"Now widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in early musical history, Heinrich Schutz cultivated, in the context of his Lutheran faith, all the principal forms of sacred music of his time, serving as Kapellmeister to the electoral court at Dresden from 1615 to his death in 1672. Since, however, his work is so intensely bound up with German biblical language, the full magnitude of his achievement has only gradually been recognized outside his native country. By means of translations and of references to English biblical sources and to wider literary and artistic models, Basil Smallman brings the composer and his work vividly alive for the non-German reader
