Samuel Scheidt's Geistliche Konzerte or Sacred Concertos, dating from the 1630s, helped spread the Venetian polychoral style in Germany, and thus lay the basis for the development of Baroque ensemble music in that country. They offer an especially troublesome instance of the debate over the appropriate size of the vocal forces in Baroque choral music: Scheidt laid the groundwork for future disagreements when he advertised that the concertos "can be performed with just a few singers" and "have also been composed by me in ...
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Samuel Scheidt's Geistliche Konzerte or Sacred Concertos, dating from the 1630s, helped spread the Venetian polychoral style in Germany, and thus lay the basis for the development of Baroque ensemble music in that country. They offer an especially troublesome instance of the debate over the appropriate size of the vocal forces in Baroque choral music: Scheidt laid the groundwork for future disagreements when he advertised that the concertos "can be performed with just a few singers" and "have also been composed by me in different volumes for many performers, that is for 8 to 12 voices in two, three, or four choirs." There are quite a few ambiguities there, and certainly nothing to prove that the music wasn't intended for the large performing groups its scale would suggest. These settings of loose adaptations of biblical texts are splendid, festive pieces, illustrating their texts in broad contrasts with lush chromaticism for the darker ideas, rather than in individual details. In this performance, with...
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