Talk:Heinrich Schütz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

	Heinrich Schütz is part of the WikiProject Saints, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Saints on Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to saints as well as those not so affiliated, country and region-specific topics, and anything else related to saints. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.

Heinrich Schütz is part of WikiProject PipeOrgan which aims to develop and expand Wikipedia's content relating to the pipe organ and its associated repertoire, organists, and other articles. If you would like to participate, you can edit Heinrich Schütz, or visit the project page, where you can join the project or contribute to the discussion.

Looking to help? Check out the to-do list: Get Pipe organ nearer to WP:FA status by adding references, and discuss moving some content to subpages (see also talk). Complete article tagging with {{PipeOrgan-project-page}} and add the articles to the Article list. nearly complete... Complete the organists category overhaul, in conjunction with above. See WP PipeOrgan FAQs Copy edit organ pipe, flue pipe etc., see Mini-projects Copy edit organ stop Create article about the various types of windchest Add the new {{organist-stub}} to biographical articles either instead of, or additional to the {{Keyboardist-stub}} that currently exists. Add Category:Electronic organ manufacturing companies to List of organ builders.

[edit] Clarification?

Here are three sentences from the current version of this article: Schütz was one of the last composers to write in a modal style, with non-functional harmonies often resulting from the interplay of voices; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strong tonal pull when approaching cadences. His music makes extensive use of imitation, in which entries often come in irregular order and at varied intervals. Fairly characteristic of Schütz's writing are intense dissonances caused by two or more voices moving correctly through dissonances against the implied harmony.

• That term "non-functional" strikes me as being very unhelpful; when people talk about "functional harmony", in my experience they mean the common-practice Roman numeral I-IV-V-I stuff that Rameau cooked up and that endless undergraduate theory teachers have driven into the ground; I don't think it really applies to Schütz. I might suggest that sentence read as follows: Schütz was one of the last composers to write in a modal style. His harmonies often result from the contrapuntal alignment of voices rather than from any sense of "harmonic motion"; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strong tonal pull when approaching cadences.

• The last half of the second sentence is rather confusing, I think. What's "irregular order?" And the use of the term "interval" is very misleading, since it is more often used to describe things like the interval of a fourth or an octave sounded simultaneously. Maybe it could say something like, "His music includes a great deal of imitation, but structured in such a way that the successive voices do not necessarily enter after the same number of beats or at predictable intervallic distances." That's a bit clunky too so alter as you see fit.

• The last sentence doesn't really make sense to me. How about this: "Schütz's writing often includes intense dissonances caused by the contrapuntal motion of voices moving in correct individual linear motion, but resulting in startling harmonic tension." (Again, somewhat clunky so re-do as needed.) Tallis and Byrd and those guys exploited the same kind of thing, though I don't know how much English music Schütz would have known.

Schütz is a great composer and I have sung and conducted his music, but it's not easy to do, and I also can't lay any claim to being a scholarly expert on him, just an experienced and (I hope) sensitive and sensible musician. Thoughts? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I have made these changes since there has been no discussion. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 15:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)