Vocal Performance and Affective Delivery in the Music of Heinrich Schütz

© 2019 Stephen James GrantSeventeenth century German composer Heinrich Schuetz is renowned for his skill in aligning music and text and for adopting the new Italian style that had emerged in the early part of the seventeenth century. Schuetz’s works demonstrate a strong affective component that is often acknowledged in the musicological literature, and yet remains elusive in the performance of his works. This thesis brings together the fields of musicology, performance practice research and vocal performance to examine Schuetz’s vocal works and their performance practices. Drawing on the historical background to highlight the changes in musical thought that led to the newer, more affective style of music in the seventeenth century, this thesis asserts that the affective components in Schuetz’s music place demands on performers to approach his music in ways that reflect those affective intentions. This necessitates a practical exploration based initially on an understanding of how rhetoric and affective delivery pervaded musical and wider culture of the seventeenth century and how they were manifested in the works of Schuetz. The practical realisation of these ideas is contained in an associated performance portfolio which is analysed in the final part of the thesis. It is in the translation that occurs between the written score and the music in its sonic form that the notion of affective delivery and performance can be seen to coalesce, and the work in this thesis reveals a style of performance with the aim of matching the affective intentions of the composer’s works themselves