Heinrich Schütz | |
|---|---|
 Heinrich Schütz by Christoph Spätner, c. 1660 (Museum of Musical Instruments of Leipzig University) | |
| Born | 18 October [O.S. 8 October] 1585 |
| Died | 6 November 1672(1672-11-06) (aged 87) |
| Works | List of compositions |
Heinrich Schütz (German:[ʃʏt͡s]; 18 October [O.S. 8 October] 1585[1] – 6 November 1672[2]) was a German earlyBaroquecomposer andorganist, generally regarded as the most important German composer beforeJohann Sebastian Bach and one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from theRenaissance into the earlyBaroque. Most of his surviving music was written for theLutheran church, primarily for theElectoral Chapel in Dresden. He wrote what is traditionally considered the first Germanopera,Dafne, performed atTorgau in 1627, the music of which has since been lost, along with nearly all of his ceremonial and theatrical scores. Schütz was a prolific composer, with more than 500 surviving works.
He is commemorated as a musician in theCalendar of Saints of some North American Lutheran churches on 28 July withJohann Sebastian Bach andGeorge Frideric Handel.
Schütz was born inKöstritz, the eldest son of Christoph Schütz and Euphrosyne Bieger.
In 1590 the family moved toWeißenfels, where his father managed the inn "Zum güldenen Ring". His father eventually served asburgomaster in Weißenfels, and in 1615 purchased another inn known as both "Zur güldenen Sackpfeife" and "Zum güldenen Esel", which he renamed "Zum Schützen".
While Schütz was living with his parents, his musical talents were discovered by LandgraveMoritz von Hessen-Kassel in 1598 during an overnight stay in Christoph Schütz's inn. Upon hearing young Heinrich sing, the landgrave requested that his parents allow the boy to be sent to his noble court for further education and instruction. His parents initially resisted the offer, but after much correspondence they took Heinrich to the landgrave's seat atKassel in August 1599.
After being a choirboy, Schütz studied law atMarburg before going toVenice from 1609 to 1612 to study music withGiovanni Gabrieli. Gabrieli is the only person Schütz ever called his teacher. He inherited a ring from Gabrieli shortly before the latter's death. He was subsequently organist at Kassel from 1613 to 1615.
After a prolonged negotiation between the landgrave and the elector, Schütz moved toDresden in 1615 to work as courtcomposer to theElector ofSaxony. In 1619 Schütz married Magdalena Wildeck (born 1601). She bore two daughters before her death in 1625: Anna Justina in 1621 and Euphrosyne in 1623.
In Dresden Schütz sowed the seeds of what is now theSächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, but left there on several occasions; in 1628 he went to Venice again, where he may have metClaudio Monteverdi. In 1633 he was invited toCopenhagen to compose the music for wedding festivities there, returning to Dresden in 1635. He again conducted an extended visit to Denmark in 1641, due to the devastation of the Electoral court. TheThirty Years' War ended in 1648, and he again became more active in Dresden. In 1655, the year his daughter Euphrosyne died, he accepted anex officio post as Kapellmeister atWolfenbüttel.
Schütz's Dresden compositions during the Thirty Years' War were, by necessity of the times, smaller-scale than the often massive earlier works; this period produced much of his most charming music. After the war, Schütz again wrote larger-scale compositions culminating in the 1660s, when he composed the greatest Passionmusic before Bach.[3]
His pupils includedHeinrich Albert,Christoph Bernhard,Anton Colander,Constantin Christian Dedekind,Carlo Farina,Johann Wilhelm Furchheim,Johann Kaspar Horn,Caspar Kittel,Christoph Kittel,Johann Klemm,Adam Krieger,Johann Jakob Loewe (or Löwe),Johann Nauwach,David Pohle,Philipp Stolle,Johann Theile,Clemens Thieme,Johann Vierdanck,Matthias Weckmann,Friedrich Werner, andFriedrich von Westhoff.[4][5] (See:List of music students by teacher: R to S#Heinrich Schutz.)
Schütz moved back to Weißenfels, in a retirement he had to beg for, to live with his sister (the house is now a museum of his life), but the Electoral Court often called him back to Dresden. He died in Dresden of astroke in 1672 at age 87.[6] He was buried in the old Dresden Frauenkirche, but his tomb was destroyed in 1727 when the church was torn down to build the newDresden Frauenkirche. (His longtime house on the same square has been reconstructed in the same style and is an apartment building with hotel rooms and a restaurant.)
Schütz's compositions show the influence of Gabrieli (most notably in Schütz's use ofpolychoral andconcertato styles) and Monteverdi. The influence of theNetherlandish composers of the 16th century is also prominent in his work. His best-known works are sacred, ranging from solo voice with instrumental accompaniment toa cappella choral music. Representative works include hisPsalmen Davids (Psalms of David, Opus 2),Cantiones sacrae (Opus 4), three books ofSymphoniae sacrae,Die sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz (The seven words of Jesus Christ on the Cross), threePassion settings, and theChristmas Story. Schütz's music, while in the most progressive styles early in his career, eventually grew simple and almost austere, culminating in his late Passion settings. Practical considerations were certainly responsible for part of this change: theThirty Years' War devastated Germany's musical infrastructure, and it was no longer practical or even possible to put on the gigantic works in theVenetian style of his earlier period.
Schütz's composition "Es steh Gott auf" (SWV 356) is in many respects comparable to Monteverdi.[7] His funeral music "Musikalische Exequien" (1636) for his noble friend Heinrich Posthumus of Reuss is considered a masterpiece, and is known today as the first German Requiem. Schütz was equally fluent in Latin and Germanic styles.
Schütz was one of the last composers to write in amodal style. Hisharmonies often result from thecontrapuntal alignment of voices rather than from any sense of "harmonic motion"; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strongtonal pull when approachingcadences. His music includes a great deal ofimitation, but structured in such a way that the successive voices do not necessarily enter after the same number ofbeats or at predictable intervallic distances. This contrasts sharply with the manner of his contemporaryJohann Hermann Schein andSamuel Scheidt, whose counterpoint usually flows in regularly spaced entries. Schütz's writing often includes intensedissonances caused by the contrapuntal motion of voices moving in correct individual linear motion but resulting in startling harmonies. Above all, his music displays extreme sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text, which is often conveyed using special technical figures drawn frommusica poetica, themselves drawn from or created in analogy to the verbal figures ofclassical rhetoric. As noted above, Schütz's style became simpler in his later works, which make less frequent use of the kind of distantly related chords and licences found in such pieces as "Was hast du verwirket" (SWV 307) fromKleine geistliche Konzerte II.
Beyond the early book of madrigals, almost nosecular music by Schütz has survived, save for a few domestic songs (arien) and occasional commemorative items (such asWie wenn der Adler sich aus seiner Klippe schwingt (SWV 434), and no purely instrumental music at all (unless one counts the short instrumental movement, "sinfonia", that encloses the dialogue ofDie sieben Worte), even though he had a reputation as one of Germany's finest organists.
Schütz was of great importance in bringing new musical ideas to Germany from Italy, and thus had a large influence on the German music which was to follow. The style of theNorth German organ school derives largely from Schütz (as well as from the DutchmanJan Pieterszoon Sweelinck); a century later this music culminated in the work ofJ.S. Bach. After Bach, the most important composers Schütz influenced wereAnton Webern andBrahms, who studied his work.
The following are major published works; most of these contain multiple pieces of music; single published works are also listed in thecomplete work list, including major works such as theSeven Last Words, and the Passions (according to Matthew, Luke, and John). Over 500 individual pieces by Schütz survive.
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