Schütz, Schein, & Scheidt

The music in this concert comes from the first generation of German baroque composers, active during the first third of the 17th century. The works performed represent their application of new, Italian musical ideas to traditional German forms associated with the Lutheran service. All are based on German prosody, poetry, and melody—particularly as fused in the "chorale"; they also incorporate traditional German techniques of counterpoint. To this material the composers added new Italian compositional devices for enhancing the musical expression of words through innovations in harmony, melodic ornamentation, and the make-up of the performing ensemble.

Just as traditional Roman Catholic liturgical music of the Renaissance developed out of earlier Gregorian chant melodies, so the Lutheran church music of the Renaissance/Reformation era was grounded in a body of sacred songs called chorales. Many of the chorale tunes were in fact older medieval melodies, some derived from Latin hymns, others from popular songs. Still others were newly composed by Martin Luther himself or by his associates and followers. The chorale texts were either translations of Biblical passages or Roman liturgy from Latin into the vernacular or in some cases new hymns. In the generations following Luther, these chorales themselves became the bases of innumerable polyphonic settings by German composers, many of whom were employed as chapelmasters (the 16th century equivalent of church music directors) within the Lutheran ecclesiastical establishment.

In the German compositional practice of the time, an individual chorale melody might be used in a number of ways: The simplest was as an unmodified tune, usually placed in the top line of a work (though sometimes in the tenor line instead), and harmonized by the other parts according to the composer’s taste, much like a modern hymn or Christmas carol. Alternatively, it might be used as a cantus firmus, appearing in one part with its melody stretched out into very long notes while the other voices wove counter-melodies around it. A third method was to use short phrases of the melody as subjects for imitation, a fragment appearing first in one voice, then in the others in succession, followed by the appearance of a new fragment of the melody in one of the voices which was then similarly imitated, and so on until the entire melody was developed in this manner. All of these compositional methods were popular throughout the great age of Lutheran church music, through the time of Bach and beyond. Needless to add, the three techniques were often used in combination within a single work, as they are in some of the pieces on this concert, perhaps most noticeably in the music of Scheidt and Prætorius.

The baroque musical revolution which began in northern Italy toward the end of the 16th century was in large part the outgrowth of composers’ striving for a more powerful language in which to express words, ideas, and emotions. Italian composers, led by Claudio Monteverdi (and anticipated by his predecessors Andrea Gabrieli and his more famous nephew Giovanni) applied a body of new techniques to sacred composition, techniques which spread across Europe during the next century. Their resonance was especially strong in Germany, in part per- haps because of its proximity to Italy, but certainly also because of the Lutheran commitment—traceable to Luther himself—of “preaching the Word” through music.

Among the more influential techniques popularized by the Italian masters were “antiphony,” “chromaticism,” and “coloratura.” Antiphony refers to the spatial division of the performing ensemble into separate choirs who sing sometimes in responsive alternation, sometimes together. This “polychoral” technique came into common use at San Marco cathedral in Venice, where it was developed furthest by the Gabrielis. The antiphonal or polychoral style tended to break texts into small fragments passed back and forth between the choirs, drawing greater attention to individual words and phrases and thus motivating composers to refine further their means of expression. Chromaticism refers to the use of semi-tones (sharps and flats) that lie outside the normal diatonic or modal scale. The use of these unexpected notes and harmonies can create moments of great tension, dissonance, expectation, or poignancy within the music, heightening its emotional power. Coloratura refers to the ornamentation of a melody by turning its original, longer notes into groups of shorter ones, thereby creating decorative effects at desired points. Such effects also served to emphasize particular words and phrases.

While these and other Italian innovations quickly diffused north in the early 17th century, two of the composers represented on this evening’s program, Heinrich Schütz and Michael Prætorius, were directly responsible for their rapid acceptance in Germany. Schütz actually traveled to Italy twice during his lifetime and studied there with both Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi. Gabrieli was so impressed with the young Schütz that he bequeathed him his signet ring as a sign that he considered him his truest disciple. Prætorius learned about the new music less directly, largely through his study of manuscripts in Dresden, but was probably even more influential than Schütz in disseminating it, both through his prolific composition in the new idiom and through his didactic writings showing readers, for instance, how to add melodic ornamentation in the Italian style.

What is evident in the works of all four of the composers on this program is a spirit of experimentation, an attempt to apply the Italian innovations to familiar melodic and harmonic material as well as to integrate it with the older, common practices of German counterpoint, such as the imitative and cantus firmus techniques mentioned earlier. Each of the composers seems to have been drawn in varying degrees to different aspects of the new music. Prætorius and Scheidt are the most conservative, adopting little more than the antiphonal style. The works of Prætorius presented in this concert, it should be noted, come from his first published collection, Musa Sioniae (1605), written before the new music had made its full impact on the composer. Our December concert will showcase some of his later, more elaborate works. Schein’s fascination with chromaticism is evident in both of his pieces on this program. The opening of Die mit Tränen säen, in particular shows his skill in using a series of chromatic intervals to create a powerful mood of grief. Schütz’s music is by far the most advanced presented here, both in its integration of all the old and new techniques and in his gift for constructing original melody. In Mein Sohn he also creates a clear division into sections, anticipating the structure of the baroque cantata. Yet Schütz never lost his reverence for the older music. His Der Engel sprach is in a sense the most primitive work on the program, being simply a German setting of Andrea Gabrieli’s Angelus ad Pastorem, an homage to his mentor’s mentor and thus one of the forebears of his own music.