With the memory of the horrors and deaths of the Thirty Years' War still relatively fresh in people's minds at the time, it was natural for them to deal with their own deaths in good time and to make arrangements for their own demise. Schütz's Musicalische Exequien SWV279 is a masterful testimony to this long-forgotten art of dying. The third volume of the complete Schütz recording features an almost luxurious cast of soloists.