Score analysis #3 - Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck / Ricercar del nono tono 

Superbly annotated score - thank you!

Exactly same!

Under played because few have the patience or time (or assignment) really to master. Guilty as charged 😏, and kudos, Elam! I am less scared of Sweelinck now!! Agreed! This music really deserves to be studied, played, and heard!

How about Bruckner's Fifth? I read today how you see that piece...

J.S. Bach is beyond compare. Sweelinck is great in his own right. Let us not compare apples and oranges.

@@danielwaitzman2118 I did not write that Bach was not *great* but that he did not reach such achievement and perfection. The Ricercar and fantaisies of Sweelinck are contrapuntal works for keyboard exactely like those of Bach, but Sweelinck's works are more organic and more natural, not so self constrained by an inner mechanical logic. Over a century before Bach, Sweelinck's fantaisies are the quintessence of keyboard music in a form which allies expression, economy - or density of thought - counterpoint and something which reminds of organic growth, as if these works were rare plants developing along recognizable patterns yet never really repeating themselves, each phrase new and unique in its context. This is music of the rarest kind, crystallized culmination on the keyboard of the centuries old art of polyphony, making the subsequent Baroque and Classical eras appear like a little light music in comparison.

@@JohanHerrenberg Bruckner and Sweelinck are my favourite composers.

@@Tracotel Listen, if you will, to Sebastian Bach’s “Art of the Fugue”, Canonic Variations on “Vom Hummel Hoch”, “Goldberg Variations”, cantatas, concerti, and countless other works, any one of which would be enough to mark him as one of the immortals. Consider his consummate mastery of the learned style, the older free style, the Franco-German style, and the then-emergent galant style. Bach stands categorically supreme; and to recognize this does not detract from one’s estimation of Sweelinck, Schubert, Bach’s sons, or any of the other suns in the sterling universe of Western music. Why must we choose?-let us, rather, study, listen, play, and be moved and transfigured.

The answer at the sub-dominant is a bit weird though. We are so used to fugues to the dominant that I find it a bit confusing.

Ahhhhmennnn/... Ç'en fait deux maintenant qui allons travailler cette pièce. Une petite vision "nage" dans la tête: un récital d'orgue ou l'on commence par cette oeuvre du maître JPS. Et qui se termine par les Litanies de Jehan Alain. (Son exergue, mon Dieu! Ce dont nous avons tous besoin dana nos pays occidentaux dits civilisés. Et au milieu Praeludium ou bien Prélude et fugue en do majeur (résurrection après maintes épreuves). Cantabile de César Franck. Wir glauben all de Scheidt (élève de JPS d'ailleurs). Choral du veilleur (Wachet auf version "Schübler.") Et Louis Vierne: mais quoi? Sa simple Berceuse me vient à l'esprit, mais/.... Quelles joies fructueuses hein de notre ami italien si génial, si travailleur (justement), si dénudé de toute prétention. Vive la France! De la part d'un Ricain qui vous suit depuis l'âge de 19 ans. Mark (Arizona)

@@markbell9973 Beau et éclectique programme virtuel !!! Ma modeste ambition se résume a comprendre comment ce Ricercare est construit et à essayer de le jouer le mieux possible au clavecin...Bon courage à vous (organiste ?)

Downright wicked humor à l'italienne! Ya gotta be born into it. 😁

He’s Dutch.

I second this! I love that piece!

Motion carried. On a 16' plenum maybe even to end a program. Cheat just a tiny bit and bring in a 32'' at the hmm let's call it "stretto coda." With only manuals coupled into it in order to keep the 'early-music informed' thang as intact as possible. I think JPS might at least smile at the use in 2022 (!) his "Chromatica" got put to. ....an exorcism, ya think?

same here

Yes!!!

1/6 comma meantone

I had wondered, and guessed, the same thing. Thanks for asking, and confirming.

It could definitely be with a C#, as you say. But because of the direction of the melody, the standards of this notation, and the canniness of Sweelinck (especially in this severe piece), I actually think that this harsh false relation was intended. I might be wrong of course.