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ISSN: 1089-747X
Volume 25 (2019) No. 1
Heinrich Schütz. Hochzeitsmusiken. Edited by Joshua Rifkin, with the assistance of Hope Ehn, Eva Linfield, David St. George, and Jean Widaman. In Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, vol. 29. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016. [liii, 125 pp. ISBN 979-0006-49759-1.]
Reviewed by Mara R. Wade*
1. Overview
1.1 The publication of Heinrich Schütz’s music written for weddings, under the magisterial editorial leadership of Joshua Rifkin, presents a long-awaited opportunity to engage with the composer’s secular music. Because so little of Schütz’s non-liturgical music survives, this publication is particularly welcome.
1.2 The present volume contains four works by the Dresden Kapellmeister Heinrich Schütz written and performed for weddings, primarily in the extended Schütz family circles: (1) Die Worte Jesus Syrach: Wohl dem, der ein tugendsames Weib hat (SWV 20); (2) Concert mit 11 Stimmen: Haus und Gut erbet man von Eltern (SWV 21); (3) Der 133. Psalm: Siehe, wie fein und lieblich ist’s (SWV 48); and (4) Freue Dich des Weibes deiner Jugend (SWV 453). (The setting of Psalm 128, Wohl dem der den Herrn fürchtet, SVW 44, that Schütz wrote in 1619 for his own wedding on 1 June of that year is contained in his Psalmen Davids, SWV 22–47.) The parallel essays in English and German are beautifully written and present a wealth of detail on these works and their contexts. Each essay is fully idiomatic; one is not a translation of the other with the result that one merely transmits the information of the other in a stilted manner. Each essay flows smoothly and is a masterpiece of scholarly writing in the respective language. This level of linguistic competency cannot always be assumed and must therefore be mentioned here.
1.3 The Vorwort/Preface is followed by well-produced illustrations of the printed works and titles pages, manuscript church records for the weddings of Michael Thomas and Anna Schultes (1618) and of Georg Schütz and Anna Grosse (1619), a manuscript page from the bass part of SWV 453, and a facsimile of the unique broadsheet print of the Madrigal: Zwei wunderschöne Täublein zart (SWV deest) in the private collection of Professor Jörg-Ulrich Fechner in Bochum. Rifkin’s edition of the Hochzeitsmusiken occupies the volume’s central 103 pages. It is followed by the appendix, containing a transcription of the original poetry by Schütz for the Madrigal: Zwei wunderschöne Täublein zart. The volume concludes with a critical apparatus documenting known imprints and copies of the works, and giving details concerning the editorial decisions for the present edition. These carefully edited compositions, the English and German essays, the pictorial materials, and their full documentation combine to present a model of scholarship.
2. Biographical Context
2.1 Heinrich Schütz’s four compositions represent his contributions to the widespread genre of occasional poetry and music written for and presented to family members and friends to mark important life events. As appropriate to the genre of wedding music, the introductory essays contextualize these works most helpfully within their wider social environments. The fact that the compositions are so few in number for such a prominent composer suggests that Schütz was keenly aware of his status, especially later as the electoral Kapellmeister, a rank that distinguished him from musicians in the employ of a city. The fact that the two earliest works, SWV 20 and 21, apparently fall into the period before Schütz was appointed Kapellmeister in Dresden offers striking evidence for Rifkin’s argument. The detailed biographical scholarship allows the social networks of the composer to come to light. Rifkin has been able to refine and clarify existing scholarship on many points, for example by establishing the bride’s name for SWV 20 as Görlitz (not Börlitz). He has also established clear links and possible connections between members of the Schütz family and the bridegroom, Joseph Avenarius, that establish the composition more firmly in networks of kinship and friends. The research presented here also brings the Thirty Years War into sharp relief: on 31 August 1631 Tilly’s troops beat Avenarius so savagely that he bore the marks of it on his body, above all on his face, until he died on 12 November 1632, never having recovered.
2.2 Also of considerable interest is the light Rifkin sheds on Heinrich’s brother, Georg Schütz, who, by the time of his death in 1637, had written more than thirty occasional poems in Latin and Italian. Georg recalls how his father had at great expense financed foreign studies in Italy and France of the languages and culture of these regions (XXXII–XXXV). This is especially important for understanding the background of the German composer for whom the interplay of text and music was so critical. The close reading of Der 133. Psalm: Siehe, wie fein und lieblich ist’s (SWV 48) and its contexts allows Rifkin to tease out more details about this work: that Heinrich was very likely in Leipzig for the wedding and that he knew his brother’s bride. It is noteworthy that Heinrich’s most forward-looking piece was composed for the brother to whom he was closest. SWV 48 is important to the evolution of his music as the “first surviving work to demonstrate the assimilation of the concerted style with mixed vocal and instrumental forces” (XXXVI).
3. Loose Ends and Conclusion
3.1 Freue Dich des Weibes deiner Jugend SWV 453 is somewhat of an orphan as it is not known when or for whom the piece was written. Rifkin notes that Tobias Michel used the same text and exploited many similar musical features in his work from 1637 and offers that year as the terminus ante quem for this composition. Rifkin argues that mensuration signs point to an earlier period and, with reservations, suggests it might possibly have been composed for the wedding of Benjamin Schütz who married on 19 April 1629, when Heinrich was in Venice for the second time.
3.2 The Madrigal: Zwei wunderschöne Täublein zart (SWV deest) was written and composed for the wedding of two members of the Saxon court, Reinhart von Taube and Barbara Sibylla von Carlwitz. Unfortunately, the music to this work no longer exists—it is believed to have been destroyed in World War II— yet it can be documented by the composer’s own poetry, a reminder that Schütz, like his brother Georg, also wrote lyrics.
3.3 This reviewer finds very little to fault in this volume. There are a few infelicities: in footnote 58, where the “is” in the first line of the English version should be deleted; in the Kritischer Bericht, footnotes 21 and 22, where the musicologist Werner Braun is cited in note 21 as “Braun” and in note 22 as “Werner,” with an erroneous cross reference to footnote 17. In a book that is so full of dense details and minutely argued points, these are extremely minor problems. The wealth of material brought to bear on these works in their broad contexts is most impressive.
3.4 As the ample documentation for the volume confirms, evidence for Rifkin’s profound and ongoing engagement with the sources and the strength of his findings may be found in the many publications that have spun off from the research for this edition. His detailed archival research, his deft mining of funeral sermons for biographical information about the subjects, and his broad and deep knowledge of the composer and the period make each individual essay a foundational study. Rifkin’s thorough understanding of the significant cultural practices of the period, as revealed in wedding and funeral sermons, alba amicorum (friendship books), and the selection of godparents, allows him to engage with these sources productively and to make the people for whom this music was written and performed come alive.
[*]Mara Wade (mwade@illinois.edu) is professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research on Heinrich Schütz centers on the royal Danish wedding of 1634 and cultural transfer between the Danish and Dresden courts. In 2018–19 she was a Getty scholar and the recipient of the Reimar Lüst Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.