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As the Plague and the Thirty Years’ War left a trail of death and destruction across Europe, Heinrich Schütz, one of the most important German composers prior to Johann Sebastian Bach, wrote his Musikalische Exequien. Based on his personal experience – having lost his parents, his wife and later his two daughters in a short period of time –, Schütz composed a deeply felt meditation on bereavement and mourning for a force of a few soloists and a small choir. Instead of reverting to the usual Latin requiem, he set to music a collection of short liturgical texts in the vernacular, about grief, comfort and forgiveness.
In this twenty-first-century interpretation, director Peter Sellars and the Los Angeles Master Chorale perform this moving work as a tender ceremony of remembrance and mourning. Ethereal choral passages offer comfort and contemplation, solos an intimate but shared moment of grief. Until, in a minimalist choreography, the life of the bereaved finally picks up its rhythm. Trusting that what seems so far away is always near.
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