Heinrich Schütz
Cantiones Sacrae 1625 (Currende feat. conductor: Erik van Nevel)

Up to this moment, I had established that Roland de Lassus, known as Orlando di Lasso in our parts, was my favorite composer when it comes to sacred choral music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both of which were particularly vibrant and prolific periods in this regard.
Having stumbled upon this beautiful collection of cantatas by Heinrich Schütz, a German composer who came shortly after the Flemish Lasso, I find with pleasure and emotion that I have discovered a great figure in choral music, whom I read is considered a worthy precursor to the great Bach and a true German national glory, on par with our Monteverdi.
Already upon the first listen, the boldness and depth of Schütz's scores stand out clearly against the dramatic stasis of Lasso, who is decidedly less structured and more unison even when the number of voices is equal. More counterpoint and more cadences in a major key, which stand out notably with the minor key counterchants that traditionally characterize the various Lauds, Penitences, or Vespers. We would have to wait for Johann Sebastian Bach (who was born about a decade after Schütz's death) to hear music themes entirely composed in a major key, with the illustrious and famous example of the cantata 'Jesus bleibet meine Freude" BWV 147 serving as a bright example, but Henricus Sagittarius (his Latinized name) navigates smoothly among the vocal parts and seems to happily anticipate the genius of the Master of Thuringia.
Setting aside here the influence of his organ works, Schütz (who like Bach was a long-standing kapellmeister) also has the merit of spreading the Italian and Flemish musical styles, which he loved and admired particularly from Monteverdi and Lasso, and he is distinguished especially for a certain inclination towards micro-dissonance (due to the phasing of voices and changes in tone) that others after him would avoid like the plague. It is to be excluded that Schütz ever read the scores of Perotinus, which after four centuries were practically lost in France and would remain unknown for another three hundred years, thus leading to the conclusion that the two composers - so distant in historical context and musical experiences - had substantially comparable intuitions.
The recording made in 1963 by the Dresden Kreuzchor, imperceptibly accompanied on the organ by the discreet and punctual Hans Otto, is vivid and faithful in this 1985 edition on 3 Eterna vinyls, in my opinion superior to the Tekefunken edition of 1978.