The main composer on this album is Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), whose life was permanently scarred by the abominations of the Thirty Years’ War. His contemporaries – some of their vocal and instrumental works appear on this same album: Melchior Franck, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Johann Kindermann or Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde – considered him as a versatile composer of the highest rank, together with his colleagues Schütz and Schein (the “Three Great SCH” or the early German baroque). However, later assessments during the 19th and 20th centuries saw him rather as an instrumental composer who had considerably furthered the art and style of his teacher Sweelinck in terms of contrapuntal development. This is best seen in his two organ pieces Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ and Christ lag in Todesbanden from the collection printed under the name Tabulatura Nova. Both rely, according to prescriptions given to Lutheran organists, on church melodies for their cantus firmus, in particular German-language chorales by Martin Luther and his contemporaries, themselves partly based on known pre-Reformation sequences. That Scheidt, in contrast to Schütz for instance, largely based his vocal compositions on these sources, was due to the fact that his works were destined for an urban church music audience. The composition of “small”, i.e. soloistic and spiritual concertos – as distinguished from large-scale, partly double-choral works, such as Scheidt had published in his Concertus sacri in 1622 – came to play an additional role during the Thirty Years' War, as city chapels suffered considerable personnel and material restrictions. The smaller form meant higher chances of being printed and finding customers. The ensemble I SONATORI consists of five specialists of the so-called “Ancient music scene”, all of which which are active as soloists in numerous prestigious baroque ensembles (among them the Freiburger Barockorchester) and have come together to make music even outside of the “mainstream” baroque repertoire. The sung pieces are performed here by the tenor Knut Schoch, accompanied by the violin, the bassoon (or rather the bass dulcian), the cello (more precisely the violone) and the portable organ.