In the Western musical tradition, December is the time for the "Christmas concert," of Handel's Messiah and Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and dozens of choral offerings of carols and more general "Christmas music". A gentle, 17th-century, Lutheran devotional work full of subtle beauty is a rarity - but that is Heinrich Schütz's late masterpiece entitled The Christmas Story or the Story of the Birth of Jesus Christ. It is joyful, beautiful, melodic, inventive, but there is not a trace of the later, 18th-century grandeur. Schütz could write in that style if he wanted to, but the magnificence of his musical art lies in his sophisticated response to the words of Luther's Gospel translation.
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was a German composer and organist. In the field of church music, he was the most important Lutheran-Protestant composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote mostly for the Electoral Chapel in Dresden. Schütz was a prolific composer, with more than 500 surviving works, but much has been lost as well, including the first German opera, Daphne, from 1627. Almost no secular music by Schütz has survived, and his purely
instrumental music is completely lost, although in his day he was
considered one of the finest organists in Germany.
Schütz's compositions are influenced by his teacher Gabrieli, with his Venetian polychoral and concertato style, and by Monteverdi. The influence of the 16th-century Dutch school can also be heard. Representative works are the three books of the Symphoniae sacrae, the Psalms of David, the Seven Words of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and his Three Passions, which he wrote shortly before his 80th birthday. Schütz's early works were written in the most progressive styles, while his later works, including the Passions, are simpler and more austere. Practical concerns probably played a role in this change: the Thirty Years' War had virtually destroyed the musical infrastructure in Germany and it was no longer possible to perform the great works in the Venetian style.
Schütz played an important role in the transmission of musical ideas from Italy to Germany. As a result, his influence on German music was great. The North German organ style was largely founded on Schütz's work, although the work of the Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was also important in its development. A century later, this style would reach its apogee with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The Historia der Geburt Christi, or Christmas History, SWV 435, is a historia by Heinrich Schütz that sets the Gospel, in this case the Christmas story according to Luke and Matthew, to music for use in church services as the Gospel reading. The work was probably first performed in Dresden in 1660.
The text of the Historia is taken almost entirely from the Bible in Martin Luther's translation, framed by two choral movements, the Introduction and the Resolution (a translation of the Christmas sequence "Grates nunc omnes" by Johann Spangenberg). The narrator is the Evangelist. Other characters appear in eight sections, each designated as an intermediary: the Angel of the Annunciation, the heavenly hosts, the shepherds, the wise men, the priests and scribes, Herod, and an angel who appears to Joseph.
The work is scored for soloists, six-part choir (SSATTB) and orchestra (two violins, two viols, two recorders, two trumpets, two trombones, and basso continuo). The Evangelist sings in secco recitative in the dramatic Italian style, in which Schütz emphasizes individual words and clarifies the action through frequent modulation. The angel is sung by a soprano accompanied by two violins, the shepherds by recorders. Herod is accompanied by trumpets, which contrast with the angels' violins as an expression of worldly power.
Schütz can rightly be considered the genius who bridged the gap between Monteverdi's madrigals and Bach's cantatas. He is a phenomenal master of his chosen idioms: his harmonic imagination, fantastic wordplay, and profound expressiveness are intensely rewarding to those willing to devote a little time and attention to his music.
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Choral Masterworks