When Luther constructed the liturgy of the Church which followed his religious leadership, he borrowed from the Roman ritual, among other things, the custom of singing to musical accompaniment the story of the trial and death of the Saviour. About the middle of the seventeenth century German composers[75] injected into the existing Italian form a new spiritual and musical fervor, and an emotional expressiveness which was eventually to culminate in the great Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the end of the seventeenth century the Passion existed in three distinct forms--the chant, the motet and the oratorio. Schütz cultivated particularly the last two forms with wonderful results considering the musical vocabulary of his period, but the Passion-oratorio, with its greater musical and dramatic possibilities, was best adapted to serve the deep religious fervor of Bach’s inspiration and to attain its final development at his hands. Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), of Dresden, was the greatest of Bach’s predecessors as a composer of church-music. Familiar with the best music of Italy and a master of religious writing, he laid the foundation of the modern German oratorio. His ‘Resurrection,’ ‘Seven Last Words,’ and four ‘Passions’ represent the culmination of the form before Bach. Schütz, who has been called ‘the father of German music,’ was one of the greatest Psalm-writers of all times, though few of these compositions are so named but appear under such titles as ‘spiritual concertos,’ ‘sacred symphonies,’ motets, and ‘sacred choral music.’ Though his work was based on the Italian style, he was greatly influenced by Scandellus, one of his predecessors in Dresden as chapel-master of the Elector Johann Georg of Saxony. His finest choral works are the six mentioned above, all of which come under the general classification of oratorios. One of his greatest works, _Historia der fröhlichen und siegreichen Auferstehung unseres einigen Erlösers und Seligmachers Jesu Christi_, or ‘Resurrection,’ was written in 1623, for Easter service, it being the custom then, as now, in some of the important churches of Saxony, to sing the Resurrection on Easter day before the sermon, just as the Passion was sung on Good Friday. The vocal parts are accompanied by the organ and four _viole da gamba_, and the chorus is frequently in six and eight parts. The works of Schütz are characterized by simplicity of themes, which are always expressive and full of color. At times he becomes dramatic, but he is always devotional and reverential, and though he abandons the liturgical forms of Scandellus, many of his themes, though original, are based on liturgical melody or Gregorian chant. All trace of the Italian recreational element disappears; there is no suggestion of the stage or of ‘attractive’ effects and the only object before the composer’s mind is evidently to faithfully portray in music the solemnity and pious grandeur of the texts.