born Oct. 8, 1585, Köstritz, Saxony
died Nov. 6, 1672, Dresden
German composer.
An innkeeper's son, he was heard singing by a nobleman staying at the inn, who underwrote his education; in 1608 he entered the University of Marburg to study law, but in 1609 he began to study music with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice. The elector of Saxony in Dresden "borrowed" Schütz for a "few months" in 1614, then refused to let him return. As kapellmeister in Dresden from 1619, he published his first collection of sacred music, Psalms of David (1619). In 1628 he traveled to Italy, where Claudio Monteverdi acquainted him with new musical developments, and he adopted aspects of the Italian style in his great Symphoniae sacrae (1629) for chorus and instruments; he later published a second and third collection of Symphoniae sacrae (1647, 1650). He spent much time in Denmark and elsewhere over the next 15 years. Economic conditions deteriorated, and in the early 1650s he was no longer even being paid; he was released by the elector's death in 1656.