This course on German Baroque Motets from Schütz to Bach is aimed at experienced musicians, amateurs and young professionals (singers and keyboardists) wishing to acquire or deepen their experience of the German Baroque motet. Built on the practice of the chorale, a cement of Germanic culture, the motet is
omnipresent from Luther’s contemporaries to Brahms and Bruckner. Its golden age was reached in the Baroque period, notably with Praetorius, Schein, Buxtehude and Schütz. Although Bach turned to the cantata, he nonetheless wrote 8 motets, the pinnacles of the genre.

This course will enable singers to explore this world by practising polyphony with one per part (reinforced at times by ripienists – a second backing choir), notably in double and triple choirs. We will look at the vocality required for this repertoire, based on the text and its rhythm, as well as the expressive means of the Baroque period (affects, ornamentation, inequality, etc.) and their rhetorical powers.

Keyboardists will use the great organ, the king of accompaniment instruments, as well as some harpsichords, which were not reserved for secular music in the German repertoire