Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe founded the vocal ensemble La Chapelle Royale in 1977 with a primary focus on music of the French Baroque, but the group has since branched into the repertoires of other countries and eras. In this release, the group sings Heinrich Schütz's three-movement Musikalische Exequien (Musical Funeral Rites) of 1635, as well as several motets. Schütz wrote the Musikalische Exequien for a Protestant nobleman who wanted it to be performed at his funeral. (The German language texts came from ...
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Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe founded the vocal ensemble La Chapelle Royale in 1977 with a primary focus on music of the French Baroque, but the group has since branched into the repertoires of other countries and eras. In this release, the group sings Heinrich Schütz's three-movement Musikalische Exequien (Musical Funeral Rites) of 1635, as well as several motets. Schütz wrote the Musikalische Exequien for a Protestant nobleman who wanted it to be performed at his funeral. (The German language texts came from Biblical and liturgical texts the nobleman had had inscribed inside his coffin.) The time and places in which Schütz lived were dominated by war, pestilence, and violence, and the composer's personal life was marked by great losses, so it's not surprising that he poured such deep feeling into these texts dealing with death and the hope of a better life hereafter, and the texts he chose for his motets frequently deal with the same subjects. Schütz had been a student of Giovanni Gabrieli's...
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