Customer Reviews

Schï¿1/2tz (Master Musicians (Hardcover Oxford))

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I haven't really much to add to the synopsis above, which sums up the book's strengths very well. Schütz is undoubtedly Germany's greatest composer before Bach (though I suppose Buxtehude comes close) and Smallman's scholarly biography is the first in English for quite some time. It is comprehensive, elegantly written and belongs on the shelf of anyone who loves 17th century music.

I must note in concluding that Smallman appears to have done much of his research through the Devon County Library in England. What a fine tribute to the public library system!

Heinrich Schütz is arguably the greatest German composer before Bach, but to most concertgoers today he is not much more than a name in musical history books. Basil Smallman, with whom I had a nodding acquaintance previously as the author of two good guidebooks on the piano trio and piano quartet/quintet, has penned an exemplary biography of this seminal figure in Western musical history. He recounts the events of Schütz's surprisingly long life (he died at the age of eighty-seven) with as much detail as is historically possible, alternating biographical data with analytical chapters on the composer's most important collections of sacred music. Schütz brought the genre of the sacred concerto, devotional music for combined voices and instruments, to its peak in seventeenth-century Germany, taking what he had learned from his principal teacher, the great Italian master Giovanni Gabrieli, and adapting the Italian model to the needs of the court where he was Kapellmeister for many years. Smallman's prose is a model of clarity and concision without sacrificing comprehensiveness. He deserves much gratitude for making available a study of such quality of this composer in English.