Christmas Around Schütz

A beautiful Christmas concert will be given in the National Museum of Antiquities with German choral music from the early Baroque, including Heinrich Schütz's Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi.
In this concert the story of Advent and Christmas is told with compositions by the most famous and influential predecessors of Johann Sebastian Bach.
This concert will also be given in the Agnietenkapel in Gouda on December 16.

Conductor: Margot Kalse.
Project choir of soloists Key2Singing. M.m.v. Ensemble with authentic instruments

The program follows the Christmas story from the Annunciation (Deutsches Magnificat by Schütz) and the Visitation of Mary (Johann Eccard's Übers Gebirg Maria geht) to the adoration of the Magi and Herod's reaction to the birth of Jesus. The centerpiece is Schütz's small oratorio: Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi. Beautiful works by Johann Schein and Andreas Hammerschmidt complete the whole. The program makes clear the transition from old to new in Lutheran church music of this period: from Latin texts set in polyphonic style with solid German chorales to works with German texts and an opera-like Italian style - a development that culminated in the work of Schütz's admirer, J.S. Bach. Schütz is therefore not only seen as the father of German music, but thanks to his masterful settings of German liturgical texts, he is also considered the founder of German as 'Musiksprache'