Schein / Schütz

Paul Agnew brings together the sacred music of Heinrich Schütz and Claudio Monteverdi with a major work by a lesser-known composer straddling the Renaissance and Baroque periods: Israelis Brünnlein by Johann Hermann Schein.

A contemporary and friend of Heinrich Schütz, Schein was the first German composer to draw inspiration from the innovations of Italian music at the dawn of the 17th century. Also a poet, his mastery of language is particularly evident in his collection of motets sraelis Brünnlein, published in 1623, where he strives to express the prosody of the German text in a style inspired by the Italian madrigal.

Paul Agnew, a master of the art of the madrigal and the rediscovery of early Baroque repertoires, explores this key figure in European musical history for the first time. A true discovery!