Il Vasto Mar. From Safe Harbor to New Shores

EXPERIMENT IV | Works by Heinrich Schütz and Moritz Gagern (*1973)

The madrigal "Il Vasto Mar" is a living monument Heinrich Schütz erected to his patron, Landgraf Moritz of Hesse, at the beginning of his eventful compositional career. Moritz Gagern immerses himself in music that sings an entire century through jubilation, pleas for peace, tears, and hope, allowing himself to drift on the "vast sea in which we can all swim".

Gagern carefully adopts Schütz's compositional principles, transforms them, and writes his own pieces that remain in direct dialogue with the old master. Some works are heard in their original form; others are reimagined for the ensemble's eight-voice setting - in a way that has never been heard before. Together with artist in residence THE PRESENT, he explores the power of vocal music to resist. These are urgent pleas, intense invocations, and intimate prayers that underlie Heinrich Schütz's most expressive works and constitute the source of profound fascination with his gift to posterity.