Search - Heinrich Schutz, Matteo Messori, Alessandro Orsaria :: Schütz: Cantiones sacrae; Kleine geistliche Concerte I; Madrigali [Box Set]

Five Brilliant Stars in Sagittarius

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 09/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The five disks in this Volume II of the Brilliant Classics Schuetz Edition cover three of the great German composer's most Italianate compositions - his Book 1 madrigals, written in 1611 in Italy and in Italian; his Cantiones Sacrae, written in 1625 in Latin; and his "Small Spiritual Concerts, in German in 1636. Schuetz spent only a few years in Italy, studying personally with Giovanni Gabrieli but absorbing every element of the Italian operatic and madrigalesque manner. When he returned to Germany, still a devout Lutheran, he brought back over the Brenner Pass all the musical culture of Italy, a transfer of compositional art from south to north as significant as the north-south transfer of the earlier Flemish composers who internationalized polyphony.



Schuetz is a massive pivotal figure in the history of music, no doubt. But he is more importantly a superb composer, whose music requires special performance practices to be effective. Cappella Augustana has devoted itself to mastering the vocal techniques and interpretive understandings that bring Schuetz to glorious life. These Brilliant Classics live up to their boastful name, and for a brilliant price.



The Madrigals of 1611 (Primo Libro de magrigali di Henrico Sagittario Alemanno) were in effect Schuetz's graduation thesis, composed entirely in the style and spirit of the Mantuan masters, Marenzio, de Wert, and early Monteverdi. Though they open no new doors of musical structure, they are very beautiful and affective - fully worthy of their models. Cappella Augustana's performance is the best since that of The Consort of Musicke with Emma Kirkby.



The Cantiones Sacrae - Sacred Chansons - of 1625 constituted Schuetz's mature effort to bring the "erotic" luxury of madrigalesque counterpoint to the Lutheran private chapel, that is, to sacred devotional music. All in strict four-voice polyphony, with optional continuo, they are an intellectual achievement on the scale of Bach's Art of Fugue, but they shimmer with sunny Italy's emotional intensity. Once again, Cappella Augustana has throughly mastered both the style and the affect of these passionate songs; the bass voice of Garrick Comeaux deserves particular commendation. The only competitive recording is that by Manfred Cordes's Weser-Renaissance. These two performances are so fine that a Schuetz lover might well want both. In the same genre, only one other composer reached such heights - Schuetz's contemporary Johann Schein in his masterwork Israelis Brunnlein, recorded superbly by the Ensemble Vocal Europeen with conductor Philippe Herreweghe.



Cappella Augustana's performance of the Kleine Geistliche Concerte of 1636 has no rival at all. These two disks alone are worth the price of the whole box. These "little concerts" are operatic 'monodies' for solo voices with exquisitely decorated continuo. It seems that Schuetz was again influenced by Italy, by the arrival in Germany of the 'excited' (concitato) style of oratorio, specifically of the works of Lodovico da Viadana. For years, Schuetz had deplored the paucity of suitable texts in the German language. The texts Schuetz chose to set in German include Psalms as well as selections from the little books of meditation so popular among Protestants in the era of the Wars of Religion. This was Schuetz's most popular and oft-performed publication of music during his lifetime; as he intended, the pieces could be performed by the small forces available to Lutheran congregations scattered around German during the desolations of the Thirty Years War. That the vocal agility required by these little concerts is far from modest says something about the level of musicianship in the 17th Century, even during hard times in the provinces.



If you've not heard much of Heinrich Schuetz, you couldn't do better than to start with this box of three classics performed brilliantly. If you're an established Schuetz-worshiper, this is a must-have recording."