Beard of the Week XXI: Renaissance Polyphony
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This time I'm in the mood for some Renaissance polyphony, brought to us tonight by one of its masters, Heinrich Schütz, whose rather stylish and stylized beard is featured in the two portraits at right. In fact, if it helps you get in the mood, we are listening to a recording of choral music by Schütz as I write this.
I've been a fan of "early music" — anything, say, before the Baroque period — since college, some 25 years ago, when I played with a small early-music group at my college.* The size varied, but the core was formed by me, playing my 'cello for continuo, a friend David who played recorders with sublime technique, and Bob Triplett, college organist who was our conductor and harpsichord player (we had recently received a fine, 2-manual Hubbard instrument as a gift to the college). One of our bigger events was a recreation of a banquet with music for Queen Elizabeth I, complete with dancing and boar's head.
Anyway, I had not performed much music for a number of years before I met Isaac who encouraged me to return to playing 'cello in public (mostly at his church), and who gave me some chances to sing,# usually with a small group (our Schola Cantorum) of 6 to 8 people who have sung early music occasionally as part of his church-music program. We've sung Schütz on more than one occasion.
Tonight was choir rehearsal night, and we are singing Schütz again. This time it is his celebrated setting of Psalm 100, Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt (SWV 36), known as "The Echo Psalm" because it calls for two choirs, a large choir and a "little" choir. The little choir — in this case 5 of us from the ad hoc Schola — is used as an echo choir, overlapping and repeating the ends of phrases sung by the large choir. It is antiphonal and we are performing it with the two choirs at opposite ends of the sanctuary. Despite the unfamiliarity of the musical idiom to many people, the echo effect with the two choirs is stunning.
Here is a biography of Heinrich Schütz (baptised October 9, 1585 – November 6, 1672) that Isaac pulled together for the cover of our printed copy of Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt
German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and is often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi. He wrote what is thought to be the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627; however, the music has since been lost.
Schütz was born in Köstritz; his musical talents were discovered by Moritz von Hessen-Kassel in 1599. After being a choir-boy he went on to study law at Marburg before going to Venice from 1609-1613 to study music with Giovanni Gabrieli. He subsequently had a short stint as organist at Kassel before moving to Dresden in 1615 to work as court composer to the Elector of Saxony.
He held his Dresden post until the end of his life (sowing the seeds of what is now the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden while there), but left Dresden itself on several occasions; in 1628 he went to Venice again, most likely meeting Claudio Monteverdi there—he may have studied with him—and in 1633, after the Thirty Years' War had disrupted life at the court, he took a post at Copenhagen. He returned full time to Dresden in 1641, and remained there for the rest of his life. He died from a stroke in 1672 at the age of 87.Schütz's compositions show the influence of his two main teachers, Gabrieli (displayed most notably with Schütz's use of resplendent polychoral and concertato styles) and Monteverdi. Additionally, the influence of the Netherlandish composers of the 16th century is also prominent in his work. His best known works are in the field of sacred music, ranging from solo voice with instrumental accompaniment to a cappella choral music. Representative works include his three books of Symphoniae sacrae, the Psalms of David, the Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz (the Seven Last Words on the Cross) and his three Passion settings. Schütz's music, while starting off in the most progressive styles early in his career, eventually grows into a style that is simple and almost austere, culminating with his late Passion settings. Practical considerations were certainly responsible for part of this change: the Thirty Years' War had devastated the musical infrastructure of Germany, and it was no longer practical or even possible to put on the gigantic works in the Venetian style which marked his earlier period.
Schütz was one of the last composers to write in a modal style, with non-functional harmonies often resulting from the interplay of voices; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strong tonal pull when approaching cadences. His music makes extensive use of imitation, in which entries often come in irregular order and at varied intervals. Fairly characteristic of Schütz's writing are intense dissonances caused by two or more voices moving correctly through dissonances against the implied harmony. Above all, his music displays extreme sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text, which is often conveyed using special technical figures drawn from musica poetica, themselves drawn from or created in analogy to the verbal figures of Classical Rhetoric.
Almost no secular music by Schütz has survived, save for a few domestic songs (arien) and no purely instrumental music at all (unless one counts the short instrumental movement entitled "sinfonia" that encloses the dialogue of Die sieben Worte), even though he had a reputation as one of the finest organists in Germany.
Schütz was of great importance in bringing new musical ideas to Germany from Italy, and as such had a large influence on the German music which was to follow. The style of the north German organ school derives largely from Schütz (as well as from Netherlander Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck); a century later this music was to culminate in the work of J.S. Bach.
In the current Lutheran calendar, he is commemorated on 28 July, along with Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685 — 28 July 1750) and George Friderik Handel (23 February 1685 — 13 April 1759).
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* That would be Cornell College, in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, which I attended as an undergraduate from 1974 to 1978.
# Singing with our Musical Theatre Troupe is a whole 'nother story that we might talk about some other time.
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on Sunday, 26 November 2006 at 19.16
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