Heinrich Schütz

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was a German composer of the early Baroque period and the most important German musician of the seventeenth century before Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in Köstritz in Saxony, he studied law at Marburg before travelling to Venice in 1609 to study with Giovanni Gabrieli, an experience that shaped his handling of polyphony and vocal writing for the rest of his life.

From 1617 he served as Kapellmeister at the electoral court of Saxony in Dresden, a post he held in name for more than half a century. He returned to Italy in 1628 to study the newer concertato style of Claudio Monteverdi, then carried those innovations back to German sacred music.

The Thirty Years' War devastated Saxon court life, and Schütz spent extended periods in Copenhagen as Hofkapellmeister to the Danish king. Through these unsettled decades he produced a steady output of psalm settings, motets, concertos, and dramatic scenes drawn from scripture.

His published collections include the Psalmen Davids of 1619, the Symphoniae Sacrae in three parts, the Geistliche Chormusik, and three Passion settings on the texts of Matthew, Luke, and John. He is also credited with writing the music for Dafne in 1627, often described as the first German opera, though the score itself is lost. Schütz died in Dresden at the age of eighty-seven.

The given name Heinrich is the German form of Henry, from Old High German Haimirich, combining heim, meaning home, with rîhhi, meaning ruler. Used for boys across the German-speaking world, it suited him in a long career marked by steadiness and authority.