Help us record an album combining music by German baroque trailblazer Heinrich Schütz with new works from the fantastic David Fennessy.
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‘The performances are models of discretion and musical taste, every texture clear, every phrase beautifully shaped.’ The Guardian
‘Exquisite...the ensemble sings with eloquence and expressive finesse’ The Sunday Times
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Our next recording will combine Heinrich Schütz’s extraordinary Musicalische Exequien with new compositions from the award-winning composer David Fennessy. Championing new music has been at the heart of our work as an ensemble since the very beginning, and pairing it with earlier repertoire a cornerstone of our live performances, but something we’ve not really explored on disc until now.
We were thrilled to commission David back in 2022 to write two companion pieces to Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien. It’s the original German requiem, a commission from the aptly named Prince Heinrich 'Posthumus', into which Schütz poured everything he learnt in Italy from Gabrieli and Monteverdi, giving it enormous emotional power and drama. This culminates in the astonishing final movement where the soul of the Prince, represented by a single bass voice, is flanked by two soprano angels who are placed off in the distance at Schütz’s express instruction, while the rest of the voices intone the German Nunc Dimittis to send his soul off into the afterlife.
And David's ‘Two Pieces about Heinrich Schütz’ are something really special too. They take the soundworld, instruments, and even some of the melodies and music from the Schütz as a starting point, shaping them into something both new and timeless, all the while exploring the ideas of personal grief and musical drama that make the Exequien such a pioneering work of the 17th Century.
We’ll be recording this fantastic music with our talented friends at LINN records, with whom we’ve previously collaborated on four award-winning CDs. There are lots of different levels of support which you can read about below, from giving us a few pounds to sponsoring one of the movements of the Schütz or one of David’s pieces. Thanks in advance for your support!
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The Marian Consort is an internationally renowned, award-winning vocal ensemble, recognised for its innovative presentation of a broad range of repertoire. Led by founder and artistic director Rory McCleery, The Marian Consort performs across the UK, Europe, Asia and North America and features regularly on radio and television.
Praised by The Scotsman for ‘performances that glow with golden purity and soul’, The Marian Consort, singing one person to a part, offers a more intimate, spontaneous, and emotionally direct performance than any other ensemble working with this repertoire.
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Born in Maynooth, Ireland in 1976, David Fennessy began his musical life as the guitarist of his school rock band but had no formal musical training until the age of fifteen when he decided to study classical guitar. His interest in composition grew whilst studying for his undergraduate degree at the Dublin College of Music. In 1998 Fennessy moved to Glasgow for a Masters Degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to study with James MacMillan. He was later invited to join the composition faculty and has held a teaching post there since 2005. Fennessy was shortlisted for the Gaudeamus Music Prize in Amsterdam in both 2000 and 2006 and was a finalist for the Philharmonia’s composition prize in 2004. In addition, his music has been chosen to represent Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers, and he is a recipient of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award and Ensemble Modern International Academy scholarship.
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Heinrich Schütz was born in October 1585 into a prominent Saxon dynasty. In Schütz’s own words ‘it was never the will of my late parents that I should make a profession of music either this day or the next’, so after musical training as a choirboy he went on to study law at the University of Marburg. This break with music proved to be short-lived, however, as only a year into his studies he was given the opportunity to travel to Venice to apprentice with Giovanni Gabrieli, ‘a widely famed but rather old musician and composer. Since he was still alive, I should not miss the chance to hear him and learn something from him’. The two men developed a close friendship, and Schütz's time with Gabrieli profoundly influenced his musical style and outlook. Schütz moved to Dresden in 1615 to become Kapellmeister for Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony, a position he would retain until the Elector’s death in 1656 (despite Schütz repeatedly requesting that he be allowed to retire!) although with periodic interruptions, including a return to Italy in 1628 to study with Claudio Monteverdi.
The Musicalische Exequien, first performed at the interment of Prince Heinrich ‘Posthumus’ of Reuss on February 4 1636, is written in three movements for voices with basso continuo in a new form devised by Schütz that would prove to be hugely influential on subsequent generations of German composers, all the way to Bach and Brahms.
This project successfully funded on 10th November 2025