BaroqueHeinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz was born in Germany more than four hundred years ago.
Heinrich Schütz’s life
The big moments of this life, and what was happening in the world at the same time.
A life at a glance
- 1585👶 Birth
Born in Köstritz on 8 October
- 1599📚 Trainingage 14
Choirboy at the court of Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel
- 1609🧳 Journeyage 24
Studies in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli
- 1609🌍 Meanwhile
Galileo observes the sky with his telescope
- 1611🎼 Workage 26
Publishes a book of Italian madrigals
- 1617🎩 Careerage 32
Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden
- 1619🎼 Workage 34
Psalmen Davids; marries Magdalena Wildeck
- 1627🎼 Workage 42
Dafne, the first opera in German (music lost)
- 1637🌍 Meanwhile
The first public opera house opens in Venice
- 1648🏛️ Landmarkage 63
End of the Thirty Years’ War
- 1666🌍 Meanwhile
Great Fire of London
- 1669🌍 Meanwhile
The Royal Academy of Music (Paris Opera) is founded
- 1672🕯️ Deathage 87
Dies in Dresden on 6 November, aged 87
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Excerpts of up to 90 seconds, freely licensed recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
Once upon a time…
Heinrich Schütz was born in Germany more than four hundred years ago. His parents ran an inn. One day a prince stopped there, heard little Heinrich sing and took him to his castle to make him a musician!
As a young man he went to Venice, in Italy, to learn from a great master. Then he became head of music in Dresden for more than fifty years.
But a terrible war lasted thirty years in Germany. There was hardly any money or any musicians left. Schütz did not give up: he wrote music for very few singers, and it was magnificent.
He lived to eighty-seven and is called “the father of German music”.
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