrbuch‘‘, Jg. 14, 1992, pp. 25?55. Online:
"Gerald Drebes - 2 Aufsatze online: Monteverdi und H. Schutz"
. Archived from
the original
on 3 March 2016
. Retrieved
30 July
2017
.
.
- ^
cf. Steude 1986, pp. 58?61
General sources
[
edit
]
- Manfred Bukofzer
,
Music in the Baroque Era
. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947.
ISBN
0-393-09745-5
- Wolfram Steude
, "Zum gegenwartigen Stand der Schutz-Ikonographie," in
Schutz-Jahrbuch 1985/86
. Kassel, Barenreiter, 1986, pp. 50–61.
ISBN
3-7618-0778-3
- Basil Smallman
,
Heinrich Schutz
, The Master Musicians, 2000.
- Tamsin (nee T.D.) Jones,
Passions in Perspective: An Analytical Discussion of the Three Passions of Heinrich Schutz (1585?1672) Against Their Historical and Stylistic Backgrounds
(
PhD
thesis
,
University of Birmingham
, 2000)
- Heinrich Schutz:
Geistliche Chor-Music, Op. 11.
Edited by
Andrew Thomas Kuster
.
Ann Arbor
, MI, 2005.
ISBN
1-4116-4243-0
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Hoffer, Brandi (2012). "
Sacred German Music in the Thirty Years' War
",
Musical Offerings
, Vol. 3: No. 1, Article 1.
- Moser, Hans Joachim (1936, 2nd edition English translation by Carl F. Pfatteicher, 1959)
Heinrich Schutz: His Life and Work
739 pp. Concordia, St. Louis, Original Barenreiter, Kassel
External links
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