What was it like to be a court composer in 17th-century Europe? Certainly, it was a cushy, prestigious gig compared to most jobs of that time. Music was one of the main ways that rich nobles advertised their luxurious living, and those born with the right talents could rise to rub shoulders with the great figures of the age.
But the position carried burdens as well. Chief among these was the fact that composers were essentially glorified servants. Without any personal freedom, they traveled with their noble patrons wherever they went, providing constant melodious accompaniment to a fabulous lifestyle that they could observe, but never participate in. If they left without permission, they would be hunted down. In times of financial hardship, they would not even be paid.
The life of Heinrich Schütz offers a snapshot of this existence. He was a musician who wrote masterpieces into extreme old age, and not all of his compositions were created under conditions of his own choosing. He had to compose and perform on demand and was denied retirement more than once.
Early Years
Born exactly 100 years before Johann Sebastian Bach in 1585, Schütz was the son of an innkeeper. His father, Christoph Schütz, later became the mayor of the Weissenfels, and Heinrich was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.One evening, an important nobleman, Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, heard the young Schütz singing while staying at his father’s inn. Impressed, Moritz became determined to develop the boy’s talents. Schütz’s father allowed the boy to leave home and join the nobleman’s chapel choir, but was not enthusiastic about his son becoming a professional musician. He was even less enthusiastic when Schütz abandoned studying law to travel to Italy and train under the great composer Giovanni Gabrieli.
While Germany would become a glorious musical center in the 19th century, at this time it was still a cultural backwater compared to Italy, France, and England. Schütz, probably more than any other single person, helped inaugurate this national shift towards melodic greatness.
In his lifetime, innkeepers ranked higher on the social scale than musicians.
Serving the Empire
Sometimes the only way for a court servant to be released from the duties to a patron was to be taken into the service of a wealthier one. The Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg I, demanded in a politely worded letter that Landgrave Moritz give up his favorite composer. Thus, Schütz found himself employed by one of the most powerful men in the Holy Roman Empire. The Electorate of Saxony had earlier protected Martin Luther when the Catholic Church sought his death.
For more than 50 years, Schütz served as Kapellmeister (choir master) to Johann Georg I. Unfortunately, the Thirty Years’ War began just three years after he moved to Dresden to take up this position, and much of the funding that should have gone to Schütz’s musical productions was redirected towards military matters.
In the preface to his collection, “Small Sacred Concertos,” Schütz lamented that “praiseworthy Music has not only gone into a great decline but in many places has been altogether destroyed by the still continuing course of the war in our beloved German homeland.” Nevertheless, Schütz was determined to not let his “God-given talent in this noble art” to “remain totally idle,” and continued to compose, leaving Germany at times to find work elsewhere.
When he was 60, with the war still raging, he asked the Elector permission to retire for the first time: “Inasmuch as the Electoral ‘Hofmusic’ (court music) in these adverse times has fallen into utter decay, I have become old as well. … Thus would it now be my one wish, that I live free from all ordinary service henceforth.”
‘The Swan Song’
Even after retiring, he continued to compose. Schütz wrote no purely instrumental music, but did write a good deal of theatrical music. This included the first German opera, “Dafne.” All of these stage works have been lost, though. What survives is his religious music.One of his greatest masterworks is his last: “Der Schwanengesang” (“The Swan Song”), written when he was 86, a year before his death. In it, Schütz looks back over a life of hard work, a war-torn country, and the personal tragedy of losing his wife and his only two daughters to illness.
The work sets Psalm 119 to a cycle of motets sung by a double choir, each performing four parts and accompanied by an instrumental baseline.
Here, Schütz demonstrates the masterful way he blended Italian influences with German texts and practices to create a new musical tradition that later composers would build upon. Each motet begins with a Lutheran-style plainchant intonation, then transitions to an Italian polychoral style. The two choirs mirror one another, singing independent melodic lines, then alternating, then fading as a soloist comes to the fore, and occasionally combining together to emphasize particular phrases. In the last of these motets, the singers stress verses that reflects Schutz’s own looming mortality: “Let my cry come near before Thee, O Lord,” and “Let my soul live.” As the performers move through 176 verses, they progress from faith and hope towards the assurance of salvation. For the climax, Schütz ends with joyous settings of Psalm 100 and a Magnificat.
