There is some uncertainty about precisely which year, but 2011/2012 sees the 400th anniversary of the birth of Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611/12-1675), one of the most important masters of the early German Baroque. His vocal works are known to the wider public today through just a few pieces such as “Machet die Tore weit”.

Hammerschmidt ranks alongside the greatest Protestant-Lutheran church music composers, including Schütz, Schein, Rosenmüller and Bach. His output encompasses a wide range of the most varied musical forms: sacred concertos and cantatas, motets and instrumental pieces, and secular vocal works. Like Schütz, Hammerschmidt’s music is also strongly text-inspired and yet at the same time, musically artistic.

This CD with the ensemble Gli Scarlattisti presents Andreas Hammerschmidt’s vocal compositions for Advent in a thematic and theologically-liturgically arranged sequence, a revealing complement to a Latin Magnificat setting by his contemporary Johann Rosenmüller (1619-1684).

The vocal ensemble Gli Scarlattisti was founded in 1995 by Jochen M. Arnold and comprises professional singers from Germany and Switzerland.