The path which German religious music was destined to follow in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the guidance of the new ideas of expression, was plainly indicated when Heinrich Schütz, the greatest German composer of the seventeenth century, and the worthy forerunner of Bach and Händel, wrote his “histories” and “sacred symphonies.” Born in 1585, he came under the inspiring instruction of G. Gabrieli in Venice in 1609, and on a second visit to Italy in 1628 he became still more imbued with the dominant tendencies of the age. He was appointed chapel-master at the court of the Elector of Saxony at Dresden in 1615, and held this position, with a few brief interruptions, until his death in 1672. He was a musician of the most solid attainments, and although living in a transition period in the history of music, he was cautious and respectful in his attitude toward both the methods which were at that time in conflict, accepting the new discoveries in dramatic expression as supplementary, not antagonistic, to the old ideal of devotional music. In his psalms he employed contrasting and combining choral masses, reinforced by a band of instruments. In the Symphoniae sacrae are songs for one or more solo voices, with instrumental obligato, in which the declamatory recitative style is employed with varied and appropriate effect. In his dramatic religious works, the “Resurrection,” the “Seven Words of the Redeemer upon the Cross,” the “Conversion of Saul,” and the Passions after the four evangelists, Schütz uses the vocal solo, the instrumental accompaniment, and the dramatic chorus in a tentative manner, attaining at times striking effects of definite expression quite in accordance with modern ideas, while anon he falls back upon the strict impersonal method identified with the ancient Plain Song and sixteenth-century motet. Most advanced in style and rich in expression is the “Seven Words.” A feature characteristic of the rising school of German Passion music is the imagined presence of Christian believers, giving utterance in chorus to the emotions aroused by the contemplation of the atoning act. In the “Seven Words” the utterances of Jesus and the other separate personages are given in arioso recitative, rising at times to pronounced melody. The tone of the whole work is fervent, elevated, and churchly. The evangelist and all the persons except Christ sing to an organ bass,—the words of the Saviour are accompanied by the ethereal tones of stringed instruments, perhaps intended as an emblematic equivalent to the aureole in religious paintings. In Schütz’s settings of the Passion, although they belong to the later years of his life, he returns to the primitive form, in which the parts of the evangelist and the single characters are rendered in the severe “collect tone” of the ancient Plain Song, making no attempt at exact expression of changing sentiments. Even in these restrained and lofty works, however, his genius