Annual holiday season post

[jbuck919]

As we are still within the twelve days and Epiphany approaches, I somewhat apologetically make my annual post. First, it is more difficult every year to come up with something new. Second, I am still exhausted from my duties and the local cold. (I don't know how many more years I'm going to be able to keep up "midnight mass.") This work by Schutz, the greatest German composer chronologically before Bach, was the first serious work I ever sang in, as a chorister in the chapel choir at Princeton, and I still remember every word in German. It is a gospel mix, which involves a mixture of passages from Luke and Matthew, the latter giving me permission for this post as it involves the Three Kings. Among other things, note that the recitatives are greatly different from those of Bach.