Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) of Hamburg was a preeminent composer in north Germany. His five-volume Opus musicum, originally published between 1599 and 1625, contains 100 Latin and German motets for five to twenty voices (for one to four choirs), six Masses in five to eight parts, and nine eight-part Magnificats. His vocal works display the beginnings of Italian influences on north-German sacred music, especially through the extensive exploitation of polychoral techniques, and exhibit an imaginative blend of old and new styles in sacred music during the early Baroque. This new complete modern edition preserves the arrangement and contents of the original prints. In addition to authoritative scores with continuo parts, each volume includes historical commentary, style criticism and analysis, text translations, performance alternatives, and critical notes. The Liber misssarum (Opus musicum II, 1616), contains six impressive settings of the Ordinary of the Mass for five, six, and eight voices. The double-choir masses are based on his own motets for Christmas, Easter, and St. Michael’s Day; a fourth mass on his Benedicam Dominum a 6; and two on motets by Stephano Felis and Jacob Meiland - all are included in the edition. Praetorius blends the older motet-style with the new concerto-style polychorality by his word declamation, short motives, repetition of sections, sequencing of ideas, and varieties of choir exchange. All the masses exhibit imaginative reworking of the motet models and contain much newly composed music rather than simply adapting the mass text to the models. The six settings represent the last stage of complete polyphonic masses by German seventeenth-century composers (another set of five was published by Christoph Demantius in 1619). For more information, see http: //www.corpusmusicae.com/cmm/cmm\_cc110.htm
