Scheidt: Great Sacred Concertos

La Capella Ducale;
Musica Fiata;
Wilson, Roland

CPO 777145

Samuel Scheidt ranks together with Schütz and Schein as one of the three great SCH-composers of the seventeenth century in Germany. He was born in Halle and spent his entire life there, apart from a two-year apprenticeship under Sweelinck in Amsterdam. He became court organist in 1609 and court music director ten years later. Halle was hard hit by the Thirty Years' War, and the arts fell on difficult times. Like his friend Schütz, Scheidt had to reduce his compositions to the barest essentials for reasons of war. He wrote four books of Geistliche Concerte (Sacred Concertos) for two to three voices with thoroughbass, though he had originally designed them for much larger performance dimensions — probably in their entirety. Our Scheidt expert Roland Wilson, who recently released his interpretation of the instrumental Ludi musici (cpo 777 013-2) is now for the first time presenting the original versions in their full musical splendor, in part on the basis of extensive reconstructions, in part from original versions in manuscript sources. An early baroque sound feast!

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

CPO

19-02-2007

761203714520