Schutz: Musicalische Exequien / Busspsalmen

Nothing but praise for the performance and the recording. Funeral arrangements are likely to weigh heavily on your mind if you’re gone through your life with the name ‘Posthumus’. Heinrich Posthumus von Reuß came by his name on account of being born after the death of his father, and his arrangements for his own funeral were precise to the letter, with every text and reading prescribed. We are not certain that Reuß selected Schütz to be the composer for his funerary observances, but the texts that are set are very much of his own choosing. They are also inscribed into his copper coffin, which according to the liner-notes for this disc has recently been restored and put on public display in the Thüringen city of Gura. The posthumous challenges set by von Reuß for Schütz were formidable. The texts are a selection of scriptural readings and hymns with little obvious sense of musical or semantic coherence. Schütz’s solution is essentially episodic, with homophonic chorales interspe