Luogo e data di registrazione		Stiftskirche, Klosterneuburg, Vienna (Austria) - 1954
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Produced by		Seymour Solomon
	Engineer		-
	Prima Edizione LP		Vanguard - The Bach Guild | BG-529 | 1 LP - durata 43' 33" | (p) 1954
	Edizione CD		Artemis Classics | ATM-CD-1279 | 1 CD - durata 43' 33" | (p) & (c) 2005 | ADD
	Cover Art		-
	Note		Billboard, 4 december 1954

The 17th century is one of the great periods in the vigorous and adventurous expansion of new musical resources. Opera, oratorio, sonata, concerto, violin music, keyboard music, a veritable flood of vocal and instrumental forms, and experiments in dynamics, harmony, instrumentation and design, root themselves and flourish steadily. Genesis is inevitable, and so therefore is the historian’s interest in it. But it profits us little to make the accurate and, in some respects, relevant observation that some of these developments have their points of origin in a prior century. For all of the academicism of certain phases of 17th century musical theory and practice, the dominant tone in both fields is one of the opening up of new tonal territories, and of the conquest of new realms of emotionality. The word “new” occurs in the titles of several significant publications, and upon occasion, the 17th century composer is ready to sustain a high polemical passion in defense of this stylistic novelty. This concern with style, structure and technique, reflected in so many of the pieces in this organ anthology, and the rich profusion of compositional procedures which one finds not only in organ music, but in every main area of 17th century music, can be deceptive. Conditioned by the historical peculiarities of 20th century musical aesthetics, one tends to take refuge in a complicated road map guide to the complex of interrelated developments of style, structure and technique regarded as formal absolutes. However useful for the sake of clarity, essentially this misses the point. Few periods illustrate better, or even as well, an almost constant concern for the expressive potential of new techniques. And since the functional roots for music were still sturdy, healthy and deep, most composers were able, rather readily, to test out in use the validity of the new levels of emotion, the new refinements of feeling, which the exploration of new resources made available to them. Perhaps most challenging in terms of contemporary musical practice, is the continually healthy interplay of the abstract, the expressive and the functional in 17th century music. The singular vitality of organ music in the 17th century is in large measure rooted in the livelihood it afforded the composer. Organ playing was a recognized profession and the patronage extended to it came from both church and court. Every composer represented in this anthology held a post as an organist. Michael Praetorius (1572-1621) - the assumed name, a Latinization of Schultze, meaning village head man, hence praetor - was organist first, and later Kapellmeister and secretary of the Duke of Brunswick. Tarquino Merula, whose published work appeared between 1615 and 1652, was organist at the court of Sigismund III of Poland, and later at S. Agata in Cremona, Italy. Johann Jacob Froberger (d. 1667), who studied with Frescobaldi in Rome, became court organist in Vienna upon the accession of Ferdinand III in 1637. The same Emperor sent Johann Kaspar kerll (1627-1693) to Carissimi in Rome, although once there it is not unlikely that he heard Frescobaldi and learnt from him. Kerll served as organist both at the court of the Bavarian elector in Munich, and at the imperial court in Vienna. Anton Sebastian Scherer (1631-1712) was cathedral organist in Ulm; Christian Erbach (1573-1635) held the equivalent post in Augsburg; and Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), the greatest organist of his age, held the coveted position of organist at St. Peter’s in Rome from 1608 until his death, although for a period (1638-1634) he left Rome to become court organinst in Florence. Basically, as this biographical review suggests, the organ was perforce the favorite instrument of these composers and the medium most natural to them for the realization of creative impulses, even when such impulses were not directed towards church service. This was, of course, more true of some than of others. More true, for example, of Frescobaldi than of Praetorius; but as a generalization it holds. One finds in their organ music (even in the less than great examples) much of the vitality, enthusiasm and superlative workmanship, which often characterize the work of men who find themselves able to operate as artists, and to earn both a livelihood and a respectable position in society (Erbach, for example, died a city councilor) through this very operation. Furthermore, travel was creatively stimulating. Despite the emergence of strong regional organ styles, the peregrinations of many of these musicians were quite typical for the period, and the resultant exchange of ideas contributed materially to the advancement of the art. However, if the functional nature of the organ in church and court chapel service, and the security and social standing conferred by court and church patronage conditioned the widespread interest in the instrument, this interest in turn led to a far richer exploration of its resources than was necessitated simply by liturgical function. In this collection, only the Praetorius pieces reflect a clearly sacred orientation. Both are polyphonic elaborations over hymn melodies, the polyphony suggesting a rather conservative leaning towards 16th century vocal polyphonic practice. The first, A solis ortus cardine (Christ we praise in duty bound) is a Latin hymn by Coelus Sedulius. Luther did a German translation of the text (Christum wir sollen loben) and Johann Walther adapted the cantus melody. It is a Christmas hymn. The second, Alvus tumescit virginis (Lo! A virgin has conceived) is a setting of the third verse of the Advent Hymn Veni redemptor gentium (Come, the Saviour is born). In both, the cantus is in the pedals. While the remaining pieces reflect a much greater interest in composition per se, or in the art of the organist, than in liturgical function, one must remember the diversity and elasticity of local practice, and the possibility that in a given instance a free toccata might find place for itself at some point of the service. The group of toccatas presented here reflect Frescobaldi's leadership in this field. All follow his manner of evolving the design rather freely, avoiding both the exuberantly improvisational quality of the Andrea Gabrieli toccatas with their flinging together of rapid scale passages and massive chords, and the schematic and seemingly predetermined formal layout of the Claudio Merulo toccatas. The Frescobaldi and the Scherer toccatas are rather clearly display pieces, works that could scarcely be conceived in terms other than the keyboard. The Frescobaldi, in particular, with its continual outcroppings of running passages and coloratura line, has much the nature of a loosely fashioned “touch-piece”, a work built up by the free play of fingers on a keyboard (which is what a toccata-from toccare, to touch-in its most rudimentary sense is.) Froberger achieves a more evident degree of organization through a more frugal use of keyboard passage work, and through a use (still fragmentary) of a type of coloratura keyboard figuration that tends to suggest to the ear a melodic line. Krell’s toccata achieves its more evident sense of continuity through the exploitation, as its title indicates, of the durezza e ligature technique. The phrase (which can also be found in Frescobaldi, from whom he may have taken the idea) indicates a study in tied notes and dissonances. Both the Kerll toccata and the Merula sonata indicate the wholly characteristic interest in chromaticism (there are some stunning examples in Frescobaldi); while conversely, the Kerll passacaglia derives much of its essential strength from its harmonic over simplification, since in essence it is founded upon a recurring authentic cadence. Erbach’s ricercar turns to Italian secular vocal music for its sources, and his elaboration of the Io son ferito may be compared to Scheidt’s fantasia based upon themes from this Palestrina madrigal. Notes by Abraham Veinus, Professor of Music, Syracuse University About the Performance Gustav M. Leonhardt, born in 1928 in Holland, has entered the select circle of brilliant instrumentalists who are also ground-breaking scholars of renaissance and Baroque music. In his student years in Holland, Switzerland and Austria he won the highest honors both for musicology and performance on the harpsichord and organ. He is one of the acknowledged European masters of the authentic ornaments and improvisatory style of Baroque music. In the spirit of the old musician-artisans, he is also an expert on the construction and design of the harpsichord and Baroque organ. Since 1952 he has been professor of harpsichord and musicology at the Academy of Music in Vienna, dividing his time between Vienna and the Conservatory at Amsterdam, where he teaches as well. This recording of 17th Century Organ Music of Southern Europe is one of a series of recordings being made by Mr. Leonhardt, who is an exclusive Vanguard-Bach Guild recording artist. His recordings on harpsichord of Bach’s Art of Fugue and Goldberg Variations have already been established in American musical life as classic readings of these great works. These performances of organ works which are both beautiful in their own right and throw light upon the 17th century development of musical form will likewise stand as a permanent testament to the finest scholarship of our time and models of performance in the true Baroque tradition. The organ on which Mr. Leonardt plays on this recording, that of the “Stiftskirche” at Klosterneuberg in Austria, is one of the finest Baroque organs in Europe. It was built in 1636-42 by the organ builder Georg Freundt of Passan, who made use of part of the pipework, and probably also the organ case, of the former 16th century organ. It has 2179 pipes. Some alterations were made in the reeds during the 19th century, but these were corrected, after the 17th century design, in recent years. The pitchof the organ is one half tone above our normal pitch. The cover design is based on photographs of the actual organ.