Scheidt / La Capella Ducale / Musica Fiata - Great Sacred Concertos (CD)

All Music Guide

Samuel Scheidt's Geistliche Konzerte or Sacred Concertos, dating from the 1630s, helped spread the Venetian polychoral style in Germany, and thus lay the basis for the development of Baroque ensemble music in that country. They offer an especially troublesome instance of the debate over the appropriate size of the vocal forces in Baroque choral music: Scheidt laid the groundwork for future disagreements when he advertised that the concertos "can be performed with just a few singers" and "have also been composed by me in different volumes for many performers, that is for 8 to 12 voices in two, three, or four choirs." There are quite a few ambiguities there, and certainly nothing to prove that the music wasn't intended for the large performing groups its scale would suggest. These settings of loose adaptations of biblical texts are splendid, festive pieces, illustrating their texts in broad contrasts with lush chromaticism for the darker ideas, rather than in individual details. In this performance, with one voice to a part, the voices blend into brassinstrument textures rather than standing apart as a discrete group. It's still a startling way to perform music in this style, and it may seem to resist the music's natural energy. On the other hand, the vocal mix achieved by the small vocal group La Capella Ducale and the historicalinstrument brass players of Musica Ficta is carefully controlled, and it approximates the effects of the diffuse rather than sharpbordered masses of sound heard when such music is actually performed in the large, complex space of a Baroque church. Each sacred concerto has a slightly different set of forces, adding to the impression of gradually shifting sounds. Ultimately treatments of this kind may come down to individual preferences which is fine, since Scheidt apparently allowed for them. Booklet notes are in German, French, and English, but texts are in German and English only.

- James Manheim, All Music Guide