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Melchior Franck. Paradisus Musicus.

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Edited by Martin P. Setchell. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 106.) Madison, WI: A-R Editions, c2000. [Acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix-xii; texts and trans., p. xiii-xxii; 7 plates; part 1: title page in Ger., Eng. and honorific poem in Lat., Eng., p. 2-6; score, p. 7-88; part 2: title page in Ger., Eng. and onomastic epigrams in Lat., Eng., p. 90-92; score, p. 93-288; crit. report, p. 289-90. ISBN 0-89579-464-0. $100.]

Martin P. Setchell's edition of Melchior Franck's two-part Paradisus musicus (Coburg: Johann Eyrich; Nuremberg: Wolfgang Endter, 1636) is the third volume devoted to this composer in the series Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era (Geistliche Gesang und Melodeyen, ed. William Weinert, vol. 70 [1993]; Dulces mundani exilij deliciae, ed. Randall Craig Sheets, vol. 80 [1996]). This may seem surprising, especially considering Franck's relative obscurity even in musicological circles. Franck nonetheless ranks alongside Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein, and Heinrich Schutz as one of the most important--not to mention one of the most prolific--composers of Lutheran sacred music, and this volume is a welcome addition to our still woefully limited modern library of sacred music composed north of the Alps during the seventeenth century. The Paradisus musicus, moreover, is a fascinating work in itself, not only was it the last publication issued by Franck in his lifetime (he died in 1639), but it also consists entirely of motets setting verses from nearly every chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, carefully...

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