Next PBO Program to Include Spirituals

Banner for the Web page being discussed

The title of the next program to be presented by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra is Pearls of Sorrow. As was observed when the season was first announced this past July, it may be the first time that American spirituals will be included on the program. That program will be structured into five episodes, each of which interjects one or more spirituals to “rub shoulders” with works by composers from the Baroque period. Those composers will include both Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach as well as many others, including Pietro Locatelli, Heinrich Schütz, and Dieterich Buxtehude. The vocalist will be countertenor Reginald Mobley, and Christine Brandes will conduct. The titles of the episodes will be as follows:

1. Trauma
2. Sorrow
3. Pain
4. All My Trials
5. Finding

To borrow a text from Eugene O’Neill, one may describe the overall program as “a long day’s journey into night.”

As usual, this performance will take place in Herbst Theater, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 13. Ticket prices range from $40 to $125. They may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page, which includes a diagram showing where seats are still available.

California Bach Society: Split-Choir Repertoire

Nate Widelitz, the new California Bach Society Artistic Director

Early next month the California Bach Society will begin its 2025–2026 season. This will mark the arrival of a new Artistic Director, Nate Widelitz. It will also be the month in which he receives his degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting, which he is completing at Yale University.

The full title of his first program will be Cori Spezzati: The Spatial Art of Split-Choir Sound. The one composition by Johann Sebastian Bach on the program will be the BWV 225 motet “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (sing unto the Lord a new song). This is a three-movement composition scored for double-choir (eight voices divided into two four-part choirs). Three composers have been selected for the remaining works on the program:

• Adrian Willaert: “In convertendo,” an eight-voice setting of Psalm 125
• Dominique Phinot: “Lamentations” for eight voices in two groups of four
• Heinrich Schütz: Psalm 98: “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (SWV 35)

As in the past, the San Francisco performance of this program will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 3. A Web page has been created for all information about ticketing, including season subscriptions as well as individual performances. The basic price for a single ticket is $35; but, as can be expected, there are several alternatives for discounts. Doors will open at 7 p.m. Because this is the first event of the season, the Web page also includes the purchase of four-concert subscriptions, whose standard price is $125. The page also allows for donations.

California Bach Society: The Holiday Program

“The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco, probably between 1325 and 1330

A little over a week ago the California Bach Society announced the plans for its holiday concert. Derek Tam will serve as guest conductor for this performance. The program will be framed by two settings of the “Ave Maria” prayer. It will begin with a monodic medieval chant setting and conclude with a much richer arrangement by twentieth-century composer Franz Biebl. These “extremes” will be bridged by a chronological unfolding of composers: Michael Praetorius, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Heinrich Schütz, Benjamin Britten, and Francis Poulenc. A Web page has been created with notes for the entire program.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 13. The venue will be the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, which is located near Potrero Hill at 500 De Haro Street. Individual tickets are available for general admission at $40 with discounted rates for seniors and students. A Web page has been created for such tickets, as well as for three-concert subscriptions, which will also include From Tallis to Tavener and Brilliant Bach.  Doors will open at 7 p.m.

CBS “Compiles” a Christmas Story Program

Last night at the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church the California Bach Society (CBS) presented a program entitled The Christmas Story. This was not a single full-evening composition. Rather it was a compilation by Artistic Director Paul Flight, consisting primarily of works that the seventeenth-century German composer Johann Rosenmüller called Kern-Sprüche (core sentences, most of which were taken from the Old and New Testament). The texts for these sentences alternate between German and Latin, and Flight selected seven of them. Then, in the interest of “fleshing out” the narrative, he interjected two motets (again one in Latin and one in German) from Heinrich Schütz’ Kleine geistliche Konzerte (brief spiritual concerts) collection.

Most of the music itself was choral with occasional interjections of passages for solo or duo voices. Instrumental accompaniment was moderate. There were one-to-a-part performances for two violins, two violas, cello, bassoon, two cornettos, and three sackbuts. Continuo was provided by Yuko Tanaka on organ.

Between the transparency of the instrumentation and the diverse dispositions of the texts being sung, Flight’s compilation made for an engaging listening experience. There was also much to be said for a “seasonal” program in which none of the selections were familiar! (There are still more than twenty days before the holiday itself, so there will be more than ample time to encounter the many “traditional” carols and songs.) Personally, I was drawn to those passages that involved interleaving voices. This was a significant rhetorical strategy in the Kleine geistliche Konzerte, and there were ample opportunities to observe how Rosenmüller had been influenced by that genre’s style. (The nature of any connection between Rosenmüller and Schütz will depend on the historical sources one chooses to read! All we know for sure is that Schütz was the elder of the two.)

Screen shot from a video “tour” of The Dancing Saints (from the Web page about the mural)

The church was relatively intimate in scale, making it a first-rate setting for the musical resources that Flight led. The venue is probably best known for the mural that encircles the sanctuary, entitled The Dancing Saints. The “saints” depicted in the mural range from the Old Testament (King David) through Christianity (Teresa of Avila and Francis of Assisi) to more recent secular figures, including Malcolm X and Anne Frank. The figures are grouped in panels, each showing them executing a dance-step in unison. My favorite panel includes a wolf. The six “saints” are raising their left leg in unison, and the wolf raises his front right leg! Last night was my first return to St. Gregory’s since the pandemic, and I had forgotten how much I missed the place!

CBS Christmas: Rosenmüller and Schütz

Having begun its 53rd season with a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 Mass setting (best known as the Mass in B Minor), the California Bach Society (CBS) will celebrate Christmas with two rarely performed Baroque composers. One of those composers is familiar to me, even if I am not sure that I have heard any of his music in performance. That composer is Heinrich Schütz, and my knowledge is the result of having written about all twenty volumes of the “complete works” collection organized by Hans-Christoph Rademann and released by Carus-Verlag.

Cover of the second Kleine geistliche Konzerte CD in the Rademann “complete works” collection of the music of Heinrich Schütz (courtesy of Naxos of America)

Schütz will be represented on this program by two  relatively short motets, one from each of the two collections entitled Kleine geistliche Konzerte (small spiritual concerts). The first of these will be the SWV 314 “Verbum caro factus est” (the word is made flesh). The second will be the SWV 502 “Ein Kind its uns geboren” (unto us a child is born).

The remainder of the program will be devoted to Johann Rosenmüller; and his Wikipedia page asserts that “his sacred compositions show the influence of Heinrich Schütz” (although that quoted text has “citation needed,” rather than a footnote). He will be represented by a collection of six motets. Three are settings of German texts, and the other three are in Latin. The latter will include settings of both the “Magnificat” text and the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” section of the Mass.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place on Friday, December 1, beginning, as usual, at 8 p.m. The venue will be the Saint Gregory of Nyssa church, located at 500 De Haro Street at the foot of Potrero Hill. General admission will be $40 with a $35 rate for seniors. Students and those under 30 will be admitted for $10. A Web page has been created to process all ticket sales, and the alternative will be to call 650-485-1097. Sales should be finalized at least 24 hours before the concert. Doors will open 30 minutes before the performance.

Cal Bach Announces Christmas Program

Readers may recall that, a little over a month ago, the California Bach Society (Cal Bach) was one of the first ensembles (if not the first) to perform before an audience in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church since lockdown conditions were imposed in response to COVID-19. At the beginning of next month, the 30-voice choir led by Artistic Director Paul Flight will return to St. Mark’s to present a Christmas-themed program. Given that the first program of the season featured music composed by three generations of the Bach family, it is worth noting that none of those many Bachs will contribute to the holiday spirit.

The portrait of Heinrich Schütz that graced the covers of all the Carus-Verlag albums of his complete works (painted by Christoph Spätner, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Instead, the program will feature the music of Heinrich Schütz, who is generally regarded as the most important predecessor of Johann Sebastian Bach. Personally, I took that accolade seriously enough to accumulate all twenty volumes of the Carus-Verlag recordings of Schütz’ complete works through a project managed by Hans-Christoph Rademann. Schütz composed his SWV 435 setting of the Nativity with a German text with the simple title Christmas Story (Weinachtshistorie).

This music was probably performed for the first time at a Christmas service in 1660. It would have substituted for a reading of the Nativity texts from the Gospels. Schütz’ libretto uses Martin Luther’s German translations of the Gospels of both Luke and Matthew. The score amounts of a verse-by-verse account in short movements.

The chorus is in six parts” two sopranos, alto, two tenors, and baritone. There are solo parts for one soprano, one alto, three tenors, and three baritones. Narration by the “Evangelist” is a tenor part, which will be sung by Flight himself. The other “roles” in the libretto are those of an angel (soprano Caroline Jou Armitage) and Herod (baritone Sepp Hammer). Instrumental accompaniment will be provided by a Baroque orchestra consisting of Christine Meals and Rachel Hurwitz on violin, John Thomas and Becca Burrington on sackbut, Lars Johannesson and Alissa Roedig on recorders, Elizabeth Reed on treble viol, Danial Deitch on both treble viol and bassoon, Farley Pearce on cello, Cheryl Ann Fulton on harp, and Yuko Tanaka on organ.

The program will also include a multinational survey of Christmas Music. The composers range from two of Schütz’ predecessors to one currently living arranger of traditional Polish music. These seven selections revisit works that had been previously performed by Cal Bach between 2009 and 2019.

St. Mark’s is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of its intersection with Franklin Street. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 3. General admission will be $35 with a $25 discount for seniors and $10 admission students and those under 30. A Web page has been created to process all ticket sales, and the alternative will be to call 650-485-1097. Sales should be finalized at least 24 hours before the concert. Sales at the door will be only be available if COVID-19 restrictions allow. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. All concert-goers must submit proof of vaccination, and masks must be worn at all times.

The Final Schütz Project Release (really!)

courtesy of Naxos of America

Apparently, my announcement this past February of the conclusion of Hans-Christoph’s Rademann’s project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz was, to appropriate the words attributed to Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated.” This past Friday, Carus-Verlag released the twentieth volume in the series; and I feel a bit more confidence, on this occasion, in citing the words of Bullwinkle J. Moose (not quite in Twain’s league), “This time, for sure!” One compelling piece of evidence is that the final track in the second of the two CDs in this collection, “Trostlied” (song of consolation), is marked as a “world premiere recording” and has the catalog number SWV 502, one higher than the highest number in the SWV (Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis) itemization on the List of Compositions by Heinrich Schütz Wikipedia page.

The title of the two-CD set is Psalmen & Friedensmusiken (psalms & peace music); and, as of this writing, Amazon.com has only released it as an MP3 album (whose download, fortunately, includes the PDF file of the accompanying booklet). Those interested in purchasing a physical copy will be able to do so through a Web page on the Carus Web site. The contents do not fit conveniently into the categories on the SWV Web page; and they cover an extended period of time, from 1618 to 1648. Those who know their history (if any are left) may recognize these as the years that mark the beginning and ending of the Thirty Years’ War.

While Schütz made Dresden the base of his operations in 1615, he was astute enough to evade the threats of devastation that haunted Central Europe for 30 years. He is probably best known for having taken refuge in Venice, where Claudio Monteverdi was both teacher and colleague. However, he also made two extended visits to Denmark. The booklet does not give a thorough account of when each of the nineteen selections on the album was composed, but there are no particularly informative records that can be consulted for these matters. To the extent that the Thirty Years’ War involved conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, it is worth noting that only four of the selections on this album set Latin texts and are probably associated with Schütz’ time in Venice. Similarly, there are polychoral selections, which may well have been inspired by the physical layout of St Mark’s Basilica and the exploitation of that layout by Schütz’ earlier teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli.

In spite of his impressive influences, this final release makes it clear that Schütz was definitely master of his own compositional voice. This is evident not only through the exchanges among the vocal lines but also the interplay of the voices with instrumental resources. These account for strings, winds, and brass in different selections, while the continuo is managed by theorbo, violone, and organ. Taken as a whole, these nineteen selections make for very satisfying “last words” in a collection whose releases have been consistently satisfying since the recording sessions for the first volume began in November of 2006.

Rademann’s Schütz Project Concludes!

Christopher Spätner’s portrait of Heinrich Schütz, appropriated by Carus-Verlag for the covers of all of Rademann’s Schütz albums (painted around 1660, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

At the beginning of this month, Carus-Verlag released the nineteenth volume in Hans-Christoph’s Rademann’s project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz. According to the accompanying booklet, this is the project’s final volume. Thus, since 2006 when the project was launched, a total of 26 CDs have been released, accounting for the fact that some of the volumes consist of more than one disc.

When compared with the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach (or even just the sacred music), this makes for a relatively modest collection; but it is still an impressive achievement in its own right. Indeed, Bach was influenced by Schütz; but of much greater interest is the fact that, thanks to the inflation of religious conflicts into military ones, as both student and practitioner Schütz was equally at home in Dresden and Venice. Schütz first visited Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli; but the city would later provide him with refuge from the Thirty Years’ War in a setting in which he could work with Claudio Monteverdi as a colleague.

The title of the final volume is Madrigale & Hochzeitsmusiken (madrigals and wedding music). This is not the title of a publication by either Schütz or any of his contemporaries. Indeed, a scan of the track listings shows that the SWV (Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis) catalog numbers are not consecutive. Basically, these are madrigal-style compositions, some of which are suitable for nuptial ceremonies conducted in the church while others were probably intended for more secular festivities. Thus, the text sources are drawn not only from the Book of Psalms and the Song of Songs but also from German poets of the time, such as Martin Opitz. Furthermore, two of the selections are being recorded for the very first time: SWV 459, “Saget den Gästen” (“Tell them which are bidden,” King James Bible translation from the Gospel of Matthew) and SWV 474, “Ach, wie soll ich doch in Freuden leben” (“Ah, how should I live in happiness,” unknown source).

The resources for this final recording include six vocal soloists joined by the Dresdner Kammerchor, which Rademann founded in 1985. There is a rich variety of instrumental resources, which seem to be deployed according to the instrumentation found in the eighteen-volume edition of Schütz’ complete works published by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1885 and 1927 and edited by Philipp Spitta, Arnold Schering, and Heinrich Spitta. For the most part these selections have the intimacy of chamber music, although SWV 474 requires three instrumental choirs (lutes, three viols, and three trombones), as well as cornett, violin, and continuo accompanying two tenors and one baritone. All of the compositions are relatively brief, making the entire album a thoroughly diverse and engaging journey.

Schütz Project Concludes “Sacred Symphonies”

courtesy of Naxos of America

At the end of last week, German choral conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann’s project with Carus-Verlag to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz reached a milestone of sorts. The eighteenth volume in the project consists of 27 “chamber” settings of sacred texts published as the second volume published under the title Symphoniae sacrae (sacred symphonies). This follows the release of the first volume as the fourteenth volume in the Carus collection, which took place in March of 2017, and the release of the third volume as the twelfth Carus volume in January of 2016.

As has already been observed, the title for each of these volumes was probably appropriated from Giovanni Gabrieli, who used it for two of his own collections. Schütz was no stranger to either Venice or the musical community there. Indeed, Venice provided him with refuge during the Thirty Years War, during which time both Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi, were both teachers and colleagues of Schütz. Presumably, Gabrieli had written his “symphonies” to be sung in the St Mark’s Basilica; and all the texts were in Latin. The same was the case for Schütz’ first volume, which was published in Venice in 1629. However, the remaining two volumes were published in Dresden in 1647 and 1750, respectively; and their texts are in German.

It has also already been explained that the idea of a “symphony” has nothing to do with current semantics. Based on its Greek origins, the word refers to a “concord of sound,” which involves a consonant blend of different sources, both vocal and instrumental. In our own semantics we would probably call these pieces “sacred chamber music,” taking many (most?) of the aria and duet settings in the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach as a point of reference.

With such “concord” in mind, Rademann has assembled an impressively diverse assortment of instruments, all of which play solo parts on the tracks to which they contribute. Those instruments are violins, zinken (a form of cornetto), recorders, trombones, dulcian (the predecessor of the bassoon), theorbo, violone, organ, and occasional percussion. In all probability the 27 pieces on this new recording were never meant to be performed as a group. However, through the diversity of both style and instrumentation, one can listen to either (or both) of the two CDs in the set from start to finish, simply because each track presents the music in its own characteristic light. As a result this new release makes for an engaging addition to the recordings accumulated thus far in Rademann’s project.

Delos Releases Third Cappella SF Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

A little over a week ago, Delos released its third recording of Cappella SF, an a cappella chamber choir based in San Francisco (as its name implies), conducted by Ragnar Bohlin. The title of the new album is Timeless: Ten Centuries of Music, which also happens to have been the title of the concert that Cappella SF presented in October of last year. However, the recording sessions for this album, engineered by David Bowles’ Swineshead Productions, took place on either side of this performance, in both June and November of that same year.

As one may guess from the title, the album is basically a historical anthology with the selections presented roughly in chronological order. The description on the Amazon.com product page (once again under the Editorial Reviews header but actually appropriated from the Naxos of America New Release Guide) states that the album “offers choral fans and history-minded classical music aficionados a rare smorgasbord of choral compositions encompassing every musical period of the past millennium.” While I would suggest that the determiner “every” is a bit too hyperbolic to be accurate, there is definitely a generous amount of scope in the fourteen selections of this album. With Hildegarde of Bingen (one of the liturgical songs from her Symphonia armoniae celestium cycle) as the first track, the repertoire gradually approaches the “immediate present” with the world premiere recording of Ola Gjeilo’s setting of the “Veni Sancte Spiritus” sequence.

Those who have followed the way in which I track the release of recordings probably know by now that I prefer “going deep” to “going wide.” For example, where Hildegarde is concerned, I made it a point to acquaint myself with all nine CDs that Sony reissued as its Hildegarde von Bingen Edition. This was not just a matter of being thorough. Every composer, through his/her compositions, establishes his/her own “ground rules for listening,” rules for which “musical period” is far too broad an approach to categorization. Just as my father used to like to say “One is not a statistic,” those ground rules can almost never be inferred on the basis of a single sample.

On the other hand for those who prefer breadth to depth, the selection on the album is definitely impressive for the scope of its variety (even if it does not encompass “every musical period”). Thus, even the casual listener can come away with a sense of just how significantly things changed as practices of making music progressed from Hildegard to Guillaume de Machaut to Carlo Gesualdo and then to Heinrich Schütz (by which time we have advanced only to the middle of the seventeenth century, prior to the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach). At this point the chronological gaps begin to widen, probably through a desire to give a fair account to the twentieth and current centuries, even if it involves short-changing the eighteenth and nineteenth. Nevertheless, my personal feeling is that, if one is going to “go wide,” then this is the way to go, since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tend to be “havens of familiarity” for most listeners. To the extent that the mission of Timeless was to offer up new encounters, it has succeeded admirably, admirably enough that, even with my own preference for depth, I definitely see myself returning to it for further listening experiences.

Carus Releases Volume 2 of Schütz “Sacred Concertos”

courtesy of Naxos of America

This past Friday, Carus released the seventeenth volume in Hans-Christoph Rademann’s project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz. The new recording presents the second of the two volumes that Schütz published under the title Kleine geistliche Konzerte (little sacred concertos). The first volume had been released in August of 2013 as the seventh volume in the Carus project. This second volume was published in 1639, three years after the first volume. As in the recording of the first volume, Ludger Rémy conducts from a small organ or virginal, leading an ensemble of vocalists and an instrumental continuo.

The 24 “sacred concertos” in the first volume could be taken as brief meditations, each one setting a few verses of Biblical text in German. The second volume is distinctive from the first in several ways. First of all, it consists of 31 pieces, meaning that the new release consists of two CDs, while the first volume could fit on a single CD. Furthermore, five of those pieces set text in Latin, rather than German. In addition, with the exception of the first two tracks on the first CD, all of the remaining “concertos” are grouped under six ecclesiastical “themes” as follows:

1. Weihnachten (Christmas): six entries
2. Der Herr ist mein Hirte (the Lord is my shepherds): four entries
3. Passion & Ostern (Passion and Easter): four entries
4. Gottes Lob (praise of God): six entries
5. Zuversicht & Hoffnung (confidence and hope): five entries
6. Abschied & Tod (farewell and death): four entries

Note that I keep putting scare quotes around that noun “concertos.” Michael Talbot’s contribution to The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto asserts that the earliest use of the noun referred to music for voices and instruments in which the instruments did something other than merely follow the vocal lines. This would be true of both of the Kleine geistliche Konzerte volumes, but it would be fair to point out that, for all of the pieces in the second volume, the instruments are basically there for continuo support and little else.

For better or worse, I tend to prefer labels that evoke meaningful expectations. Given that Schütz studied with Claudio Monteverdi (while taking refuge from the Thirty Years’ War in Venice), I have no problem approaching these relatively short pieces as madrigals that happen to have sacred texts and instrumental accompaniment. I might even be so bold as to suggest that Monteverdi was a far more influential teacher than his predecessor, Giovanni Gabrieli, has been; but I would not try to argue this point with those whose knowledge of Schütz is far more extensive than my own!

Whatever the historical record may or may not tell us, the operative word for these individuals is definitely the adjective “little,” rather than the noun “concertos.” Where the phrase not so hackneyed, one could easily call each of the selections “short and sweet.” Put another way, each composition is a meditation on a short Biblical text; and the duration of the meditation is consistent with that of the text itself. From a different perspective, those who enjoy listening to a recording that traverses the entirety of one of Monteverdi’s books of madrigals are likely to be equally pleased with these recordings of the two Kleine geistliche Konzerte volumes.

Rademann’s Schütz Project Advances to Vol. 16

courtesy of Naxos of America

This past Friday I received word that Carus-Verlag had released the sixteenth volume in Hans-Christoph Rademann’s project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz. That news came with a link to a download site set up for business connections (including press reviews); and I could not get to those tracks fast enough. The recording presented the entirety of Schütz’ final published work. Called Schwanengesang, it was published in Dresden in 1671; and Schütz would die of a stroke the following year at the age of 87.

The volume accounts for catalog numbers 482 through 494 in the Schütz-Werke-Verseichnis (SWV). The first twelve entries account for an extended setting of Psalm 119 with each individual entry accounting for a consecutive pair of “strophes.” This is a very long Psalm. It consists of 22 of these strophes, each of which has eight verses. Thus, each SWV entry accounts of sixteen of those verses. The Psalm is also an acrostic, since each strophe begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet following the order of that alphabet. The remaining entries are a single-movement setting of Psalm 100 and a German-language setting of the Magnificat canticle. Curiously, this recording is not yet listed on Amazon.com, meaning that those wishing to keep up with Rademann’s progress will have to purchase the recording through its Web page on the Amazon Web site for Germany.

As might be guessed, Psalm 119 is rarely encountered in religious services, due to its prodigious length. Nevertheless, the booklet notes by Werner Breig (translated from the German by Elizabeth Robinson) suggest that Schütz had a strong personal attraction to the words of this Psalm. Having “paid his dues” with an abundance of extended settings of narrative texts, primarily from the New Testament, one gets the impression that, recognizing his advanced age, Schütz decided to turn to a text purely for the religious values that it expressed. In other words his setting is as much a labor of devout love as it is a “swan song.”

The key sign of Schütz’ devotion is his straightforward delivery of the text. One might almost say that he was more interested in making sure that the listener appreciated the rhetoric of the text, rather than dwelling on his own rhetorical skills as a composer. This may stand as a problem for more “secular” listeners; but, if one is willing to take Schütz on his own terms, there will be much to consider as one journey’s through the thirteen selections on this album.

Rademann Presents Schütz’ “Becker” Psalm Settings as a Viable Listening Experience

At the end of this coming week, Carus-Verlag will release the fifteenth volume in Hans-Christoph Rademann’s ambitious project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz. The title of the new album is Becker-Psalter; and, as usual, Amazon.com is already processing pre-orders. The performance is by the Dresdner Kammerchor (Dresden chamber choir), led by Rademann, who is the group’s Director, along with what may best be described as ad hoc instrumental accompaniment.

The Editorial Reviews section on the Amazon Web page provides a basic introduction to the content of this new recording; but the story deserves a bit more flesh, particularly since this may be the first time in Rademann’s project that he had to come to grips with just how “complete” he wanted things to be. The Becker Psalter actually has its own Wikipedia page. It is an arrangement of all 150 of the Psalms rendered in rhymed verse by the Leipzig theologian Cornelius Becker. This was a text-only publication with the intention that the Psalms would be sung to well-known Lutheran hymns.

Over the course of his lifetime, Schütz set all 150 of Becker’s settings to original music. He published an initial, but incomplete, collection in 1628, followed by the “complete package” in 1661. That complete edition was then edited by Walter Blankenburg for the sixth volume in the Neue Schütz-Ausgabe, published by Bärenreiter in 1957. Because this publication is now public domain, it is possible to reproduce a page showing a typical setting:

from IMSLP

Note the numbering of the verses with the gap between the third and the eighth. Becker set each Psalm in its entirety, and Schütz probably assumed that each of his settings would be sung to all of the verses.

This clearly makes for a lot of music. The Schütz-Werke-Verseichnis assigns the catalog numbers from 97 to 255, accounting for the fact that a few of the longer Psalms are broken into separate parts. It is thus necessary to draw attention to the final sentence of the Amazon Editorial Review, which describes the recording as “an exceptionally spirited interpretation of a selection [my emphasis] of these unusually unadorned, transparent, folk-like compositions.” To be more accurate, this recording offers twenty of those 150 Psalm settings; but, on the other hand, it appears that each Psalm has been sung with all of its verses.

While this may seem like more thoroughness than one would wish, Rademann has used repetition as an opportunity for innovation. The opening and closing verses are sung by the entire choir with instrumental accompaniment. However, the intervening verses involve different combinations of voices, often solo, as well as variety in that accompaniment, which sometimes is embellished by improvisation. Furthermore, solos do not always involve singing the “melodic” line. When the solo is taken by a bass, he sings the bass line, which has just as much melodic originality as the soprano line does. In other words Rademann has his own methods for “adorning” what would otherwise come across as excessive repetition of “folk-like” devotion.

Nevertheless, it is unclear that this is a recording to be enjoyed by start-to-finish listening. There is almost 75 minutes of music on this CD, and it is hard to imagine that Schütz would have envisaged anyone sitting still for 75 minutes to listen to a series of hymns based on Psalm texts! From that point of view, it is probably advantageous that the “digital age” is one of “sampled” listening. Granted, these samples are unlikely to be embedded in Lutheran (or any other Christian) services; but it will still be the case that this is music best enjoyed through “piecemeal” listening. Should Rademann plan to account for the remaining 130 Psalms in any subsequently recordings? I can give my own answer in a heartbeat: Enough is enough!

Rademann Returns to the “Sacred Symphonies” for the Latest Carus Schütz Project Release

Those who followed my Examiner.com national site probably know that I have been following a major project to record the complete works of Heinrich Schütz since I first became aware of it in 2013. The project is the brainchild of German choral conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann, who is currently the Director of the Dresdner Kammerchor (Dresden chamber choir); and the recordings are being released by Stuttgart-based Carus-Verlag in coproduction with Deutschlandradio Kultur. (Carus-Verlag also has a parallel project to publish performing editions of Schütz’ complete works.) At the very least Rademann and his ensemble are “geographically suited” for this project, since Schütz was based, for the most part, in Dresden between 1615 and his death in 1672 after which he was buried in the old Dresden Frauenkirche. (His tomb was destroyed in 1727 when the church was torn down to build a new one.)

Nevertheless, Schütz time in Dresden was interrupted for a variety of reasons. The most notable of these was the Thirty Years War. Fortunately, he had previously traveled to Venice to study with Claudio Monteverdi in 1628; and, as a result, Venice served as a place of refuge when that war was at its worst. One result of these circumstances is that Schütz’ music tends to have a close kinship with the music of Monteverdi, both sacred and secular, as well as his other distinguished Venetian teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli. A corollary result is that the texts for Schütz’ vocal music cover not only good Lutheran German but also both Latin and Italian, reflecting the sacred and secular aspects of his influences. Thus, the first nineteen entries in the Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis (SWV) catalog are five-voice Italian madrigals, published in Venice in 1611 as Schütz’ Opus 1.

At little over a week ago, Carus released the fourteenth volume in their Schütz project, the first of the three volumes that Schütz entitled Symphoniae sacrae (sacred symphonies). Schütz probably appropriated this title from Gabrieli, who used it for two of his own collections of liturgical music published in 1597 and in 1615 (after his death). Schütz published his own first volume in Venice in 1629, presumably for services held at St. Mark’s Basilica; and, as a result, all of the texts are in Latin. (The other two volumes were published in Dresden in 1647 and 1650, respectively; and they are all settings of liturgical texts in German.)

The noun “symphony” constitutes a major departure from current semantics. Basically, it entails the “concord of sound” (taken from the word’s Greek origins) arising when many parts, both vocal and instrumental, sound together with a sense of overall consonance. This particular collection involves vocal solos, duets, and trios performing with different collections of string and wind instruments, along with the consistent use of a keyboard continuum provided by an organ (performed by Ludger Rémy). As the booklet notes by Oliver Geisler (translated by David Kosviner) observe, Schütz was as specific in identifying instruments as he was in designating vocal ranges; and those instruments included cornets, recorders, trombones, violins, bassoons (or dulcians), gambas, and “fiffari.” (Scare quotes indicate that Geisler acknowledged that the denotation of that noun is uncertain; but it is like to be some cross-blown version of a flute or pipe.)

It would probably be fair to say that Schütz expected his listeners to be as moved by his “concords of sound” as by the denotations (and connotations) of the sacred texts he chose to set. For example, his use of four trombones (Sebastian Krause, Julian Nagel, Masafumi Sakamoto, and Fernando Günther) to accompany a solo bass voice (Felix Schwandtke) in a setting of David mourning the death of his son Absalom is as moving in its tragedy as it is ravishing in its sonorities. Furthermore, there is a crystalline clarity to the delivery of all of the vocalists on this album, which means that those with even a smattering of knowledge of Latin are likely to pick up on the semantic implications of each of the texts that Schütz set in this collection.

With fourteen volumes in this project released and another one scheduled for next month, it is unclear how to advise those who wish to establish a “first contact” with Schütz. However, those familiar with the Roman Catholic ritual can probably draw upon that familiarity to provide a frame of reference for this particular collection, since it represents so well Schütz’ productivity in the sacred music that he wrote while in Venice. Between the familiarity with the texts and the delightful instrumental diversity, it should not be difficult for such listeners to get quickly “hooked” on this composer, who definitely rose to the heights of his two major teachers, Gabrieli and Monteverdi.