Home > Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck ( 1562 - October 16, 1621) was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras.He was born in Deventer and died in Amsterdam. Many of his family were musicians--principally organists--and he is known to have studied with Jan Willemszoon Lossy as well as Zarlino, the famous composer and theorist, in Venice.
Sweelinck represents the highest development of the Dutch keyboard school, and indeed represented one of the highest pinnacles attained in keyboard contrapuntal complexity and refinement before J.S. Bach. However, he was a skilled composer for voices as well, and composed over 250 works for voice ( chansons, madrigalA madrigal is a setting for 4 6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. The madrigal has its origins in the frottola, and was also influenced by the motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance. It is related mostly by name alone to the Italian tres, motetIn Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions. The name comes either from the Latin movere ("to move") or a Latinized version of Old French mot "word" or "verbal utterance. If from the Latin, ths and Psalms) Some of Sweelinck's innovations were of profound musical importance, including the fugueFor the use of the word in psychology see fugue state In music, a fugue is a type of piece written in counterpoint for several independent musical voices. A fugue begins with its subject (a brief musical theme) stated by one of the voices playing alone.—he was the first to write an organ fugue which began simply, with one subject, successively adding texture and complexity until a final climax and resolution, an idea which was perfected at the end of the Baroque era by Bach. Stylistically Sweelinck's music also brings together the richness, complexity and spatial sense of the Gabrieli s, with whom he was familiar from his time in Venice, and the ornamentation and intimate forms of the English keyboard composers. In formal development, especially in the use of countersubject, stretto, and organ point (pedal point), his music was far beyond the works of FrescobaldiGirolamo Frescobaldi ( September, 1583 March 1st, 1643) was one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Frescobaldi was born in Ferrara. He studied under the organist Luzzasco Luzzaschi at Ferra—its nearest predecessor—and looks ahead to Bach.
Sweelinck was a master improviser, and acquired the informal title of the " OrpheusFor other senses of the word Orpheus, see Orpheus (disambiguation). Gustave Moreau ( 1880) In Greek legend, Orpheus was the chief representative of the arts of song and the lyre, and of great importance in the religious history of Greece. He was a Greek o of Amsterdam." Over 70 keyboard works of his have survived, and many of them may be similar to the improvisations that residents of Amsterdam around 1600 were likely to have heard. Even his vocal music, which is more conservative than his keyboard writing, shows a striking rhythmic complexity and an unusual richness of contrapuntal devices.
As a teacher, his influence was perhaps as great as it was as a composer, since his pupils included the great North German school, including PraetoriusMichael Praetorius (probably February 15, 1571 February 15, 1621) was a German composer and writer on music. He was born in Creuzburg and studied in Torgau, Frankfurt an der Oder and Zerbst. He was organist at the Marienkirche in Frankfurt before working, ScheidemannHeinrich Scheidemann (c. 1595 1663) was a German organist and composer. He was born in Wohrden in Holstein and died in Hamburg. He was the best-known composer for the organ in north Germany in the early to mid 17th century, and was an important forerunner, Siefert , and Samuel and Gottfried Scheidt . He was known in Germany as the "maker of organists" and was clearly in demand as a teacher.
His influence was international: for example, some of his music appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which otherwise mainly contains the work of English composers. Sweelinck wrote variations on John Dowland's internationally famous Lachrimae Pavan , and John Bull (composer), the English keyboard composer, wrote a set of variations on a theme of Sweelinck, indicating the close connection between the different schools of composition across the English Channel.
