Opera Scotland

Heinrich Schütz Suggest updates

Born Köstritz, 18 October 1585.

Died Dresden, 6 November 1672.

German organist and composer.

Heinrich Schütz is generally regarded as the most important composer of his generation in the various German states. He did compose at least one opera, Dafne, but it has not survived.  He spent the years from 1609 to 1612 in Venice, studying with Giovanni Gabrieli. When the Thirty Years War was raging in northern Europe, he travelled widely, returning to Venice in 1628, when he is believed to have met and studied with Monteverdi. This is the time at which he probably obtained a copy of Il combattiment di Tancredi e Clorinda, a startlingly original piece composed in 1624. Recent research by David Lee indicates that he prepared a German translation of the work.