Motet notes - Schein

Schein's Opella Nova I is one of the first volumes of Italian style chorale arrangements published in the Baroque period. Schein, who was Cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig exactly one hundred years before Bach, was a talented contemporary of Schütz. He died while in his middle forties but was a prolific and versatile composer. The chorale arrangements in Opella Nova are all for two or three voice, sometimes with obbligato instruments. Today's setting of "Vater unser in Himmelriech" shares its chorale tune with that of the Buxtehude. As always, there is much imaginative canonic interplay between the two sopranos, the tune often appearing in diminution.