ALHPA
1 CD - 042 - (c) 2003

Clavierorganum





Hans Leo HASSLER (1564-1612) Canzon
2' 29" 1
Nicholas STROGERS (?-1575) Fantasia
3' 01" 2
William BYRD (c.1542-1623) Corranto
1' 13" 3

Queens Alman
4' 03" 4

Ground
3' 41" 5
John BULL (1563-1628) Bull's Goodnight
3' 31" 6
Orlando GIBBONS (1583-1625) Fantasia II
2' 58" 7
Johann PACHELBEL (1653-1706) Fantasia
2' 42" 8
Johann Christoph BACH (1642-1703) Praeludium
5' 19"
9
Johann PACHELBEL Toccata in G
1' 30" 10
Christian RITTER (1650-1725) Allemanda in discessum Caroli XI regis Sueciae
5' 08"
11
Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) Fantasia, BWV 1121
2' 47" 12

Aria variata, BWV 989
15' 17" 13

Partie sopra "O Gott, du frommer Gott", BWV 767
15' 31" 14





 
Gustav LEONHARDT
- Claviorganum de Matthias Griewisch, 2001 (1-11)
- Clavecin allemand d'Anthony Sidey, 1995 (12-14)
 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Chapelle de l'hôpital Notre-Dame de Bon Secours, Paris (Francia) - febbraio 2003

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer
Alpha

Recording Engineer / Editing
Hugues Deschaux

Prima Edizione LP
nessuna

Prima Edizione CD
Alpha - ut pictura musica | 042 | 1 CD - durata 70' 15" | (c) 2003 | DDD

Cover Art
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Interior of St Bavo's Church in Haarlem, 1648 Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland

Note
Digipack












Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Assendelft, 1597 - Haarlem, 1665)
Interior of St Bavo's Church in Haarlem, 1648 (Oil on panel, 200 x 140 cm)
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland

The images of the previous faith have been whitewashed over, but the interior of Haarlem's Gothic cathedral is nevertheless magnificent in its present bareness. The Calvinist faith, based on Scripture rather than on the exteriorisation of religious feeling, has rejected the former decoration, which was not in accordance with Protestant sensibility. Disapproving of the Roman Catholic Church's role as mediator and its theatrical pomp, Calvinism advocates a simple, direct relationship with the Creator, experienced in an atmosphere of austen'ty. Neveitheless, a number of heraldic elements, diamond-shaped coats of arms, are visible here and there on the columns as reminders of the tight against the Spaniard or the merits of some group, guild, family or individual that played some part in the setting-up of the new political order based on civic liability, whose values tally with the spirit and the precepts of the new faith. The pulpit and other furniture relating to the rite, the ornate chandeliers punctuating the nave between the impressive blind arcades, the wind rose familiar to the navigators of the 'golden age' of the powerful Dutch navy: all these have survived, or pertain to the metamorphosis.
The organ on the night, its Flamboyant-style case seen in profile level with the triforium, has escaped destruction. Music was the subject of heated debate among theorists of the new religion. While some associated it with the frivolity and ostentatious excesses of the papacy, and with the pleasures of somewhat impious clerics, a large section of the Reformed church nevertheless recognised its íntrinsic spiritual value. While the congregation, assembled to proclaim God's Word, sang without accompaniment, the organ was played outside the church services at sacred concerts. The imposing presence of this instrument undoubtedly represents a passionate and nostalgic stand on behalf of music. Saenredam seems to have been particularly fond of this very beautiful old organ, which had been restored shortly before the picture was painted: it appears in several of his works. Furthermore, biblical verses, clearly visible in a decorative band running round the instrument, are used in support of rnusic's role as a vehicle for the singing of Gods praises.
The raised ceiling (partly made of wood) with its delicately intersecting ribs is decorated here and there with fine rinceaux - scrolls of formalised leaves and stems: the only departure from the prevailing restraint, austerity and soberness of the interior. The painter uses the larger-than-life columns to intensify the impression of verticality and suggest celestial harmony. Rather than drawing the eye towards a single vanishing point, following the rules of perspective set forth by Alberti (Della pittura, 1436), the painter creates two focal points, thus enlarging the field of vision and giving the viewer more room for contemplation, Saenredam is quite rightly considered to be a master of this art based on geometry, but that does not prevent him from bending the rules to suit his aesthetic intention. His artistic freedom is seen in the “counter-perspective” of the decorated vault at the intersection of the central bay. By multiplying the views the painter enriches the discourse. Though descriptive, the 'church portrait', of which Saenredam was a pioneer, was not meant to be purely objective and realistic: like any work of art, it serves to achieve the authors expressive aims. The painter's method is based on a very accurate and meticulously detailed observation of architecture in situ, but the final result is nevertheless creative, imaginative and evocative.
Although the vertical dimension takes precedence, the horizontal plane is also asserted by the introduction of discreet narrative elements, which nonetheless attract the viewer's attention. Standing on the slate floor, which has been raised to make it more visible, and which contrasts strongly with the delicate shades of brown, beige, grey and silvery white that predominate in the rest of the building, the tiny figures on the left indicate not only the scale of the painting but also the cathedral's colossal proportions. Seen conversing beneath a picture on the wall - a work within the work, a tapestry, perhaps, or a fresco (although the latter was rare in northern Europe), possibly evoking one of the artists own paintings - these burghers tell us something about daily life in Holland, where the church served not only for worship but also as a public meeting place. The transverse (`melodic') axis crosses the main vertical ('harmonic') axis, rising to the vaults. Saenredam was an indefatigable explorer of churches and an unsurpassable poet of religious architecture. Supported by a clear architectonic structure, a feeling of order, silence, meditation, peace and serenity prevails in this picture. The subtle, atmospheric light coming in through the many windows creates tonal unity, merging and mellowing the parts.
Less than fifty years before the birth of the greatest architect of Western music, Saenredam expresses the transcendent clarity, the monumentality and the perfect form that were to be taken to hitherto unattained heights by J.S. Bach. With its aesthetic and mystical qualities, the vast nave symbolises the cosmic balance of the universe. Set firmly on the ground, concrete and tangible, the small figures represent the microcosm; they provide the touch of anecdote that brings out the abstract formal perfection of the work as a whole. The movement of contemplation induced by art music, sacred or secular, is not severed from its vernacular source; music of popular origin is none the less noble and worthy of permanence. The classical language, in both music and painting, transfigures reality while retaining its essence, and thus makes it lasting.
Denis Grenier
Department of History
Laval University, Quebec
Translation: Mary Pardoe
The Italian legacy
Italy's contribution to music, and to the arts in general, is unparalleled. Although it remained politically fragmented for centuries (unifìcation was not achieved until the nineteenth century), by the Quattrocento it had become the cultural centre of the Western world. Its creative approach based on the elaboration of obiective techniques, in painting, sculpture, poetry and music, appealed to the whole of Europe. Each of the great centres - Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Mantua, Milan, Modena - had its own artistic identity, yet viewed from the outside that identity is nevertheless Italian.
Italian vocal music, both sacred and secular, is of course of legitimate importance, but we must not forget the great influence Italy had on instrumental music, and particularly keyboard works, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In our recording of harpsichord pieces by Girolamo Frescobaldi and Louis Couperin (Alpha 026) we approached the complex relationships between Italy and France. Here we turn to the Italian influence on English and Germanic composers.
Why use the rather vague word 'keyboard'? Why not refer more specifically to the harpsichord, organ, virginal, spinet or claviorganum, all of them keyboard instruments? Musicians of that time were pragmatic; rather than specifying the instrument, and therefore narrowing the destination of their works, they preferred to leave the player to make his own choice, depending on his tastes and, above all, on instrument he had at his disposal. Early seventeentb-century treatises (Mersenne, Kircher, Praetorius...) show what a wealth of keyboard instruments existed side by side at that time, without any hierarchy. The claviorganum, which seems almost exotic to us today, was then quite commonplace. Furthermore, the earliest surviving harpsichord made in England is part of a claviorganum.
Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612), an organist and composer of great repute, was regarded during his lifetime as one of Germany's fìnest musicians. Born in Nuremberg, he was appointed director of town music there in 1601, before moving to Ulm in 1604, then being appointed electoral chamber organist in Dresden in 1608. He received his early musical training in Nuremberg, with a former pupil of Roland de Lassus. In 1584 he was sent to Venice to study with Andrea Gabrieli, master of the art of the ricercar and the canzon, a polyphonic instrumental form which gradually gained independence from its vocal model, as did the fantasia. The Fantasia by the London organist Nicholas Strogers (fl 1560-75) still shows signs of its Italian origin.
One of Strogers' great compatriots was William Byrd (1545-1623), who was a prolific composer of excellent keyboard works. Like other English musicians of his time, Byrd was affected by the events of the English Reformation, when the English Church separated from Rome under Henry VIII and papal authority in England was destroyed. The decision created terrible tensions between Anglicans and Catholics who remained faithful to Rome. Byrd was a Catholic, 'a stiff papist and a good subject', but his stature as an artist earned him the favour of Elizabeth I (who, like her father Henry VIII, was an amateur musician). He was admitted to the Royal Chapel in 1570, both as a Gentleman and as joint organist with Tallis, and no one troubled him when he published a volume of Catholic music in 1605. If his vocal music for Anglican or Catholic worship was his main source of pride, his music for virginals shows outstanding creative skill. A few of these pieces were published in 1615 in Parthenia, the first book of keyboard music printed in England, containing twenty-one pieces by Byrd, and the younger composers Bull and Gibbons - Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls.
Other instrumental music by Byrd is preserved in manuscripts compiled for patrons or by admirers, such as the exquisite My Ladye Nevells Book, dated 1591, and the vast Fitzwilliam Vírginal Book. The latter was compiled by Francis Tregian, a Catholic recusant, during his years of imprisonment in the London Fleet Prison from 1609 until his death in 1619. It contains not only numerous compositions by Byrd, but also many pieces by Bull, Farnaby, Strogers and Morley.
Dances formed the basis of much of the music of that time; the Corranto, Galliard and Jig did not conceal their Italian origins, but they often came close in melody and rhythm to the typically British country dance. In this Byrd carried on the earliest English keyboard tradition, a fine example of which is Hugh Aston's extraordinary Hornepype, composed around 1500. He also took an interest in the theme and variations, which allowed the composer great creative scope. His Queenes Alman is in fact a set of three variations on one of the most popular songs of the time, Une jeune fillette. The subject of the song - the lament of the young girl forced to become a nun - first appeared in Sienna in the fifteenth century.
Une jeune fillette / A young maid
De noble coeur / Noble minded
Plaisante et joliette, / Amiable and pretty
De grand' valeur /  And of great merit
Contre son gré, on l'a rendue nonnette / Was made a nun against her Will
Cela point ne lui haicte /  And as it pleased her not
Dont vit en grand douleur. / She lived in great sorrow.
The melody found its way to other parts of Europe. In Italy it became the popular song La Monica, and Frescobaldi and Scheidt, amongst others, composed variations on the tune. In Germany we find it in the Works of Hassler, in the song Ich gieng einmal spazíeren (variations) and in the chorale Von Gott will ich nicht lassen (melody). In France, Eustache du Caurroy used it for one of his Fantasies of 1610 and for a Christmas hymn entitled Une jeune pucelle. In the Netherlands, the Van Soldt Manuscript presents it as L`Allemande de la nonnette, and it was even published in Toronto in 1643 as a Huron hymn.
The last piece by Byrd presented here is a Ground. It consists of a three-note thematic motif in the bass which is constantly repeated with changing harmonies while the upper parts proceed and vary.
John Bull (?1562/3-1628) was a Catholic like Byrd, but he did not suffer for his religion. In 1613, however, he became involved in a serious scandal and was forced suddenly and secretly to leave England for the South Netherlands; from 1615 he was organist of Antwerp Cathedral. He never returned to England. From 1586 until his exile he had been a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. And he became a Doctor of Music at Oxford in 1592, which explains why several of his works are signed “Dr Bull”. He was recognised as one of the finest English composers and contributed to the famous collection Parthenia of 1613. Bull's Goodnight, with its evocative but inexplicable title, takes the form of nine charmingly voluble variations on a short theme. Full of detail, the piece calls for great dexterity.
The last famous composer whose works appeared in Parthenia was Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). He became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (date uncertain), of which he was senior organist by 1625, and he was organist of Westminster Abbey from 1623. He was regarded as the most skilful keyboard player of his day. His compositions, including the Fantasia presented here, are similar in style to those of Frescobaldi.
Like Hassler, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) was born in Nuremberg. He was a Lutheran, and after training at Altdorf, then Ravensberg, he went to Vienna in 1673 to become organist of St Stephens Cathedral, where he would certainly have been exposed to the works of Catholic composers of Italy as well as southern Germany. His style was strongly influenced by that of Froberger, who studied with Frescobaldi. His music amalgamated both German and Italian styles and marked the beginning of the diffusion of an Italian manner that was to live on for several decades. On his return to Germany he became court organist at Eisenach (1677), before moving to Erfurt in 1678 as organist of the Protestant Predigerkirche. During his years at Eisenach and Erfurt, he was naturally drawn to the Bach family, and he taught music to Johann Christoph Bach, Johann Sebastian's eldest brother. He was organist at Stuttgart, then at Gotha, before returning to Nuremberg in 1695.
Pachelbel's Toccatas are generally Italianate, quite short, and based on a single thematic cell, while Johann Christoph Bach's Praeludium belongs more to the world of the German stylus phantasticus. Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703), who was the cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach's father, was one of the most interesting musicians of the late seventeenth century. He worked at Eisenach as organist, then as a member of the court Kapelle (where he no doubt got to know Pachelbel). Sensitive to injustice, he spent many years battling with the town council for better treatment as a musician, thus prefiguring a similar spirit in Johann Sebastian. To be sure of obtaining payment when he played at weddings, he proposed that the marriage certificate should be delivered only on receipt of his fees! Johann Christoph Bach's vocal and instrumental works are a delight. He left some magnificent motets, which may have served as a model for Johann Sebastian, including Lieber Herr Gott for two choirs, as well as isolated pieces such as the famous Lamentatio: Ach, dass ich Wassers gnag hätte, a musical declamation in which the music follows the text step by step. His Praeludium in E flat (transposed here to C) is in fact a prelude and fugue, like those later to be found in Das wohltemperierte Klavier. An overture in the form of an Italian-style toccata is followed by a chromatic four-part fugue, very clear in structure; the conclusion is vehement and almost improvisational.
After his parents died, Johann Sebastian Bach was taken in by his brother Johann Christoph, organist at Ohrdruf. His biographers tell us that Johann Sebastian spent long hours reading by moonlight the scores that his brother had collected (and mention that this was probably one of the causes of his subsequent blindness). Johann Christoph copied out compositions, compiling anthologies. And that is how we come to possess the Suite by Christian Ritter from which the Allemande on the death of Charles XI of Sweden is taken, a piece is directly descended from the tombeaux of Froberger or Louis Couperin. It is included in the Möller Manuscript, along with pieces by Zachow, Böhm, Lully and others. Ritter (c1645-after1717) was court organist at Halle, then at Stockholm, where he became Kapellmeister in 1699.
The Italian influence was clear throughout the life of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), and the particular influence of Vivaldi`s concertos can be seen in his numerous concerto arrangements. It is also obvious in some of his early individual pieces, such as the very touching Fantasia BWV 1121, a piece combining a delicate melodic line with a subtle use of counterpoint. And even more so in the Aria variata alla maníera italiana BWV 989, probably composed before 1710 and included in the “Andreas Bach Buch”, into which it was copied by Johann Christoph Bach, in the early eighteenth century. Although Bach was probably not yet twenty-five years old at the time of composition, this set of variations shows a perfectly well organised creative mind. We do not know whether the Aria which serves as a theme for the variations, with its very unusual harmonic relationships, was written by Bach himself or whether he took inspiration from a pre-existing melody. He uses it for ten variations, each one making the most of some rhythmic or harmonic element from the theme. We cannot help being reminded of the Goldberg Variations, which Bach composed later in his life. The theme itself and the last variation are for four voices; all the variations in between are for two voices. Sometimes the writing calls to mind Italian violin compositions, and we wonder if the piece was not originally written for violin and continuo, although the homogeneous treatment of the lines is perfectly suited to performance on a keyboard instrument.
The Partitas (or variations) on the chorale O Gott, du frommer Gott BWV 767 are generally included among Bach's organ works. But they were probably intended for the harpsichord. Many aspects are more typical of harpsichord writing: the linking of chords in the exposition of the chorale, the ornamentation, the arpeggiated formulas, the analogies with movements of the dance suite, the 'concerted' nature of the final variation. And the work also appears to belong to the 'Hausmusik' genre - music intended for performance in the home by family and friends for their own entertainment and edification. Such music was common at the time of the Reformation and similar partitas were written by Georg Böhm and Pachelbel. Unlike the chorale prelude, intended to introduce the hymn tune to be sung by the congregation, the chorale partita, a set of variations based on a chorale melody, does not require a vocal interpretation; it may be seen as a substitute for, or a paraphrase of the hymn. This work dates from the years 1702-1707, when Bach was still a very young composer. It is based on the words of a chorale by Johann Heerman (1630) and a melody that was first published in 1648. Curiously, Bach did not use the same very beautiful melody again when he decided to use O Gott, du frommer Gott as the final chorale of his cantata BWV 24. Heerman's text - a spiritual reflection on the finality of existence, a theme that was common at that time - is in eight verses. And there are nine Partitas. It is therefore difficult to imagine a close concordance between the words and the music, unless we assume that the first Partita is meant to be a sort of introductory sinfonia. In that case the correlation that emerges is sometimes quite remarkable. The second Partita, for example, with its persistently repeated phrase on the left hand, corresponds to the image of God as an eternal source of goodness (verse 1). In the fourth Partita, the power of the Word (verse 3) is possibly represented in the vehemence and constant flow of the music on the right hand, supported by a very strong rhythm on the left. The chromatic lamento of the eighth Partita may also be compared with the words about death in verse 7, and the exhilarating character of the final Partita with the reference to the Resurrection in the last verse. Although these are merely conjectures, they nevertheless fit in with the declamatory conception of music that was prevalent in the seventeenth century. We must not forget that much of Bach's early (extra-musical) education stemmed directly from the ideas of the Renaissance, and that the general teaching he received was in keeping with that perspective, notably at Lüneburg, where the rich library contained, amongst other works, a copy of Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universsalis. This very influential work of music theory, regarded as a reference at that time in the Germanic world, emphasised the closeness between music and declamation, while giving the advantage to the former for its capacity to express human emotions - a notion that was central to Baroque thought.
Therein lies perhaps the most constant aspect of Italy's legacy, for the question of the relationship between the poetic text and the music was posed at a very early date in the peninsula, giving rise to opera on the way. Thus, 'musical rhetoric during the Baroque era achieved its true aim from the moment that it began to take into account the reception of a musical work, its effect on the audience, its emotional dimension'.
In a way, the extraordinary development of keyboard music reflects the quest for that eloquence that has no need for words in order to be expressive and to move the listener.
Jean-Paul Combet
Translation: Mary Pardoe