Hienrich Schütz is one of those composers you read about in history texts, or experience in music history classes, but often he doesn’t seem to become a real composer who is part of your regular living experience. Well, at least that is how he has usually been with me. And yet he’s a terrific writer, if a bit dour on occasion.
I’ve been getting to know him better as a result of these two (large) recordings, combined with some earlier ones in my collection. Both are multiple CD sets from Harmonia Mundi, from the redoutable Konrad Junghänel and the Cantus Cölln. Good, good group.
I’m still becoming better acquainted with these works and with Schütz in general. On the whole I’m deeply impressed with what I hear. As a younger composer (represented in the Psalmen Davids) he reminds one vividly of Monteverdi. As an older composer (as in the Symphoniae Sacrae III) he is unlike anyone else. Admittedly the early-mid Baroque style isn’t to everyone’s taste. Schütz in his later works doesn’t offer the sheer sonic splendour of the early Venetian folks like Monteverdi and Gabrieli. He tends to write sparsely, which he had to do given his circumstances. (This is Germany in the 30 Years War, remember–a particularly grim time.) So one has to listen within the austerity of the sonic means.