GREEN MAN PRESS - EARLY MUSIC EDITIONS
Heinrich Schütz (1685-1750)

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Stz 1

Iss dein Brod mit Freuden from Symphoniae Sacrae book II

for soprano, bass, two violins and continuo

Edited by Derek Harrison

 

Heinrich Schütz stands as a major figure in the development of music, synthesising the German and Italian traditions on the path that led to and beyond the creative work of JS Bach. Coincidentally, Schütz was born exactly 100 years before Bach and lived to the great age of 87, dying in Dresden where he had spent so much of his working life as Kapellmeister. The second volume of Symphoniae Sacrae from which this piece is taken was published when Schütz was 62. It shows the influence of the Italian school, in particular the music and philosophy of Claudio Monteverdi in Venice, whom Schütz visited when he was 43. Not that this was Schütz’ first visit to Italy. Some twenty years earlier, he had been to study with Giovanni Gabrieli, and the influence of the Venetian church music style was already absorbed into Schütz’s music. The new characteristics that he found in his later visit are those of Monteverdi’s stile concitato. Indeed, one of the other pieces in the Symphoniae Sacrae II (Es steb’ Gott auf) is an adaptation of Monteverdi’s Armato il cor and Zefiro torna.

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Text and translation

Source: Prediger Salomo (Ecclesiastes) 9,7; 3,12; 8,15; 3,13.

Iss dein Brod mit Freuden,
und trinke deinen Wein mit gutem Muth.
Es ist nichts bessers denn fröhlich sein
und ihm gütlich tun in seinem Leben.
Ich lobe die Freude, dass der Mensch
nichts bessers hat unter der Sonnen.
Denn, ein jeglicher Mensch,
der da isset und trinket,
und hat guten Muth in aller seiner Arbeit,
das ist eine Gabe Gottes.

Eat your bread with joy,
And drink your wine with a good heart.
There is nothing better than to be cheerful
and to do well in one’s life.
I praise Joy, for mankind has
nothing better under the sun.
Thus, each man that
so eats and drinks, and has
a good spirit in all his work,
that is a gift of God.

Stz 2

Von Aufgang der Sonnen from Symphoniae Sacrae book II

for soprano, bass, two violins and continuo

Edited by Derek Harrison

In this setting of verses from Psalm 113, Schütz uses the rich colours of two bass voices set against the high-sounding violins. There are some picturesque moments such as: the rising and falling of the opening phrase(“From the rising ….unto the going down…”); the long melisma (bars 45-46) for the wideness of the heavens; bottom E for “the mire” (bars 80,81); the use of repeated notes fro the joyful mother (bar 102 onwards). The times changes from 4 time to 3 time also add colour to the setting.

sample pages - PDF