Histories of Heinrich Schütz

Varwig places the music of Schütz in a richly detailed seventeenth-century context, comparing this to its later nineteenth- and twentieth-century reception.

Bettina Varwig (Author)

9780521197656, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 November 2011

266 pages, 18 b/w illus. 28 music examples
25.4 x 18.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.71 kg

Bettina Varwig places the music of the celebrated Dresden composer Heinrich Schütz in a richly detailed tapestry of cultural, political, religious and intellectual contexts. Four key events in Schütz's career - the 1617 Reformation centenary, the performance of his Dafne in 1627, the 1636 funeral composition Musikalische Exequien and the publication of his motet collection Geistliche Chormusik (1648) - are used to explore his music's resonances with broader historical themes, including the effects of the Thirty Years' War, contemporary meanings of classical mythology, Lutheran attitudes to death and the afterlife as well as shifting conceptions of time and history in light of early modern scientific advances. These original seventeenth-century circumstances are treated in counterpoint with Schütz's fascinating later reinvention in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German musical culture, providing a new kind of musicological writing that interweaves layers of historical inquiry from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Introduction
1. Trumpets and drums (Psalmen Davids, 1617)
Paraphrase 1. Lutheran Schütz
2. Echoes, mirrors and masks (Dafne, 1627)
Paraphrase 2. Operatic Schütz
3. Life, death and afterlife (Musikalische Exequien, 1636)
Paraphrase 3. Monumental Schütz
4. Old and new worlds (Geistliche Chormusik, 1648)
Paraphrase 4. Rhetorical Schütz
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Romantic music [c 1830 to c 1900 AVGC5], Baroque music [c 1600 to c 1750 AVGC3]