The title Der Wächter auf der Zinne, or The Guard on the Battlement, refers not to the title of any musical work, but to the concept of this album of north German music from the early seventeenth century, and the attractive little drawing on the cover makes this concept more clear than the title does. The music here, dances and sacred works by Michael Praetorius and Samuel Scheidt, has been recorded before, but the ensemble Capella de la Torre, with countertenor Dominique Visse, makes a newly detailed attempt to put it in ...
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The title Der Wächter auf der Zinne, or The Guard on the Battlement, refers not to the title of any musical work, but to the concept of this album of north German music from the early seventeenth century, and the attractive little drawing on the cover makes this concept more clear than the title does. The music here, dances and sacred works by Michael Praetorius and Samuel Scheidt, has been recorded before, but the ensemble Capella de la Torre, with countertenor Dominique Visse, makes a newly detailed attempt to put it in context. Torre, among other things, means tower (in Spanish), and it is tower musicians, especially common in Germany, but also present in other European lands, that this release imagines as the performers of the music. The highly readable booklet (in German, English, and French, with full translations of the vocal works) describes how these musicians grew in status over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, evolving from watchmen/criers (one unfortunate trombonist...
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