HEINRICH SCHÜTZ

 

Opus ultimum

Psalm 100

Psalm 119

Deutsches Magnificat Concerto Palatino

 

Collegium Vocale Gent / Philippe Herreweghe

 

In the early 1660s, Schütz, relegated among the faded glories of the Dresden court, began to prepare for his own death. He embarked on a setting of all 176 verses of Psalm 119, a summing-up of the Old and New Testaments, without necessarily expecting the resulting work to be performed: it was to be his swansong or Schwanengesang. Ten years later, this Opus ultimum had evolved into 11 motets for double choir. The manuscripts were dispersed after his death and it was to be another three centuries before the work was reconstructed and then sung.

 

In 1900 during a clear out in the town church of Guben, now Gubin, Poland, six manuscript books from a set of 8-part motets for double choir by Schütz were found. These were works whose existence had until then been known only from old documents. A second windfall occurred in 1930, when the lost continuo part turned up in the antiquarian book trade and was bought by Stefan Zweig. The Guben parts disappeared during the war and did not resurface until the mid-1970s, when Dresden musicologist Wolfram Steude relocated them. Thus a second chance was offered to preserve this collection of works permanently for posterity by means of a scientific critical edition. Der Schwanengesang is in both artistic and biographical terms one of Heinrich Schütz's most remarkable works, written at 86 and concluding his life's work with a collection of motets for double choir, addressed to Eternity.

 

Harmonia Mundi 2cds HMC901895-96