Motet notes - Schütz

The large scale concerto "Es erhub sich ein Streit" (SWV Anhang 11), written for the feast of St Michael, exists only in an anonymous seventeenth-century manuscript.  It was attributed to Schütz by the great 19th-century scholar Philip Spitta. While it has an appendix SWV number there is little doubt that it is a work of Schütz.  This was written at the same time as the big polychoral Psalms of David, and represents the composer at his grandest, right after his return to Germany from study with Gabrieli in Venice.The work is one of several large-scale works that were probably written to be included in  a polychoral collection that was to be a sequel to the enormously popular Psalms of David. While this collection never materialized, some of the works written for it are among Schütz' most brilliant and successful early works.