Abstract
The Lutheran court at the Saxon capital Dresden possessed a musical life as rich as any court in seventeenth-century Europe. The wide variety of music performed at court in services, in stage works, on special state occasions, and even at the royal table is known today largely because of the preservation of an abundance of archival material pertaining to Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), the central figure of the city’s musical life. Many of Schütz’s own letters as well as a wealth of other documents relating to court life at Dresden — court correspondence, Hofkapelle lists, musicians’ contracts, court account books and receipts, music and instrument catalogues, Kantoreiordnungen (chapel orders) and court diaries — provide vivid details of the role of Dresden’s court musicians. These records also form an illuminating portrait of Schütz and the factors that influenced his productivity.
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Notes
For an excellent survey of the political, religious, and cultural aspects of the period, see T. Munck, Seventeenth Century Europe: State, Conflict and the Social Order in Europe 1598–1700 (London, 1990).
There are currently a number of thorough studies of the Thirty Years War in English, but perhaps the most engaging is still C. V. Wedgwood’s The Thirty Years War (London, 2/1981).
G. Benecke has translated primary source material pertaining to the war in Germany in the Thirty Years War (London, 1978).
Another important study is J. V. Polisensky, The Thirty Years War, trans. R. Evans (London, 1971).
Economic and social conditions during and after the war are covered in R. Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, trans. J. B. Knudsen (Cambridge, 1988).
G. Grass has created a thoroughly enjoyable account of a fictional meeting in 1647 of musical and literary luminaries, including Schütz, in The Meeting at Telgte, trans. R. Manheim (New York and London, 1981).
A useful overview of seventeenth-century lyric poetry precedes G. Schoolfield’s translations of the work of important poets in The German Lyric of the Baroque in English Translation (Chapel Hill, 1961). Several important essays may be found in B. L. Spahr, Problems and Perspectives: a Collection of Essays on German Baroque Literature (Frankfurt, 1981), and German Baroque Literature: the European Perspective, ed. G. Hoffmeister (New York, 1983).
For descriptions of the art collection of the Saxon rulers housed in Dresden, see J. Menzhausen, The Green Vaults, trans. M. Herzfeld, rev. D. T. Rice (Leipzig, 1968), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition catalogue The Splendor of Dresden: Five Centuries of Art Collecting. An Exhibition from the State Art Collections of Dresden, German Democratic Republic (New York, 1978).
Music
Schütz’s music has been edited in Heinrich Schütz: Sämtliche Werke, ed. P. Spitta and others (Leipzig, 1885–1927), which is being superseded by Heinrich Schütz: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, ed. on behalf of the Internationale Schütz-Gesellschaft (Kassel, 1955-) and Heinrich Schütz: Sämtliche Werke, ed. G. Graulich and others (Stuttgart, 1971-).
For prefaces of several of Schütz’s works in English translation, see G. J. Buelow, A Schütz Reader: Documents of Performance Practice, Journal of the American Choral Foundation, Inc., xxvii/4 (Oct 1985); and for translations of the dedications and forewords to Schütz’s three collections of Symphoniae sacrae,
O. Struck, Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950), 432–41.
H. J. Moser, Heinrich Schütz: his Life and Work, trans. C. F. Pfatteicher (St Louis, 1959), remains the standard biography of the composer; for a condensed version of it, see Heinrich Schütz: a Short Account of his Life and Work, trans, and ed. D. McCulloch (London, 1967).
Important new work has been done by J. Rifkin in ‘Heinrich Schütz’ (with C. Timms), The ‘New Grove’ North European Baroque Masters (London, 1985), 1–50; ‘Towards a New Image of Henrich Schütz’, MT, cxxvi (1985), 651–8, 716–20; and ‘Whatever Happened to Heinrich Schütz?’, Opus, vi (Oct 1985), 10–14, 49. R. Petzoldt has assembled a fine collection of pictures and facsimile reproductions presented with German and English commentary in Heinrich Schütz und seine Zeit in Bildern (Kassel, 1972). R. A. Leaver has translated one of the most important primary sources for Schütz’s biography in Music in the Service of the Church: the Funeral Sermon for Heinrich Schütz (St Louis, 1984). Other relevant documents may be found in G. Spagnoli, Letters and Documents of Heinrich Schütz: an Annotated Translation (Rochester, New York, 2/1992). Current research on Schütz and seventeenth-century music in general appears in the Schütz-Jahrbuch, ed. W. Breig under the auspices of the Internationale Heinrich-Schütz-Gesellschaft.
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© 1993 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Spagnoli, G. (1993). Dresden at the Time of Heinrich Schütz. In: Price, C. (eds) The Early Baroque Era. Man & Music. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11294-4_8
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