The polychoral style associated with St. Mark's cathedral in Venice, and with the German composers who went there to soak it up, depends on a specific sonic environment that is extraordinarily difficult to reproduce on recordings. A composer like Heinrich Schütz wrote music for specific occasions, with use of space counterbalanced against the range of styles, from formal German polyphony to nearly operatic effects, that he had inherited and heard around him. Those factors are displayed in an exemplary way in the ...
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The polychoral style associated with St. Mark's cathedral in Venice, and with the German composers who went there to soak it up, depends on a specific sonic environment that is extraordinarily difficult to reproduce on recordings. A composer like Heinrich Schütz wrote music for specific occasions, with use of space counterbalanced against the range of styles, from formal German polyphony to nearly operatic effects, that he had inherited and heard around him. Those factors are displayed in an exemplary way in the Musikalische Exequien that forms the centerpiece of the program here, a funeral work composed for the burial of one Heinrich II Posthumus Reuss, who picked the texts for the work before he expired. The performers, including the veteran historical-instrument group Musica Fiata under Roland Wilson, and the underexposed Stuttgart Hymnus Boys' Choir, are fully competent here, but the real stars of this recording are the engineers of Germany's MDG label, working in the Christuskirche Stuttgart. They...
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