Wednesday, 26 October, 9.30, p.m.,
Igreja e Recolhimento do Bom Jesus (Funchal)
North versus South: Sweelinck and Cabezón
Jesús Gonzálo López, organ
Frank van Wijk, organ
North versus South: Sweelinck and Cabezón
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (born in 1562 in Deventer, town organist at the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam) is widely regarded as the most important composer in Dutch history. Nicknames as “the Orpheus from Amsterdam” and “Organist-maker” testify of his reputation as a musician and teacher. Although he never published his keyboard compositions, his output in this realm was carefully copied by students and admirers abroad, and thus preserved in (mostly) reliable hand-written sources. The selection for this program aims at giving an impression of the genres in which Sweelinck excelled as a keyboard composer: the Toccata, inspired by Italian examples, such as Claudio Merulo; the Variations on Hymn tunes, which he used to play daily on his Oude Kerk organ in Amsterdam; the Echo Fantasia – in this work the effect is suggested by playing the Echo an octave lower; the Variations on secular tunes – the theme of his Pavana Hispanica variations was in fact borrowed from Antonio Cabezon’s Obras de musica (in which it was entitled Pavana Italiana!); finally the polyphonic Fantasia, in which a theme is worked out in four voices. The lively (and never predictable) way in which Sweelinck handles the strict style and contrapuntal techniques (such as diminution and augmentation of the theme) testifies to his absolute mastery.
Frank van Wijk
After the death of Antonio de Cabezón, in 1566, his son Hernando, similarly highly placed in the musical service of the Spanish royalty, sought to cement the importance of his father by means of the publication of part of his polyphonic instrumental works, which he would complete twelve years after his father’s death. But it was while Antonio was still alive, at the age of forty-seven, that the first works of the blind organist from Burgos, for keyboard, harp or vihuela, were published, by the merchant Venegas, who worked to publish, as anonymous, much of the repertoire of the vihuelists of the time, together with that of keyboardists, amongst them, and in first place, Antonio Cabezón, to whom in the edition it was sufficient to refer as Antonio, given his wide renown... The differences between his work as published by Venegas and as published by Hernando Cabezón are important. Venegas published renaissance works of mediaeval descent, and Hernando works that, possibly through having passed through his own hands, are full of the renaissance. For today’s concert I have chosen the more mediaeval music by Antonio, whose works were published five years before the birth in Deventer of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and I conceived this, so foreign tot he concert and so proper to the service of God and man, as though it were a day in his life with the emperor: from the Mass to the table, with its hymns and dances, from ecclesiastical chant to the popular romance and from the French song to the courtly songs of knight and lady, playing, before sleep, a tiento in the style of a fantasy for vihuela to send his imperial patrons and all of us to rest.
Jesus Gonzálo López
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)
¬ Toccata in C SwWV 283
¬ Allein Gott in der Höh sey Ehr (4 variations) SwWV 299
¬ Fantasia auf die manier eines Echo SwWV 275
¬ Pavana hispanica (4 variations) SwWV 372
¬ Fantasia a 4 in F SwWV 264
Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566)
ON HYMNS
¬ O Lux beata trinitas
¬ Te lucis ante terminum
ON DANCES
¬ Rugier
¬ Pavana
¬ Gallarda milanesa
¬ Pavana italiana
ON A PLAINCHANT
¬ Dic nobis María
ON A FRENCH SONG
¬ Malherur me bat
ON ROMANCES AND SONGS
¬ Para quien crié yo cabellos
¬ Vacas
¬ Canto del Cavallero
¬ La Dama le Demanda
LIKE A VIHUELA FANTASY
¬ Tiento III
(Venegas de Henestrosa, Libro de cifra nueva, Alcalá de Henares, 1557; Antonio de Cabezón, Obras de Música, Madrid, 1578)
Participants
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During the course of a career of twenty-five years, Jesús Gonzálo López has travelled through much of the world playing the organ and has published some thirty CDs and books. He began studying music with canon Bienvenido García, organist of the Cathedral of El Burgo de Osma, absorbing the ancient tradition of learning music in Spanish cathedrals. Riaño, Uriol, Jansen, Kastner, Prensa and Calahorra were fundamental artistic influences. Since finishing his training, he has sought to build his career around the musical heritage of the Iberian Peninsula, and in particular Iberian organs, dividing his life between performing on historical instruments, research into these instruments, publishing music and making its aesthetic values better known. He has been advisor on the restoration of historical organs to the regional governments of Aragon and Castile and Leon for many years. He is director of two collections at the Institución “Fernando el Católico” (Provincial Government of Zaragoza), one of recordings of historical organs and another of the musical heritage of Aragon. He teaches at the Conservatoire in Zaragoza. As an organist, whether as soloist or with other musicians, he has performed Iberian music from Uruguay to Estonia, from the Azores to Lebanon, travelling through four continents and almost the whole of Spain. He has thus, during his twenty-five year career, built on his initial idea that, though studying and promoting the heritage of early music, one may assist everyone in having a great understanding of the world, of life and of mankind. |
Jesús Gonzálo López|
Frank van Wijk, born in Alkmaar in 1964, studied from 1983 to 1991 at the Amsterdam Conservatory. There he graduated in organ (with Piet Kee, Jacques van Oortmerssen and Hans van Nieuwkoop respectively), Harpsichord (with Bob van Asperen and Kees Rosenhart) and Church Music (with Klaas Bolt among others). He is active as teacher of organ, harpsichord and clavichord, as church musician (organist of the Ruïnekerk in Bergen NH and the Kapelkerk in Alkmaar with its 1762 Christian Müller organ) and performing musician with an extensive concert practice. Furthermore he is involved in the organ activities of the St Laurens Church in Alkmaar with its famous historic organs. With organist Pieter van Dijk he forms the artistic direction of Organ Festival Holland. He has made several CD and DVD recordings and regularly publishes articles, especially about organ history. In 2012 an 32 volume edition of the collected works of the Dutch composer, organist and Bach pioneer Johannes Gijsbertus Bastiaans (1812-1875) was published by Donemus, for which he took care of the organ works. |
Frank van WijkNotes about the Organ
Hospice of Bom Jesus, Funchal
This small positive organ was built in 1781 by Leandro José da Cunha (b. 1743, d. after 1805), who was from Lisbon and was one of the three members identified as belonging to this family of organ builders. Leandro was the son of the builder João da Cunha (b. 1712, d.1762), also from Lisbon, who built the organ of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, at Ponta do Sol.
It is an example of a type of instrument typical of Portuguese organs in the first half of the 18th century. The fact that the instrument did not originally possess a basic 8’ (12-palm) stop – like many other positives of the period – but only 4’ (6-palm), seems to indicate a musical practice that relied on reinforcement in the lower register through the use of another instrument.
Manual (C, D, E, F, G, A-d’’’)
Flautado de 6 tapado (4’)
Quinzena (2’)
Dezanovena (1 1/3’)
22ª e 26ª
Sesquialtera II (c#´-d´´´)