This is a specialist recording of works that are still in need of general-listener coverage. It harks back in a way to a time, four decades ago or so, when most recordings of music before Bach were made by ensembles associated with academic institutions. The liner notes seethe with scholarly score-settling, and the average listener wanting to learn basic facts about the music heard on the disc might as well be reading ancient Greek. An editor could have slashed it by at least half and made something useful out of it.So, for ...
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This is a specialist recording of works that are still in need of general-listener coverage. It harks back in a way to a time, four decades ago or so, when most recordings of music before Bach were made by ensembles associated with academic institutions. The liner notes seethe with scholarly score-settling, and the average listener wanting to learn basic facts about the music heard on the disc might as well be reading ancient Greek. An editor could have slashed it by at least half and made something useful out of it.So, for the record, Schütz published his first collection of Symphoniae Sacrae in 1629, after making his second musical pilgrimage from central Germany to Venice. He named them after a collection of works by Giovanni Gabrieli, but the music shows the fruits of his efforts to familiarize himself with new Italian music -- most significantly that of Claudio Monteverdi, whom he met during his stay. These Latin-language motets are for one to three solo voices, plus small groups of instruments...
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