SCHUTZ, H.: Cantiones sacrae (Currende Vocal Ensemble, Nevel)

Album review

Heinrich Schütz's Cantiones sacrae of 1625, from his 40th year (the middle of the road of life), stand apart from his other works. A group of some 40 four-voice motets (11 are presented here), they fall neither among the composer's splendid German adaptations of the Venetian polychoral style nor among the severe, stripped-down pieces he wrote late in life. They are also, intriguingly, neither really Protestant nor Catholic; written for a Catholic prince, they are in Latin, but they draw on a group of meditative texts, adapted from the Bible, that were used by members of both faiths. They are inward works that owe a great deal to Renaissance polyphony but are marked as part of Schütz's own time by their intense text expressivity and by madrigalian chromaticism applied with climactic effect. The motets include continuo parts that were added at the behest of a publisher, but the continuo does little to define what we would call harmonic motion. This 1991 recording by the vocal group Currende (apparently Belgian, but the booklet gives no biographical information whatsoever) keeps the continuo, executed on an organ, far in the background. The focus is exclusively on the small group of singers, who catch the music's reverent but dramatic quality perfectly. Sample track 10 for a reading of the simple text "In te Domine speravi" (In you, Lord, I trust) that reveals Schütz's acknowledged debt to Renaissance polyphony but nevertheless brings the "I" into the picture in a way Josquin, for all his expressivity, would never have done. A beautiful recording that fills out its small dimensions beautifully, and the 1991 sound has held up well.
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