At the age of eighty-six Heinrich Schütz composed his last work in 1671 with his monumental setting of Psalm 119, complemented in an appendix with a setting of Psalm 100, and a setting of a German Magnificat. This group of works, called “Schwanengesang” [Swansong], is scored for eight vocal parts, but two were lost so that it is not performable in its surviving form. However, as the composition is in a strictly regular style, and the two choirs often have common motivic material, it has been possible to attempt a reconstruction of the missing material from what survives. In 1984 a version reconstructed by the Dresden Schütz scholar Wolfram Steude was published for the first time, and has been performed many times since then. The new edition by Werner Breig as part of the Stuttgarter Schütz-Ausgabe is another attempt to create a performable version. In the process, other reconstruction options have been suggested for many passages, and in addition to this, some previously undiscovered mistakes have been corrected.
