American Choral Review Archive

Whereas the documents of Bach's and Handel's lives have been...

Whereas the documents of Bach's and Handel's lives have been collected in special definitive volumes, those relating to the life of Heinrich Schütz, Germany's greatest choral composer before their era, are still variously dispersed in the biographical and bibliographical literature. A plan of gathering some of the records of Schütz's activity proved particularly tempting since the composer left a series of fundamental statements that set forth the manner in which he wished his works to be performed. Born a hundred years before Bach and Handel, Schütz lived into a period that almost borders on theirs; his last works were written at the beginning of the 1670's, and the documents presented here span the six decades that saw the composition of those works that appeared in print during his time.