Heinrich Schütz

<p>Born in Köstritz on October 18, 1585, Heinrich Schütz showed remarkable musical talent as a choirboy in the court of Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel. Although sent to study law at the University of Marburg, the Landgrave recognized his genius and financed his studies in Venice from 1609 to 1612 under the great master Giovanni Gabrieli. In Venice, Schütz mastered the Venetian polychoral style, publishing his first collection of Italian madrigals in 1611.</p><p>In 1615, Schütz was appointed court Kapellmeister to John George I, Elector of Saxony, in Dresden, a prestigious position he held for over five decades. During the devastation of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), when musical forces and court finances were decimated, Schütz demonstrated immense artistic versatility, creating austere yet deeply moving small-scale sacred concertos (<em>Kleine geistliche Konzerte</em>) using only a few voices and continuo.</p><p>Schütz composed <em>Dafne</em> (1627), recognized as the first German opera (now lost), and monumental sacred masterworks including the <em>Psalmen Davids</em>, <em>Symphoniae Sacrae</em>, and his poignant <em>Musikalische Exequien</em> (1636). Synthesizing Italian dramatic expressiveness with German contrapuntal rigor and theological depth, Schütz laid the musical foundation upon which Buxtehude, Handel, and J.S. Bach would later build. He died in Dresden on November 6, 1672, at the age of eighty-seven.</p>