One evening in the year 1598 a carriage stopped in front of the inn called zum Schützen in the old village of Weissenfels, Germany. A prominent guest stepped out, Count Moritz von Hessen, who because of his scholarship was also called Moritz the Learned. He was on a journey, probably now on his way home, and he had stopped here for no other reason than to spend the night. The short stay of this Hessian prince at this inn, however, was to take on a different significance before he left. In fact, it would take on much greater significance. For here, this evening, he was to make a discovery that would have historical consequences.

History chronicles exactly how it happened. The young prince lingered awhile in the family circle of the innkeeper, Christoph Schütz. In the course of the family’s informal music making he heard the 13-year-old son, Heinrich, singing. What he was singing we do not know. But the trained ear of Moritz’ musical nature perked up, and the delicate intuition of his aristocratic spirit comprehended immediately that in this boy existed something special. Martin Geyer, Schütz’s biographer, says that the count was literally moved by young Heinrich’s singing. In fact he was so moved that he immediately proposed to Heinrich’s parents that they should permit the boy to go with him on the very next day to his residence at Kassel so that he might train him there in the fine arts and courtly virtues.

Moritz the Learned had seen correctly. His expectations were not disappointed. From the immature voice of young Heinrich grew the mature musical opus of the great Schütz, the opus of a master. Not only the opus of a man of talent, for talent is only the best form of the possible. No, his was the opus of a genius, which Dr. Moser characterizes as the realization of the impossible, which makes mockery of all calculation and speculation about its causes because it falls from heaven. Schütz’s contemporaries always appreciated his work. Although he expressly preferred the modern idiom he held fast to the traditional but not to the conventional. They were witnesses to the pilgrimage he made while still a young man to the musical mecca of that era, namely, the Venice of Giovanni Gabrieli. They learned from his first works that he had drunk long and deep from the sparkling goblet of the nuove musichi, the modern Italian style which overflowed with new zest for life and a new ideal of sound. The attraction of sound differentiation, the fascination of the contrasting effects of vocal and instrumental choirs, of the tutti and soli,and the sensation of the musical word expression, all of this they breathlessly took in from his Italian madrigals, his Psalms of David of 1619, his Resurrection Story, and—to name just one more example—his Cantiones sacrae of 1625. During the dark years of the Thirty Years’ War, Schütz was Kapellmeister at the court in Dresden. His artistry acquired new profundity because of the serious wartime situation, and he became a shining figure to his contemporaries. They drew strength and comfort from his Shorter Psalms and from his Musikalische Exequien, which is a requiem mass pointing beyond death and the grave. Hope and encouragement they received from his Kleine geistliche Konzerte and from his Geistliche Chormusik written in the year of the Peace of Westphalia, 1648. To he sure, toward the twilight of his years he was a lonely man. He was alone also in this sense, that he had arrived at a level which in the history of the human spirit is seldom achieved, and then by very few. His creative powers, however did not desert him here. In extreme concentration he set himself to the task of what he called the revision and compilation of some of his former ideas and inspirations. With the last works he wrote, he hoped to serve God and the world even after his death. They were the Zwoelf geistliche Gesaenge of 1657, the Christmas Oratorio, and last of all the German Magnificat, the work of an 87-year-old man, his musical “last will and testament” and at the same time his confession and farewell: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Although in later years Schütz had withdrawn from public life, his contemporaries did not forget him. Naturally they were not able to envision the extent of his significance in the history of music. They could not realize the key position he held in the transition from renaissance to baroque. They had not yet concerned themselves with the problems with which we are now concerned, namely, the profound resources of his person and thought. For them he was without a doubt a Protestant like them, who in the words of Friedrich Blume reworked the musical forms of Roman Catholic and secular Italy and produced a music which amounts to a Lutheran confession in musical sound. They were grateful to him and honored him as musicus excellentissimus, the most excellent of musicians.

Historically speaking, however, it is not extraordinary that after his death Schütz was soon forgotten. His age possessed no historical consciousness, and in addition it was interested in the new music which the next years brought. It was left to a later age to discover Schütz again. In the same way Bach, after he had long been forgotten, was discovered anew. With Schütz, however, it took longer than with Bach, but it did happen in 1834, and once more it was a learned man who came upon Schütz’s trail. It was Carl von Winterfeld, by profession a lawyer but by preference a devoted student of music history.

In the same way as Moritz the Learned, he, too, was not actually looking for Schütz. You could also say that he was on a journey, for he had ascended the mountain of Bach to get a clear look at the horizon. You might say he was paying a visit to the Gabrieli family, studying their works and the works of their pupils, and in so doing he suddenly discovered Schütz. With his inner ear he heard him singing. In this discovery of Schütz it was not a matter of intuition but rather of professional understanding to comprehend the significance of the encounter. Carl von Winterfeld proved that he was enough of a professional. In his two books on Johann Gabrieli he brought Schütz, along with others, back into the limelight. Great was the excitement this discovery produced, and great was the movement that followed it. It was the signal for further investigations which finally led to the publication of all the rediscovered works of the master—in 16 large volumes, This also led to a series of studies on Schütz’s art which culminated in the great Schütz biography by Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Moser, a worthy pendant to Spitta’s book on Bach and Abert’s work on Mozart. After the comeback made by Bach, a Schütz renaissance was possible and to be expected. And it did come! It came in such proportions that it was simply astounding. In this connection I should 1ike to mention the Singbewegung in Germany and elsewhere which has worked so intensively with Schütz’s music, that not long ago the director of a church music school remarked that he had determined while enrolling new students that nowadays “young people know every available note of Schütz’s music” better than Bach’s music! He was referring, naturally, to young folks interested in church music. But these people exist today in no small numbers. The rebirth of Schütz’s music is confirmed by the fact that in addition to a Bach Society, a Mozart Society, and a Bruckner Society, there has also existed for many years a Schütz Society. In fact, there is even a new Schütz Society, the successor of the former one, which is now publishing a new edition of Schütz’s works. Together these two societies have sponsored twelve Heinrich Schütz festivals. These festivals, regardless of where they were held, were extremely well received. Schütz’s setting of the psalms of David, the cantiones sacrae, his religious choir music, and above all, his little religious concertos have become known and loved in ever-widening circles. In addition (and this is not unimportant) the majority of the significant young composers of contemporary musica sacra have found education and inspiration in this newly discovered Schütz. To make a long story short, one can say the old Kapellmeister of Dresden has once more become a reality, a symbol for many. He lives again.

The question arises how all this was possible. Didn’t Schütz belong to that group of ancient masters who were buried behind the grandiose figure of J. S. Bach? Bach, who excelled them and who superseded them, while they, according to a contemporary philosophy of music history, merely prepared the way for Bach, that is, they were nothing more than his forerunners? We come now to several discoveries that have been made on the subject in our own time. These have taken place not in the quiet of the music expert’s study but rather have come about through practical association with Schütz, an association which has taken place primarily against the background of our encounter with the tragedy of the stormy world and time in which we live. Wars and revolutions bring about a reevaluation of all values; and so also this philosophy of music has become outmoded. Thus we know today better than previous generations could that the history of music is not a straight line which begins with Dufay and ends with Schoenberg, or according to some others ends with Beethoven or Brahms. We have discovered and learned that the history of music is rather a circle encompassing the present and that sometimes it can happen and does happen that in a certain period and situation Mozart, for example, comes closer to us than Mendelssohn, and that Schütz is closer than Schubert or Schumann. Thus, although the master is old, he is not therefore antiquated. In the same way Schütz's famous contemporaries Rembrandt and Rubens, Shakespear and Paul Gerhardt, though old, are not antiquated. No, the re-encounter with the Schütz who personally lived through the horrifying holocaust of the Thirty Years’ War has prepared us for this discovery: that we of the twentieth century with our world wars and rumors of wars stand very close to him. We have discovered that he is our kindred spirit with his profound, continually vital—rather revitalized—tone language, that he has something to say to us, that he belongs to us, that he is able to grant us light and joy to look once more with courage and with comfort into the darkness of our times.

Professor Dr. Theodore Adorno, the Schoenberg apostle and sociologist of music, a non-Christian and a musical radical, has expressed his veto upon the composers of the new church music. He has accused them of archaism. He claims that they are not genuinely modern, precisely because they begin by latching on to Schütz again and to his forms (which by the way is not necessarily imitation). Everyone today who still finds his foundation in the church, who has respect for the culture which has come and still comes forth from the worship life of the church, and who knows at least something about the proven strength of her tradition will not be misled by Adorno’s sharp, arrogant, and incorrect verdict. For the churchman can show Adorno that in Schütz we find today hints of a free tonality and melody which, as Ernst Pepping has shown, can be further evaluated and utilized without radically breaking with the past and without robbing our technical world and mechanical mankind of their salutary bonds with former times. I should like to point to the beginning of the 84th Psalm, “How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts,” and point to Schütz’s musical setting of these words and ask whether this particle of ancient music does not sound “modern” in that sense (and modern enough in our ears) and whether his tonicless beginning does not indicate a way out of the pinch of romantic cadence harmonics that is better and fuller of perspective than the way proposed by twelve-tone music.

However, there is something completely different with Schütz that yet remains to be discovered, something for which Adorno undoubtedly has no ear, no antenna, but something which for us church musicians at the present is especially important.

To one who knows something of the history of liturgy and church music the classical problem of the relationship between word and tone, music and text, is well known. He knows how in the course of the centuries the emphasis has shifted from word to music. In Gregorian the word was primary, and music was the servant which merely gave a tone of reverence to the words. Music was genuinely ancilla—handmaiden. With the many voices of ancient polyphonic music a different situation arose: the text became incomprehensible in the contrapuntal structure. However, in the musica reservata of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as in the monodie, this was corrected to this extent, that the text determined the new forms of expression and thus received once more a central position. Later though, especially in romantic music, which was the expression of personal subjective “emotional life,” music once more assumed primacy over the word. And in the so-called religious music of the last century, which in the meantime in many congregations and churches has been experiencing its second, third, fourth, and fifth rejuvenation and evidently cannot be killed in this religious music, the sacred Word hangs so loosely to an overwhelming banal melody that word and tone actually have nothing to do with each other. If only present-day church members, our pastors, our synods, and finally, all church musicians would realize this! Then for instance you, too, here in America would immediately have a new hymnbook and a different church-music practice.

Therefore it is no small wonder that in the meantime, as this low point in church music arrived (you can still hear this in “little brown churches of the air”), a reaction ensued, promoted by the liturgical, and above all, the church-music renewal of our time. Thus one can understand that this renewal was extreme to begin with in that it fastened upon the ancient Gregorian, which had also flourished alongside of polyphonic music in the young Lutheran Church, as the ultimate ideal. This had its effect in the new art of the motet, where for example a half-tone step was avoided and the whole-tone step was considered more pious. Without a doubt Adorno was justified in his mocking reference to this (one might almost say) pedantry. Since that time, however, important changes have occurred. The re-encounter with the treasure of old church music and the rise of a new church music has led to conscious contemplation of the whole complex of questions about liturgy and music, word and tone, church and art, etc., and finally has induced a theology of music in which music per se is taken seriously and illuminated. With this theology Lutheranism arrives at different results from Roman Catholicism, for whom Gregorian is something holy and determinative. Lutheranism also arrives at other results than Reformed theology. For Reformed theology, music per se is still something dangerous, it remains a threat to the Word. Lutheran theology comes to this result, that music per se, music as a phenomenon, as a gift of God, and, as Luther additionally emphasized, as “instrument of the Holy Spirit,” possesses its own rights and inherent laws, that it ought to have these, and that, when connected with the Word, it need not nor should not abandon these laws, if it really wants to serve the Word, that is, in its limited expression to help it. It would take us too far afield to go deeper into the development of a theology of music. Suffice it to say that such a theology has recently achieved a high point in the significant study by Dr. Oscar Söhngen in the book Leiturgia, in his attempt at a trinitarian understanding of music. This is a piece of work that is not only genuinely interesting but even fascinating. For our purposes these two points must be made: (1) Luther’s famous hymn of praise to music was not spoken merely by Luther the musical reformer but also by Luther the serious theologian. This hymn of praise was not addressed only to a subordinated “service” music, not even to church music in the common sense of the term, but to music itself, that is, the free and great art. According to his theology there is no such thing as sacred church music per se, there is no essentially sacred music. (2) It is especially revealing that the Reformed theologian Karl Barth places Mozart above Bach. For the consequence of this is, that Barth, a good disciple of Calvin, wants to have no art in the church, being still afraid that the Word will be smothered, and therefore he has no interest in Bach, although he can enjoy Mozart unendingly in the concert hall. The result is that in the current Reformed Church a division of music is made which from a Lutheran point of view is completely unjustified and incorrect.

Barth believes—as he once wrote—that the angels in heaven, while on the job, will most likely sing Bach publicly, but that in their spare time, when they are just with one another, without a doubt they will play Mozart. It is my opinion, however—to follow Barth’s train of thought—that the angels will sing Schütz and the modern composers whom he has inspired above and beyond all others. Why? Because in the first place I believe that the angels together with the “cloud of witnesses” will sing praise unceasingly to God and to the Lamb. They will have no spare time because time will exist no more. They will be busy doing this with the striking texts of the psalms and the Biblical canticles. Secondly, I am bold enough to maintain that even the angels know no other master who, like Schütz, was able to make these sacred texts alive and transparent in a marvelous balance of word and music. For in this balance the music sanctifies nothing of its own existence, although the text has inspired it and, on the other hand, the word loses none of its value although because of the music it has attained greater expression and higher precision.

Let us look for a moment at the central position which Schütz occupies in the historical development of the relationship between music and text. He lived after Josquin des Pres, the man in whom musica reservata with its objectively applied “affects” conquered the old musica speculativa. He began working at a time when Palestrina had already followed the wishes of Pope Marcello in using texts for the church’s music which the normal ear could understand. He composed shortly after Monteverdi had used the stilo concitato, stilo temperato, and stilo molle to clarify and bring out the content of a text polyphonically. Schütz wrote his outstanding works before this new musical development had lost its objective substratum and before it had embarked on individualistic subjective dead ends.

Let us further take a precise look at how he exercised his creativity in giving musical structure to his texts and in his serious concern for balance between text and music. We know a few things about this subject from a treatise on composition by one of his pupils, namely, the Tractatus compositionis augmentatus of Christoph Bernhard, published in 1926 by Josepf Marie Müller-Blattau. This book introduces us to the technique of Schütz’s composition. It gives us insight into the rules by which the maestro gave musical expression to such concepts as redemption and doubt, such words as weeping and joy. It shows us how he went about giving musical form to certain basic motifs such as peaceful release and a growing sense of power. It explains to us such things as the significance of rising motifs in Schütz’s interpretation of the text, and the use of an “organ point” when the text speaks of serenity or confidence. To make a long story short, this document describes Schütz’s stylus luxurians communis, in which both oratio and harmonica domina, text and music, word and tone, stand in perfect balance. One simply must read this interesting document which introduces the profound artistry of Schütz. For our purposes let me quote one concluding statement from the editor’s introduction. He wrote:

There is no motif which does not correspond to the form of the text, no motif whose Affekt runs counter to the content of the text. On the contrary: the musical invention is almost completely oriented toward the text. It clings closely to the system of accentuation which syntax dictates and gives sensations lively expression. On the other hand, the musical motifs are at the same time pure musical structures of independent value constructed according to musical laws and comprehensible on the basis of these laws even apart from the text.

In this connection one question: Could the same remarks be made about Bach? Is it not rather the case that since Bach could use the same music for different texts, for him the connection between word and music is basically much less intimate? Therefore we may ask, From this point of view is there really any other maestro who, like Heinrich Schütz, possessed the skill to unify, unite and weld text and music to each other? Is there besides Schütz any other composer who was able to permeate word with music and music with word as he was? Is it not therefore natural that for those of us who are concerned today with both word and music Schütz has once more become a lively reality? Even more so than Bach? Even more than the so-called eternal and supra-personal Gregorian music, which we naturally appreciate, which Schütz also used, which however immediately took a second role to his polyphonic music (I am tempted to say “Lutheran” polyphonic music) whenever his prime concern was to provide a text not merely with a vehicle of expression but to give it decisive power.

To carry on, in the artistic treasure-house of Heinrich Schütz there is more to be discovered. Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Ehmann, the musicologist and practicing church musician, has demonstrated this in his endeavors to determine how Schütz’s music was performed, what it really sounded like, and he has done this much more critically than his predecessors.

We said before that Schütz owes his revival to Carl von Winterfeld, the first person to re-encounter him in the middle of the last century. This means that Schütz was rediscovered in the era of the restoration of a cappella, that is, at a time when a cappella singing was considered the highest ideal, the purest tonal art. Therefore, it was self-evident that the music of the Reformation (just like Palestrina) had to be performed without instruments. For it was universal opinion that instrumental music could only detract from a musical work of art. To quote a document from 1887, instrumental music “annihilates, destroys, and renders a genuine work of art impossible.” Thereby Schütz’s works were drawn into this vocal music movement. They were drawn into a romantic movement which in addition did not hesitate to take Bach’s chorales out of their vocal-instrumental setting and calmly to interpret them with crescendi and decrescendi, with rubati and ritardandi, which, as we all know today, is absolutely incorrect.

There is one possible excuse for this. The manner in which Schütz’s music existed at the time of its discovery in the 19th century could easily lead to the conclusion that it really was meant to be sung a cappella. In the section parts—at Schütz’s time there was no such thing as an instrumental score, for only the individual vocal parts were written out—in these section parts instruments are seldom mentioned. To understand this correctly demands a more exact knowledge of Schütz’s time. One has to reinvestigate the manner of performing music at that time, and then co-ordinate this with the fact that the famous picture of Schütz with his choir in the Castle Church at Dresden shows not only singers but also a whole long row of instrumentalists as a part of the choir.

Nevertheless, our predecessors ought to have known something about this mixed vocal-instrumental music practice which was customary and taken for granted in Schütz’s day. For many of the titles and forewords of Schütz’s works indicate that the maestro was operating with the assistance of various instruments. Even in the motets of the Geistliche Chormusik of 1648, his most choral work, apparently intended to be sung a cappella, Schütz writes the following notation: “to be used both vocaliter and instrumentaliter.” In addition, here and there in some of the section parts specific instruments are indicated: for example, in such simple notations as “trombone solo” or “cornet solo,” etc. Especially in Schütz’ 150th Psalm for four choirs is this the case. Here every instrument mentioned in the psalm is brought into the performance.

But now we have arrived at the problem for which the 19th century had no possible solution. The use of a wide variety of instruments in Schütz’s time was in the first place so much taken for granted, secondly, so closely bound with singing, and thirdly, so much a matter of improvization on the part of the players that no composer needed to make precise notations or even to write out the instrumental score. Everything proceeded according to established laws and rules, traditions and customs, or to put it differently, it proceeded according to a common music practice of combining voices and instruments which today we call Kantoreipraxis. Since Schütz’s time this has ceased to exist, and thus has arisen the problem of how to perform Schütz’s music. Thus it was simpler for our forefathers to perform Schütz’s music without instruments and to publish it this way in new editions. Thus it is also to be understood that even nowadays certain editors and publishers don’t bother their brains about the problem of instrumentation in Schütz (if they have any brains at all) and consequently still try to convince the public that Schütz’s music is purely vocal. In the meantime, however, a penetrating investigation in this area has taken place. In 1916 the Syntagma musicum of Michael Praetorius was published by Bernoulli. This book, from the year 1619, reveals a great deal about the ancient Kantoreipraxis and also clarifies the issue of improvization. As mentioned above, it has been primarily Wilhelm Ehmann who has worked on the problems of the music of this era and especially the music of Schütz. His research as well as his practical work may well be considered the primary cause for our present knowledge of how Schütz’s music was meant to be performed and how his works ought to sound. Ehmann has preserved the results of his many years of work in various monographs. As far as musical practice is concerned, however, it is even more important that he has put out a new series of practical editions of Schütz’s music which once more put us in a position to perform Schütz true to his own style. The Bärenreiter Publishing Co. of Kassel, Germany, is printing this series. In these editions the ancient Kantoreipraxis is made the basic principle. Instruments are once more set together with the choirs to strengthen and to add color to their sound. This is done not arbitrarily but on the basis of scientifically determined and rediscovered rules. Thus, for example, the various instruments are fitted together in family groups, and as in the case of vocal choirs they play groupwise back and forth against one another. In these texts not only the thorough bass is worked out, but in addition that which originally was improvised is also written out, especially in the cadences of a work or at the end, when, for example, trumpets and timpani competed with each other to intensify the brilliance of the sound. I should like to call everyone’s attention to this musicological and practical work of Prof. Ehmann and especially urge, above all, that his directives be followed. For the issue here is not one of mere historicism. It is not a mere technical musical issue. But it is the matter of the genuine sound-structure of Heinrich Schütz. The sound of instruments belongs to his choral music. Trumpets and timpani belong to his psalms of praise. Anyone who has ever heard Schütz performed like this is even more profoundly impressed. It is similar to what happens when an old painting has been chemically cleaned and the dust removed from the canvas. At first glance one is tempted to criticize what the cleaning has done for the old picture isn’t there any more. But after one has gotten used to the new, after one has overcome the initial astonishment, one then acquires all of a sudden a new approach to the picture, and one sees it with more clarity and brilliance than ever before. It is as if a new world opens up, a world of undreamed of beauty. At least this is the case with Schütz. For him a cappella performance is the dust which the newly discovered Kantoreipraxis wipes away.

But now the question arises: What, then, about the text? If Schütz’s music depends on the word, won’t the instruments drown out or at least threaten the word? Naturally modern-day instrumentalists, accustomed as they are in modern symphony orchestras to using their instruments as though they were machine guns, or (as Berlioz almost demands) to use their trombones to produce the roar of cannon, could prove very obstructive. Therefore, the director who performs Schütz today has to train his vocal choirs as well as his instrumental choirs anew. Therefore, back to the Kantoreipraxis! This means, for example, that singers and brasses breathe at the same time, articulate, accentuate, and tune themselves altogether differently than they would in a classical oratorio. When this has been accomplished, then there are no dangers. As Ehmann says, then the instruments begin to speak like the human voice itself. I myself would like to add: Then the word which the choir sings receives additional precision and conviction, additional depth and expression, additional clarity and strength, additional life and brilliance. In any case, instruments simply belong to Schütz’s world of choral music. From the very beginning he had figured them into his settings of the text, and he knew what he was doing.

We now come to the last point, to a brand new discovery which the learned as well as the unlearned can make. This is the discovery, that Schütz was not merely a composer, not merely a servant or a promoter of that which we today call culture, namely, that independent and so-called neutral zone which has become Ersatz-Religion for many and a home for those who are “too intelligent” to go to church or even to believe in a God. On the contrary, what everyone will discover if he takes a closer look at Schütz and his work is that he created from depths of Christian conviction or, to be more precise, from inner Christian motivation and compulsion, that on the basis of this he took seriously his responsibility to his fellow man—for the plagued fellow man of the dark days of this time. Wilibald Gurlitt in his book on Johann Walter refers to a “Lutheran ethic of vocation” present in this composer. Yes, that’s precisely what it is. It is a Lutheran, evangelical concept of working which stems from the evangel, that is, from the Gospel, which built up Schütz’s life’s work, shaped it, and put its decisive stamp on it. Schütz was a master of setting words to sound. In his long and hard life Schütz never wrote one single note for instruments alone. The word always fascinated him and tantalized him to set it to music, to give it the wings of song. But not every word was important to him: he selected carefully. To be sure, in his younger and more peaceful years, he wrote his Italian madrigals. In fact he wrote the first German opera, Daphne, on a text by the famous Martin Opitz. Sorry to say, this opera has never been found again. But already at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, as all peace and joy disappeared, as life and limb were being destroyed, he turned to the great texts of the church fathers, and above all to the even greater texts of the Bible. Already in 1619 he published his psalms for two and three choirs and shortly thereafter his cantiones sacrae, his symphonie sacrae, his Geistliche Konzerte, and all the other works mentioned at the beginning of this paper, in addition to many texts from the New Testament, especially those concerning Christ’s dialogs and practically all the parables. Thus when his world became darkened, when the life of mankind and his own life, too, was struck with hardship, he concluded his first, his “pure artist” period, full of daring experiments, and grew into a new role: “Full of pious humility he grew into the fellowship of the people of the evangelical world as its great cantor” (Moser). But he became more than just a great cantor. He became, as one of his contemporaries said, the Asaph christianus, the Christian psalm singer. Yes, he became even more. In view of what we now know about history, we can say he became the “composer of the Bible.” More than for any other composer, the Bible was for Schütz the most beloved libretto. He chose it purposely because he knew and wanted to testify that in the last analysis there is only one text in the world which possesses enduring value, which is really worth being set to music to sing and ring. And that text was the old but ever new, the warming and yet comforting, eternal Word of God. Schütz tested his artistically sharpened pen on the Bible and that which he always had in mind, namely, to make the Word of the Bible sing, to transpose it into a viva vox, a living voice, to make it ring out loud and lovely—and this he succeeded in doing. Possessing extraordinarily creative capacity, he understood how to actualize the Word of the Bible with variations at times unpretentious, at times fascinating, at one time sensitive, at another time sensational. Three hundred years later we are surprised and inspired, impressed and strengthened in our faith time and time again when we hear how Schütz serves Holy Scripture, how he lets its Word sound forth, how he underscores it, enlivens it, illumines it, colors it, and sets it on fire so that we might pay attention only to it, let it surge through us, so that it can truly strike us and stand in flaming letters before our spirit. In reference once more to Psalm 136, it is impossible ever to read this psalm in the way Schütz sings it. For example, in the first part, which repeats the constant refrain “for His mercy endureth forever,” the psalm receives once more the form which it originally had in the days of the psalmist. Secondly, it is set to such transfixing music that it prompts an echo from the hearers. If you’ve ever heard it once, you have to sing it again and again. The second part should be mentioned too, where the joyfulness of this refrain suddenly sounds forth from the three choirs a whole tone higher and breaks forth into a genuine exultate actually above and beyond the realm of the trumpets and timpani. And finally the third portion should be mentioned, wherein the phrase “Oh, give thanks to the Lord” is sung at first in broad chords as if standing on pillars. It is sung more slowly, more emphatically than before, as though Schütz were raising an admonishing finger, whereupon the refrain returns once more and in a new almost dancelike rhythm—I am tempted to say—tears loose in this surprising tonal variation, and at the end, proclaimed by a fanfare of trumpets, comes the final proclamation that God’s mercy “endureth forever.”

There are people today, prompted by an unbalanced, that is, un-Lutheran, liturgical passion, who divide church music into three categories: (1) The music of the church. By this they mean Gregorian, which brings them dangerously close to Catholicism, which has canonized this music and thus isolated it. (2) Music in the church. This is the later polyphonic art of the motet which many of them no longer like because it is too much music. (3) Music outside of the church.

The music of Heinrich Schütz was not written originally for the worship service. In the precise sense of the term, Schütz wasn’t even a church musician. He was Kapellmeister at the Dresden court. Nevertheless his music is music of the church, written for the church’s task in the world. Thus his music is church music of the first order because it sets the message of the church into music in such an infectious manner that it forces its way into the hearts and souls of men, into the deepest layers of their inner life where—as psychology says—human decisions are made. Schütz’s church music, it may be said, is genuine Lutheran church music. It not only conveys the Word, but it actively carries the Word forth. It doesn’t merely make known, but it preaches, it proclaims. It does not merely serve the Word, but it makes the Word truly strike a person. In addition it confesses, admonishes and comforts. In fact, we can say still more about Schütz’s music. It belongs to that type of church music for which many a cantor and many a theologian has spoken words of praise. I could in conclusion cite several of these words but will limit myself to one rather unknown comment which, however, really fits in Schütz’s case. It is the “greeting to music” by Abraham a Santa Clara in the year 1698. He possesses a typically Lutheran trait in that he brings music into comparison with all the other liberal arts. He begins by saying salve, greetings to you, dear grammar and rhetoric. They he says, servitor, I am your servant, O beautiful logic and arithmetic. He continues, basio le man, I kiss your hand, O beautiful geometry and astronomy. Now, however, when he has fulfilled these duties, he comes to that which he really wants to say, and in exhilaration he proclaims: But you, my praiseworthy beloved, artful, charming, noble, and pleasant music, to you a thousand times welcome! The others are, to be sure, the free arts, but you are a free and joyful art! You are a portion from heaven. You are the foundation of eternal joy. You are a poultice for melancholy, you are the harmonization of the emotions. You are a spur to meditation, you are a treasure of the church, you are a work of the angels. You are the respite of the aged and the delight of the youth.

Yes, all of this is the music of Heinrich Schütz, and thus it is to be understood that in the grim years of the second World War his music came so close to us and was so beloved. It was a portion of heaven for us, and since we still live in an almost apocalyptically threatened and anxious world, it will continue to be so. Together with it will be the music of our time which following Schütz’s example has returned again to the source of highest inspiration and is merely waiting for the church to see it as its treasure.

Utrecht, Holland

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume V (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1959). 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.