Discovering Schütz Through Singing

Schütz has been another reminder of how much there is still to explore in music.

Singing Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien has been a very different experience from playing the piano. I’m used to approaching music through the keyboard, shaping phrases, colors and voices through an instrument. But when singing, the instrument is me. There is nowhere to hide behind the piano.

I have been completely exposed to my own voice, earning to listen to its sound, its breath, its limitations and its place within the ensemble. At the same time, I have had to pay much closer attention to the words, the German language and pronunciation, and to how my voice connects with the other singers. It has made me listen in a different way.

Musikalische Exequien was written in 1635–36 for the funeral of Heinrich Posthumus Reuß, who had selected biblical passages and hymn texts for his own funeral. Knowing this makes the music feel remarkably personal. These aren't simply texts chosen for a piece of music; they were words that someone had chosen to accompany his own death. There is also something deeply moving about singing music that has survived for almost four hundred years.

One thing our teacher introduced before the concert made the experience even more fascinating. In Schütz’s time, the singers could be divided into two groups, positioned on two balconies and singing across the space. Looking at our own concert stage layout, I could suddenly imagine how the music was conceived not just as notes and voices, but as sound moving through architecture and space.

A harmonious performance: Two choirs unite on stage alongside a small orchestra of four musicians, singing Schütz Musikalische Exequien II

It made me realise how much there is to discover beyond the notes on the page through the voice, the space, the language and the history behind the music.