He spent his youth in Weißenfels (Saxony) where he gained a comprehensive education at the "Mauritianum" of Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel. In 1608 he began to study law in Marburg but abandoned this course in 1609 and with the Landgrave’s support began to study music in Venice with the organist of St. Mark’s Cathedral.

His apprentice pieces were the Italienischen Madrigale, published as Opus 1 in Venice in 1611.

In 1613 Schütz returned to Kassel but just two years later he was lured away by Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony to come to the court at Dresden as organist and director of music. Here he held the position of Hofkapellmeister from 1617 until his death (from 1656 under Elector Johann Georg II).

Prior to 1631, before Saxony entered the Thirty Years’ War, Schütz composed significant large scale works with rich instrumental and choral resources: the Psalmen Davids (published 1619), the Auferstehungshistorie (1623), the Latin Cantiones Sacrae (1625), the Psalter collection based on the rhymed psalm paraphrases of the Leipzig theology professor Cornelius Becker (1628), the first volume of Symphoniae Sacrae, which was published in Venice during Schütz’s second visit to Italy in 1629.

In addition to these large collections Schütz composed many independent compositions, although only a few of them have survived.

In theears of deprivation in the third phase of the Thirty Years’ War Schütz composed not only the Kleinen geistlichen Konzerten (published in 1636 and 1639) but also the Musikalischen Exequien (published in 1636) for Heinrich Posthumus Reuß in Gera, who was effectively Schütz’s sovereign. It is an unusually funereal work both from the text and the compositional style.

Schütz was twice temporarily resident at the court of the Danish King in Copenhagen (1633-35 and 1642-44). It was during his second stay that he composed the second volume of Symphoniae Sacrae, which in contrast to the Latin first volume contains soloistic concerti with instrumental obligati and is based on German bible texts (published in 1647).

In spite of the decline of the Saxon Hofkapelle, Schütz produced more collections, with which his reputation reached its height in Germany and northern Europe: the collection of motets Geistliche Chormusik (Dresden, 1448) and the third volume of Symphoniae Sacrae (1650), again based on German texts and with which he intended to end his career as Kapellmeister.

This was however not to be, and it was only under the young Elector Johann Georg II that Schütz was finally granted his wish to retire.

The impressive late works of Schütz begin with the Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas History) (1660, published in 1664); followed by the Die Sieben Worte (The Seven Last Words, probably composed in 1662), the three a-cappella passions St Luke, St John and St Matthew (1665/66) and in 1671, a year before his death, his swansong, an extensive double-choir motet based on Psalms 100 and 119 with the German Magnificat, with which he ended his compositional output.