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Nancy P FlemingConway, Arkansas
Stephen Town(EDITOR)
Smallman, Basil
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 218 pp. $35 ISBN: 0-19-816674-5 (Hardcover)
HEINRICH SCHÜTZ IS a composer who needs no introduction to choral musicians. Most of his long life (1585-1672) was devoted to the composition of vocal music, the majority of it sacred. A number of his compositions, notably the Weihnachtshistorie and the Musikalische Exequien, as well as some of the Psalmen Davids and the Symphoniae Sacrae, are standard choral repertoire today. Unfortunately, with the exception of Carl Pfatteicher's translation of Hans Joachim Moser's massive study of the life and work of the composer (originally published in 1936), most Schütz scholarship to date has been in German. Therefore Basil Smallman's compact yet highly informative volume is a welcome addition to Oxford's Master Musicians series, for it provides an up-to-date resource in English.
Over the course of his lifetime, Schütz produced music that is remarkable in its variety, ranging from the Venetian opulence of the Psalmen Davids and the Italianate elegance and drama of the Symphoniae Sacrae to the ''exquisitely fashioned miniatures'' (p. 87) of the Kleine geistliche Konzerte and the mature austerity of the Passion settings. Smallman combines analysis with biography by placing his examination of each work or collection in its chronological context, thereby providing valuable insight into the political, religious, and personal circumstances surrounding the composition of each one. In addition, he locates Schütz's music artistically, drawing on visual and musical works for comparison.
For example, Schütz's setting of ''Die mit Tränen saen'' from the Geistliche Chor-Music (1648) is compared to Schein's setting of the same text in his Israelsbrünnlein (1623), on the likely...