James Rainwater presents a brief biographical sketch about the German composer Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630), as part of Baroque Music. Schein composed sacred songs, madrigals, motets, suites, chorale melodies and harmonizations, and other instrumental works. The composer was assigned as the Court Kapellmeister in Weimar from 1615.

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was the most important and influential German composer of the seventeenth century. Director of music at the electoral Saxon court in Dresden, he was lauded by his German contemporaries as "the father of our modern music", as "the Orpheus of our time." Yet despite the esteem in which his music is still held today, Schütz himself and the rich cultural environment in which he lived continue to be little known or understood beyond the linguistic borders of his native Germany. Drawing on original manuscript and print sources, A Heinrich Schütz Reader brings the composer to life through more than 150 documents by or about Heinrich Schütz, from his earliest studies under Giovanni Gabrieli to accounts of his final hours. Editor and translator Gregory S. Johnston penetrates the archaic script, confronts the haphazard orthography and obsolete vocabulary, and untangles the knotted grammatical constructions and syntax to produce translations that allow English speakers, as never before, to engage the composer directly. Most of the German, Latin and Italian documents included in this volume appear for the first time in English translation. A number of these texts have not even been printed in their original language. Dedications and prefaces of his printed music, letters and memoranda, poetry and petitions, travel passes and contracts, all offer immediate and unabridged access to the composer's life. To habituate the reader ever more in Schütz's world, the entries are richly annotated with biographical detail; clarifications of professional relationships and ancestral lines; information on geographic regions, domains, cities, courts and institutions; and references to biblical, classical and contemporary literary sources. Johnston opens a door for researchers and scholars across a broad range of disciplines, and at the same time provides an historical complement and literary companion for anyone who has come to appreciate the beauty of Schütz's music.

This vintage book contains a comprehensive treatise of Baroque music. It was written for the music student and music lover, with the aim of acquainting them with this great period of music history and helping them to gain a historical understanding of music without which baroque music cannot be fully appreciated and enjoyed. Written in simple, plain language and full of fascinating information about baroque music, this text will appeal to those interested in music but who have little previous knowledge of baroque, and it would make for a most worthy addition to collections of music-related literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Early Baroque in Italy'; 'The Beginnings of the Concertato Style: Gabrieli'; 'The Phases of Baroque Music'; 'Tradition and progress in Sacred Music'; 'The Netherlands School and Its English Background', et cetera. We are republishing this antiquarian volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

-- Music Educators Journal

Mattias Lundberg investigates the historical role of a deviant psalm-tone, the tonus peregrinus, focusing on its applications in polyphonic music within all major branches of Western liturgy. Throughout the remarkably persistent tradition of applying this melody to polyphony, from the ninth century right up to the twenty-first, coeval music theory is able to shed light on the problems it has posed to modal and tonal practice at various historical stages. The musical settings studied hold up a mirror to the general development of psalmody, concerning practices of organum, diverse regional forms of fauxbourdon, cantus firmus composition, free imitation, parody, fugue, quodlibet, monody, and many other compositional techniques where the unique features of the psalm-tone have necessitated modification of existing practices. The conclusions drawn reveal a musico-liturgical tradition that was not in real danger of extinction until the general decline of Western liturgy that followed in the eighteenth century, at which point the historiography of the tonus peregrinus became a factor stimulating scholarly and musical interest in its alleged pre-Christian origins. Lundberg demonstrates that the succession of works based on the tonus peregrinus often preserved a distinctly conservative musical and theological conception even during periods of drastic liturgical reform.

This volume contains parallel texts and translations of all Bach's church and secular cantatas that have come down to us complete. They have been translated into an accurate and readable English style that does not attempt to render the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the original German texts but allows the reader to appreciate the beauty and atmosphere of the poetry set by Bach. The volume also includes a short glossary of geographical and mythological names, a list of dedicatees of the secular cantatas, a list of the poets with their dates, and an introduction to the cantatas by Martin Neary, former organist of Winchester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. This corrected and revised printing incorporates a number of corrections to the text and a new alphabetical index of the cantatas by title.