The Passiontide motet
Videns Dominus has eight voices which are arranged in two equal choirs of four voices. Praetorius clearly enjoyed working in the polychoral medium (or strictly speaking bichoral in this case) which took recent developments from Venice as its starting point. The essence of this motet is disarmingly simple—the two choirs separately imitate or otherwise support each other until particularly important phrases within the text when both choirs join together (as, for instance, to great effect at Jesus’s calling of the name Lazarus).
from notes by Jeremy Summerly © 2008
