Premieres of rediscovered Heinrich Schütz works

Helmut Lauterwasser

Monday, September 28, 2015

This post has reached us from Helmut Lauterwasser (RISM Germany):

It is hard to believe that there are still new works by Heinrich Schütz that are awaiting discovery. And indeed, on 1 October 2015 two small Christmas pieces by the Saxon court Kapellmeister will be heard for the first time after a nearly 400-year slumber at the opening event of the International Heinrich Schütz Festival in Dresden.

“Ein Kind ist uns geboren” (SWV 497, see image) for two tenors and “Ach Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding” (SWV 450a) for three voices (SSB), each with basso continuo, are preserved (albeit incompletely) in a collective manuscript from the Saxon village of Pirna, today held by the SLUB - Sächsischen Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden. Both works were reconstructed for new editions published by Carus. Since the upper voice was missing in each piece, melodic material was reused as much as possible from the surviving parts to complete the works. In SWV 497, music could be reconstructed because Schütz plainly repeated material from other parts throughout most of the piece. The second work is an arrangement of the madrigal “Deh poi ch’era ne’ fati ch’io dovessi” by Luca Marenzio, so the editor attempted to reconstruct the missing descant part using the two surviving parts from the madrigal.

SWV 497 has just been released in Carus’s “Edition princeps” series.

Image: Excerpt from the collective manuscript Mus.Pi.57 (Bassus) in D-Dl with the beginning of the unfigured bass part.

Category: Events