Luther & the Reformation, continued

I. Tobias Michael—Musicalische Seelenlust (Weser-Renaissance Bremen/Manfred Cordes). CPO CD 555 064-2.

Sacred Motets by a St. Thomas Music Director

Tobias Michael succeeded Johann Hermann Schein as the Music Director at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig in 1631, and Sebastian Knüpfer was Michael’s successor in this post in 1657. Many different kinds of parallel developments occurred in the life stories of Schein and his direct successor Michael; the former exercised a model function in the latter’s music, and there were documented contacts involving collegial exchange. Michael’s extant oeuvre includes two volumes of motets and sacred concertos entitled Musicalische Seelenlust (1634-37), from which a selection is heard on this CD. Their style corresponds to that of the Venetian school then very widespread in Germany, and they are presented here in renderings by seasoned interpreters the WESER-RENAISSANCE led by Manfred Cordes. We have the St. Thomas music directors, who were obliged to archive the school’s score materials, to thank for the fact that even today we are able to gain insights into the repertoire of this centuries-old institution. When Kuhnau exercised this office in the early eighteenth century, he was familiar with many an older collection that continues to exist today and can be put to practical use.

II. Fro bin ich dein—Music Treasures from 16th Century Basel (Canti B Ensemble). Coviello CD COV 91 708.

"I seem to live in a pleasant place of the Muses," wrote Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1516 about Basel. In fact, the city was at that time a flourishing center of book-printing, humanism and music. With the CD "Fro bin ich dein", the Ensemble Canti B presents a tribute to its hometown with the most varied genres of music.

III. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott: Luther and the Music of the Reformation (Vox Luminus/Lionel Meunier). Ricercar CD RIC 376.

A two-CD set devoted to the Lutheran liturgical repertory from Martin Luther himself to Heinrich Schütz.

The first disc comprises compositions specific to the Lutheran liturgy: Deutsche Messe, Deutsches Magnificat, Deutsche Passion (the first German polyphonic Passion, by Joachim von Burck) and even a reconstruction of a Deutsches Requiem drawn from polyphonic works that set the same texts as those Brahms was later to use for his Deutsches Requiem.

The second disc presents a selection of motets arranged according to the liturgical calendar, from Advent to Trinity. These polyphonic pieces were written by a wide range of composers including Martin Luther, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael Praetorius, Joachim von Burck, Christoph Bernhardt, Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Selle, Melchior Franck, Caspar Othmayr, Michael Altenburg, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Walter. The organist Bart Jacobs completes the programme with a few organ pieces by seventeenth-century composers.