Composer Heinrich Schütz is known for big sacred works that adapted the sumptuous multiple-choir style of the late Renaissance Venetian masters to the German language and the requirements of Protestant worship. His music has a remarkable, elevated quality that anticipated that of Bach a century later. The Cantiones Sacrae, Op. 4 are music of a different sort though, and until fairly recently, performances tended to be one-size-fits-all. If the Symphoniae Sacrae were Schütz's answer to Giovanni Gabrieli, the Cantiones Sacrae ...
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Composer Heinrich Schütz is known for big sacred works that adapted the sumptuous multiple-choir style of the late Renaissance Venetian masters to the German language and the requirements of Protestant worship. His music has a remarkable, elevated quality that anticipated that of Bach a century later. The Cantiones Sacrae, Op. 4 are music of a different sort though, and until fairly recently, performances tended to be one-size-fits-all. If the Symphoniae Sacrae were Schütz's answer to Giovanni Gabrieli, the Cantiones Sacrae refer back to the perfect polyphony of Palestrina. In each case, however, there is a new emotionalism; here, Schütz's settings of biblical texts and some by Augustine have the quality of deep, inward meditations. Unlike Palestrina, Schütz applies considerable harmonic depth to his settings, which are somewhat like spiritual madrigals. The small English group Magnificat under director Philip Cave is probably ideal in size with its ten singers. Schütz's musical language is perhaps...
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