In October Magnificat joins with The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols and The Whole Noyse to perform Schütz’s Opus Ultimum, a monumental psalm setting that stands as a testament to his mastery of the marriage of text and music. Nowhere is Schütz’s debt to the Venetian polychoral tradition more evident than in this collection of double choir motets.Schütz asked his colleague at the Dresden Chapel, Constantin Christian Dedekind, to expand his work by adding instruments. It seems that Dedekind, rather than carrying out the master’s request, made his own setting of Psalm 119 which he published several years later. For Magnificat’s performances, artistic director Warren Stewart has drawn on his familiarity with the theory and compositional practice of the 17th Century to create a new ‘orchestration’ of Schütz’s masterpiece.