Any discussion of Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach is, if nothing else, a very ambitious enterprise. The reasons, obvious to all, need no particular mention. The discussion is by no means made easier by linking the two together. If the link were to be established for purely objective reasons of history, there may be no ground for any criticism. And yet, if the connection carries historical weight, we should assume an artistic communication to have existed between the two. There has been nothing of the kind. It is more than likely that Bach knew nothing of Schütz, except perhaps the Psalter of Becker, which, after its first publication in 1628, has frequently been re-edited and was still in use when Bach was young. But this work least of all could have exercised an influence artistic in nature on Bach. Hence there is no such thing as an artistic contact between the two. The frequently made assumption that Bach’s work rested upon Schütz is impossible to justify. Historically speaking, the only link that joins the two is, therefore, the idiom of the baroque epoch that they have in common, even as men of the same age always will speak essentially the same language. Both are the towering posts that set chronological limits to German baroque music, one at its beginning, the other at its end; and they are at the same time the cornerstones in the baroque phase of Protestant church music.

But it is not this objective, historical point of view alone that related one to the other. Prejudices have often entered the discussion and consequently beclouded its issues. Schools of thought have been formed, and Schütz, whose greatness could not be doubted, was made the precursor of Bach in a very peculiar sense, as if he had started what Bach completed. Bach, the fulfiller, was therefore the greater of the two; they were actually pitted against each other. To make one greater at the expense of the other will always be a very questionable enterprise, to say nothing of the difficulty that we have in trying to understand why Bach should have had a small precursor at all in order to become as great as he was. There exists no scientific method by which one could furnish proof as to who of the two masters was the greater artist on purely aesthetic grounds. There are compositions by Schütz that stand above the best of Bach, and there are works by Bach which surpass those of Schütz. Even so, most of the two composers’ output does not lend itself to direct comparison. Hence, most of the comparisons made are failures because the points of comparison do not meet. Here lies the chief reason why the method as a whole can well be discarded without loss to anyone. If Schütz had really been the precursor of Bach artistically and stylistically in the sense that Bach had studied the work of Schütz and learned from his predecessor, the situation would be entirely different. Since history, however, does not confirm such a relationship, because Bach had entirely different artistic precursors, whose work he studied, and from whom he learned, the two composers must be taken as entities by themselves who belong to one age, and they will be great in their own time and beyond and above all times, even if we should be unfortunate enough to approach greatness with thoughts of small measure.

Surely I will not be expected even to attempt a comprehensive interpretation both of Schütz and Bach. I should like to limit myself to a few artistic problems that include certain aspects of matters liturgical and religious, and I should perhaps add that all will be seen under the historical point of view.

To understand the artistic-liturgical significance of Schütz’s music, two subjects must be discussed: certain factors of his artistic career and the temper of his musicianship on the one hand, and on the other the situation of the musical liturgy at the time when Schütz began to work for the Lutheran Church. The first very striking observation the student of Schütz’s artistic career can hardly fail to make, results from the fact that, contrary to the usual habits of the time, Schütz came rather late and almost unwillingly to choose music as his profession. Despite his most extraordinary gifts in music that at once amazed people of his environment so as to encourage him to the musical profession, his heart was actually set upon humanistic studies. The thorough training in the liberal arts that made him a man of deep thought and culture, was in part due to the interest of Moritz of Hesse, a prince, exceptional among the German princes of the time, the majority of whom were rather uncouth, rough, and hardened by continual warfare. Schütz attended first the Collegium Mauricianum, a school founded by Moritz for the purpose of training the youngsters of the nobility of Hesse, to make them educated noblemen according to the ideal of Baldassare Castiglione’s El Cortegiano. The humanistic education of Schütz became fundamental to his conception of music. Let us hear a passage from Geier, who wrote the “post mortem” for the funeral of Schütz. “He [Schütz stayed at the Collegium Mauricianum for several years. In this distinguished court school, or rather Gymnasium, amidst counts, noblemen, and other valorous ingenia, he was brought up to study various languages, arts, and exercitia, for which his industrious, keen mind and intellectual appetite prepared him well. Within a short time he acquired Latin, Greek, French. . . . In view of his capacities and success his professors would have liked him to continue in the learned profession.” I should like to add another report. Speaking of Weckmann, the pupil of Schütz, Johann Mattheson, the leading theorist of Bach’s period, wrote that Schütz in Dresden had advised Weckmann under all circumstances to study Hebrew, a language “a musician should master when composing the Old Testament.” If the report is correct, we are bound to assume that Schütz at one time of his life had acquired the Hebrew language. This, I believe, is very close to the problems that will be discussed later. Why did Schütz consider the study of so many languages necessary for a musician? I am convinced that behind this demand is not only the learning of a humanistically trained man; nor does a purely artistic interest explain the request. What clearly seems to have caused the attitude is rooted in Lutheran ideas. The musician is the discoverer of the truth of the meanings inherent in words; and he cannot discover the truth unless he masters the original languages. To be the faithful interpreter of the connotations of the texts is a task of the composer that Schütz set forth because he was a Lutheran musician.

However, it still took many a year until Schütz would think of this task. First, there was the decision to be made in favor of professional musicianship. Schütz continued to pursue his humanistic studies and prepared himself for the profession of law by enrolling as a student at the University of Marburg. He was interested in music; in all likelihood he also composed while a university student. Despite his musical genius, nothing that he did in matters musical during that time gives the impression of that determination that distinguished the pursuit of his other studies. Indeed, in his autobiography, Schütz, in an almost nostalgic manner, reveals how close to his heart the study of the liberal arts and of jurisprudence had been. He mentions this at a time when he regretted that he had ever turned away from these studies. He cursed the decision that he had made, since now, old and embittered, he had to admit that he had worked in vain. At this point an adequate comparison appears between Schütz and the aged Bach. The same tones of bitterness, the same wrath that all the costly efforts and energies of a long life had been wasted; and the comparison holds even for the reasons of such painful distress. The reasons were not purely artistic, they were linked to religious and liturgical purposes which the two composers had spent their lives to serve.

In all other respects, however, the comparison is wholly inadequate. How different their early career! Bach never questioned his choice of profession, and it appears as if he had no other choice. He grew into the position of organist and cantor by the power of tradition. He had a clear view of the task of his life as a composer already when Schütz still was wavering. Bach was trained in the well-established setup of musical education, linked to school and church. Schütz grew up among young noblemen, and later at the university amidst an international group of students who were attracted to Marburg as a Protestant university from all parts of Europe, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and Scotland. Bach learned his musical technique as a craftsman. Schütz made himself first of all a humanist, who turned to study and training in music because of his enormous genius; Bach took up music, not because of the recognition of his genius, but because music was the craft of his kinsfolk; he did not think about any other profession. Schütz, however, was finally led into professional musicianship as a result of the persuasive encouragement of Moritz. Again, Martin Geier gives us an interesting report on the way in which the decision was made. Moritz came to Marburg for a visit, and Schütz at once made a polite call on him. “At the interview, Moritz immediately began to say that he had learned Schütz had completely turned to the Studium Juridicum. Since, however, he had always found Schütz to have particular inclination to the profession of the noble music, and since Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice, a man of world-wide fame, was still living, he, Moritz, would like to provide the funds needed to send him there in case he would be inclined to go in order to continue the study of music in a proper manner. Inasmuch as such offers were scarcely ever rejected by young men, he, Schütz, also was ready to accept the generous gift most gratefully, thinking that upon his return from Italy he would nevertheless pick up his books again and continue his studies.” This is a rather odd way to come to a decision in favor of music for a man who was to become one of the leading composers of all time. Before he went to Italy, he seems to have played with the idea that all would be merely a matter of temporary change. But things turned out differently. In 1609 he followed the advice of Moritz and went to Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli. Schütz was twenty-four years old. At the same age Bach held his third position and had gained a certain renown as an organist. More remarkable still, at the age of twenty-three, in 1708, when he resigned from his post in Mühlhausen, he had, with determined tones of finality, defined the end of his artistic work in a document that I regard as the most important in the whole of Bach’s life. We may well quote from it, although we all have read it many a time: “Although it was my intention to advance the music in the divine service toward its very end and purpose, a regulated church music in honor of God; although it was also my intention here to improve the church music, which in nearly all villages is on the increase and is often better treated than here; although for the purpose of improvement I provided, not without expense, a good supply of the best selected church compositions, and also, in obedience to my duty, submitted a project for the repair of the unsatisfactory and damaged organ, and in short, would have fulfilled my obligations with enthusiasm: it so happened that none of this was possible without vexatious relations. . . . So God willed to bring about an opportunity that will not only put me in a better position so far as the subsistence of my livelihood is concerned, but will also make it possible for me, without annoyance to others, to persevere in working towards my end, which consists in organizing church music well.” It will forever be amazing that a young man of twenty-three, with such clarity and determination, was able to formulate the reorganization of church music as the very principle of his art for the whole of his life.

Schütz, even a year older, made the first really serious attempt to acquire the science of music. When he came to Giovanni Gabrieli, whom he venerated for the rest of his life, a sudden revelation must have come home to him that no longer allowed his musical genius to be held back from its rising path. Schütz shall not return to his books of jurisprudence; his musical genius had once and for all driven him to artistic creation. Of course, he realized immediately that his craftsmanship was totally unsatisfactory, at least to his own critical mind. He had been very familiar with the religious music of the sixteenth century that was cultivated by Moritz at the court of Kassel; and that music followed the pattern of purely Netherlandish tradition; there the work of Clemens non Papa, of Lassus, and Georg Otto represented the style of choral polyphony, more or less in purity. When Schütz came to Italy, he found the Venetian school of choral polyphony under Giovanni Gabrieli at its height and at its end. He was, of course, a most attentive observer; he absorbed the large religious choral works; he studied—admittedly counterpoint; but — to judge from the artistic results he apparently studied counterpoint largely through the profane medium. There are, indeed, very few artists with as sharp a mind as Schütz’s, who had trained himself to the ever-austere clarity of thought. Thus, when in Venice, he at once must have recognized that the Italian climate of music was predominantly profane; to put it in other words: he must have seen that the profane medium, such as the madrigal, revealed, more than any other category, specifically Italian characteristics. An that time, the five books of madrigals of Monteverdi were available. More than ten books of Marenzio’s madrigals had been published. In 1611 there appeared the fifth book of madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo, Principe da Venosa. It seems that Schütz followed the line of madrigalesque composition from Cypriano de Rore through Gesualdo and Marenzio.

The artistic result of all these studies was Schütz’s first work: a collection of five-part madrigals, published in Venice (1611–12), but dedicated to his patron, the Landgraf Moritz of Hesse. Schütz is all at once fascinated by the art of madrigalesque composition, which required a highly skillful and clever hand to be satisfactory to the sophisticated Italians. He at once knows about the latest phase of Italian poetry and chooses poems of Guarini and Marino for his madrigals. He is stirred by the technical problems which the madrigals present. And why? The answer gives the reason why we mention this work of Schütz’s here. Stimulated by certain techniques of the Italian madrigalists, Schütz discovered that the composition of madrigals contained the most fascinating problems concerning the relation between text and music. He discovered that the madrigalist at his best was an interpreter of the text and its connotations. For the sake of the most faithful interpretation of the text he struggled with the vocabulary of the madrigal. This relationship between word and tone gave his work an enormous artistic passion. Fascinated by the problems of the text, he strikes out toward the boldest adventures in harmony, in chromaticism, in the treatment of the dissonance. Schütz apparently did not want to be outdone by any Italian; and wherever possible, he increased the technical difficulties, not for their own sake, but because of his artistic passion to be faithful to the text. The madrigals of Schütz are an exceedingly complicated, soloistic art; for only the best-trained singers will be able to render them. As a fine connoisseur of the history of the Italian madrigal once said: “Schütz’s madrigals are profounder than anything Italian” (Einstein). We may add that they are, though immensely artificial, the boldest madrigals ever written and at the same time they combined all that the madrigal had been: the whole apparatus, the techniques of generations. For the work of a beginner this is a miraculous achievement. When these madrigals arrived in Germany, they must have been admired with awe; one can be certain that the Germans, who were connoisseurs, had not seen anything like them. But those madrigals were probably also immediately shelved. We do not hear of any performance; nor is there any mention of a demand for them; nor has there ever been a German reprint of the Italian edition. One must assume that these works were lost for Germany.

We have treated these compositions at such length for good reasons; they exemplify certain principles of Schütz’s artistic approach. When in Italy, Schütz taps the resources of profane styles of music; he carries the results of his studies home, but applies his experience to categories of religious music. That is a startling fact of first importance. We shall make the same observation again. The relation of Schütz to Italy is peculiar. He knows that the Italians had advanced the leading style of the seventeenth century; he knows that the style is essentially profane and that it originated in profane categories. His reactions will be consistent. Once he had made himself familiar with the style, he turned his knowledge to the benefit of religious composition.

There is another reason for dwelling upon his early work. Historically speaking, the madrigals of Schütz were in their impact on German musicianship probably a total loss. One more attempt was made by Schütz to convince German musicians and win them over to all the subtleties of the madrigalesque style that he had presented in his first compositions. But significantly he made the attempt no longer within a profane category. He carried the style over into the sphere of religious music. The Cantiones Sacrae, which Schütz published in 1625, are the direct parallels of the early madrigals. The collection of motets written “quatuor vocum cum basso ad organum” is not as uniform as the madrigalesque work, since they were composed at different times in Schütz’s life. The publisher, eager to be fashionable and modernistic, forced Schütz to add the basso continuo to these classical four-part compositions of strict polyphony. Schütz protested in vain, for the musical structure of most of these motets precludes the organ as an accompaniment. Schütz frankly admits that he had been forced to that addition of the basso continuo against his own will; he turns to the organist and gives his advice, yet his advice amounts to saying: disregard the whole thing.—In the preface to the Cantiones Sacrae Schütz made a brief but important remark; he stated that music to him had only one purpose: the glorification of God, not the consent and applause of the great men, the rulers, the princes. Although this statement of the “glorificatio Dei” as the purpose of all music may not have any far-reaching liturgical implications, the serious belief in the predominance of religious music should be kept in mind. The Cantiones Sacrae are as unique from an artistic point of view as were the madrigals. Schütz, who had meanwhile learned a great deal about the conservative character of German music, saw new possibilities in the classic form of Netherlandish polyphony of the past, and he hoped it would still be possible to recast it and to modernize it. This is the meaning of the Cantiones Sacrae. The same artistic problems that he had solved in the earlier madrigals are set forth once more. He applies the same adventurous boldness to the motets. So do all the harmonic experiments, the dissonances, the forbidden progressions and combinations, surely not for the sake of being complicated. Schütz more clearly than ever feels himself to be the interpreter of the text. The notes are expected to translate all the inner meanings of the words despite their polyphonic structure. Thus, in view of the technical difficulties, these motets can hardly be imagined as choral works; the choral style has not that flexibility which is here expected, and these motets call for a soloistic performance, as did the madrigals. Schütz has attempted a combination of almost irreconcilable elements: the strict Netherlandish polyphony on the one hand, and on the other a highly individualistic, faithful interpretation of the content of the texts by means of the madrigalesque vocabulary. The attempt remained an experiment, unique, of high artistic quality, but isolated; for the German musicians could not follow him, and Schütz never again repeated such an experiment. In this work the passionate will to interpret the text faithfully may also have influenced the choice of the texts. They are Psalms, passages from the Song of Songs, and religious lyrics of St. Bernard and St. Augustin.

Schütz had brought home from his first Italian trip another artistic experience: the polychoral composition that the Venetian school since Adrian Willaert had cultivated, especially in conjunction with Psalm texts. The results of this experience were presented by Schütz in the collection Die Psalmen Davids, published in 1619, when Schütz had had the leading position at the court of Dresden for about two years. He applied the psalmodizing style to the polychoral combination and realized the antiphonal form in a double sense. The antiphony implied both the liturgical style of psalmodic recitation and the alternation of the choirs. In the preface Schütz made a surprising remark: “I have composed these my Psalms in stile recitativo (which up to now is nearly unknown in Germany), since in my opinion there is nothing more appropriate for the composition of Psalms than the recitation without interruption and without any particular repetition, because of the extensive text. In view of this style, I kindly request that all those who have no knowledge of this manner should not take the tempo too fast, rather a medium, in order that the words may be sung comprehensibly. Otherwise an unpleasant harmony will result, or nothing but a battaglia di Mosche, or a war of flies, entirely against the wish of the author.” The use of the term stile recitativo is strange. Schütz did not refer to the recitative that originated within the new dramatic music. He took, quite correctly, the psalmodizing to be a stile recitativo. But the liturgical recitation in the manner of the chant could not possibly be said to have been unknown in Germany. Obviously, Schütz had in mind the application of the liturgical recitation to the polychoral forms. In doing so Schütz closely observed the characteristics of the German language. The selection of the texts is again of interest. Some of the texts are passages from Jeremiah, rather than the Psalms proper. Others show a combination of verses from various Psalms. All of them seem to be selected under the aspect of highly emotional lyricism affectionally rich; as such Schütz regarded them as a stimulating challenge to the imaginative power of composition. But are these Psalms really liturgical music? It is true, some of the Psalm compositions have the doxology and thus are in keeping with the liturgical structure of antiphonal psalmody. But one may doubt that the presence of the doxology alone is satisfactory evidence. Of course, the Psalms were performed as church music, and were therefore probably placed where the singing of Psalms was appropriate, that is, in the Vespers. These works could, however, also have been used on any special occasion. At all events, there is no mention of any particular liturgy or service for which Schütz may have intended the compositions to be performed. They all require a huge musical apparatus and carry the character of festival solemnity. I do not think that Schütz had primarily liturgical considerations in mind when he composed the Psalms. At that time Schütz’s interests were nearly exclusively concentrated on problems of an artistic nature; he thought entirely in terms of an artist. In that capacity he felt at once the urgent need for new solutions of the artistic problems he recognized as soon as he came into professional contact with the music of Italy. But this was not all. It took the foresight of a genius to discover as early as 1609 that German music, rooted firmly in the sixteenth-century style, would soon be hopelessly outdated, unless, through an intimate contact with the new tendencies of Italian music, a gradual transformation would be carried out. And that transformation appeared to him first as a purely artistic matter. The idea of reshaping German music, of keeping it in pace with a modern spirit, in order to prevent the musical art of his country from falling out with the time, this is the noble and ambitious task that Schütz set for himself at the beginning of his musical work. For that reason his mind is set on matters of art, of style, of techniques of composition. And yet it is remarkable and worthy of particular emphasis that he thinks of religious music when thinking of German music. Both to him are identical from the very start. To transform German music means transforming religious music. He said, and we quoted the statement, that the purpose of all music to him is the glorification of God. The religious character is, therefore, nothing but a general attitude, a state of mind, a temper of the music. It goes without saying that religious is not identical with liturgical music; a composition may be sacred without being liturgical. This general implication of religious music characterizes the artistic beginnings of Schütz. He is still far remote from accepting the idea of liturgy as the primary problem of any reform of church music while his mind was actually possessed by the passionate will artistically to reconcile German religious music to the new style of Italy.

At this point, especially, the enormous contrast between Schütz and Bach makes itself felt. Bach never had to strike the balance of artistic reconciliation between two divergent styles. Bach unknowingly became the heir to the artistic accomplishment of a reconciliation that was due to the efforts of Schütz. When approaching religious music, Bach did not start out with problems of an exclusively artistic nature; nor did religious music have, for him, merely an all-comprehensive, general connotation. When he set out to reorganize religious music and to bring about a well-regulated form, religious music at once implied the music of the Church, that is, of a liturgical character. Bach began with recognizing liturgy to be the prevailing problem of the religious music of his time; Schütz began with discovering artistic problems to be the first needs of religious music. Neither was really in harmony with his own time: Schütz was out of sympathy with the artistic characteristics of Protestant church music, and Bach disagreed with the religious-liturgical tendencies of his time if we at all can grant his time as having had liturgical tendencies, except negative ones. If in such a vital manner as this there is so fundamental a difference in the historical conditions between the two, comparison and evaluation of one set against the other do not make sense in any respect. By the power of historical conditions Schütz was forced first of all to establish a balanced artistic situation for Protestant music just as much as Bach was driven to a reorganization of church music under liturgical aspects because of the general situation of Lutheranism and Lutheran liturgy. This difference can hardly be over-emphasized and must continually be kept in mind if we care at all to endeavor to reach an objective interpretation.

The further development in the work of the two composers moves on in exactly opposite directions. Schütz’s beginnings in the composition of religious music are predominantly, if not exclusively, artistic. The clearer he became about the artistic problems of style, the more he grew to be the master over them, the more he opened his work to the realization of liturgical ideas. Schütz’s path leads from art to liturgy. And Bach’s development proceeds in reverse order. In the last phase of his life, when the rise of new music took place, which had nothing in common with what he artistically believed in, he realized that the new spirit of the time would demand an artistic revision of the musical style. He made a few feeble and exceedingly inadequate attempts to establish a contact with the younger generation by preparing major collections of his instrumental compositions for publication. He hoped that by doing so his art would be recognized also by the younger men. He hoped, of course, in vain. Beyond this he did not take part in the revision of the artistic principles of music; on the contrary, he rather strengthened artistically the musical forms which he had worked out throughout his life. Schütz, on the other hand, learned at the end of his life that after he had found the solutions to artistic problems, and after he had turned his thoughts more to liturgical and religious matters, his artistic efforts had not been rewarded by German musicianship. He had many pupils and followers, but he had no artistic and spiritual heir. And at the end he is as desperate and bitter as Bach. If there is any point of comparison, it is seen only on the basis of tragedy where Schütz and Bach stand in an inner relationship.

What are, then, the liturgical elements in the work of Heinrich Schütz, and what do we think is the religious character of his composition on the basis of a liturgical understanding of music? During the age of the Reformation, and largely throughout the sixteenth century, the highest artistic form in which the liturgical function came to its own, was the motet, in which category the chorale-motet may well be included, since even the German chorale wherever it had replaced a Proprium motet in the main service was not always sung choraliter with the participation of the congregation, but artistically formed in accordance with the style and behavior of motet composition. The Psalms and antiphons, the cantica, the Magnificat, their liturgical place being in the Vespers, largely followed the traces of the motet that governed the style. The musical interpretation of the texts, held within the framework of choral polyphony, was possible only as an objective procedure. That is to say: Music as a whole fulfills the interpretative function, and the single composition is always pars pro toto. Luther in particular and for the whole of the sixteenth century has clarified musical interpretation to be such an objective procedure. The individualistic approach of the text by the composer is thereby excluded. The individual genius of the musician can still be manifested through the degree of craftsmanship and through the degree of intensity. But that is not what can be called an individualistic interpretation of the text. This objective procedure in artistic work may well conform to the impersonal, objective character of the congregation in the liturgy, even if the congregation had no direct share in such artistic manifestation. Not only the chorale, but also the choral polyphony in the motet style seems to reflect in a unique manner the congruity of an artistic form with the congregation as an objective element of the liturgy. No wonder that the Lutheran musicians clung to the motet style with striking tenacity.

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the congregation begins, physically and idealistically, to be separated from an influence on form and character of artistic composition. Together with a rapid increase of very simple harmonizations of the chorales for musically untrained laymen, the congregation moved into its own closed circle of liturgical activity, and the distance between the development of the artistic forms of church music and the congregational share became rapidly, and, some of us may say, alarmingly, greater. In the seventeenth century, some musicians tried to draw the congregation closer again to the artistic form by providing artistic varieties for the performance of the chorale whose various strophes were performed in a changing manner. But this seems to have been a solution from which, as a liturgical factor, the artist drew the benefit rather than the congregation. In my opinion the separation of the congregation from the development of the artistic work is excessively difficult to evaluate, even if we change the positions from which to view the situation: as a matter of theological content, or of liturgy, or of religious music, or of art, or simply of history. Everyone with a strong sense for liturgy will be ready, perhaps too quickly, to condemn the event and its consequences. Without suggesting any compromise, unprejudiced caution in evaluating seems to me the best advice, since after all the congregation is not the only element of the Lutheran liturgy. Above all, what happened is a historical fact, a reality that has to be accounted for. And what we have mentioned here as a historical event, had bearing on both Schütz and Bach, though in different ways.

Schütz grew up in a period when the event that we mentioned had already had its full effects, since we cannot place Schütz’s artistic career much before 1608. He learned that the congregational chorale stood within a sphere nearly untouched by artistic efforts of the musicians. That is a factual situation we have to take into account as much as did Schütz. On the side of artistic composition he found the motet style to be the prominent form of the music of the services. This situation aids in explaining the reason why Schütz at once could concentrate his energies on artistic problems after he had fully recognized the implications. That, in fact, he did recognize the situation is clearly proved by the very existence of the Psalmen Davids as well as by the Cantiones Sacrae. The Psalm compositions were, as religious music within the artistic sphere and separated from the congregational liturgy, surely a success. Their success is also shown in the imitations by German musicians, and had it not been for the devastating effects of the Thirty Years’ War, which afflicted courts, churches, schools, and all public institutions alike with poverty, the cultivation of such Psalm compositions with their huge musical apparatus would probably have flourished more and longer. The Cantiones Sacrae are another attempt within the same sphere, one more attempt that Schütz had made in order to test the foundations of the motet style and its liturgical function. They were not successful, as we have already pointed out. Their passionate interpretation of the texts which Schütz faithfully carried through, reveals yet another aspect of seventeenth-century music that is particularly characteristic of Schütz and of the liturgical element in his music. I shall presently discuss it. First, however, one more reference must be made to the separation of the congregational chorale from the sphere of artistic music. In that situation there may lie the answer to the rather infrequent use Schütz has made of the chorale in his artistic work. (It is, however, not quite so rare as is often stated.) At this point, reference may, perhaps, be made to the music of Michael Praetorius, whose compositions, in great contrast to Schütz, are frequently based on the chorale. Although Praetorius died in 1621, he is artistically not a seventeenth-century composer, not a modern composer. The only modernization he ever carried out within choral polyphony involves the polychoral style of Venetian derivation. Otherwise he operates with the tools of the motet style and thereby quite naturally frequently incorporates the chorale. And although Schütz had personal contact with Praetorius and thought very highly of his music, he definitely did not follow him. That is striking. Schütz’s Psalms of David are not derived from Praetorius, but directly from Venice, from the same source from which Praetorius drew for his polychoral compositions.

The infrequent use of the chorale in Schütz’s work has also been turned into an interpretation unfavorable to Schütz by comparison with Bach. Such an interpretation suffers from a misunderstanding of Bach’s age, of his artistic intentions, of the purpose of his music, of the liturgical situation of his music; in other words, it suffers from misunderstanding everything that is essential in Bach’s music. If frequency of the chorale is an acceptable measure by which to establish the greatness or even the Lutheran spirit of a composer, then all those whose work would consist of nothing but harmonizations of the chorales will be the greatest, and a host of little ones will at once be superior to the best religious art man has produced. Applied to our situation: on such grounds very decent, honorable, but small musicians would all be greater than Schütz.

If and when Schütz made use of the chorale in his composition, and there is evidence of it in all his major collections, the Symphoniae Sacrae, the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte, the Geistliche Chormusik, he always presents a highly fascinating and instructive treatment. Now he takes up the chorale melody and begins in faithful observance as though it were a strict cantus firmus. In the course of the chorale text, however, he suddenly breaks off, introduces changes, proceeds absolutely freely and may then return again to the melody (“O hilf Christe, Gottes Sohn,” Symphoniae Sacrae, I). Then he may strictly adhere to the full chorale melody without any actual change, but with a repetition of melodical phrases that is of his own making. (“Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” ibidem). He may make use of a chorale melody to be treated as material for the motifs of the composition (“Wir gläuben all an einen Gott," ibidem). Then he may take up merely the text of the chorale and regard its melody as unfit for the specific purposes of a composition (“Wann unsre Augen schlafen ein,” Symphoniae Sacrae, II). Now he may introduce deviations from a traditional chorale melody for the first strophe; he may bring new deviations for the second strophe; he may drop the melody altogether for the third strophe; and he may faithfully take up the established form without change for the final strophe (“Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr',” Symphoniae Sacrae, II).The artistic techniques with which Schütz has treated the chorale are at least as varied as those of Bach, despite the considerably lesser frequency. On this occasion I cannot list them all. All cases are exceedingly instructive. For the particular structure of a composition reveals nearly always the reason for the special method of treating the choral; above all we can usually identify the reason that was back of Schütz’s decision when to deviate from and when to maintain the chorale, when to drop it and when to take it up. The reasons largely rested on the individualistic attitude which Schütz assumed for his interpretation of the text. The use of the chorale in a larger artistic work has, however, not come about by considering the function material or idealistic, that the congregation fulfills in its relation to the chorale. When Schütz avails himself of the chorale, he does not think of the congregation.

Here again, we are forced to recognize a marked and important difference between Schütz and Bach in their attitude toward the chorale. Bach often takes the chorale to be the most important organizing factor in the structure of the work; in addition to and above this structural function, however, the chorale is at least symbolically the representative of the congregation, the reminder of religious messages to the congregation, which cannot have an active share any more, but should be admonished to turn to religious values, which a gloriously enlightened time has obscured rather than clarified. Bach’s chorale seems first of all to serve the aedificatio hominum, the second purpose of religious music next to the glorificatio Dei. Thus, Bach thought of the congregation when he approached the chorale. Schütz, on the other hand, treated the chorale primarily as matter of a religious text, independent of any relation to the congregation. And he understood the chorale text to be as traditional within the Lutheran Church as any other traditional Scripture: a passage of the Bible, a Psalm, the Gospel. I do not mean to say that the chorale text was to him as holy as the Bible; it would be presumptuous to venture such a statement. I mean to say that Schütz as an artist took the same attitude toward the Scriptures and the chorale texts, that is, the attitude of an interpreter.

Here we come at last to our problem of the liturgical implications in Schütz’s work. The separation of the congregation from the artistic development was only one of the important movements in the seventeenth century. That separation was by no means antireligious. It was expressive of the desire to formulate the part of the congregation in austere simplicity. The powerful, emotionally stirring religious expression, equally sought after by seventeenth-century men, fell upon the individual. There arose in this century of religious and political passions an individualism that differed widely from the age of the Reformation. Religious poetry, in many instances as powerful as in the period of the Reformers, begins to speak of religious values and realities as individualistic experiences. The poet, the musician, each has his own message, not intended to be dogma or ever to become dogmatic, but surely meant to be expressive of a personal, subjective recourse of the individual to God, that is, to God as revealed in the Scriptures. Thus the musician becomes the subjective interpreter of the Scriptures and by the grace of God experiences their meaning. Of this meaning, that is, the interpretation he arrives at, he speaks in terms of artistic composition. We shall not dispute this subjectivism in terms of for or against on the basis of theological reasons. We accept its existence as a historical fact, perceptible in religious poetry and music alike. Moreover, Lutheranism had had this subjectivism as a possibility of its religious form from the very beginning. When it unfolded itself, subjectivism as such at least did not essentially conflict with certain theological aspects of Lutheranism. Especially the interpretation of the texts had the support of the doctrine. Although the new individualism manifested itself in many phenomena of the life of the Church, it found its chief expression in art, which included both poetry and music. It must be stressed that under the aspect of the interpretation of texts the new artistic individualism of the seventeenth century is in keeping with the Doctrina Christiana of Luther. In my limited opinion, and one that I clearly want to be understood in relation to art alone, a distinction between needs and principles is necessary. That is to say: There are periods in the history of the Church that seem to call for the more objective form of Lutheranism, the more uniform conception which binds all and in which all find themselves held and expressed; there are other periods in which individualism prevails and nonetheless seems to be a comprehensive representation of Lutheranism, for which, in other words, the individualism is the more adequate form of Lutheranism. That the seventeenth century in terms of art saw a fulfillment of Protestantism in the individualistic expression can hardly be doubted. What the music of the Lutheran Church is in need of today, of the more objective, more uniform conception of the Reformation, or of the manifestation of the individual according to the seventeenth-century form, that is altogether a different matter which must be decided by those who establish the course. But the needs of the present should not distort the interpretation of the past.

The artistic interpretation of the texts in the form of the individualism that the seventeenth century has produced seems to be the climactic result of Lutheranism. As a matter of fact, it was for the first time in the history of the music of the Church that this genuine element of the doctrine, the interpretation of the texts by the individual in a state of grace, broke through. Whatever greatness lies in the music of the Reformation, and it abounds in greatness, the musician has not been the individual interpreter of the text. In view of this fact it is understandable and appropriate that the artists, the poets, and the musicians of the seventeenth century felt themselves to be most faithful to Lutheranism, inspired by what the Reformation had brought about. In sharp contrast to the history of the music of the Catholic Church, individualism as such has never brought music into conflict with the religious principles of the Lutheran Church. Whenever a generally individualistic tendency arose, and it happened frequently in the music before the Reformation, the place of music in the Church at once became altogether problematic. Each time individualism made itself felt, the aged struggle ars contra religionem broke loose in full force. I do not see that this holds principally true for the music of the Lutheran Church. At all events, the great epochs of its history show that individualism as such, on principle grounds, did not cause the conflict between art and religion. The music of the seventeenth century surely proves that its individualistic traits did not endanger the principles of doctrine and of the Church, since those traits were altogether and indissolubly linked to the interpretation of the texts by the individual. That an artistic interpretation of texts is a proper, adequate, and acceptable form of religious life in the Church has been taught by Luther once and for all. Once more, then, not individualism as such is wrong, but it may be the wrong individual who takes advantage of this element of Lutheranism. Surely, only the great individual can successfully lead the artistic expression in the name, or in the place, of the congregation.

For the new temper of the seventeenth century also changed the relation between the individual artist and the congregation. The individual musician becomes the active element since he took over the function of being the interpreter of the holy Word, of being the intermediary, or the medium of transmitting the message. Consequently, in view of the leading and active role the musician maintained as an artist, as a composer who transmits his interpretation of the text to the congregation, the function of the congregation began immediately to assume a certain passiveness. Surely, this fundamental change in the relation between individual and congregation must be reflected in the character and use of the congregational chorale. The simplicity of chorale harmonization, far removed from being intended as predominantly artistic expression, certainly was indicative of the structure of the congregation. But with equal certainty we can say that it did not satisfy the composer’s desire actively and individualistically to find the truth of divine content in the texts that he felt himself called upon to express in the highest and noblest artistic forms. In this change of relationship to the congregation there may lie another reason why Schütz none too frequently incorporated the chorale in his artistic composition.

Schütz is, however, the greatest representative of that individualism which, founded on the Lutheran interpretation of the divine content of religious texts, is the most prominent character of seventeenth-century Protestantism. The striking tones of an extraordinary passion and of profundity which distinguish nearly all his works, resulted from his awareness of being the interpreter. Indeed, any study of Schütz’s works and of what he had stated about the procedure of composition, either in his letters, or in the prefaces to his works, or in the theoretical treatise that his pupil Christoph Bernhard wrote as a result of what he had learned from Schütz, all this gives indisputable proof that the primary problem he sees in musical composition from beginning to end, a problem that dictates structure, style, and technique of composition, a problem that truly possessed his mind, is the text and the translation of the content of the text into terms of music. Tone and word are an inseparable unit, a new entity, different from what it was in the period of the Reformation. Quite apart from the religious aspects of the matter, the individualistic artist of the seventeenth century sees the music, the tone, in subordination to the text. We shall refer briefly to this general historical situation that Schütz accepted for his composition. The word, the text is the superior element through which the composer justifies the musical form and the style. Schütz takes the superiority of the text over the music to have religious implications, those of his Protestantism. The superiority of the text, in contrast to the Catholic composer of the seventeenth century and the composer of profane music, to him is twofold: prescribed by the musical style itself and inspired by the religious implication. What he himself called the stile oratorio, which he described on various occasions and which he had Bernhard explain at great length, is based on the predominance of the word. To Schütz, music exists only in its connection with the text; music without words never did inspire him to any artistic achievement, since such a composition would be deprived of the very foundation of his music. Schütz therefore had no interest in instrumental composition. As a matter of fact, he did not compose any instrumental work that was separated from a vocal context.

And is this not another point upon which Bach and Schütz part company? Nobody should use, as a counterargument, the assertion that instrumental music was in its infancy at the time of Schütz. For such historical distortions no longer excite any interest. Schütz lived a long life, till 1672, in the course of which he had encountered pure instrumental music of great brilliance. German musicians were traditionally given to strong interests in instrumental forms, due in part to the sociological conditions of German musicianship. Schütz was not very German in that matter; he totally disregarded that tradition. Bach maintained the attitude of interpreting religious texts through music, comparable to the individualism of Heinrich Schütz. Nonetheless, the large quantity of his purely instrumental music is not a sideline in his work. Although most certainly his cantatas represent the essence of his art, his musical composition is not bound up with the word to the exclusion of any other artistic manifestation. The difference between the two composers as to basic conceptions becomes even more striking when we take into historical account the period Bach spent in Köthen as a court composer, a Hofkapellmeister. It was then and there that Bach had turned almost exclusively to the representative categories of instrumental music. It was with the choice of the position as a Hofkapellmeister that Bach had dropped his original task of reorganizing church music. In Bach’s artistic career, this was the most decisive turn he made; a turn that could not well be anticipated after he had at first in Muehlhausen formulated the purpose and end of his music in a manner that had the ring of finality as though that purpose would hold for the rest of his life. The turn could also not be anticipated after the enormous concentration on the realization of the task in Weimar, where the first large part of his liturgical music originated with the organization of a well-regulated church music in view. Weimar in the end brought disappointment as did Muehlhausen, and the turn to Koethen implies the turning away from religious music. An that moment, it looked as if Protestant music would lose Bach forever. All the great instrumental compositions fall into the period of Koethen. Bach no longer composed cantatas. Historically speaking, we must take the period at Koethen as an entity by itself, and it is of greatest importance to realize the historical implications of Bach’s renunciation of his religious task. When Bach received the call to Leipzig, he was not at all ready to end the attitude held at Koethen. It was only with great hesitation and also grave doubts that he accepted the position at Leipzig and, together with it, the return to his task. Much too often, this situation has been either overlooked or misinterpreted.

In this respect, then, the historical conditions of the work of Bach and Schütz have nothing in common. Schütz in his ninety-three years never departed from the once-accepted purpose of his art: the interpretation of the text. Never did he give over any part of his work to musical categories that would not conform to that purpose, as did Bach during the period of Koethen. Even the relatively small section of profane music which Schütz has composed does by no means disagree with the purpose of religious art; for there too he submitted the composition, in an equal measure, to the interpretation of the text. We must return to the point where we have seen Schütz discovering the implication of being the individualistic interpreter of the religious text. We also have seen that Schütz had made certain attempts to adjust the traditional motet style of Lutheran church composition to the new individualisic intentions; we have also seen that the traditional motet style did not have the flexibility Schütz expected it to have; it could not be bent without being broken. Shortly after or about the time he published the Psalmen Davids, the fruits of his first stay in Italy, Schütz learned of the most astonishing changes that took place in the art of music in Italy, carried out by musicians other than Giovanni Gabrieli, different from those whom he had met in Venice ten years before. A new generation had arisen there and, together with it, a new ideal of composition, a totally new style, related to dramatic music, which we know under the name of baroque style. When hearing about the new music, Schütz also must have learned that the new style was essentially based on the interpretation of text, a style that conformed to the intention of the artist. It is understandable that Schütz, who from the very first had seen the interpretative function of the composer to be the very essence of composition, who meanwhile also had come to learn that his purpose could not satisfactorily be fulfilled with the tools of the motet style of old even if modernized by madrigalesque or polychoral methods, was stirred to the core of his artistic being when he learned that the new style was the exact answer to the musician’s intention to give an individualistic interpretation of the text, its content, its mood. He knew that the modern style had been formulated within categories of secular character, that the new style was essentially profane; but that was no cause for concern as long as he would be able to acquaint himself with the new trends. Schütz heard about all this through Germans who returned from Italy, through Italians who began to come to Germany in ever-increasing numbers, and, of course, through whatever musical compositions he could get hold of. It was not much, but enough to whet his artistic appetite. The years passed by, and Schütz, growing more and more restless, could hardly restrain himself from his eagerness to go once more to Italy, to Venice. That restlessness is well revealed in the letters: as soon as he learns that someone of his surroundings is to go to Italy, he immediately puts in his request by all means to bring back as much of the latest Italian music as possible. His thirst for knowledge of the new style is insatiable. Moreover, the war began to have the unavoidably devastating effects under which the musical activities at the court suffered considerably, so that Schütz rightly felt he could easily be spared in Dresden. But for some years he must collect his information about the style of Italy through merchants and political ambassadors, since the court did not grant the furlough, for which he applied persistently. In was not until 1628 that he obtained a leave of absence and went once more to Venice. By letter to the Dresden administration, he requested funds in order “to buy many new beautiful compositions, since I feel that from the time I was last here, the whole music has completely changed.” That was, indeed true and clear to a man who, forty-three years old, looked upon the musical situation with the eyes of full maturity. He himself was an accomplished artist, but his keen mind was ready to benefit from intensive studies. We know nothing about the personal contacts he made in Venice. Yet it is unthinkable that he failed to meet Claudio Monteverdi, the very creator of the style of which Schütz was in search. (Schütz later incorporated some of Monteverdi’s compositions in his own work.) It was in the sphere of profane music that Monteverdi, the Maestro di Cappella at St. Mark, had become the founder of the baroque style. With the soloistic stile concertato and the accompanied monody he had found the artistic form appropriate to the purpose of interpreting the next, in which he believed with as much passion and profundity as did Schütz. But Monteverdi did not arrive at this end for the sake, or through the aid, of religious considerations. His chief concern was the expression of human affections as given in the poetical texts he set to music. Although the most original musician, from whose work all the basic factors of modern music can well be derived, Monteverdi was no radical revolutionary. He gradually transformed the sixteenth-century polyphonic madrigal, and in this transformation arrived at the dramatic, baroque cantata of secular character. His cantata-madrigal was most influential for the development of the repertory and idiom of the seventeenth-century musician. By 1628, when Schütz came to Venice, Monteverdi, after having gone through a long struggle and various phases, had formulated the final form of the style that was to hold for the baroque epoch as a whole and, in certain aspects, for the rest of modern music. When in earlier years, as a matter of fact not much before the time when Schütz was in Venice as a student, Monteverdi was viciously attacked by representatives of sixteenth-century polyphony because of the startling novelties he introduced, he planned a reply in form of a treatise to be called Seconda Prattica in contrast to the old Prima Prattica. That treatise was never completed. Instead, he instructed his brother to make the reply and to explain briefly the fundamentals of his, that is, of modern music, principles that he had planned extensively to describe in the treatise. In the reply of his brother, together with the preface of his own fifth book of madrigals, we find the most important points taken into consideration. Two that are of interest to us should be mentioned. The first deals with the relationship between music and text, tone and word. Monteverdi maintained that the old style, the Prima Prattica of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had allowed harmony to have complete control over the text; music prevailed over the words. Modern music, that is, his music, sets forth as the supreme law and invariable guide for all composition: that the text is master over the harmony. From the text and its content the composer derives the general outline of the musical form, the individual structure, and even the details. Thus Monteverdi, too, saw the composer to be the interpreter, who through his composition carries out an artistic exegesis of the text. And the second statement of importance is this: Monteverdi wants to assure his critics that even his most startling novelties were not the product of accidental and willful procedures. Based on the law of the relation to the text, they all were well considered and fully justified. And he concludes with the address to his student: Believe me, the modern composer works on the foundation of truth. Monteverdi meant the discovery of all the inherent secrets of the text by the individual, to be rendered faithfully in terms of music. In view of this conception of musical composition we can understand the reason why Schütz was immediately attracted to Monteverdi, who had given the principle as well as the form. Schütz made himself ready to acquire all the media of the new art, the stile concertato, the new soloistic form of melody, all the dramatic possibilities that the new style has brought about, the various forms of monody in the arioso, in the recitation, in the mixture of aria and expressive declamation, in short, all the elements that by their very nature were flexible enough to allow a faithful interpretation of the text. Schütz acquired the style with all its implications. Of all the German composers of the seventeenth century he was the only one who exhausted all its possibilities.

When he came home from Italy, it was not the profane music that he cultivated; he again took up the categories of religious music. He did not condemn secular music; he used the new style also for those works which he dedicated to representational purposes of courtly life. But most of these compositions are lost. And his chief efforts were, at all events, concentrated on the categories church music needed for the services. Despite the basic secularity of the style, Schütz consistently works with these categories in religious music. What Monteverdi achieved through a gradual transformation of the madrigal to the secular cantata is now presented as a complete and perfect product: the motet becomes the sacred cantata, not, of course, in the sense of Bach, but in accordance with the understanding of the form the seventeenth century had obtained through Schütz. In his Kleine Geistliche Konzerte Schütz gives an interpretation of the text in the style of the monody and the stile concertato. He does this with a completeness and perfection that in the field of religious music has never been surpassed. The three parts of the Symphoniae Sacrae and the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte not only show the result of what he had acquired through his studies, but they contain the new individualistic interpretations of traditional texts; they are the compositions which Schütz now dedicated to the services of the Church. The texts are mostly traditional. The first part of Symphoniae Sacrae (1629), for instance, is altogether based on passages of the Bible, from the Psalms, from Samuel, from St. Matthew, from the Caticum Canticorum. According to the traditional character of the texts, the compositions are motets; according to their musical form they are cantatas. Such compositions as Fili mi, Absalom from the Second Book of Samuel reveal what the new individualistic but faithful interpretation of text implied, a work without comparison. Most of the compositions contained in the three parts of the Symphoniae Sacrae and in the two parts of the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte are liturgical in the sense that they were composed for a definite liturgical place in the main service or in the Vespers. With regard to assigning the individual compositions to their proper places in the various liturgies of the church year, we must admit that much research is still to be done to arrange the work of Schütz in liturgical order. The first part of the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte, for instance, consists chiefly of Psalms; there are furthermore two Gospel compositions, one Epistle, four chorales. The second part has ten Psalms, three Gospels, four Epistles and six strophic texts, among the latter “Allein Got in der Höh’” (Decius?), “Ich ruf’ zu dir” (Speratus); there is also the Antiphon “Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” In these and other collections it is surely characteristic that the Gospel composition and such works as are related to it through the sermon, play a distinguished role, characteristic, because the act of interpretation had here a specific importance. The Germans called the music centered in the Gospel and sermon the “Predigtmusik.” This part of the liturgy had considerable importance for Schütz. At all events, the texts he had chosen usually present a particular challenge to the interpretative mind of the composer.

Although most of his works are liturgical in the strict sense of the word and can therefore be attributed to the specific liturgies, it becomes clear, when taking the work of Schütz as a whole, that he never had the intention to organize systematically the Lutheran liturgy with his music. The principle of Schütz’s liturgical music, that of the individualistic interpretation, was new. It would not have been a far-fetched idea to have the new principle penetrate all the liturgies. The result would have been a comprehensive musical reinterpretation of the services. This did not come to pass. Schütz did not aim at a well-regulated and reorganized church music. Perhaps he was too much of an individualist to be capable of carrying out his task systematically in organic harmony with the liturgy of the church year. His accomplished work seems to suggest it. At this point there is the final difference between Schütz and Bach. Bach had always thought of church music as an organized, systematic form. He thought in terms of liturgical completeness, which he would gradually reach when all the regulations that he foresaw for church music would materialize. In that sense, Bach is perhaps the stronger liturgical thinker of the two. At any rate, he saw the need of a systematic organization to come from the conditions of his own time. With regard to the artistic interpretation of the religious texts which in Bach’s work were not even always “traditional,” Bach was as much of an individualist as was Schütz. Was one form of individualism really greater than the other? We confess that we do not know.

Under the aspect of church music, their work is not subject to a decision in favor of one or the other. The history of church music does not permit the issue to be formulated in a manner of “either or.” If it were a matter of accepting and rejecting, we can accept only both or none. Such a condition, however, has no historical justification; but both, in an equal measure, can justify their artistic work within the liturgy of Protestantism.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume IV (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1954). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.