“O sing unto the Lord a new song” – Sacred music by Johann Schein (1586-1630)
VOICES & INSTRUMENTS
Tutor: Peter Syrus
Location: Didsbury Baptist Church, Manchester
Reviewer: George Horsman
A murky dawn had given way to bright but still chilly sunshine by the time we arrived at Didsbury Baptist Church on 31 January. We were about forty in number, including four excellent sackbut players and two versatile ladies who oscillated between voice and recorder. The church, painted a lovely bright white inside and offering a pleasing simplicity of architecture and a spacious worship area, also provided a rewarding – some would say flattering – acoustic. Our purpose was to learn and perform seven works of Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) under the baton of Peter Syrus. Peter started proceedings in a suitably scholarly manner by handing out an overview of the composer’s life and works, at its head the reproduction of a woodcut portrait displaying Schein’s flared-out, butterfly-style hair do and an unshaven face which bespoke the multiple diseases that afflicted his short life: gout, scurvy, kidney stones and, finally, tuberculosis. To these were in due course added the premature deaths of his first wife and seven of his nine children. When one recalls that his duties at the Thomaskirche also included the teaching of Latin and singing for ten and four hours a week respectively, one wonders how he found time and energy for his numerous (almost entirely choral) compositions. The portrait shows him carrying, in addition to a scroll of music, something which might be the rod round which music could be wound but which just might be a sword – possibly used for the discipline of unruly choristers? We were grateful to learn that any such practice has now been discontinued.
The works, composed for between four and twelve voices, embodied considerable variety. Two were for two choirs and one for three – a structure which called for extreme alertness on the part of the singers in instantly finding the correct choir, system, note and (sometimes varying) line at each turn of the page. In Quem quaeris, Magdalene we were indebted to the sopranos for the descant and to Mark Flynn for the tenor solo. The language of some works was Latin, of some German. The mood varied from the solemnity of Da nobis, Domine to the joyfulness of other works and the sad triumph of Die mit Tranen saen – my own favourite and an extremely moving anthem, reminiscent in its intensity of Brahms’ setting of the same words in the Deutsches Requiem. (Is it the beauty of the biblical passage or the fact of referring to the writer’s mother which inspires such works?).
In places the early Baroque style showed distinct traces of influence from the Italian madrigals of the day: indeed, some of Schein’s works are widely referred to as sacred madrigals. Not least, Christum wir sollen loben combines chorales written, apparently at some distance in time, by Schein and Lucas Osiander in a work which indicates clearly that we are en route for a later Thomaskantor in Leipzig – J.S. Bach.
We left Didsbury feeling gratitude to Peter, the sackbut players, the refreshment providers and all the other organisers for a most enjoyable experience. We had performed some exhilarating music and learnt something of a composer many of us may not have appreciated sufficiently. Perhaps a follow-up with Schein’s contemporaries such as Schutz and Scheidt would provide another enjoyable and worthwhile day?
George Horsman
First published in February 2015 Newsletter
