RHETORIC WITHOUT WORDS: THE AURAL AND CULTURAL WORLD OF THE KEYBOARD WORKS OF JAN PIETERSZOON SWEELINCK by BRADLEY STEVEN SCHULTZ A DISSERTATION Presented to the School of Music and Dance and the Division of Graduate Studies of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2022 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Bradley Steven Schultz Title: Rhetoric Without Words: The Aural and Cultural World of the Keyboard Works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the School of Music and Dance by: Marc Vanscheeuwijck Chairperson Margret Gries Core Member Lori Kruckenberg Core Member Zachary Wallmark Core Member David Luebke Institutional Representative and Krista Chronister Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies. Degree awarded June 2022 2 © 2022 Bradley Steven Schultz 3 DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Bradley Steven Schultz Doctor of Philosophy School of Music and Dance June 2022 Title: Rhetoric Without Words: The Aural and Cultural World of the Keyboard Works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) stands among the earliest keyboard players to leave their imprint on music history as both a composer and teacher. Though his influence on the composing and performing traditions of subsequent generations of students is well known, his own activities as a keyboard composer and performer are less apparent. Because his written compositions are not in his own hand and separated from his Amsterdam post by time and space, little is known about the way Sweelinck’s keyboard works sounded in performance, or how a listener may have received them. This dissertation considers the keyboard works of Sweelinck in tandem with pervading rhetorical currents in the “Dutch Golden Age.” Through examination of rhetoric’s effect on the musicking process, organological and sound studies of the instruments and spaces represented, embodied responses of the performer and listener, and extensions of structural theories known as Forma formans as identified and described first by Frits Noske, a clearer picture of the circumstances surrounding the performance of this repertoire emerges. In addition to implications for performance practice of the works in question, this study provides for further application and synthesis of historical sound studies, musico-rhetorical composition and performance, and somatic responses to music that considers the performer and listener alike. 4 CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Bradley Steven Schultz GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Emory University, Atlanta Luther College, Decorah DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Musicology, 2022, University of Oregon Master of Sacred Music, 2012, Emory University Bachelor of Arts, Music, 2007, Luther College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Historical and Culturally Informed Performance Practice Organ and Harpsichord Performance PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Director of Music, First United Methodist Church, 2017-present Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2017-2022 Visiting Instructor of Music, Luther College, 2012-2017 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to extend heartfelt thanks to the members of my dissertation committee, whose encouragement, expertise, and dedication to the art of raising up a doctoral student has given this project its roots and its wings. It has been a privilege to be advised by Professor Marc Vanscheeuwijck, whose discerning eye and wellspring of knowledge and wisdom has been a constant role model in all facets of my scholarship and teaching. I’m grateful to committee members Professors Lori Kruckenberg, Margret Gries, Zachary Wallmark, and David Luebke, who have given me a lifetime of exciting additional questions, angles, and possibilities with which to continue my future work in this area. This dissertation stemmed from my own experiences as a performer, and I am indebted to the wonderful organ teachers I have had the privilege of studying under, including Dr. Timothy Albrecht at Emory University, Dr. Gregory Peterson and Professor Bill Kuhlman at Luther College, Dr. Barbara Baird at the University of Oregon, and Dr. Tom Hamilton. I am ever thankful for the unending support of my family, the Oregon musicology/Collier House Basement cohort, and especially my husband, Matt: I wrote mine- now you write yours. 6 To my students: past, present, and future. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. EXORDIUM ............................................................................................................ 13 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck ..................................................................................... 17 Listening in the Oude Kerk ................................................................................... 23 Status Quaestionis – Methodology ........................................................................ 27 2. RHETORIC IN THE TIME OF SWEELINCK ...................................................... 33 Amsterdam and the Oude Kerk in the Sixteenth Century ..................................... 35 The Calvinists and their Psalms ............................................................................. 44 Rhetoric and Rhetoricians ..................................................................................... 50 Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam ......................................................................... 54 Chambers of Rhetoric ............................................................................................ 56 Henry Peacham the Elder ...................................................................................... 58 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 61 3. SWEELINCK’S RHETORIC .................................................................................. 63 Musico-Rhetorical Figures .................................................................................... 65 Rhetoric of Predictability and Surprise ................................................................. 72 Forma Formans ...................................................................................................... 80 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 85 8 Chapter Page 4. RHETORIC AND PEDAGOGY ............................................................................. 88 Pastiche Partitas ..................................................................................................... 91 Compositions-Regeln ........................................................................................... 98 Playing by Example ............................................................................................... 102 Theory into Practice ............................................................................................... 105 5. CASE STUDIES ...................................................................................................... 108 Case Study 1: Fantasia Chromatica ....................................................................... 108 A word about temperament ............................................................................. 114 D# and the Supertonic entry ............................................................................ 116 Case Study 2: Psalm 140 ...................................................................................... 122 Sweelinck and the Psalms ................................................................................ 124 Embodied Variations ....................................................................................... 129 Predictability and Familiarity .......................................................................... 131 Surprise and Innovation ................................................................................... 132 Forma Formans ................................................................................................ 134 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 135 Case Study 3: The Echo Fantasia ......................................................................... 136 First This Way, Then That ............................................................................... 139 Embodying the Echo ....................................................................................... 140 Key Mechanics ................................................................................................ 142 Compass and Chromatic Range ....................................................................... 145 9 Chapter Page Situational Structure ........................................................................................ 147 Fixity vs. Mobility ........................................................................................... 148 Competing Muscle Groups .............................................................................. 149 Friction and the Release of Friction ................................................................ 150 Tuning & Temperament .................................................................................. 150 Decay ............................................................................................................. 154 Registration ...................................................................................................... 157 From Teacher to Student ................................................................................. 157 Forma Formans ............................................................................................... 159 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 159 6. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 162 Further Inquiry ....................................................................................................... 170 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 174 A. FANTASIA CHROMATICA, SwWV 258 ...................................................... 174 B. PSALM 140, SwWV 314 ................................................................................. 182 C. FANTASIA d4, SwWV 261 ............................................................................. 189 D. SAMUEL SCHEIDT – ECHO AD MANUALE DUPLEX ............................. 193 REFERENCES CITED ............................................................................................... 200 ADDITIONAL REFERENCES .................................................................................. 206 1 0 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Emanuel de Witte: Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, South Aisle to the East (1660) ............................................................................... 38 2. The Main and Transept Organs in the Amsterdam Oude Kerk today. .................. 43 3. Imitation of melodic line in Est-ce mars. .............................................................. 66 4. Pseaume 36 (Pseaumes, ii) & Psalm 36 (keyboard) .............................................. 70 5. Anabasis in Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 3 .................................................... 71 6. Anapestic figures as figura corta in Est-ce Mars .................................................. 74 7. Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ ............................................................................. 82 8. Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 7 ........................................................................ 95 9. Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 9 ........................................................................ 97 10. Psalm 140, Variation 1 .......................................................................................... 131 11. Psalm 140, Variation 4 .......................................................................................... 133 12. Components of a mechanical key action pipe organ ............................................. 143 13. Vertical orientation of a three-manual keyboard instrument ................................. 146 14. Map of the Oude Kerk ........................................................................................... 154 15. Close view of the main Niehoff organ in the Oude Kerk ...................................... 156 16. Portrait of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck ................................................................... 161 1 1 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Keyboard Students of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck ................................................. 19 2. Dutch-language Psalm Publications, 1539-1580. .................................................. 45 3. Est-ce Mars Text and Translation .......................................................................... 66 4. Typology of Predictability and Surprise ................................................................ 73 5. Forma Formans Structure of Ich ruf, zu dir ........................................................... 84 6. Variations and Respective Attributions in Allein Gott in der Höh ....................... 92 7. Sacred Keyboard Variations of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck .................................. 107 8. Pieter Dirksen’s explanation of three-part form in the Fantasia Chromatica ........ 111 9. Order of chromatic subject entries in Fantasia Chromatica .................................. 121 10. Stop list of the Main Organ ................................................................................... 155 11. Sweelinck’s Non-Fugal Fantasias ......................................................................... 161 1 2 CHAPTER 1 EXORDIUM When contemplating what constitutes a rhetorically informed musical performance, one would typically reflect upon several key considerations. Bruce Haynes, for example, considers “rhetorical music” an apt label for any piece of music composed before the nineteenth-century Romantic revolution,1 and an understanding of the tenets of classical rhetoric should be considered an essential parallel for the understanding of Western music from the Renaissance onward, if not earlier.2 The existence of rhetoric in music also diminished the divide amongst the Seven Liberal Arts. Rhetoric, part of the trivium, influencing music, which is part of the quadrivium, suggests a wholistic approach to learning and understanding that speaks well to the interconnectedness between disciplines sought by Greek and Latin culture, and later by the humanists as well. Any study of the subject of rhetoric, coined the “metalanguage of discourse in the West,”3 surely begins with Cicero’s five canons of rhetoric: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio, all firmly established by the Greeks, further codified by the Romans, and revived in the Renaissance as a central tenet of a humanist education. It should come as no surprise that the pervasive influence of rhetoric affected music as well. For musicians, the steps necessary for a well-constructed musical experience, be it notated or improvised, mirrored the 1 Bruce Haynes, The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-first Century (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 12. 2 Scholars in recent years have begun to account for rhetorical processes in music from the Middle Ages. For one compelling example, see Jordan Stokes, “In Search of Machaut’s Poietics Music and Rhetoric in Le Remede de Fortune,” Journal of Musicology 31, No. 4 (Fall 2014), 395-430. 3 Patrick McCreless, “Music and Rhetoric” in Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (New York: Cambridge Universy Press, 2002), 847. 1 3 steps toward a well-constructed speech or debate. The actor, preacher, and lawyer’s devising, creating, and producing of a rhetorically sound argument saw parallels in the musician’s perception of their own craft; as the orator does, so too does the musician. Such extrinsic connections, though perhaps considered novel today, were quite self-evident in their own time.4 When accounted for in early musicological discourse, the search for answers to what constituted a rhetorically informed music led scholars in the nineteenth century to assemble what they called a Figurenlehre, or doctrine of musical figures. Based on treatises and grounded in notated musical practices and poetic song texts, these figures served to translate and systematize musical ideas into words and affects, similar to Richard Wagner’s Leitmotives of their day, which regulated and governed music of the high Baroque era. As these views assumed a sort of orthodoxy through the mid-twentieth century, the notion of an input/output relationship between musical figure and extramusical affect led to several misplaced assumptions regarding musical devices that were otherwise commonplace. Layers of unintended meaning were sometimes ascribed to the slightest musical idea, note grouping, rhythm, or turn of phrase in an effort to develop a causal relationship between musical sign and abstract ideas. No composer’s work has been more subjected to such treatment than Johann Sebastian Bach’s, and scholarship has long sought the presence of intangible ideas such as faith and sin expressed musically in the notated 4 As a precursor to an understanding of the relationships between music and rhetoric, sixteenth-century writers often referred to musica poetica as a companion to musica theorica and musica pratica, aligning with the Aristotelian categories of the human mind (theoretical, practical, creative). The term is first found in Nikolaus Listenius’s Musica (1537). Three publications of Joachim Burmeister (1562-1629), including Hypomnematum musicae poeticae (1599), Musica autoschediastike (1601), and Musica Poetica (1606) build upon preexisting sixteenth-century references to describe musical events with rhetorical terms. Christoph Bernhard expands upon Burmeister’s lexicon of musico-rhetorical figures, but does so by returning to musical terms, creating a handbook for musicians to apply rhetorical principles. Though his figures are given Latin names, Bernhard is among the first to provide a text of musical rhetoric in the German vernacular. The beginning of the eighteenth century sees greater interest in Figurenlehre, and theorists such as Wolfgang Caspar Printz, Mauritius Vogt, and Johann Gottfried Walther writing on melodic figures capable of generating extrinsic meaning, while also fully integrating new Italian styles into their figures. See Patrick McCreless, “Music and Rhetoric.”. 1 4 works. Conceived originally as the manner in which music and its delivery were negotiated, rhetoric as a term became coopted to describe music as a grammar, or music as a system of semiotic relationships. Vocal music becomes low hanging fruit with such a system, with the text providing the key to the figures used: [sung text + rhetorical figure = affect]. Furthermore, what are we to make of rhetorically informed performances where a text is not present? Can one have rhetoric without words? “Rhetorically informed” implies an antonym – can a musical experience’s “rhetorical-ness” be measured or evaluated? Such conflations between the minute gesture and the meta-narrative in music have led some to question the historical validity of the rhetorical style of performance. Joshua Rifkin, for example, argues that Baroque treatises used rhetorical terms simply as a means of cataloguing common musical procedures that were otherwise self-evident. His synthesis of Joachim Burmeister’s 1606 Musica Poetica makes apparent that Rifkin sees rhetoric best suited as a descriptive discipline in music, rather than a prescriptive list of affects achieved through systematic musical means: Lacking a terminology of music, such as the technical terminology that we have, [Burmeister] simply goes to the sister discipline that already has a developed terminology for describing surface phenomena in a performance medium, and that is rhetoric…Rhetoric dealt with delivery, and with the shape of sentences in terms not of grammatical parts but of whether your repeat words for emphasis and so forth.5 The misuse of the term ultimately leads Rifkin to eschew the use of rhetoric as it describes musical elements, though he acknowledges that every performance has and needs a foundation in rhetoric both to be compelling and sympathetic to any historical ties. He cites 5 Bernard Sherman, Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 384. 1 5 particularly the use and importance of an understanding of rhetorical principles in composition but negates its importance to the performer and listener. Regarding the former, Rifkin sees rhetoric in performance as a byproduct of intuition: We can never know, of course, but I like to think that the best performers in those days did it intuitively. I really do not think that there was any conscious notion of this in performance. What theorists were saying about it, insofar as it had any applications to performance at all, was in a sense more descriptive: they were putting a magnifying glass to what happens in a good performance, just as the science of rhetoric was fundamentally putting a magnifying glass to what good orators did.6 For the performer of historical repertoire, the task is to recapture that which was once common knowledge and perform it in a convincing manner. The tools for this task, however, are much less apparent. As Rifkin explains, while a theoretical text can explain what happened in one single performance and attempt to distill those single events into a series of maxims to guide composition, such descriptive texts do little to explain long-term trends and patterns that may have existed across musical repertoires that cross national and stylistic boundaries, or how rhetorical performance becomes so second nature in a musician’s training. Furthermore, by negating the role of the listener in the rhetorical exchange of musical ideas, we risk a one-sided understanding of the role of performance as manifest of the culture from which it stemmed, losing the sense that music as a performative art exists as a series of feedback loops between composer and performer (if they are not one in the same) and the listener. 6 Ibid., 388. 1 6 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck This dissertation seeks to account for both the performer and the listener’s role in the rhetorical exchange of musical ideas as related to the keyboard works of Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, who assumed the role of principal organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam around 1577, when he was fifteen years old. His ascendency to such a position came in tandem with great disturbance in religious life in the Netherlands, and the role and status of the pipe organ in that upheaval was constantly tenuous. Sweelinck’s early tenure saw the dawn of the Dutch Eighty-Years War (or Dutch War of Independence, 1568–1648), when resentment over Spanish authority under Philip II mixed with religious tensions derived from the clashing of Spanish Catholicism with the many and various strands of the Protestant Reformation.7 The Alteratie of 1578 most affected the young Sweelinck, as the principal churches of Amsterdam shifted from Catholicism to Calvinism,8 forcing Catholic authorities out of the city, including the Oude Kerk’s former minister, Jacob Buyck, who played an important role in the young composer’s upbringing. The Calvinists viewed organs and organ playing as relics of the former Catholic rite, forbidding organ playing during the worship service well into the seventeenth century in Holland, and ordering the removal of all organs from churches. However, in Amsterdam, as in most Dutch cities, the municipal authorities still owned the church buildings and the pipe organs, many of which were newly acquired, and at great expense. In the decades 7 Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555-1590 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 8 Throughout this dissertation, “Calvinism” refers to the major branch of Protestantism that follows the forms of Christian practice and theological traditions of Jean Calvin and other sixteenth century reformers, realizing that the term itself was not in common use during this time. While it may have been common practice for the Roman Catholic church to name what it viewed as heresy after its founder, “Calvinism” was a term first used pejoratively by the Lutherans in the early 1550s, a designation Jean Calvin denounced. Though the label “Reformers” may be more commonplace, such a term also referred to followers of Jacobus Arminius in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century (known later as Remonstrants), not to mention the many Protestant traditions that emerged later. 1 7 that followed the Alteratie, the organ became for Dutch citizens as much a symbol of prosperity and innovation as a religious symbol, echoing many of the overarching sentiments of the Dutch Golden Age. Although the ecclesiastical duties of the early-career keyboardist and composer were limited only to that which concerned the unaccompanied singing of psalms, Sweelinck, like other Dutch organists, was retained as a municipal employee instead, subject to a different set of duties and working conditions that were ultimately more favorable, thus encouraging his long tenure of over forty years. As such, it is these same limits on his church-related functions that allowed time and opportunity to explore other significant musical endeavors particularly helpful to our understanding of a rhetorical keyboard language. Sweelinck’s pedagogical undertakings are perhaps his best-known accolade; his sphere of influence extends most notably to Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Scheidemann and eventually onwards to Dieterich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach, in addition to generations of students from the Netherlands. The students of the so-called North German School comprised the majority of Sweelinck’s students and were arguably the most renowned and successful. For much of the seventeenth century, four of Sweelinck’s former students; Jacob and Johann Praetorius, Heinrich Scheidemann, and Ulrich Cernitz were organists for the four principal evangelical churches in Hamburg, dominating the art of organ playing so much that Johann Mattheson would later describe Sweelinck as the hamburgischen Organistenmacher (creator of the Hamburg organists). Sweelinck’s compositional tools and theoretical writings are likewise well documented and grounded in variation and early fugal technique, both of which lend themselves well to rhetorical analysis. While we cannot know exactly the didactic methods that Sweelinck utilized, the music of his students offers several clues, as does the composer’s own 1 8 Compositions-Regeln, which places into practice many of the theories found in Gioseffo Zarlino’s Istitutioni Harmoniche, and which I will discuss in chapter three. Table 1. Keyboard Students of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Student Locations of significant posts David Aebel Lübeck Augustus Brücken Berlin Ulrich Cernitz Dömnitz Andreas Düben Stockholm Martin Düben Stockholm I. Habben Emden Peter Hasse Lübeck A. Janssen Emden Matthias Leder Danzig Jacob Praetorius II Hamburg Heinrich Scheidemann Hamburg Gottfried Scheidt Altenburg Samuel Scheidt Halle Melchior Schildt Hanover Paul Siefert Danzig Pieter Alewijnszoon de Vooys The Hague Jonas Zornicht Königsberg Scholarship also aptly accounts for Sweelinck’s vocal compositions, many of which are based on tunes from the Genevan Psalter, and the regular repertoire of Amsterdam’s Collegium Musicum, which Sweelinck conducted on occasion. Many of these compositions exist in autograph and greatly eclipsed the keyboard works in popularity in their time, though today the reverse is perhaps more often the case. Harald Vogel and Pieter Dirksen suggest that Sweelinck’s activities related to notation for keyboard instruments begins only during the last fifteen years of his life, long after the first choral works were in circulation.9 As I will discuss in chapter four, 9 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Complete Keyboard Works, Band 3: Variations on Chorales and Psalms, ed. Pieter Dirksen and Harald Vogel. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2004), 5. 1 9 Sweelinck’s keyboard music exhibits many distinct characteristics also found in his vocal music, and his attributed keyboard variations often make use of tunes from the Genevan Psalter, as well as Catholic hymns and Lutheran chorales, perhaps provided by his North German pupils. As such, I will show that the essence to understanding the rhetorical construction of Sweelinck’s keyboard works lies both in the idiomatic traits of the instruments themselves (and the enduring question over whether the organ or harpsichord is the instrument in question) and in the rhetorical processes native to oratory, especially mimesis, varietas, and a balance of surprise and predictability. Further, I will show that the above rhetorical processes were meant for aural affect and a kinesthetic bodily response as well. In addition to the Collegium Musicum, we know that Sweelinck also directed a consort of viols, played and composed for the lute, and served as consultant for other organ-building projects in churches in the Netherlands to round out his official duties. Concerning the keyboard works, however, part of the reason for the scholarly void stems from lack of empirical evidence: no performance records survive in print and no listeners’ accounts can verify the specific repertoire that constituted such events as the public recitals in the Oude Kerk. Sweelinck the performer was instead best known as an improviser, and it is likely that his keyboard playing was exclusively improvisatory for several decades.10 The well-known account of Willem Baudartius– the lone report of Sweelinck in performance–highlights his improvisatory prowess: As I recall, some good friends and I were at the house of my good friend master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, with more good friends, in the month of May; and he, having begun to play the harpsichord, continued until about midnight, playing among other 10 Lindsey Henricksen Rodgers discusses this extensively in her dissertation, The North German Chorale Fantasia: A Sermon Without Words (University of Oregon, 2013), which traces the genre of the Chorale Fantasia from Sweelinck through subsequent generations of North German organists. 2 0 things the tune ‘Den lustelicken Mey is nu in zijnen tijdt,’ which he, if I remember correctly, played in twenty-five different ways, first this way, then that.11 Although the keyboard works exist in manuscript form, all are in the hands of Sweelinck’s students and subsequent generations. No autograph has been found in the composer’s hand, but Pieter Dirksen’s monumental study has revealed the presence of Sweelinck’s keyboard works in over thirty sources,12 including the manuscript Lynar A113 which he finds particularly trustworthy and relatively comprehensive, and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book14 which is one of the few sources containing music by Sweelinck written during his lifetime, and which has received the greatest circulation. Sweelinck’s role as a musician straddled the divide between sacred and secular, beholden as he was to a position within a church yet under the employ of the municipal government. This is often cited in tandem with the speculation that Sweelinck’s responsibilities, like those of his counterparts in Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Leiden, included two daily organ performances, a forum not unlike the modern recital, and perhaps among the first such performances of their kind. Although this is widely assumed to have consisted of a significant part of Sweelinck’s duties, the lack of concrete detail concerning his recital duties has caused scholarship to merely mention this in passing, rather than considering the possibilities such regular events may have provided for the composer’s works to be heard in a regular forum. As I show in chapter three and magnify 11 Guillelmus Baudartius, Memoryen ofte cort verhael der gedenck-weerdichste so kerckelicke als wereltlicke gheschiedenissen van nederland…van den jaere 1603, tot in het iaer 1624…Het tweede-deel…Beginnende met he Jaer 1620, ende eyndigende in Novembri des Jaers 1624, (Arnhem, 1625), 163. 12 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Its Style, Significance and Influence (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1997), 645-668. 13 Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mus. MS Lynar A 1. 14 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Music MS 32 G 29. 2 1 further in the three case studies found in chapter five, several of Sweelinck’s notated works should be considered as plausible performance pieces in the Oude Kerk, even though they were likely notated well after the fact. The question of improvisation and notation as related to authenticity is likewise taken up by Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers, who acknowledges that Sweelinck’s notated scores serve a specific function, most likely related to his teaching endeavors and by proxy his performance activities: If one does believe, as Dirksen does, that Sweelinck composed only when he wrote something down, it follows that the music we can look at now should be his longest, most complex, most thoroughly worked-out compositions. That is to say, music that he could not possibly have improvised, or music that was an example of his best work for use by his students. I contend that Sweelinck may have viewed all the music he created at the keyboard as “compositions.” It is possible that he only decided to write it down around the turn of the seventeenth century, when he started training several students and needed to provide them with keyboard models to copy. If that is true, then Sweelinck’s “compositional activity” may have effectively begun when he was fifteen and first became the organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam.15 I agree with Rodgers here, that questions related to authenticity have essentially been exhausted by Dirksen and others as far as this repertoire is concerned. For purposes of the present study, it is of less interest who composed or notated what (though such questions are equally valid in other contexts). What is most significant is the use of specific rhetorical structures, varietas and variation form itself, and its effect on the listener. These notated examples, whether or not they chronicle a specific instance in performance, reflect how 15 Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers, “The North German Chorale Fantasia: A Sermon Without Words,” 13. 2 2 Sweelinck thought about his role as a rhetorical performer, attributes that brought these same students who would notate his music to study with him in the first place. William Porter also makes this distinction between improvisation and composition clear in his discussion of the first generation of Sweelinck students. He sees improvisation, or quasi-improvisation in this case, as a natural outgrowth of composition, and essentially one in the same: An organist studied composition; this, in addition to the study of technical aspects of performance, appears to have been the primary emphasis, for instance, in the pedagogy of Sweelinck. It was in the context of these compositional studies that the Hamburg organists learned the art of quasi-spontaneous music making.16 Porter finds no evidence to suggest that which was notated differed from that which was performed from memory, a process he calls a mente. There is, instead, close correspondence between music that was performed and music that was written down. When considering the musical activities of the Oude Kerk, including selections performed in secular recitals and occasional worship services, our chief clues to those repertories lie in the scores that remain. Listening in the Oude Kerk As stated earlier, I contend that the relationship between rhetorical composition, or rhetorically informed performance and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century audience has been lost in recent scholarship. To reclaim the status of the historical listener, my study will investigate the soundscape of Amsterdam during Sweelinck’s active years. Although several scholars have sought to reconstruct the historical soundscapes of centers of important musical sites during this era, such a study has not been done on the city of Amsterdam or the Oude Kerk. 16 William Porter, “Hamburg Organists in Lutheran Worship” in The Organ as a Mirror of its Time: North European Reflections, 1610-2000. Ed. Kerala Snyder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69. 2 3 Scholars in a range of disciplines – history, anthropology, musicology, and ethnomusicology included – have as late shown interest in the many and various dimensions of aural historical experience, moving beyond the privileged place of sight as primary mode of perception, and recognizing the importance of the relationship between sound and the spaces they travel through. As an interdisciplinary field, these dimensions are labeled as sound studies, with implications ranging from sound reproduction studies to sound activism. Ethnomusicology has revealed a sensory field dominated by the aural, as evident by Steven Feld’s groundbreaking work, Sound and Sentiment,17 as well as the same author’s ongoing work on the culture of bells as a global phenomenon used to shape the experience of space and time. Reinhard Strohm’s Music in Late Medieval Bruges18 provides a rich depiction of sounds and music as mediated by urban geography, and codified by fifteenth-century painting and iconography, and Niall Atkinson translates similar techniques to the Italian peninsula in The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture and Florentine Urban Life, 19 where he discovers particular conflations even in aural bell cultures between sacred and secular influences. Alain Corbin’s Village Bells20 discusses an auditory landscape in a sacred and secular contested space that bears many similarities to conditions in sixteenth century Amsterdam. Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s Soundscapes21 further demonstrates the fluidity of musical forms and timbres as they appear in 17 Stephen Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1982). 18 Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 19 Niall Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). 20 Alain Corbin, Village Bells: The Culture of the Senses in the 19th century French Countryside (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 21 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Soundscapes: Exploring music in a changing world (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015). 2 4 different cultural spaces, but the first use of soundscape as a term and tool is certainly credited to R. Murray Schafer, whose Tuning of the World22 is not only a siren against the effects of constant industrial sound, but also provides an important starting point for imagined historical soundscapes. Schafer’s typology of a soundscape calls for the identification of background “keynote” sounds of the natural environment, against which foreground “signals” are listened to consciously. Some of these signals become “soundmarks” which possess a distinctive function generally recognized by a community.23 In the ensuing chapters, I argue for the continuation of Schafer’s typology of keynote, signal, and soundmark into the rhetoric of musical composition itself. The resulting analysis will, hopefully, provide helpful insights into understanding the historical listener. When we listen to music from Sweelinck’s time today, listeners often have difficulty understanding what they are hearing without using frameworks and ideologies of Sweelinck’s contemporaries. Throughout this study, I argue that musical rhetoric, particularly untexted musical rhetoric in this case, is enacted upon the listener and experienced through processes of embodiment and principles of associations, an idea borrowed from Arnie Cox.24 Hearing an organ for secular purposes in a sacred space, particularly in the months and years immediately following the Alteratie in 1578, likely triggered significant consciousness of this cognitive dissonance between a timbral quality (the organ) that had for centuries been yoked to sacred and ritualized embodied experience, now presented in a space stripped by iconoclast measures that 22 R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, (Rochester VT: Destiny, 1977). 23 Ibid., 9-10. 24 See especially Arnie Cox, Music & Embodied Cognition: Listening, Moving, Feeling, & Thinking (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). 2 5 left in its wake the organ, the pulpit, but not much else to symbolize the earlier sanctified space. Because music is grounded in context, as Cox argues, the organ after 1578 is heard as a remnant of its former sacred context and reminds its listeners of the posture assumed under that context: standing to listen (unless status determined otherwise), listening quietly so as not to disrupt the flow of the mass, and noting and participating in the mimetic flow of one sung stanza giving way to the next improvisation in alternation. The improvisation of variations, heard after 1578 in a secular context, allows the listener to expand upon such associations, thus redefining that which constitutes “sacred.” In the years immediately following the Alteratie, Roman Catholic Hollanders were allowed to practice their religion only in discrete clandestine churches, known as schuilkerken.25 Visits to the old church turned municipal enclave would have been rare, or at the very least, significantly repurposed. As part of my sound study of the Oude Kerk, I will discuss organological records of the instruments in the space, including both pipe organs and the carillon. Given the long nave of the Oude Kerk, and the placement of the two organs (one speaking the length of the room, the other speaking crosswise), the sonic experience for the listener is profoundly different depending on which organ is used. A study of relevant sources of iconography, especially the paintings of Emanuel de Witte will also be further explained and described. Dirksen has discussed elements found in de Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam series from 1657-58 that contribute to 25 Municipal control over the activities of the schuilkerken waned over the course of the late-sixteenth and early- seventeenth centuries. By the mid-seventeenth century, reports exist of Roman Catholic congregations in Amsterdam worshipping in buildings with interiors bearing every resemblance to their former vestiges, but with exterior façades made to blend into the surrounding neighborhoods. Some had organs as well. See Benjamin Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” in The American Historical Review 107 4, October 2002), 1031-1064. 2 6 our understanding of the large and small Niehoff organs.26 The paintings of the Oude Kerk, as well as de Witte’s more famous paintings of other nearby Calvinist churches give us many clues that help to further establish the sonic culture surrounding these churches in their post-Alteratie functions. Significant also to my work will be a discussion of rhetoric as pedagogy, both in Sweelinck’s network of students and in our own teaching and performing of Sweelinck’s works today. Regarding the former, several examples exist of works in Sweelinck’s hand that bear some relationship to his students. These include a dedicatory canon given to Heinrich Scheidemann upon conclusion of his studies in 1614, and variation sets composed in collaboration with students Samuel Scheidt, Andreas Düben, and others. Rhetorical analysis of these pieces, as well as a case study on two contrasting Echo Fantasies by Sweelinck and Scheidt will show instances of the teacher modeling a specific rhetorical framework for the student. Particularly in the case of the echo fantasies, the use and manipulation of varietas is on full display. Status Quaestionis – Methodology Methodology for this dissertation includes the development of a new rhetorical framework for the analysis of the keyboard works of Sweelinck, with particular focus on three case studies. Central to this work is the application of principles set forth in Frits Noske’s “Forma Formans,” which suggests that musical form for Sweelinck should be thought of as a construct of temporal perception, rather than a spatial structure. Citing criticisms of Pirro, van 26 Pieter Dirksen, “A Rediscovered Painting by Emanuel deWitte” In Sweelinck Studies: Proceedings of the Sweelinck Symposium, edited by Pieter Dirksen (Utrecht: Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 2002), 219-224. 2 7 den Borren, and others that the music of Sweelinck lacked spontaneity and sensitivity, resulting in motoric performances devoid of understanding of formal structures, Noske differentiates between Forma formata, or form as it may be derived from the printed score – a byproduct of proportions and symmetry, with Forma formans, or the form forming itself. Although he applies this methodology to selected fantasias of Sweelinck, Noske stops short of suggestions for a rhetorically informed performance of the works, nor does he extend the approach to the remaining keyboard works, most notably the keyboard variations, cantus firmus works, and echo fantasies. I contend that the soundness of Frits Noske’s reasoning has not been fully realized in scholarly work on Sweelinck, and that the concept of Forma formans should be revisited with an eye to those who heard the works in question, and with application to a wider range of genres than Noske originally envisioned. Noske hypothesized that “structural factors come through as movement. They are time factors, affecting our experience of time. They cause psychic deviations from clock time and therefore may be marked as categories of tension.”27 When applied to his two case studies, variation sets on Engelse Fortune and Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, Noske maps progressions of tension and repose through the use of melodic and harmonic rhythm, figuration and ornamentation. While I challenge his assertion that such an analysis has no bearing on compositions with no melody,28 Noske’s methods of analysis speak volumes to the performative choices an interpreter of this repertoire might make. The case studies, particularly those on 27 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 7 No.1, (1976), 43- 62. 28 Ibid., 50. 2 8 Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica (SwWV 258) and Psalm 140 (FVB 144)29 lend themselves particularly well to an expansion on the ideas of Forma formans, particularly as it relates to variation form. A significant task of my study involves the translation of Noske’s analytical framework into the performance of the works in my case studies. Pieter Dirksen’s catalog in The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Its Style, Significance and Influence is the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date. His classification of the keyboard works by genre and by compositional technique are indicative of the possibilities of a substantial framework for understanding Sweelinck’s motivations for composing, and the manners in which the act of composition may have figured into the greater musical landscape. Although performing issues are occasionally addressed, Dirksen is far more interested in the sources themselves, often citing “authenticity problems” as justification for the inclusion or exclusion of certain pieces in his study. As such, he devotes considerable space to the transmission of Sweelinck’s compositions, which is both a necessary and difficult undertaking, as the manuscripts in question are separated from Sweelinck’s orbit by both time and space, and because none of the keyboard works come directly from the composer’s hand. Because transmission and authenticity are among his primary aims, these inform his performance suggestions as well. Certain manuscripts in certain hands suggest to Dirksen a preference for harpsichord or organ, for example, which is conflated further when mapped onto categories of genre or compositional device. Because Dirksen represents the latest in a line of scholars who attempt to systematize the preferred instrument for each of Sweelinck’s works along dichotomies including sacred/profane and free/fugal, I will contribute to this discourse with a return to the 29 Sweelinck’s works were first catalogued with SwWV numbers in Gustav Leonhardt, Alfons Annegarn, and Frits Noske, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Opera Omnia (Amsterdam, 1968, rev. 1974). Works found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book use that numbering system and typically do not have an SwWV listing. 2 9 biographical information that we do have, including Sweelinck’s position as a civic organist in secular surroundings which provides for much greater fluidity between all available keyboard instruments. Although Sweelinck rarely ventured far from Amsterdam, one noteworthy trip to Antwerp for the purposes of procuring a Ruckers harpsichord for the city indicates that more than the organ is possible. Maintaining rhetoric as the chief lens of inquiry, the three chapters that follow will progressively narrow in focus. Chapter two discusses the broader rhetorical landscape in sacred and secular contexts in Amsterdam during Sweelinck’s time. Given the dramatic shifts experienced in religious and devotional landscapes, a contextualization of prevailing rhetorical thought is necessary here. The writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Henry Peacham the Elder, and Matthijs de Castelein will be brought into a musical framework, as will the musical implications of the multilingual nature of rhetorical thought, as well as chambers of rhetoric. Chapter three deals exclusively with Sweelinck’s keyboard works and extensions and modifications to Frits Noske’s “Forma formans” framework that offer cues to the performer and the listener through the embodied experience of listening to variation forms in the Oude Kerk. Chapter four discusses rhetoric from the perspective of Sweelinck’s pedagogy, synthesizing cues found in the works of his students, as well as rhetorical foundations brought forth in previous chapters. The case studies presented in chapter five represent three contrasting rhetorical elements to be highlighted in Sweelinck’s oeuvre. First, the Fantasia Chromatica, SwWV 258 presents a number of rhetorical challenges to the performer. Pieter Dirksen has shown a tripartite rhetorical structure (exordium, medium, finis) in SwWV 258, and Derek Remeš has drawn connections between this rhetorical structure and the contrapuntal devices of stretto, suspension, and diminution. I argue that, while valid, these approaches do little to suggest a rhetorically informed 3 0 performance. My focus will be on the chromatic nature of the subject itself, in turn discussing issues of temperament and tuning not discussed in analyses by present scholarship. I will also discuss elements of language and vernacular, which I consider integral to a rhetorical understanding of Sweelinck’s Toccatas and Fantasies. Further, I suggest that SwWV 258 represents a working-out of the elements of counterpoint and fugue theory codified by Sweelinck in his Compositions-Regeln, and copied by subsequent generations of Hamburg students. Sweelinck’s Echo Fantasia in D dorian, SwWV 261 is one of eight such pieces, though Dirksen finds fault in use of the term as only three of the eight contain “echo” in the title or subtitle. Instead, he suggests that the use of echo as a technique is more closely associated with Sweelinck’s toccata style than even his usual approach to Fantasy writing. I suggest instead that the Echo be considered within the broader constructs of late Renaissance polyphony. The double-choir motet, certainly familiar to Sweelinck, though rarely employed in his choral compositions should be considered the model here, and primarily for pedagogical purposes. Further, a motivic and figural analysis will connect Sweelinck’s Echo Fantasia with that of one of his most prolific pupils, Samuel Scheidt, whose Echo for two manuals, SSWV 128 serves as an apt study for comparisons between teacher and student. The composer’s variation sets of dance tunes, psalms, and chorales are wellsprings of rhetorical content practically by definition, and Sweelinck’s keyboard setting of Psalm 140 is no exception. Although the chorale variations were undoubtedly meant for his Hamburg students, and the dance tunes may have found use in Sweelinck’s secular concerts, the context of his psalm tune variations is less apparent. Through analysis of rhetorical figures against the psalters present in Sweelinck’s time, I further substantiate the claim made by Julia Dokter that the 3 1 Marot/de Bèze psalter, which also forms the basis for Sweelinck’s vocal settings of the psalms, is the psalter represented in the keyboard variations of Psalm 140. Although I find the keyboard music of Sweelinck to be particularly compelling, both in its content and in its transparency – a single passage can be convincingly played in any number of ways – this dissertation is not ultimately about him, be it the Sweelinck of his time, or the Sweelinck we may have fictionalized because lack of credible information. Two decades after Rifkin’s remarks, and amid a new generation of performers looking to create meaningful renderings of the notated scores of Sweelinck and composers like him, my intention here is to explore the role of rhetoric as a through-line that connects religious, cultural, and discursive currents with actual sonic events in sound-producing spaces. In so doing, I will show that musicians intended to create performances that moved people physically as well as emotionally, with the intention of sparking corporeal and somatic responses. This greatly influences how a performer approaches this repertoire, but beyond Sweelinck, I imagine that the frameworks described here spark further inquiry into the question of a culturally informed performance practice that demands of its listeners a physical response. 3 2 CHAPTER 2 RHETORIC IN THE TIME OF SWEELINCK To understand Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s instrumental music, his motivations for its creation, and the rhetorical language he uses, we must first examine the unique culture from which his music stemmed. Although one would assume that such a significant shift from a highly ritualized Roman Catholic orientation to Calvinism would leave Sweelinck and other composer- organist families30 to languish without liturgical music to prepare, nothing could be further from the truth. While some still had light liturgical responsibilities, and although organists in many of the smaller parish churches were also the carillonneurs, most were met with a great bit more freedom in the city’s employ than they had in the service of the church. Free to compose as they pleased, composers in Sweelinck’s time and space produced volumes of compositions based on the psalms, in addition to works based on folk tunes, chansons, and a wide array of instrumental genres. Rapid societal transformations greatly influenced life in Amsterdam in the early years of Sweelinck’s career, which aligns well with the start of so-called “Dutch Golden Age,” of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Dutch trade, science, and military acumen were considered among the most advanced in Europe. The late sixteenth century saw tremendous flowering of the arts, resulting from a new ideological and religious framework, as well as an unprecedented influx of artists and artistic skills from south to north.31 The legacy of refined 30 Consider especially the families of Cornelis Schuyt (1557-1616) in Leiden, Sweelinck’s teacher Jan Willemszoon Lossy, (1552-1629) in Haarlem, and Anthoni Van Noordt (1619-1675) at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. 31 These were primarily refugees fleeing during the early years of the “Dutch Revolt” in the Low Countries, against the rule of Habsburg King Philip II of Spain. As a result of initial victories under the Spanish Crown, the Southern Provinces were wholly Catholic again by 1582, forcing the migration of the remaining Protestants towards the north. 3 3 artistic skills and training formerly centered in Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent now congealed itself in Amsterdam,32 whose population grew threefold during this time. In turn, the city exhibited exceptional tolerance for such wide-ranging skills, talents, and ideas, spread even faster by the advent of the printing press and rise of Amsterdam as a significant capital in printing trades. Any psychological tension caused by these changing concepts and agitated times was released not through trials and witch-hunts, but through argument and debate.33 The elevation and significance of such discourse naturally called not only upon Cicero, Quintilian, and other founding fathers of rhetorical delivery and oratory, but also on more recent ideas set forth by the Renaissance humanists, including Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and Henry Peacham the Elder. This chapter considers influences on Sweelinck’s musical language through three lenses. First, the Oude Kerk itself is perhaps the most obvious context for discussion, and I contend that an understanding of the characteristics, visual aspects, and the uses of the space inform many of Sweelinck’s musical choices, and has not received apt consideration in performance practice scholarship. Next, I address the Calvinist church as an institution for its contribution to rhetorical discourse during Sweelinck’s time. Occupying a civic position in a space that read as simultaneously sacred and secular meant that Sweelinck’s activities were increasingly varied, and that his accountability fluctuated between municipal and church authorities: a duality that becomes increasingly clear when considering the entirety of the composer’s known compositions. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of important rhetorical influences in 32 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806. New York: Oxford University Press (1995), 548. 33 Robert Tusler, The Organ Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Bilthoven: A.B. Creyghton (1958), 13. 3 4 this era, including the rise of chambers of rhetoric, with Amsterdam’s Eglantier as perhaps the most notable example. Forced closed during the Dutch revolt against the Spanish crown, the Eglantier reopened with a vengeance following the 1578 Alteratie, resulting in an outpouring of creative activity and rapid expansion of its membership. Amsterdam and the Oude Kerk in the Sixteenth Century Originally christened by the Bishop of Utrecht as the “Church of St Nicholas,” the oldest building in Amsterdam was first erected in wood in 1213 and rebuilt in stone in 1306. Through several expansion and renovation projects, the building has remained in its original location along the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in the district known as De Wallen, a short distance from the city’s shipping ports. For much of its history, the Oude Kerk has also been the tallest building in Amsterdam, its bell tower rising above the city, providing both constant visual and aural reminders of its presence to those on land and those approaching the important port city by water. Mention of a pipe organ in the sanctuary dates to at least 1450, and a second instrument was present prior to the arrival from Deventer of the new organist Pieter Swybbertszoon Sweeling, his wife Elske, and two-year-old son, Jan. Thus began a tenure of three successive generations of Sweelincks in the organist position, a dynasty spanning ninety years.34 The early years of the family’s time in Amsterdam were marked both by church conflict and personal tragedy. The elder Sweelinck was the organist at the time of the 1566 Beeldenstorm, when iconoclasts ransacked the Oude Kerk, destroying several relics and damaging others, and setting in motion the Alteratie that shifted the identity of the old church 34 Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck assumed his father’s position after his death in 1621, and held that position until his own death in 1652. The variations on the Lutheran Chorale, “Wie Schon Leuchtet uns der Morgenstern,” previously attributed to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck by Werner Breig and Alan Curtis, are believed to be the only surviving piece by Dirck. 3 5 from Roman Catholic to Calvinist twelve years later. Following Pieter’s death in 1573, Jan received instruction from the Catholic priest of the Oude Kerk, Jacob Buyck, until he resigned his position following the Alteratie.35 It is widely assumed that Jan assumed his father’s former duties by 1577, when he was fifteen years old, but the Alteratie in 1578 drastically changed his duties very early in his tenure. A faithful execution of the Roman Catholic liturgy, which would have required most all of Sweelinck’s available time and energy, gave way to a much simpler rhythm of a musician in the city’s employ, providing music for civic functions and evening organ performances. Later, teaching became a principal part of Sweelinck’s duties, and his pedagogy as manifested through the rhetoric of his compositions will be examined in a subsequent chapter. Jan Pieterszoon’s devotion to the Catholic faith remained evident. It is the account of a Roman Catholic, Cornelis Plemp, that tells us that Sweelinck was the organist of the Oude Kerk for forty-four years, meaning that he started his career as a Roman Catholic organist, if only for a year or less, but still well versed in the repertory of hymns, antiphons and responsories. Sweelinck’s later settings of keyboard variations on chant melodies Christe qui lux es et dies, Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris, and Puer nobis nascitur stood no chance of performance in a liturgical context, but give every reason to assume that Sweelinck’s loyalty to the Catholic faith remained with him throughout his life. Although a select few pipe organs did not fare as well in the 1566 purge, as evidenced by accounts of smashed instruments and rioters gleefully blowing stolen organ pipes in the streets, the cities clearly saw value in the instruments, and retained many of the church’s organists as 35 Jacob Buyck (1545-1599) received an office in the Amsterdam Oude Kerk during his studies at the University of Leuven from 1563-1573, provided he remained in the city for that period of time. He was therefore a constant figure during the young Sweelinck’s formative years. When Simon Alewijns, curate of the Oude Kerk, died in August 1573, Buyck assumed that position, but only remained for four and a half years. 3 6 municipal employees instead. Furthermore, attitudes clearly shifted by the seventeenth century, as evidenced by the immediate repair and expansion of the nearby Neuwe Kerk’s pipe organ, after sustaining significant damage in a fire in 1645.36 Caspar van Baerle, professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the Amsterdam Athenaeum, eulogized that pipe organ’s demise in the poem In Organa Exusta (On the Burnt Organ), which identifies the fire as the work of Vulcan, God of Fire in Roman mythology, but calls on Jubal, the first biblical musician to restore the lost instrument: The organ that so often sung the praise of God, and with sacred songs Delighted so many of the faithful, falls in pieces to the ground. The uppermost parts damage the undermost, one part destroys the other. In a short instant everything is ruined. The pipework has been harmed by fire, the beautiful pipes have been lost in flames, The parts that sounded in their assigned position, are now silent. The rage of Vulcan flickers up to the wonderful pipes, And makes the mouths, which were apt for a hundred voices, melt. He mingles all the sounds and mixes them with barbarous sounds, He takes away the art from the material, the choleric one. Jubal, bring back the familiar songs, bring back the numerous tongues. Make the venerable metal sound again for us. Then God and the divine will please more in the churches. Sacred matters too require decent pleasures.37 Van Baerle’s opening lines are most instructive here. That the organ had not been an instrument charged with the leadership of worship in some time is immaterial to him. 36 Sara Rachel Bordeaux, “Emanuel de Witte’s Sermon Paintings: Sight, Sound, and Spirituality,” PhD diss., (University of Delaware, 2014), 300-304. 37 Caspar van Baerle, Poematum pars II, elegiarum et miscellanearum carminum (Amsterdam: Ioannes Blaeu, 1655), 515. Quoted in The Profusion of Heaven: The organs of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, ed. Henk Verhoef (Zutphen: Walburg, 2005), 18. Translated from Latin by Roger van Dijk. 3 7 Personifying the instrument as the singer of sacred songs, van Baerle calls upon the organ’s significance as an instrument of worship, despite never having heard the instrument in that capacity in Amsterdam. That the instrument continued to function as a moniker of its former sacred self even in its current secular state indicates that listeners brought particular associations and experiences to the auditory experience, even if not raised directly in a sacred tradition that centered the pipe organ as an instrument of liturgical significance. It is perhaps intriguing that Dutch Catholics continued to live, work, and recreate in much the same places as they did before the coming of Calvinism to the region and rise of a Protestant magistrate in Amsterdam. On a regular day, Catholics still interacted with the same churches and chapels where they once worshipped. The buildings had been desacralized and converted to uses deemed suitable for a Protestant society, earning the Oude Kerk its current moniker as “Amsterdam’s Living Room.” Several paintings, most notably those of Emanuel deWitte, depict the Oude Kerk, like many former Catholic spaces, as centers of trade, municipal business, and conversation, often beneath the shadow of a large pipe organ. Figure 1. Emanuel de Witte: Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, South Aisle to the East (1660); Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart 3 8 From deWitte’s paintings, we glean a strong understanding of the characteristics of the musical space, all of which will be helpful in determining the rhetorical characteristics of the music making that happened there. Although deWitte painted the Oude Kerk several times, his 1660 rendering, Interior of the Oude Kerk at Amsterdam: South Aisle to the East gives a cursory look at the visual elements from which we can reconstruct the aural landscape. It is important first to acknowledge the inconsistencies between the painting and the true orientation of the building. DeWitte’s paintings, like many painting in the Dutch tradition of church landscapes, rely on a juxtaposition of real and imagined elements, what art historian Walter Liedtke calls a “realistic imaginary.”38 For example, the placement of the pipe organs themselves are altered in this painting. The pulpit and small organ, though clearly recognizable as belonging in the Oude Kerk, are misplaced. The large organ, mostly hidden from view save for its cover in the upper left corner, normally speaks into the long axis of the sanctuary. That deWitte felt compelled to include the organ, misplaced as it was, indicates that its presence in the space was particularly significant, and that it had a particular mark of some sort on the space, be it merely visual, or aural. The icon on the epitaph at the foreground, a depiction of Christ with a crown of thorns on a cloth evokes the Passion story of Veronica, who wiped the tears, sweat, and blood from Christ’s face at his crucifixion, the result leaving a perfect imprint of the facial features stained on the cloth. The cloth, known as the Vera Icon, was one of the most significant relics of the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and one of the first images to be given indulgence functions in the thirteenth century. The value of those indulgences continued to grow, and eventually replicas 38 See esp. Ch. 2 in Walter Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1982). 3 9 and representations of the Vera Icon were granted the same status. As such, paintings and prints of this image were in common circulation, and a number of these were discovered in the restoration of the Oude Kerk in the 1970s, though it is unclear whether de Witte knew of the existence of these specific images or not. When the Calvinists assumed control of the town council of Amsterdam in 1578, civic authorities hired painters to cover the wall and vault paintings as their presence would be out of fashion and greatly distracting in the Reformed congregation.39 In his book, The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre offers some insights into the placement of the Vera Icon and its larger field of representation. “In space, what came earlier continues to underpin what follows.”40 A place’s history neither fully disappears or leaves mere traces but instead continues to actively impact and inform present time and space. This also explains the rough traces of a ship, which appear etched into the ceiling at the upper right. Consecrated in the name of St. Nicholas, the maritime patron saint, the Oude Kerk has long identified itself with the sea, sailors, and ships. At the time of its consecration, the bell tower was amongst the tallest structures in Amsterdam, and the sounds of its carillon bells were easily heard in the shipping harbor. The ceiling of Estonian oak, which de Witte has eliminated in this drawing, also serves as a present reminder to that long history, while also linking the Oude Kerk to the enduring history of church ceilings as portrayals of an inverted ship’s hull. In addition to its connection to Rome, the Vera Icon calls to mind the Oude Kerk’s privileged place as a pilgrimage site of its own. The remains of the so-called “Miracle at Amsterdam” were kept in the 39 Angela Vanhaelen, “Iconoclasm and the Creation of Images in Emanuel de Witte's ‘Old Church in Amsterdam’” in The Art Bulletin (87/2, June 2005), 249-264. 40 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, translated by D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 229. 4 0 Oude Kerk and were a regular object of veneration and pilgrimage before they were removed during the Alteration in 1578.41 Prohibited thereafter from observing the March 12 feast day of the miracle in the open, believers instead processed along a route between the major churches and miracle sites in silence, a practice known now as the Stille Omgang, or Silent Walk. This act of walking and maintaining constant motion found a home inside the Oude Kerk walls as well. In Amsterdam, as in most large Dutch cities, church organs now found use as a recital instrument, and precedent for municipal control of the instruments themselves predates the Dutch Reformation. Even though Sweelinck’s exact duties to the Oude Kerk remain elusive, we know that the recitals required of organists elsewhere in Holland were timed to coincide with the arrival and departure of the congregations for worship. Given the municipal nature of the Oude Kerk, however, another forum for these performances is possible:42 Presumably, however, [Sweelinck] enjoyed his service not only to the Christian community in its worship service, but also to the bourgeoisie in its walk. For every evening there was a sort of slipper parade in the Oude Kerk, and then the small organ was played for about an hour to the amusement of the walkers; its use lasted until the end of the seventeenth century.43 41 The Miracle at Amsterdam celebrates the occasion in 1345 of an Oude Kerk priest visiting a dying man to administer last rites. Upon being served holy communion, the man vomited the host, and it was swept into the fire. The next morning, the host was found fully intact. Viewed as a sign from God, the host was brought to the Oude Kerk twice, but on each occasion miraculously reappeared at the home of the man. On the third attempt, it was paraded through the streets in procession. That procession route became part of the Stille Omgang observations that followed after the Alteration and continue to present day. 42 Johannes Ter Gouw, De oude tijd: geschiedenis, maatschappelijk en huiselijk leven, monumenten, volkseigenaardigheden, overleveringen, kunst, nijverheid, gebruiken, kleeding, volksverhalen, spreekwoorden, liedjes uit Noord- en Zuid-Nederland, Volume 5 (Haarlem: A.C. Kruseman, 1873), 216. 43 Denkelijk echter genoot hij bij zijn niet enkel zijne dienst te bewijzen aan de christelijke gemeente bij hare godsdienstoefening maar ook aan de burgerij bij hare wandeling. Er was namelijk alle avonden een soort van pantoffelparade in de Oude Kerk, en dan wert tot vermaak der wandelaars omtrent eenuur lang op et kleyne orgel gespeelt; - welk gebruik geduurd heeft tot ot einde der 17e eeuw. 4 1 If Ter Gouw’s account is correct, listeners to the organ music in the Oude Kerk, like those recalling the famed pilgrimages of the building’s Roman Catholic days, would have experienced the music of the organ while in motion. In contexts where the organist’s roles are better codified, the playing of the organ while worshippers are arriving and departing is also a regular occurrence, if not an object of consternation amongst the clerics.44 The implications of such a possibility move both ways. For the listener, this allows for a sonic experience that takes full advantage of the organ construction principle of Werkprincip, where each of the divisions (manuals and pedals) of the organ exists as a separately enclosed case – perhaps best thought of as several small independent organs comprising one large instrument. Sound from each division, or section of the organ would become more directionally-focused, and heard through different lenses of diffusion, enunciation, and reverberation as the listener moved throughout the room. Both organs in the Oude Kerk are in balconies above the listeners, making it possible also to hear the instruments from behind and beneath. 44 Henry A. Bruinsma, “The Organ Controversy in the Netherlands to 1640,” Journal of the American Musicological Society (7/3, 1954) 205-212. 4 2 Figure 2. The Main and Transept Organs in the Amsterdam Oude Kerk today45 From the perspective of the performer in the Oude Kerk, this allows us to reimagine Sweelinck’s music as though it was destined to be heard by listeners in motion from its conception. Implications for performance practice are certainly significant, namely decisions related to tactus and tempo. This also adds another dimension to Noske’s Forma formans. How does the body in motion react to changes in time structure that happen outside the framework of meter? When subjected to alterations in time perception, as Noske asserts that Sweelinck does as part of his wordless rhetoric, how is this manifested in the moving body of the listener? These observations bear great significance to our understanding of a rhetoric without words. Without a text with which to apply rhetorical principles, we may instead rely on a series of musical gestures and cues designed to mimic a prosodic delivery, even in the absence of 45 The location and scope of the organs in the Oude Kerk have been preserved from Sweelinck’s time, though the present main organ was installed by Christian Vater in 1724-6, and the transept organ by Jürgen Ahrend in 1964-65. By comparing the above images to their locations in the Oude Kerk (see figure 14, page 155) it is clear that the smaller organ sounds in such a direction as to easily be experienced from behind. 4 3 language. I contend that a rhetorical performance also needs to resituate the listener at the center of a sonic experience. As such, it behooves one interested in delivering a rhetorical performance of the works of Sweelinck to understand the manner in which these works were heard in their original context, and how they may have born relation to the rhetorical exchange of ideas in their own time and space. The Calvinists and their Psalms Calvinist thought reached Amsterdam far ahead of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, but norms related to language and rhetoric were by no means settled before 1578, when Sweelinck found himself suddenly at the service of a Calvinist congregation. Although the Calvinists were worshipping openly in Amsterdam after 1566, language problems were twofold. On the one hand, the mechanics of the spoken language of the worship service itself had yet to be determined, as well as the means by which significant confessional texts, mostly in French and Latin, were translated. On the other hand, the vernacular language of Calvinism, with its intellectual center in Geneva, was French, but a large portion of Calvinists in the region spoke only Dutch.46 Calvinism in Amsterdam was from its start a multilingual affair, and the early Dutch psalters are indicative of some of the ensuing challenges that resulted. 46 Alisa van de Haar, The Golden Mean of Languages: Forging Dutch and French in the Early Modern Low Countries (1540-1620), (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 194. 4 4 Table 2. Dutch-language Psalm Publications, 1539-158047 Year Title Author 1539 Deuoot ende profitelijck boecxken Simon Cock 1540 Souterliedekens Attr. Willem van Zuylen van Nyevelt 1551 Vyf-en-twintig Psalmen Jan Utenhove 1561 Hondert Psalmens Davids Jan Utenhove 1566 De Psalmens David Petrus Datheen (Daeten, Dates, Dathenius) 1566 De Psalmen Davids Jan Utenhove 1580 Het Boeck der Psalmens Davids. Phillips Van Marnix Alisa van de Haar discusses the two prevailing schools of translation in her explanation of Philips of Marnix, whose assimilation of the translation programs of Datheen and Utenhove made his work most influential in countering the Catholic reliance on Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and rejection of the vernacular: Marnix’s 1580 psalm translation built upon the work of two earlier Dutch versions of the French psalter: those by Jan Utenhove (1566) and Petrus Datheen (1566). Utenhove tried to create unity among Dutch-speaking Calvinists by attempting to write in a universal, regularized form of Dutch. Datheen focused, rather, on following the formal features of the French Calvinist psalm book, the so-called Genevan psalter, to ensure that Dutch Calvinists could unite in singing with their francophone coreligionists. Although she offers minimal commentary on music in her study, van de Haar highlights a number of significant factors contributing to a musical rhetoric. The multilingualism of the region, with Latin dominating scholastic arenas and various dialects of French and Dutch in the vernacular coalesced under the unique circumstances both of the Dutch Golden Age itself, and the rise of Calvinism as the dominant, yet largely tolerant religion. For a composer to react to 47 Gijsbert Siertsema, “Four Psalm Translations in the Low countries, 1539-1600, and their European context,” in From Revolt to Riches: Culture & History of the Low Countries, 1500-1700, ed. Theo Hermans and Reinier Salverda (London: UCL Press, 2017), 35-45. 4 5 this dichotomy musically, a keen understanding of both the scholastic and vernacular worlds was paramount, and with it the acumen to know when to employ which. It is worth noting here that the tradition of the Dutch-language Psalter predates not only those of the three mentioned translators, but also the Reformation in the Netherlands and Marot and Bèze’s Genevan Psalter of 1562. The Souterliedekens, published in Antwerp in 1540, were used not only in the forbidden meetings of Dutch Protestants, but taken to England for services of the London Dutch Church. The melodies, typically folk songs from the Low Countries as well as from France and German-speaking lands, appear in mensural notation paired with their appointed psalms.48 After the Dutch Reformation, vernacular psalm singing developed into a marker of Calvinist confession, giving way to a host of unique translation problems. For the now prevailing religious sect in the Netherlands, when it came to such translations the stakes were certainly higher: psalm translations had Latin, Greek, or Hebrew texts that needed to be respected, but the verses themselves also needed to fit a particular alternation of long and short poetic feet if the Dutch text was to be properly affixed to a coordinating and preexisting psalter melody. For principle translators of the Genevan psalter into Dutch – Utenhove, Datheen, and Marnix, an additional language needed to be taken into consideration. French was the prevailing language in much rhetorical discourse in Amsterdam in the sixteenth century, and much of the newly transplanted Calvinist community arrived from French-speaking lands. Van de Haar frames the challenges the psalm translators faced within the larger polemic around a Dutch lexicon. The 48 Attributed to Utrecht nobleman Willem van Zuylen van Nyevelt, secular songs were converted to sacred contrafacta in the Souterliedekens in an effort to persuade the youth from singing their ‘silly, lascivious songs.’ They were reprinted over twenty times between 1540 and 1613 and set polyphonically by many composers, most famously Clemens non Papa, and his pupil Gherardus Mes. See Louis Peter Grijp, “The Souterliedekens by Gherardus Mes (1561)” in From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders, edited by Albert Clement and Eric Jas, (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1994), 245-254. 4 6 challenge of creating a translation that unified the various dialects and blends of French and Dutch, and the choice to use or jettison loanwords from other languages often meant psalm translations underwent several editions as the quest for a single vernacular played itself out in rhetorical chambers and public discourse. The Utenhove Psalter makes use of a form of Dutch specifically designed for translation of the Greek New Testament, which first appeared in Emden in 1556.49 Elements of a wide array of dialects were combined so that every speaker could understand it with as little deciphering as necessary. “We have moderated our writing so that it may be of use and service for all of the Low Countries.”50 This mixed vocabulary meant that, while there were familiar words for everyone, each reader also had unfamiliar words to translate. This forced the addition of an explanatory word list to the translation, a list that contains words from the eastern dialects and loanwords from German which were unknown to Dutch speakers from the south and west. Even if several competing translations existed by the time Sweelinck found himself serving a Calvinist context, Julia Dokter claims that Sweelinck made at least occasional use of the first of the three principal psalters, that of Jan Utenhove, in setting his keyboard works. This is in spite of the presence of a slightly later and more widely accepted setting by Peter Datheen in 1566, which was in common use in congregations. She makes this claim on the presence of a set of keyboard variations on Wir Glauben all in einem Gott in Sweelinck’s oeuvre. Because the text matches that of Martin Luther’s German versification of the creed, scholars tend to group this setting with other settings of chorales that were likely used for teaching pieces with students 49 Jan Utenhove, Het Nieuwe Testament, dat is, Het nieuwe Verbond onzes Heeren Iesu Christi, Na der Grieckscher waerheyt in Nederlandsche sprake grondlick end trauwlick ouerghezett (Emden: Gillis van der Erven, 1556). 50 “Zo hebben wy onze schrijuen alzo ghematight, dat het allen den Nederlanderen zal moghen nut ende dienstigh zijn”. 4 7 from Hamburg and other Lutheran circles. While one would assume that the original source material used by Sweelinck is derived from Luther’s chorale, it is Utenhove’s Dutch translation of the German used here. The text appears in an appendix to Utenhove’s 1551 psalter, where we also find an additional verse in Dutch, which brings the total number of verses in the psalter and variations in Sweelinck’s setting to four. Having arrived at this versification schematic for Wir Glauben, Dokter devotes much of her study to the documentation of instances of music-text relationships.51 Her interest lies in rhetorical gestures at a smaller scale, highlighting instances where the musical decisions Sweelinck made bring about an illuminated sense of the text. While attention to this level of detail is certainly illuminating and perhaps instructive, one runs the risk of overstating the composer’s intentions through these exercises. In her examination of Sweelinck’s setting of Psalm 116, for example, she identifies a figure that she associates with “a sense of trepidation…but also of joy.” In fact, the rhythmic figure she identifies here is found countless times in Sweelinck’s repertory, likely representative of a wide array of affects. This dactylic rhythm can also be described simply as a devise of variatio which aids in the smooth movement from one harmonic idea to the next. As Noske shows in Forma formans, rhythms such as this comprise a wide swath of acceleration techniques. “Although movement actually remains stable, the padding of the 51 Julia Dokter, “Musical Rhetoric in Sweelinck’s Sacred Keyboard Variations,” in Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 61 (No 1-2, 2011), 50-51. 4 8 melodic skeleton with eighth and sixteenth notes gives the impression of rhythmic quickening.”52 The figures Dokter cites are largely derived from Joachim Burmeister’s Musica Poetica, thus belonging more to the generation after Sweelinck. Nonetheless, her discovery of the matched versification of the Sweelinck variations and Utenhove Psalters is significant in helping to understand the various tools the composer had at his disposal. While Sweelinck’s keyboard psalms may have had a Dutch orientation, and, if considering Dokter’s analysis, a Dutch-speaking audience well acquainted with the psalms themselves, it is perhaps puzzling that Sweelinck’s vocal compositions on the psalms (and nearly all of his vocal works for that matter) are in French. Frits Noske offers two possible reasons that the psalm settings were not in Dutch. First, he suggests that Sweelinck associated with a social class which spoke and wrote French on regular occasions, if only to distinguish itself from the lower social strata. This is weakened, however, by the fact that three sanctioned Dutch Psalters had been published by 1568, including the Datheen psalter referenced earlier. Further, the foundation of the Dutch Republic called for the use of a language common to all social strata, suggesting that Sweelinck had a very specific audience in mind when choosing French over Dutch. Book II is dedicated to eight “philomuses en la tres renommee ville d’Amstelredam’”53 who may have been members of the Collegium Musicum. Despite the fact that this dedication suggests that the Collegium sang Sweelinck’s works on occasion, Bernard van Sigtenhorst Meyer posits that these pieces were performed in the church, if not also at home, on the merits of their sound in a capacious building like the Oude Kerk. Noske agrees with this, adding that 52 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” 52. 53 Frits Noske, Sweelinck (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 64. 4 9 Claude Goudimel’s homophonic psalter appeared in Leiden in 1620, in an edition recommended by Sweelinck in the printer’s forword, and with Datheen’s Psalter texts underlaid.54 However, there is no evidence to suggest that the Calvinist service in Amsterdam was a multilingual affair. Instead, I suggest the dedication points to performances by groups of amateur musicians who preferred French over Dutch and likely performed in venues beyond the Calvinist service, given the strong preference for Datheen’s Dutch-language psalters in Calvinist worship through the eighteenth century.55 Rhetoric and Rhetoricians The relationship between music and rhetoric has long been a symbiotic one, each providing terminology for effects and properties that are readily transferrable between the two disciplines. This transference is easily seen in Ernst Gombrich’s metaphor for classical rhetoric: “Language…is an organon, an instrument which offers its master a variety of different scales and stops.”56 The two disciplines have long exchanged techniques and effects, and the boundary between the two is highly permeable. It would stand to reason, then, that the conditions would be right for an outpouring of new ideas on both fronts as late-Renaissance Humanism met the unique conditions of the early Dutch Golden Age. 54 Ibid., 65. 55 Psalm singing outside of formal congregational worship was commonplace in France, and increasingly so in outlying French-speaking areas as the defining activity of the protestant insurgency. In certain contexts the sound of psalm singing was analogous to the sound of bells – alerting passersby to either retreat or join the fray. See Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60-61. 56 Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 2nd ed (London, 1962), 317. 5 0 Activity amongst the rhetoricians and chambers of rhetoric57 met an increased interest in the use and manipulation of language in Sweelinck’s age. Fueled largely by the desire for reconciliation following the rebellion and reformation of 1578, when Amsterdam became the last city in Holland to transfer its loyalties from the Spanish crown and Roman Catholic faith, to the Prince of Orange and the Calvinist faith, prominent thinkers and writers turned to the works of classic Latin rhetoricians, as well as contemporary English and Dutch writings, including those of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Henry Peacham the Elder. Coinciding with an interest in classical rhetoric, an increasing fascination in what the French poets called the “seconde rhétorique” drove many of the activities of the new rhetoricians, who coalesced into systems of guilds and chambers in far greater numbers after 1578. This was a rhetoric, not so much interested in argumentative and stylistic means of persuasion, but built instead on sonic effects produced by rhythm, rhyme, stanzaic forms, resonant words, and a myriad of biblical, mythological, and historical allusions, typically steeped in allegory. Some of the earliest Dutch rhetorical texts demonstrate this shift in thinking, and indicate a clear understanding of the changes taking place. Jan van Mussem’s Rhetorica of 1553 reads much like a humanist textbook, borrowing directly from Cicero, Quintilian, and Erasmus.58 According to Marijke Spies, this first rhetorical textbook in the vernacular seems to take aim at the chambers of rhetoric, imploring them to quit indulging in beautiful rhymes for the sake of 57 The chambers of rhetoric, or Rederijkerskamers were amateur literary societies particularly active in the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Members competed both within and between chambers in areas of poetry and drama, and partook in public festivals and religious processions. The Eglantine Rose, or De Eglantier, first formed in 1517 and was the most popular of the Amsterdam Rederijkerskamers. 58 Jan F. Vanderheyden, “Jan van Mussem I/II,” Verslagen & mededelingen der koninklijke Vlaamse academie voor taal- & letterkunde (1952), 937-944. 5 1 clarity, and singling out those who limit their understanding of rhetoric to rhyme.59 While it appears that van Mussem decries the state of style over substance, the distinction had already been made. In French literature, versification (and with it rhyme and rhythm) had already been split from the medieval artes poeticae at the end of the fourteenth century. Writing in 1493, Jean Molinier makes clear the art of versification as a natural form of music.60 Vernacular rhetoric is a kind of music called rhythmic, which contains a certain number of syllables with no smoothness of consonance, and cannot be done without diction, diction without syllables, syllables without letters.61 Whether speaking of oratory, poetry, or music, the seconde rhétorique was most concerned with vocables and elision, rhymes, and different forms of verse and strophe,62 beginning with bare sounds at the syllabic level, and progressing to more nuanced levels of organization. Musicians, therefore, likely viewed the craft of musicking as a natural outgrowth of the progression from raw sounds through processes of organization and formal structures. The seconde rhétorique arrived in Holland most succinctly through De const van rhetoriken (1555) by Matthijs de Castelein, who brings many of the ideas of versification to the Dutch vernacular. De Castelein cites Molinier as a primary inspiration, but differs in his approach with his own text, essentially creating a handbook for the modern poet that unapologetically focuses exclusively on elocution: 59 Marijke Spies, “Developments in Sixteenth-Century Dutch Poetics: From ‘Rhetoric’ to ‘Renaissance’.” In Rhetoric, Rhetoricians and Poets: Studies in Renaissance Poetry and Poetics, ed. Henk Duits and Ton van Strien, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 41. 60 Ernest Langlois (ed), Receuil d’arts de seconde rhétorique (Paris, 1902). 61 Rethorique vulgaire est une espece de musique appelée rithmique, laquele contient certain nombre de sillabes avec aucune suavité de equisonance, et ne se peut faire sans diction, ne diction sans sillabes, ne sillabe sans lettres. 62 Marijke Spies, “Developments in Sixteenth-Century Dutch Poetics,” 41. 5 2 Here you will find no exordiums, positions, divisions, narrations, argumentations, egressions, signs, partitions, ornations, examples, amplifications, sententiae, conclusions or imitations.63 For the poet and orator, versification, particularly when metrical declamation was concerned, brought music in close harmony with the other rhetorical arts. Similarly, musicians found in the second rhetoric of Castelein much of the same varietas called for by Erasmus, as well as new ways of thinking about organizational structures of musical ideas, phrases and forms. The activities of the chambers and societies matched the ideals of this second rhetoric, distinguished from the first rhetoric of classic Greek and Latin texts that focused more on debate and discursive argumentation.64 Poetry and plays were common creative exercise in these societies, as well as contributions to festive functions, including religious processions. The pairing of these activities and ideals with music seems perfectly natural, both in theoretical writing about music, and using music for practical rhetorical effect. Chambers of rhetoric, for example, published songbooks for general consumption,65 and pipers and drummers accompanied processions in competitions and city festivals. In a similar vein, classic rhetorical ideas found their way into musical composition as well. The writings of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam show that principles of varietas found in classic oratory and magnified further through versification and the second rhetoric exist in Sweelinck’s keyboard works as well. The writings of Henry Peacham the Elder, often overlooked in discussions of musical rhetoric, show us that proper rhetoric, when executed correctly, enacts a somatic response in the listener. This 63 Matthijs de Castelein, De const van rhetoriken, (Ghent: Jan Cauweel, 1555), 55. 64 Ibid., 37-50. 65 De Eglantier, for example, published the songbook Den Nieuwen Lusthof in 1602. 5 3 suggests that, while music could be expected to move the passions of those who heard it, composers and performers in Sweelinck’s time understood music’s power to physically move the listener as well. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam Erasmus managed to remain relevant in Amsterdam’s rhetorical scene for decades after his death in 1536. He was not a professional rhetorician, nor do any of his writings constitute a treatise on rhetoric. Instead, he viewed the end of education as the development of eloquence, an idea borrowed from Quintilian.66 His On Copia of Words and Ideas, published in Latin in 1512, was reissued several times and enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe.67 The eloquence cultivated here comes in the form of variety and variation, and the abundance of possible ways a single idea can be restated under differing circumstances. For rhetoricians attuned to the previously mentioned “second rhetoric,” the early writings of Erasmus were likely well received. His commentary on embellishment and amplification is augmented not only by their written affect, but by their spoken one as well, indicating a clear understanding of the manner in which the sounds of words themselves may achieve a desired effect. The acquisition of the skill of copia also bears similarities to music, particularly Sweelinck’s own pedagogy, as I will discuss in a subsequent chapter. Erasmus recommends that the students of copia compile their own techniques and catalogue them: …so the student, like the industrious bee, will fly about through all the authors’ gardens and light on every small flower of rhetoric, everywhere collecting some honey that he 66 Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 120. 67 “De duplici copia verborum ac rerum.” 5 4 may carry off to his own hive. Since there is such a great abundance of subjects in these, a complete gleaning is not possible, and he will be sure to select the most important and adapt them to the pattern of his work.68 Sweelinck’s own Compositions-Regeln follows much the same format as is suggested here. In fact, one could also consider Sweelinck’s entire keyboard oeuvre as a metaphor for the type of anthologizing Erasmus advocates here. Sweelinck’s output of notated pieces as we know it today never leans too heavily on one genre, style, or influence. Toccatas, Fantasies, chorale, chant, secular and psalm variations are all relatively balanced. Though Erasmus does not speak directly to music in On Copia, his opinions on music both inside and outside the realm of the church were well known.69 For him, the purpose and function of rhetoric and music are similar, because both are concerned with the effective deployment of ideas and the emotion of the audience – an idea common amongst Renaissance humanist thinkers. In a nod to the rising second rhetoric codified by his contemporaries, Erasmus elevates the manner in which musicians treat rhythm as a model for poets and orators: You must be familiar with how musicians measure out a long from what they now call a vox maxima, and how they then divide this long into breves, the breves into semibreves, these into minims, and finally these again into even shorter lengths. You also know how they vary the pace of their singing, sometimes to double time, sometimes to triple, according to certain proportions or measures as they are now called.70 68 Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, On Copia of Words and Ideas, translated by Donald King & H. David Rix, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2020), 90. 69 Clement Miller “Erasmus on Music.” Musical Quarterly 52 (Vol 3, 1966), 332-349. 70 Desiderius Erasmus, De pronunciatione, in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. C.R. Thompson, vol 26 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 427. “Atque adeo mirror hoc homini musico videri, qui noris quomodo vocem, quam hodie maximam vocant, dividant in longam; rursus quomodo longas in breves, breves in semibreves, semibreves in minimas, et has insuper secant in plusquam minimas: tum non ignores quomodo proportionibus, quas illi modos hodie vocant, varie producant aut accelerant pronunciationem, nunc ad rationem duplam, nunc ad triplam.” 5 5 Erasmus found the observance of the measurement of syllables to be a basic tenet of successful delivery, and its negation a prime component of his critique of contemporary church music. In a thread continuing from the Humanists to the Calvinist church fathers, Erasmus was especially critical of untexted music in the church, in alignment with the patristic view that musical instruments, lifeless and soulless that they are, render themselves vulgar and theatrical.71 As I will demonstrate, the Forma formans principles of acceleration, deceleration, and stasis identified by Frits Noske speak to Erasmus’s elevation of rhythm in successful rhetorical delivery through the contested medium of an untexted musical experience. Chambers of Rhetoric When De Eglantier, the most prominent Chamber of Rhetoric in Amsterdam, reopened after the Alteratie in 1578, they did so with a message of reconciliation, mutual peace, tolerance, and freedom of conviction – an ideology quite apparent in the works produced by the chamber in the ensuing decade. Amidst a newly Calvinist landscape, and wide acknowledgement that a humanist Latin education was no longer as readily accessible to the general public, leaders turned to the writings of Erasmus, which, though now nearly fifty years old, spoke directly to the new ideal. The Erasmian notion that rhetoric sets one free, because it teaches how to speak up against tyranny, was a common trope, especially in the poetry of leading member Roemer Visscher, as was the concept of argumentation in a near child-like manner: rhetoric has to become foolish to make one wise.72 71 Hyun-Ah Kim, “Erasmus on Sacred Music, Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (3, 2006), 277-300. 72 Marijke Spies, “The Amsterdam Chamber De Eglantier and the Ideals of Erasmian Humanism,” In Rhetoric, Rhetoricians and Poets: Studies in Renaissance Poetry and Poetics, 56. 5 6 The confluence of religious upheaval, a flourishing arts community amongst the refugee population, and the rising influence of the Dutch republic created the ideal circumstances for a revived interest in all things rhetorical, including a forum with which to display and share ideas. In the Dutch-speaking Low Countries, practice centered on the art of rhetoric in the vernacular. Given their presence in Amsterdam and beyond early in the sixteenth century, these were communities that had experimented with vernacular language long before debates on the form and status of the vernaculars arose in the region, often as a result of particular ecclesiastical needs. In contrast with the other authors mentioned in this chapter, the chambers were primarily interested in poetry and prose for its sonic affects, a so-called “second rhetoric” that privileges much of what in language is also musical, as I have alluded to before: rhythm, form, scansion and cadence on the surface, and deeper levels of metaphor and allegory. Although the stated aim was an elevated vernacular, the wide range of professions and backgrounds of the members of the chambers meant that the organizations were multilingual at their core.73 We cannot ascertain Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s activities within such a chamber, though we do know that his son, Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck, was a regular member of the Muiden Circle (Muiderkring). United in their desire to end the perceived stasis of scholarship and cultural growth at the expense of the theological divide in Amsterdam, the group met regularly at the castle of Muiden, some fifteen kilometers south of Amsterdam, under the leadership of poet, playwright, and historian Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, who also served as drost of the castle. Hooft had the benefit of a neutral position in the theological tirades and maintained 73 This is well demonstrated in a case study on schoolteacher and rhetorician Peter Heyns. See Alisa van de Haar, The Golden Mean of Languages. 5 7 friendships on both sides. Poets Joost van den Vondel and Caspar Barlaeus were regular guests, as was Constantijn Huygens and musicians Anna Visscher and Maria Tesselschade, in addition to Sweelinck the younger.74 Rather than relishing in the public eye through spectacle and controversy, as De Eglantier often did, the Muiden Circle sought secluded debate and truth through literature as a means of solving societal issues.75 The interest in words for their sonic capabilities mirrors burgeoning interest in the timbral possibilities of organs and harpsichords. Having been spared from destruction in the Alteration, civic pride in the organs of the churches and municipalities ushered in a new era of organ building in the Netherlands in the early sixteenth century, which I will discuss in tandem with Sweelinck’s rhetoric in the next chapter. Henry Peacham the Elder Scholars have shown that English musicians knew their rhetorical counterparts and their work quite intimately.76 The exchange of English and Dutch music is also well known, and Sweelinck was an active participant in this movement of musical ideas.77 With the exchange in musical scores and performances by traveling musicians came the exchange of rhetorical ideas and influences. Henry Peacham the Elder served as a curate to an English church, but is best 74 See Adelheid Rech, “Music in the Time of Vermeer,” Essential Vermeer (2021), http://www.essentialvermeer.com/music/music_start.html. 75 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 578-9. 76 See especially Robert Toft, Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: the Art of Eloquent Singing in England, 1597-1622 (London, 1993), and Mishtooni Bose, “Humanism, English Music and the Rhetoric of Criticism,” Music & Letters 77 (1, Feb 1996). 77 See Alan Curtis, Sweelinck’s Keyboard Music: A Study of English Elements in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Composition, (Leiden: Oxford University Press, 1972). 5 8 known for his rhetorical treatise, The Garden of Eloquence, published in 1577. Devoted primarily to style, the handbook is designed to help students of rhetoric analyze the ways various persuasive effects could be achieved through the manipulation of language’s form and content. Peacham’s is also amongst the first English rhetoricians to present the principles of eloquence in the vernacular instead of the established language of schools and universities, Latin. Some of his examples come from classic rhetoric, most especially Johannes Susenbrotus’s Epitome troporum ac schematum 1541,78 though Peacham relies quite strongly on biblical illustrations. Peacham the Elder speaks frequently of music, often commenting metaphorically on the rhetorical power and beauty of the art of persuasion as akin to musical harmony: By the benefit of this excellent gift, (I meane of apt speech given by nature, and guided by Art) wisedome appeareth in her beautie, sheweth her maiestie, and exerciseth her power, working in the minde of the hearer, partly by a pleasant proportion, and as it were by a sweet and musicall harmonie, and partly by the secret and mightie power of perswasion after a most wonderfull manner79 Peacham the Elder’s emphasis on the “minde of the hearer” of both rhetoric and music has extended implications for the body of the hearer as well. Studies in Renaissance thought have elevated the pre-eminence of the mind and body (and with it the corporeal, or humoral)80duality as integral in understanding both the phenomenology of the early modern experience of the self 78 The first English edition was printed in 1562. 79 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence Conteyning the Figures of Grammer and Rhetorick, from Whence Maye Bee Gathered all Manner of Flowers, Coulors, Ornaments, Exornations, Formes and Fashions of Speech, very Profitable for all those that be Studious of Eloquence, and that Reade most Eloquent Poets and Orators, and also Helpeth Much for the Better Vnderstanding of the Holy Scriptures. Set Foorth in Englishe (London, Fleetestrete, beneath the Conduite, at the signe of Saint Iohn Euaungelist, by H. Iackson, 1577), ABiii. 80 Humors in this context refers to emotional experiences on the basis of bodily disposition – a synthesis of the four humors (or temperaments) of Hippocratic medicine with the early modern terms of ‘emotions’ and ‘affections.’ 5 9 and the understanding of the passions.81 According to Cinta Zunino-Garrido, the two features characterizing the passions are their connection to internal processes that distress the human mind (referred to later as a negatively-valenced limbic response), and the manner in which the former effects both the body and reason.82 “These passions then be certain internal acts or operations of the soul, bordering upon reason and sense, prosecuting some good thing or flying some ill thing, causing therewithal some alteration in the body.”83 Peacham the Elder aligns himself with this philosophy in his definitions of rhetorical terms. One might consider, for example, his definition of periphrasis, described as a “vehement heat of the mind, which bringeth palenesse to the countenance, burning to the eyes, and trembling to the parts of the bodie.”84 Peacham the Elder provides another clear illustration of the persuasive power of the passions in his description of ecphonesis, or exclamatio, when the orator “through some vehement affection…bursteth forth into an exclamation or outcrie, signifying thereby the vehement affection or passion of his mind,” whose “principall end and use… is by the vehemency of our voice and utterance to expresse the greatnesse of our affections and passions, and thereby to move the like affections of our hearers.”85 81 Medico-philosophical tracts that further emphasize this mind/body duality include Thomas Hill’s Contemplation of Mankind (1571), Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie (1586), and especially Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1601). 82 Cinta Zunino-Garrido, “Henry Peacham’s Affective Rhetoric and the Renaissance ‘Philosophy of Man’ in The Garden of Eloquence (1577-1593),” Parergon 33 (3, 2016), 99. 83 Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General (1601), ed. William Webster Newbold, (New York: Garland, 1986), 94-5. 84 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, X2v. 85 Ibid., K3v, K4r 6 0 The mind/body duality found in rhetorical discourse of Peacham the Elder’s time has significant implications for our understanding of the historical soundscape, for a musician to perform rhetorically meant invoking a physical response in the hearer. I maintain that composers considered the bodies of the listening members to a greater extent than accounted for in scholarship. Rhetoricians clearly understood the effect of words on the body; given the permeable boundary between the arts of rhetoric and music, it should stand to reason that musicians understood this effect as well, and exploited it for maximum effect. Conclusion We have considered here the factors present in Sweelinck’s milieu that contribute to a musical rhetoric for his keyboard works. Bearing significant impact are Sweelinck’s relationship to the changing religious landscape, the importance of the space of the Oude Kerk itself, and larger conversations around the role of language and vernacular communication in the Dutch Golden Age. Rhetoricians saw their craft as an integral solution to societal challenges; Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam received significant posthumous attention as Chambers of Rhetoric sought to bridge theological divides while also elevating the vernacular as a means of establishing unity. Musicians gleaned from these rhetoricians further codification of what they already knew and practiced – particularly elements of rhythm and proportion – in rhetorical terms that brought their art in harmony with that of poets and orators. Greater access to rhetorical thought abroad afforded the consideration that effective rhetoric not only affected the mind, but the body itself by extension. It is thus necessary to emphasize here that the above factors affected not only Sweelinck (or any composer or performer in this era), but those who would hear this music in active or passive settings. As we seek to reconstruct the historical listener in 6 1 connection with Sweelinck’s rhetoric, so too are questions of religion, space, and language significant factors in the way a casual listener may have interpreted what they heard. 6 2 CHAPTER 3 SWEELINCK’S RHETORIC Having examined extrinsic factors that bear significance to Sweelinck and his keyboard music, we now turn to the music itself to uncover the rhetorical procedures, gestures, forms and figures that appear with regularity in the composer’s written works. Like many composers of his time, his compositional output mirrors his responsibilities. Works exist for secular entertainment, typically in a variation style, but there are also athematic and monothematic fantasias and toccatas that could be heard in several different contexts on a variety of different instruments, and variations on sacred tunes. They are either reminiscent of Roman Catholic practice, reflections of Calvinist currents and tunes from the Genevan Psalter, or of Lutheran chorale tunes that saw common use in the churches of Sweelinck’s students. When playing the works of Sweelinck, one discovers several unifying characteristics that pervade his oeuvre and transcend genre in all its potential polarities and binaries. Some of these characteristics are short figural musical ideas or rhythmic motives, often ornamental in nature, and frequently repeated with vehemency. Others are heard on a larger scale, usually governing the entirety of a closed musical work, and bear analogies both to conventional musical form and the overall perception of time within a musical work, part of what Frits Noske refers to as Forma formans. Both are rhetorical in nature, and the relationship between rhetoric and music was already well codified.86 Naturally, it makes sense that to play and interpret Sweelinck’s music 86 For example, Gioseffo Zarlino’s Istitutioni harmoniche (1553), which Sweelinck knew well, describes the sonus (smoothness of speech) and numerus (well-structured speech) of Adrian Willaert’s music and Petrarch’s poetry. Burmeister’s Musica poetica (1606) equated the function of musical ornaments with rhetorical tropes and figures, culminating in a detailed list of musical-rhetorical figures that summarized their use in the previous century and laid the foundation of the German tradition of the Figurenlehre that followed. 6 3 with as faithful an adherence to the manner it may have sounded in its original form is to understand the rhetorical construction of the works themselves, even if what remains in written form differs slightly as a result of separation of time and space between the composer and the scribe.87 Because a rhetorical analysis of early music naturally relies primarily on notation, I suggest also that a full consideration of Sweelinck’s works include analysis of the ways in which the rhetoric we see on the page and hear in interpretation is embodied in the player and the listener. As we have established, listeners of Sweelinck’s keyboard performances in the Oude Kerk experienced this music while in motion, occupying a physical space that had both sacred and secular undertones – part of the “realistic imaginary” of art history mentioned previously. Keyboardists also experience this music in a particularly unique way, given their spatial orientation to the sound itself, and the transfer of energy from player to instrument needed to produce sound. The rhetorical construction of a piece differs greatly when we are considering a pipe organ performance in Amsterdam’s reverberant Oude Kerk, or an intimate rendering on a harpsichord. This chapter will address two different levels of rhetoric found in the works of Sweelinck. The figural level, where short musical ideas are utilized for a specific (albeit fleeting) rhetorical affect, includes techniques codified by Joachim Burmeister, Michael Praetorius, Gallus Dressler, as well as by later generations of writers on the subject including Johann Forkel, Johann Mattheson and Johann Walther. Applications and extensions of Frits Noske’s Forma 87 It is important to remember once more that the notated compositions attributed to Sweelinck are not perfectly empirical, and exist in transcribed notation at the hands of his students, sometimes generations removed. While we cannot necessarily replicate exactly what Sweelinck may have played, the written notation we do have is still representative of the manner in which the composer taught and performed, even if most of his public performances were largely improvised. 6 4 formans occupies a spatial level that speaks to the rhetorical significance of larger sections of musical material. I will argue that Noske’s concepts need be extended further, both to account for the varietas present in Sweelinck’s variation works, and also to extend rhetorical analysis to include affective and kinesthetic responses. Musico-Rhetorical Figures Some recent pedagogical practice in recent years has been to emphasize and draw out the small units of musical ideas present in Sweelinck’s written scores as a means of creating a performance of the works that is both rhetorically convincing and unified under stock musical gestures that become quite systematic across the entirety of the composer’s keyboard works. This is in keeping with many normative techniques that govern an overarching approach to early keyboard music: the preference for the space created by use of paired fingerings over patterns that use the entire hand being one such example. Charlotte Mattax Moersch discusses the teaching of this approach during lessons taken with Gustav Leonhardt at the Amsterdam Conservatory: …when I was playing Sweelinck’s Est-ce Mars, composed circa 1595, [Leonhardt] wanted me to capture the essence of the style, which was not yet “Baroque.” This meant no large, sweeping gestures, but more emphasis on smaller units. Ornaments were not yet organic to the whole, as in Frescobaldi, but merely “pulled from a drawer” and applied to the surface. At this point in the lesson, he made an analogy to the Westerkerk, which was built between 1620 and 1631 in Renaissance style and designed by the architect Hendrick de Keyser. Keyser applied detail (decorative elements) to a rather more “square” structure. This means, for Sweelinck, precise articulation, even passing tones, not much rubato or over-legato, and measured trills.88 88 Charlotte Mattax Moersch, “Gustav Leonhardt Pedagogy Archive,” (accessed March 18, 2022) https://leonhardt- archive.com/view/member/post/2 6 5 Much of Sweelinck’s keyboard music can be reduced to simple musical and rhythmic ideas that both hold the listener’s interest and provide the composition with necessary forward momentum. Sometimes these are elements of imitation, where one melodic line is transferred to another voice in the texture, as in the example from the composer’s Variations on Est-ce mars. Figure 3. Imitation of melodic line in Est-ce mars. The imitation here, which mirrors the intervallic construction of the original, represents rhetorical polyptoton (known to English rhetoricians as traductio),89 which Quintilian prescribes when a mocking manner is necessary,90 quite befitting of the juxtaposition in the text of the French folk tune, depicting Mars, god of war, here made vulnerable by love. Table 3. Est-ce Mars Text and Translation Est-ce Mars le grand dieu des alarmes Is that Mars the great god of alarms Que je voy ? that I see? Si l’on doit le juger par ses armes If we must judge him by his weapons Je le croy: I believe it: Toutesfois j’apprend en ses regards However I see in his eyes Que c'est plustot Amour que Mars. That it's more Cupid than Mars. 89 In Garden of Eloquence, Henry Peacham the Elder describes traductio as “a forme of speech which repeateth one word often times in one sentence, making the oration more pleasant to the eare…compared to pleasant repetitions and divisions in Musicke.” See Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, 35. 90 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria IX, ii.58 6 6 The song is based on an air de cour from Pierre Guédron’s Ballet de Madame, soeur du roy, which was first heard in Paris in 1613, and is documented in the Low Countries from 1614. The melody itself became quickly popular, but any connections between Sweelinck’s tune and relations with the text can quickly be dismissed. Sweelinck repeats the Abgesang in each of his variations, though the original tune in bar form repeats only the first half. In fact, by means of departure from the psalm, chant, and chorale variations, Sweelinck’s secular variations do not begin with the theme in homophonic texture, but instead begin with variations, perhaps to distance himself from any possible associations with the poetic texts. Furthermore, Sweelinck’s seven variations on this tune do not align with the original text’s six stanzas. The device of imitation is also simply referred to as fuga by writers of the time, including Sweelinck himself in his Compositions-Regeln. From a rhetorical standpoint, however, the fuga as defined by Gallus Dressler is most instructive here. Dressler’s most significant theoretical work, Praecepta musicae poeticae, begins from the notion that a composer wishing to write an effective piece of music was analogous to an orator seeking to make an effective speech. Be they notes and rests or words and phrases, their order and progression should leave the listener effectively persuaded. Dressler upheld the compositions of many Netherlanders as exemplars, none more so than Clemens non Papa, and suggested that the mastery of imitative texture such as Sweelinck’s was both a crucial skill to master, and an ideal technique for a piece’s exordium.91 Imitative melodic ideas comprise the vast majority of the opening sounds heard in Sweelinck’s composed works, a phenomenon we will return to in a later discussion on the composer’s pedagogy. 91 Paul Walker, Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach, (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000), 26-53. 6 7 Definitions by the writers in the generation before Sweelinck tend to emphasize the repetition of the musical theme itself, and fuga is often defined by the faithfulness to which an imitated musical theme adheres to the original. Dressler, for example, distinguishes fuga integra from semi fuga or fuga mutilata depending on whether the musical theme is repeated verbatim, whether only the incipit of the repeated passage is the same, or, in the case of mutilata, the imitation is suggested by other means.92 This emphasis on the degree to which a pair of musical figures are mimetic has kinesthetic connotations as well, especially when considering Henry Peacham the Elder’s definition of the term: Mimesis is an imitation of speech whereby the Orator countersaiteth not only what one said, but also his utterance, pronunciation and gesture, imitating every thing as it was, which is always well performed, and naturally represented in an apt and skillful actor. The perfect orator by this figure both causeth great attention, and also bringeth much delight to the hearers, for whether he imitateth a wise man, or a fool, a man learned or unlearned, insolent or modest, merrie or sorrowful, bold or fearful, eloquent or rude, he retaineth the hearer in a diligent attention, and that for a threefold utilitie, in the imitated gesture a pleasure to the eye, in the voice a delight to the ear, and in the sense, add profit to the wit and understanding.93 Through Peacham’s definition of mimesis, a technique used in copious abundance in Sweelinck’s keyboard works, we see that the intent behind the use of repetitive structures was designed to initiate a response in all the senses of the hearer. The orator “mimics” the original source down to the physical gesture and mannerism, and the hearer gains pleasure not only from the aural 92 The term fuga here should not be confused with fugue, the compositional device consisting of a phrase interwoven into multiple parts. Prior to this use, fuga referred to different gradients of imitation or mimesis between voices in a musical composition, ultimately culminating in the contrapuntal device known in the Baroque as a fugue. 93 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, signs U1-U2. 6 8 results, but also by what they can see. Cinta Zunino-Garrido suggests this as an index to inwardness in that it encourages a type of imitation that “both portrays and reveals human nature in all its complexity, simultaneously showing what is perceptible to the eye, what is hidden to the sight, and what must be conjectured from external causes.”94 It is worth pointing out here that, while a performance on the harpsichord provides the listener with ample visual stimuli, an Oude Kerk listener is deprived of any visual connection to the techniques themselves when hearing the pipe organ. Both the large and small organs are situated in balconies and the key desks are obstructed from the view of the listeners by an additional chamber of pipes. Of course, such a spatial orientation is in no way unique to Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, but for a rhetoric that sparks visual stimulation, and for a rhetoric that can, in fact, provide that stimulation with the use of different instruments, what becomes of the overarching affect when the listener is deprived of the visual connection between player and instrument? One could argue, of course, that visual disconnection between the generator of the sound and the sound itself is idiomatic not only to the pipe organ, but is also indexical of much of the sacred worship service, where music was heard but not seen, and where, by either great distance or intentional intervention, the common viewer was separated from the dramatic action. This separation, where the visual connection to the organ is limited to the grandiose instrument itself, comprises an important part of the schema of the experience of listening to a pipe organ in this time and space. Because the state of the instrument is visually unaltered whether being actively played or at rest, one cannot rely on any visual rhetorical cues from the performer to match an aural stimulus. 94 Cinta Zunino-Garrido, “Henry Peacham’s Affective Rhetoric,” 112. 6 9 In addition to imitative elements, musico-rhetorical figures also include allusions to texted music. One such example includes Pieter Dirksen’s observation of points of comparison between Psalm 36 for keyboard and Pseaume 36 from the second book of Sweelinck’s vocal psalter of 1613. Both the keyboard and texted versions present the tune three times, and move into tripla at the beginning of the Abgesang of verse 2 on the text “O que tes graces nobles.” Figure 4. Pseaume 36 (Pseaumes, ii), ‘Seconde partie’ Psalm 36 (keyboard) Dirksen’s observation, that “here then one is confronted with concrete evidence that Sweelinck follows a text in an instrumental work too”95 is carried further by Julia Dokter, who finds examples of text-based rhetorical choices in Sweelinck’s keyboard setting of Allein Gott in der Höh sei ehr. In the concluding measures of the third variation, Dokter notes that the Chorale text “accept our prayer” in measure 74 aligns with an anabasis, or extended ascending musical passage that expresses ascending or exulted images. A second anabasis ascends higher than the first, lending greater intensity to the text “have mercy on us poor men.” 95 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 175. 7 0 Figure 5. Anabasis in Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 3. Further examples in the final variation include hypotyposis figures and a shift from soprano to bass voice when the devil is evoked, as well as chromaticism to depict the suffering of Christ.96 It is noteworthy that, although she offers a fanciful interpretation of Figurenlehre in Sweelinck’s Psalm 116, Dokter’s most compelling analysis of such rhetorical figures as these comes in the Lutheran Chorales – selections not likely destined for performance by Sweelinck himself, but by his students. This perhaps suggests that the application of such rhetorical figures as these held greater pride of place in Sweelinck’s pedagogy than in his performing role, a subject returned to in the next chapter. 96 Julia Dokter, “Musical Rhetoric in Sweelinck’s Sacred Keyboard Variations,” 29. 7 1 Rhetoric of Predictability and Surprise In his Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, David Huron suggests that what we have described thus far is both schematic and dynamic in its predictability.97 The disembodied performer of the organ may come as a surprise when experienced for the first time by someone for whom a common musical convention is a visual relationship to the source of the sound, but for anyone who had heard the Oude Kerk organ more than once, the fact that the performer is not referenced visually becomes a part of the schema of that particular soundscape. Huron’s work deals with theories of musical expectation, and the psychological mechanisms that evoke a particular emotional response, very similar to the kind of affective and kinesthetic rhetoric we find in Peacham the Elder’s Garden of Eloquence. Sweelinck is unique amongst Netherlandish composers of his time in his use of variation techniques as a significant compositional tool. For the listener of Sweelinck’s music, this emphasis on variation on the composer’s behalf translates directly to a set of musical expectations one might use when approaching this repertoire as a listener. According to Huron, predictable elements in music can be either schematic, dynamic, veridical, or conscious, and I will summarize their applications to Sweelinck here. Schematic predictability occurs whenever the musical choices made conform to an existing schema brought by the listener to the soundscape. My previously mentioned example of the player being hidden from view would be one example of schematic predictability. Of course, such an element is listener specific, as the schema of an organ performance for a former Roman Catholic used to 97 David Huron, Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 239- 269. 7 2 hearing the Oude Kerk’s organs in a liturgical context differs greatly from the schema of one who views the pipe organ as a municipal status symbol. Table 4: Typology of Predictability and Surprise Predictability/Familiarity98 Surprise99 Music conforms to existing schemas listeners Music violates some preexisting schema are likely to bring to the listening experience. that listeners have brought to the Example: a tonic chord following a dominant listening experience. seventh chord in Western music. Examples: sudden change of dynamic, meter, harmony, etc. Music evokes accurate work-specific Music is constructed so the work itself expectations. will set up a work-specific expectation Examples: a motivic figure, followed by that is violated. other notes that conform to previously heard Examples: rhythmic hemiola, “surprise instances of that figure. chords” as in the Haydn Surprise Symphony. To make music more predictable, encourage Surprises evoked by violating a listener’s listeners to hear the work many times existing knowledge of a musical work. Examples: performance error, misquotation, intentional parody. Music is organized so that knowledgeable Music leads a knowledgeable listener to listeners can infer future musical events consciously form an expectation about a through conscious thought. future event that is then thwarted. This Example: if a set of keyboard variations includes “garden path” surprises, where switches to a minor key, it will likely return new musical information greatly to major. illuminates previous musical material.100 Dynamic predictability exists when the musical work evokes work-specific expectations that prove to be accurate. One comes to expect a certain bit of repetition in a musical work, and Sweelinck’s variation techniques, where a melody is repeated with only slight alterations of rhythm, ornamentation, or harmonization, would be one such example. Another work-specific 98 Ibid., 240-268. 99 Ibid., 269-304. 100 The “garden path” surprise is further explained on p. 171. 7 3 Conscious Veridical Dynamic Schematic expectation might be the cadential formula used to end a musical selection, all relatively standardized in Sweelinck’s written works. Short rhythmic motives, often borrowed from poetic meters also contribute to Sweelinck’s compendium of figuration. In Est-ce mars, Sweelinck uses the prevailing anapestic figure of the folktune’s melody as a figura corta, both in its original note values, and in diminishing note values in subsequent variations. Figure 6: Anapestic figures as figura corta in Est-ce Mars. Original melody Variation 3 Variation 5 Veridical predictability and familiarity are encouraged and cultivated through multiple hearings. This includes musical phenomena that could be overlooked on the first listening. A 7 4 listener familiar with the form of the folk tune version of Est-ce mars will likely find the fact that the second part of the tune is repeated in Sweelinck’s rendering so jarring that they will miss the inventive figura corta the composer employs in the reprise. “The most miniscule changes of performance nuance leap out as deviations from a personal ‘norm.’”101 Huron believes that conscious predictability is largely ineffective for composers, because it “depends principally on the skill and sophistication of the listener.”102 Conscious predictability refers to the manner in which future musical events can be easily inferred. Sweelinck will frequently alter the harmony at a significant cadence point in the last of his variations, Est-ce mars included, and though I always find these moments jarring, it is perhaps plausible that a passive listener may miss this index of an eminent end to a piece. Sweelinck’s own variation form could also be said to evoke conscious predictability. After having heard a few variations on the same tune, a reasonable listener could infer that another such variation is coming next. Because Sweelinck’s music leans heavily on elements of predictability, alterations become especially surprising. Just as Huron proposes predictability to be schematic, dynamic, veridical, and conscious, surprise also can be mapped with a similar framework. In many instances, the difference between surprise and familiarity comes down to the experiences of the listener, but one can still ascertain elements of Sweelinck’s composition that are intentional injections of surprise or awe. Schematic surprise abounds in Sweelinck’s Oude Kerk performances. These surprises occur when an existing schema or musical convention is violated, and that surprise remains present for subsequent hearings rather than eroding with familiarity. Visitors to the Oude Kerk 101 David Huron, Sweet Anticipation, 241. 102 Ibid., 242. 7 5 after the Alteratie in 1578 would certainly be subject to schematic surprise, entering a space that formerly housed liturgical rites of Roman Catholicism, with nearly all of the visual reminders of the vestiges of that past stripped from the space. The glaring exception, though, were the two pipe organs, which remained as significant icons of the sanctified use of the space in its previous iteration. Furthermore, this visual representation was not only seen, but heard, and the aural reminder of the organ signified the former sacred use for generations after their reappropriation in Amsterdam, as is evidenced by both the paintings of the church interiors of Emanuel de Witte and the eulogy of the Westerkerk organ by Constantijn Huygens discussed in the previous chapter.103 Dynamic surprise exists when the music is constructed so that the work itself sets up an expectation that is violated. Sweelinck’s variation sets best capitalize on this effect, particularly the secular variations like Est-ce mars that do not claim to adhere directly to a specific versification of texts. The first five variations of Sweelinck’s keyboard setting maintain the tune at the same rhythmic proportions. The listener expects the rhythmic construction to remain predictable enough to reference the sung version of the tune throughout, but the metrical change to triple meter in the sixth variation violates this familiarity. For the listener with a schema that includes the folksong rendition of Est-ce mars, their relationship to the tune moves from active to passive. The tune is rendered too far from the original folksong to be referential in this variation, but the violation subsides in the final variation, which returns to the original metrical proportions, presenting instead an unsuspecting harmony at the onset of the Abgesang. 103 Huron further suggests that examples of schematic surprise (or violation, as used interchangeably in his text) would include the deceptive cadence, chromatic mediant progressions, and the expectedness, tendency, and valence of borrowed chords depending on their context. 7 6 Huron’s concept of a schema is helpful in describing the dynamic surprise that is possible in Sweelinck’s keyboard variations as they were heard by the listening public. Because his variations are built on preexisting melodies that stem from sung traditions, listeners bring to the soundscape a schema built on their relationship to the sung tune.104 Sweelinck’s variation sets always begin with the most conservative treatment of the tune itself. Alterations and ornamentations are always reserved for later variations. While this serves to ground the player firmly in the musical material that unifies the entire piece, in this case the cantus or tune melody, this also allows the listener to establish a schema for further listening. Depending on the listener, that schema may have auditory grounding in the melodic material they are hearing – both in reference to a melody borrowed from another context and the novelty of variety spun from its treatment, or it may be grounded in the non-auditory context of a pipe organ in a space with mixed sacred and secular connotations. Therefore, the need to switch rapidly from one schema to another would have been an essential skill for the sixteenth-century listener. Huron hypothesizes that listeners built the skill of schema switching based on past experience, providing the experience of bilingual speakers, which comprised a significant portion of the Dutch learned population in Sweelinck’s age, as the most plausible parallel.105 Indeed, a rich network of schemas was suddenly quite likely for the active listener in Sweelinck’s time, as contrasts between the sacred and secular world made their relationship far from binary, as the newly readily available printing press brought wellsprings of information to 104 Huron defines schema as an expectational “set,” which provides an encapsulated behavioral or perceptual model that pertains to some situation or context. The arrival at a particular schema is most often based on environmental markers, both auditory and non-auditory. 105 Ibid., 211. 7 7 the middle class, and, in spite of a vigorous interest in the codification of a unified Dutch language, a populace that remained fairly multilingual. Therefore, veridical surprise abounds in Sweelinck’s music, as external expectations are constantly violated in this new performance context. Any instance where schema switching is required constitutes veridical surprise, which erodes with familiarity developed through subsequent listening and the development of new schemas. As listeners became more accustomed to the new functions of the Oude Kerk, it may be assumed that a new schema developed that would accommodate Sweelinck’s musical works in public recitals held independently of Calvinist worship. As the writings of Huygens and the church interior paintings of de Witte have shown, however, this schema appears to have been slow to develop, as the organ maintained its schematic linkage to corporate worship long after it ceased to fulfill that function. Conscious surprise is the rarest of the four forms of surprise outlined by Huron. This is surprise that arises when a knowledgeable listener consciously infers some future event, which then does not take place. In conscious surprise, a work-specific expectation is implied, but is then violated. One might find conscious surprise in the works of Sweelinck when attempting to align the number of variations with the number of verses present in the sung iterations of a tune, chorale, psalm melody, or chant. If Dokter’s assertion that the psalm variations were made in performance to align with the versification of the Utenhove Psalter by means of insertions of homophonic variations that do not appear in notation is correct, a listener might likewise expect the same to be true of secular variations, where Sweelinck rarely if ever appears to align the verses with the variations. 7 8 Just as Peacham the Elder sees in mimesis a corporeal response in the listener where the body is placed at ease through the use of repetition, Huron sees in the emotional consequences of surprise the recognition of low-consequence biological failure, or a negatively valenced limbic response, even if only briefly.106 Even though the resulting outcome of a surprise is often a feeling of satisfaction or awe at a composer or improviser’s ingenuity, the brain first notes its failure to properly prepare for the surprise, and thus to povide useful information about future events, a cause for biological alarm. This fast and negatively valenced biological response (surprise) is contrasted by the appraisal response of the musical surprise (awe, frisson, perhaps even laughter), which is typically positively or neutrally valenced. The act of musical surprise relies on this limbic reversal: the initial hearing of something unexpected generates a fear response, followed swiftly by a positive or neutral assessment of the novelty or creativity on display. Through rhetorical techniques of variation, which inevitably include surprise and violation, as well as predictability and familiarity, a listener in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk during the Dutch Golden Age was well positioned to experience these kinesthetic responses, making Sweelinck’s rhetoric affective and corporeal in their reception. 106 Surprise, Huron argues, can also be considered a biological failure to anticipate the future, causing the body to render an assessment of a musical situation as threatening or dangerous. The body’s limbic system, which controls emotional and behavioral responses connected to survival, produces a negatively valenced response (perhaps more overtly manifested in an increased heartrate, “chills,” or other symptoms related to general unease). As the event is processed in the brain as surprise, the body typically immediately counters with a contrasting valence that is neutral or positive, in reaction to the surprise experienced. See David Huron, Sweet Anticipation, 304. 7 9 Forma Formans Frits Noske’s seminal 1969 speech and ensuing 1976 article, “Forma Formans: a structural-analytic method applied to the instrumental music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck”107 stemmed first from the desire to return to the notion of music as an activity, rather than a product or object. He saw this particular material turn as the result of the rise of independent musical criticism and historical musicology, both aiming at the completed piece of music, favoring the tangible notated score or recording over the process of composing. The natural byproduct of this favorability, as Noske viewed it, was formal analysis and the codification of rules that had been reverse-engineered from the pieces themselves. When Sweelinck’s music is viewed from this angle, the prevailing critiques were of a “lack of spontaneity and sensitivity,”108 and a realization from the score that “could satisfy only the students of mathematics; as for the real music lover, this kind of composition leaves him cold.”109 More recent studies cited by Noske, including those by Robert Tusler and Willi Apel, cite Sweelinck’s attention to detail, perhaps at the expense of coherence of form, and resulting excessive whimsicality. Noske argues that the above interpretations of Sweelinck were based on the study of Forma formata, or the preexisting “formed form” that exists independent of a musical work, and advocates instead for attention to the Forma formans, or the “form forming itself.” The primary hypothesis, which he applies to the keyboard works of Sweelinck seemingly regardless of genre, 107 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” 43-62. 108 Charles van den Borren, Les origins de la musique de clavier dans les Pays-Bas (Nord et Sud) jusque vers 1630, (Brussels, 1914), 148. 109 Albert Lavignac, Encyclopédie de la Musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire 2e partie, (Paris: Delagrave, 1921), 1249. 8 0 and eschewing common elements such as theme, figuration, rhythm, melody and harmony is as follows: In music structural factors come through as movement. They are time factors, affecting our experience of time. They cause psychic deviations from clock time and therefore may be marked as categories of tension.110 Ultimately, of course, Noske does have to take into account theme, figuration, rhythm, melody and harmony to arrive at any sort of psychic deviations from clock time.111 Those deviations, limited to acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization, can all be expressed proportionally and by spatial terms, usually limited to diminution and augmentation of a melodic line as tempo fluctuations were rare and seldom notated. The phenomenon can most succinctly be described in Sweelinck’s first variation on the Lutheran Chorale Ich ruf zu dir Herr Jesu Christ. Numbering four variations in total, the first variation maintains a two-part texture through its entirety. Although the chorale tune has a fixed rhythm that is not altered in this variation, and remains fixed until the final movement, the rhythm of the accompanying voice creates changes in proportion that result in the perception of acceleration or deceleration at cadential and phrase points in the movement. 110 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” 47. 111 A similar phenomenon of contrasts between ontological and psychological time are often ascribed to the “Sacrificial Dance” of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. See Robert Craft, “The Performance of the Rite of Spring,” in The Rite of Spring: Sketches, 1911-1913, by Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber and Faber, 1969). 8 1 Figure 7. Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ 8 2 8 3 Table 5. Forma Formans Structure of Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ Measure Ratio Structural Contrast (accompanying voice to cantus voice) 3 2:1 -- 5 4:1 acceleratio 11 8:1 acceleratio 22 2:1 retardatio 24 4:1 acceleratio 27 2:1 retardatio 30 4:1 acceleratio 33 8:1 acceleratio 36 4:1 retardatio 40 8:1 acceleratio We see from the table above that large sections of stasis also exist, particularly between measures 11 and 22, and measure 40 to the end of the variation, both sections characterized by prolonged and motoric sixteenth notes. Noske defines such large sections of stasis as a stabilizing factor, even though the prolonged ratio of eight to one suggests a greater degree of tension. In other instances, similar patterns of acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization can be found when plotting changes in harmonic rhythm, or the frequency at which a harmonic change occurs against a melody. This also includes harmonic choices that lie outside the bounds of the meantone temperament of the organ, as is the case in the famous Fantasia Chromatica examined in an upcoming case study. Noske also considers the mimetic characteristics discussed previously in his formulation of a Forma formans, though only at cursory glance. He sees the integration of authentic melodic material in figurative passages as a “factor of continuity,”112 though it is not apparent whether he equates this continuity with stabilization or acceleration. 112 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” 53. 8 4 Because the treatment of such material is so ubiquitous in Sweelinck’s keyboard works, more attention is necessary here. Considering the Ich ruf zu dir variation once more, we see two instances where the relationship between the voices is particularly imitative. The instance in measure 1 presents the Chorale melody in incipit in original note values before moving into free counterpoint under the true Chorale melody. This is clearly heard as static motion from one voice to the next, as note values have not changed. The second instance of imitation comes at a crucial cadence point, where the incipit of the Abgesang is presented again in the accompanying voice, but this time in diminution, followed immediately by the true Chorale tune at its original note value. The diminution suggests acceleration in our perception, but I would argue that in this particular instance, that acceleration immediately switches to deceleration upon hearing the true melody’s entrance at measure 24. We hear the first entrance as a false entry, or a veridical surprise by Huron’s schema. Because a false entry violates the listener’s expectations by design, we would be hard pressed to call such an instance a moment of stasis. Conclusions I find Frits Noske’s idea of a Forma formans in Sweelinck’s works particularly compelling, both in its analysis and in performance. I suggest, however, that an additional element be added to the tools used to establish a schematic of Forma formans, which the author alludes to but does not fully investigate: tension and repose. Following a period of acceleration, Noske notes Sweelinck’s tendency to remain at the accelerated ratios for an extended period of time, primarily as a means of building tension. Repose, then, becomes synonymous with deceleration, which I see as an oversimplification. 8 5 Instead, repose is better defined by the perceived response of the listener. If the musical choices made are predictable and familiar, or if those choices harken back to previous musical choices that have developed into a schema for the listener, that is repose. A deceleration can still be surprising and can, in fact, build tension if done through the introduction of new material not present in a listener’s schema. We will recall David Huron’s citation of the imbalance between the body’s “flight or fight” response to surprise and the appraisal of the entire musical moment for its novelty and creativity when considering the possibility of predictability and surprise when juxtaposed on a schematic of Forma formans. Further, given Noske’s conceptualization of constant acceleration, deceleration, or stasis, what can we make of the so-called “echo fantasies” of Sweelinck, where musical material is treated to direct mimesis and imitatio, either through octave displacement or timbral change on an alternate keyboard? Changes to harmonic rhythm beneath the original and echoing melodic voice tend to change very little, making acceleration and deceleration difficult to plot. Noske acknowledges the echo technique as a byproduct of stasis, primarily because it is a spatial device: “As a means of musical expression the echo is determined by space, and for Sweelinck this spatial aspect is obviously of more interest than the original Arcadian connotation.”113 This is a significant rhetorical observation that remains unaccounted in forma formans as Noske defines it. Although he and Pieter Dirksen114 make a point of minimizing the significance of the echo, the manner in which it dominates certain fantasies of Sweelinck makes it more than a mere technique of mimesis, in many ways it supplants all other techniques when it is applied. 113 Ibid., 52. 114 Dirksen sees the term “echo” fantasia problematic because it over-emphasizes the technique (echo) over the genre (fantasia). See Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 453-454. 8 6 Noske also minimizes the effectiveness and significance of the variation form itself in Sweelinck’s works. Though he uses such pieces in his examples, and writes at length of the principles of forma formans at work when one variation moves into the next without pause, the novelty of the form itself is not accounted for in his analysis. Nor also is there a clear translation between the theory and its manifestation in performance. If Sweelinck’s intent was indeed to compose or improvise in such a way as to achieve derivations in psychological time, how do keyboardists perform such a theory? I contend that the solution to both quandaries comes in the realization of Forma formans in tandem with David Huron’s schematic of surprise and predictability. While fluctuation in harmonic rhythm and rhythmic proportions can affect our perception of music’s movement through time, the listener’s own experience of surprise and predictability, especially as stand-in terms for tension and repose, also greatly influence the degree to which time seems to be moving. Excessive surprise and excessive predictability both yield a sense of deceleration when compared against clock time.115 As I will demonstrate in the case studies on this subject, I contend that Sweelinck’s pieces yield reasonable amounts of both. To play these pieces rhetorically is to identify, isolate, and magnify changes in Forma formans, while also acknowledging that degrees of violation and familiarity create a sub-schema of tension and repose that changes the listener’s perception of the keyboard works of Sweelinck. 115 This compounding of musical information, manifesting in excesses of surprise or predictability, speaks directly to probability theory in music, or the general likelihood of a musical event taking place in a predictable or unpredictable way, all of which rely on the listener’s perception. David Temperley discusses the presence of these excesses using Bayesian frameworks, which helps describe how musical surfaces are generated from structures, and what one may infer of the structures given the surfaces. See David Temperley, Music and Probability. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016. 8 7 CHAPTER 4 RHETORIC AND PEDAGOGY On the heels of Pieter Dirksen’s monumental 1997 study of the composer’s works and a STIMU116 symposium dedicated to Sweelinck studies in 1999, the first decade of the twenty-first century saw two significant releases of the complete keyboard works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. The first, a four-volume set edited by Dirksen and Harald Vogel and published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 2004, generally mirrors Dirksen’s previously published findings related to authenticity and reliability of sources. If a variation appeared in the manuscript that was not reliably attributed to Sweelinck, it was relegated to the appendix, but most often eliminated outright. The second, an Urtext edition in eight volumes edited by Siegbert Rampe, was published by Bärenreiter in 2006. As mentioned before, Dirksen is primarily interested in solving issues of authenticity: filtering out variations and portions of works that cannot be reliably attributed to Sweelinck. Rampe’s edition, by contrast, privileges authenticity117 of the source over authenticity of the composer. If a piece has multiple variations attributed to composers other than Sweelinck, including variations with no attribution at all, Rampe included them anyway. This has resulted in two very different editions in rapid succession. In the case of the variations on the Lutheran Chorale Allein Gott in der Höh, for example, the Dirksen/Vogel edition contains only the four variations directly attributable to Sweelinck without contention, while Rampe’s edition contains seventeen. 116 Stichtung voor muziekhistorische uitvoeringspraktijk 117 At issue here are questions concerning whether a manuscript source is truly representative of a work of Sweelinck, not necessarily the search for an “authentic” performance practice. Because the keyboard works do not exist in the composer’s hand, questions of authenticity typically hinge on the reliability of the source, the source’s relationship to the composer’s circle, and whether the music contained within a source is idiomatic to the works more reliably deemed as attributable to Sweelinck. 8 8 Although still technically an Urtext edition, Rampe’s edition is very detailed. He carefully notates instances where the sources conflict, and, in cases in which a composer is not immediately attributable (as is the case for the final three variations of Allein Gott in der Höh, for example), Rampe makes no attempt to guess. While scholars have been quick to dismiss portions of works unattributable to Sweelinck, likely because the authenticity question is about as empirical as one can get for a composer who left so little a footprint of primary-source biographical material, I suggest instead that these compositions of mixed authorship tell us a great deal about how Sweelinck taught, or at the very least, how Sweelinck’s students learned. From these oft-overlooked pieces we can ascertain a relationship between rhetoric and pedagogy, both in the works of Sweelinck and in his students.118 One composition treatise traces its lineage to Sweelinck by way of his students. The Compositions-Regeln, first discovered in the Hamburg Stadtbibliothek by Robert Eitner in 1871, exists in multiple versions. One scribe is clearly Johann Adam Reincken, who would have copied his version from his teacher and Sweelinck pupil Heinrich Scheidemann. The other is believed by Eitner and Ulf Grapenthin to be in Johann Theile’s hand,119 though Paul Walker speculates that Matthias Weckmann copied this manuscript from his teacher, Jacob Praetorius, who also studied with Sweelinck. Reincken’s forword identifies the influence of both Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Italian composer and theorist Gioseffo Zarlino.120 Paul Walker’s analysis of 118 See Table 7, page 107 for a listing of Sweelinck’s variation pieces based on chorale, chant, and psalm melodies. 119 Karin Nelson, Improvisation and Pedagogy through Heinrich Scheidemann’s Magnificat Settings, (Ph.D diss, University of Gothenburg, 2011), 118. 120 Reincken’s forword gave rise to the belief that Sweelinck studied with Zarlino in Venice. Johann Mattheson first asserted in 1740 that Sweelinck made such a trip in 1555, which resulted in over a century’s worth of erroneously dating the composer’s birth. See Randall Tollefsen, “Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: a bio-biography, 1604-1842” in Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 22 (2, 1971), 87-125. 8 9 Compositions-Regeln further confirms the influence of Zarlino’s Istitutioni Harmoniche on Sweelinck’s theories, but one key difference between the two treatises should be noted. Zarlino tends to rely exceedingly on examples in music notation, which are followed by texted explanations. The Compositions-Regeln manuscripts take the opposite approach: a brief explanation comes first, and its application in music notation follows in a layout resembling a theory workbook. Much like the mixed-author works, these too give us some sense of how Sweelinck taught, or the skills he saw as necessary for his students of composition to acquire. Finally, we also ought to consider the performance career of Sweelinck, whose skill at improvisation earned him the nickname “the Orpheus of Amsterdam.”121 A municipal position meant that Sweelinck’s concertizing in the Oude Kerk was on greater public display than if his position were purely ecclesiastical. His own travels, though limited in scope and nearly always for official business related to organ construction and inspection, or a trip to Antwerp in 1604 for the purposes of procuring a Ruckers harpsichord for the city of Amsterdam, likely brought with them the possibilities for performance and exposure. It was, after all, his skills as a performer and improviser (not as a published composer) that brought so many students to Amsterdam to study under his tutelage. When we consider all of the elements previously mentioned: the works of mixed authorship, the Compositions-Regeln, and the performing teacher, we can arrive at a clearer understanding of Sweelinck’s rhetoric as it manifested itself through his pedagogy or transfer of 121 Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck, (Haarlem: Passchier Wesbusch, 1604) 293 v. Writing about the painter Cornelis Corneliszoon, Karel von Mander makes one of only few observations about Sweelinck in his time: “He has produced some good disciples: among others, and in particular, Geerit Pieterszoon, the brother of the most outstanding organist, the Orpheus of Amsterdam, Jan Pieterszoon.” “Hy heft eenighe goede Discipelen voort gebracht: onder ander, en besonder, den broeder van den uytnemensten Orgelist oft Orpheus van Amsterdam, Ian Pietersz. Geheeten Geerit Pietersz.” 9 0 knowledge and skills from teacher to student. By synthesizing these elements, we can move towards a better understanding of the way this music sounded in its own time and space, and the possible manners in which it was interpreted by the listener. In so doing, we can also resituate the listener and student in the rhetorical relationship. Much emphasis is placed on delivery in discussion of musical rhetoric, but a successful delivery relies as much on its reception by the listener as on the oration or performance, and oratory skills of the performer. In this chapter, we re-center the listener. Pastiche Partitas “Lynar B1,” an organ book from the collection of the Counts of Lynar in Berlin, is the sole source for the chorale variations on Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr. Of the seventeen variations, only the chorale harmonization and variations 2 through 4 are attributed to Sweelinck, while other variations cite other composers and students of Sweelinck, with five variations bearing no indication of a composer. Andreas Düben (cited A. Düben in the manuscript) studied with Sweelinck from 1614-1620, before settling in Stockholm is the organist to whom the next variations are attributed. His brother, Martin Düben, another pupil of Sweelinck’s, provided the seventh. Peter Hasse supplied variations 10 and 11, and Gottfried Scheidt’s initials appear on variations 12 and 13. 9 1 Table 6. Variations and Respective Attributions in Allein Gott in der Höh122 Variation Author Voices/Textures 1. Chorale M[eister]. I[an]. P[ieterszoon]. [Sweelinck] 4 part/homophonic 2. M[eister]. I[an]. P[ieterszoon]. [Sweelinck] 2 part/bicinium with imitation 3. M[eister]. I[an]. P[ieterszoon]. [Sweelinck] 3 part/chorale in tenor 4. M[eister]. I[an]. P[ieterszoon]. [Sweelinck] 4 part/chorale in soprano 5. A[ndreas] D[üben] 3 parts (2 keyboards)/ chorale in soprano 6. A[ndreas] D[üben] 3 parts/chorale in bass [pedal] (variation left incomplete by the scribe) 7. M[artin] D[ü]ben 3 parts/chorale in bass 8. [Martin Düben] 3 parts/chorale in bass 9. [Martin Düben] 2 parts/chorale in soprano 10. P[eter] Hasse 3 parts/chorale in tenor 11. P[eter] Hass[e] 3 parts/chorale in bass 12. G[ottfried]. S[cheidt] 2 parts/bicinium- chorale in imitation 13. G[ottfried]. S[cheidt] 3 parts (2 keyboards)/ chorale in soprano 14. [Gottfried Scheidt] 4 parts/chorale in soprano 15. Anonymous 3 parts/chorale in bass [pedal] 16. Anonymous 3 parts (2 keyboards)/chorale in soprano 17. Anonymous 3 parts /chorale in tenor The function of such a monumental piece is unclear. Allein Gott, the Gloria movement from Martin Luther’s Deutsche Messe, contains only four verses, so any possibility of a functional alternatim practice, or trading of versets between organist and vocalist is unlikely. Margarete Reimann claims the work to be a random compilation with responsibility lying solely on the copyist,123 but the mere fact that all attributable variations can be traced to notable 122 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, ed. Siegbert Rampe, Complete Organ and Keyboard Works, Vol III/1. (London: Bärenreiter Kassel, 2005), 1-17. 123 Margarete Reimann, “Pasticcios und Parodien in norddeutschen Klaviertabulaturen” Die Musikforschung VIII (1995), 265-271. 9 2 students of Sweelinck seems hardly haphazard. Hans-Joachim Moser claimed that the seventeen- part cycle was written piecemeal between former Sweelinck pupils, circulated between them like a chain letter.124 This does not sufficiently explain the anonymous variations, and is also rebutted given that not all contributors studied with Sweelinck at the same time. Furthermore, the variations show little effort in producing contrasts from the one that came previously. Even the four variations by Sweelinck do not arrive at the same sort of finis one would expect from this composer. Nonetheless, the seventeen sections of Allein Gott were numbered consecutively and set apart from the adjacent organ chorales, which included works on different melodies by Samuel Scheidt and even two additional verses of the same Allein Gott chorale set by Wilhelm Karges. Siegbert Rampe asserts that the manuscript is best viewed as the byproduct of Sweelinck’s composition lessons. Essentially, these variations are written elaborations of a particular assignment. This would account for the lack of method to the order once they were compiled in a manuscript, and the fact that the variations are based on two variants of the tune. Rather than copying a model from a hymnbook, Sweelinck’s students wrote the version of the tune as they knew it. Further proof exists in the secular variations on the Pavana Hispanica and Von der Fortuna werd ich getrieben, for which Sweelinck’s and Samuel Scheidt’s initials suggest a model of back-and-forth composition between teacher and student: Sweelinck writes a variation or two, Scheidt returns in kind, and so on. Given also that Sweelinck would have had little use for the Lutheran chorale, the Allein Gott variations should be viewed as a window into his teaching, and by extension, the manner in which he transferred rhetorical thought through pedagogy. Even if the composing of these 124 Hans-Joachim Moser, Die evangelische Kirchenmusik in Deutschland (Berlin and Darmstadt: Carl Verlag, 1953), 432. 9 3 variations happened outside Sweelinck’s direct supervision, their inclusion as a set, and their relationship to the model provided by the teacher suggest that these are compositional exercises meant to instruct, rather than find use in performance. Furthermore, assuming Rampe’s attributions are correct, we notice significant changes between the variations connected to each individual composer, as if the teacher had given suggestions for improvement or contrast, and the student was trying again. The tune of Allein Gott is in bar form, with the introductory melody repeated (Stollen- Stollen-Abgesang). For the student, this suggests an immediate opportunity for varietas, simply by ornamenting or offering slight alterations to the repetition of the Stollen portion of the melody when it is heard the second time. Apart from the first setting, one of the only instances where repeat signs are given instead of being written out verbatim, Sweelinck varies the melody of the cantus on its repeat. His students do not continue that trend, the anonymous writer of variation sixteen being the lone exception. Sweelinck’s four verses may well align with the four stanzas of the hymn; following the first stanza, each of the three subsequent stanzas aligns with the three persons of the Holy Trinity: stanza 2 for the Father, 3 for the Son, 4 for the Holy Spirit. While Sweelinck may well have been demonstrating the possibilities for melodic elaboration and an adherence to a text, he is not stymied by norms of practice, this being a Lutheran hymn that Sweelinck would not have used in Calvinist services or in secular events. The remaining variations of Sweelinck’s students show instead a strong emphasis on the possibilities for an imitative accompaniment. Andreas Düben’s two variations both single out the melody, first on a second manual, next in the pedal, so that the accompanying voices are isolated and transparent. The two accompanying voices both begin in loose canonic imitation before advancing to free 9 4 counterpoint, a hallmark present in the subsequent variations by other pupils of Sweelinck as well. By contrast, Martin Düben’s variations125 decrease in complexity across his three attempts at setting the Allein Gott tune; almost as if the younger Düben felt he had something to prove. His first variation differs from those of Andreas, and Sweelinck’s for that matter in that the imitation that foreshadows the cantus firmus is not at the unison, but at the fifth. In playing this variation, the cantus is easily lost beneath the counterpoint. Of the entire set, this is the variation most difficult to reconcile with the rest, not only in terms of an easily discernable melody, but also in its harmonic structure and generally thick texture. Figure 8: Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 7, attributed to Martin Düben. The opening imitation is at the fifth between Soprano/Tenor and Bass. Note the exceptionally thick texture and harmonic structure occurring later in the variation. 125 It is noteworthy that variation 7 bears the name Martin Düben, but variations 8 and 9 do not have an attribution in the manuscript. Variation 10 is positively identified as that of Peter Hasse. Rampe hypothesizes that the subsequent variations that follow Martin Düben’s variation 7 also belong to him. 9 5 The following variation takes far fewer harmonic risks, restores the imitation at the octave, and employs a thinner texture so as to render the cantus firmus more present for the listener. One can imagine Martin receiving critiques to simplify his accompanying textures, use greater varietas in the imitation, and to prepare the arrival of the cantus firmus as if it were to be sung. Perhaps Sweelinck still was not impressed and chastised Düben further: the variation that follows utilizes a mere two-voice texture, with the cantus firmus clearly audible in the upper voice. In this, the ninth variation, we see greater intention paid to the rate at which the accompanying voice moves. First with a 4:1 ratio of accompaniment against cantus, then 8:1 in the repeat of the Stollen, returning to 4:1 at the Abgesang. Every cadence point returns to the unison, thus jettisoning any attempt at an implied harmony in these exercises. This is simply species counterpoint, with varietas achieved only in the alternating ratios of the accompaniment. Although Frits Noske cites neither the variations attributed to Martin Düben nor any of the Allein Gott cycle in his discussion of Forma formans, this variation is as clear and succinct an example of the process of acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization as any example by Sweelinck. When variations 7 and 8 are taken as a set of missed attempts toward clarity of intention and straightforward rhetorical design, the solution is found in variation 9, where the student is to write in bicinium structure, with the cantus firmus unobstructed in the upper voice, and an accompanying voice limited to quavers and semiquavers for the purpose of sustaining and mitigating tension as appropriate. The repeat of the Stollen represents the most prolonged acceleration in the entire variation, releasing that tension only at the point of the new melodic material, the start of the Abgesang at m. 18. 9 6 Figure 9: Allein Gott in der Höh, variation 9. Attributed to Martin Düben Note the acceleration at m.12 upon the repeat of the Stollen, the deceleration at the onset of the Abgesang, and the deceleration to the cadence. The bicinium variation attributed to Düben makes apparent that Noske’s description of the form forming itself through alterations in the perception of time was not only a hallmark of the manner in which Sweelinck composed and improvised, but the manner in which he taught as well. As appears to have been the case with Martin Düben, when Sweelinck found a student’s harmonic language was becoming too verbose, or the polyphonic textures too dense, the solution was a simple statement of an unadorned melody, accompanied by another voice that directed the listener through periods of stasis, tension, and repose. In the case of the Allein Gott variations, the formal plan of the Forma formans appears to operate independently of the four stanzas of chorale text, as even Sweelinck’s four variations appear to follow the identical plan. 9 7 If we use the Düben attributed variation 9 as the new model for comparison to the rest of the verses in this partita of many composers, we notice that the application of acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization are relatively systematic across each of the other students contributions. The first Stollen is relatively stable, but the second Stollen accelerates and stabilizes. The onset of the Abgesang ushers in new musical material and decelerates, with gradual acceleration to the conclusion of the movement. If these seventeen variations of Allein Gott in der Höh do in fact represent a composition or improvisation assignment of sorts for Sweelinck’s students to ultimately apply to their own Lutheran contexts at home, the structure becomes clear: a clearly visible cantus firmus based on any version of the melody the students knew, and a formal plan of Forma formans: with stabilization and deceleration for the first- introduced portions of the melody, and acceleration through the repeated (thus familiar) portions, and towards the final cadence of the variation. Compositions-Regeln In addition to the sobriquet “the Orpheus of Amsterdam” Sweelinck was given for his skills as an improviser, Johann Mattheson praised his skills as a teacher with the moniker “hamburgischer Organistenmacher,” with Sweelinck’s pedagogy standing in for the craftsmanship of an organ builder as the maker, not of organs, but of Hamburg organists. In the same 1740 publication,126 Mattheson claimed that Sweelinck had been to Venice to study with chapel master, composer, and theorist Gioseffo Zarlino, and that he taught from his own translation of Zarlino’s Istitutioni Harmoniche. No evidence exists to support the claim of a study trip to Venice, and it is still widely asserted that many of Sweelinck’s students traveled 126 Johann Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740), 331-333. 9 8 further to see him than he ever did, save for one harpsichord purchasing expedition to Antwerp. However, he did teach from Zarlino’s volume, as the three manuscripts that commonly comprise the Compositions-Regeln attest.127 Mattheson’s claim of a direct link from Zarlino to Sweelinck, and gradually through generations of students to J.S. Bach has served a narrative that the theory behind baroque German fugal writing stemmed from Zarlino, with Sweelinck as an important conduit in this transfer of knowledge. Paul Walker has shown that this theory is significantly overblown, and that German composers of fugues were directly influenced by the Italian Baroque style, and not by Sweelinck or Zarlino.128 In fact, Zarlino’s classifications of fuga and imitation are not rendered faithfully by Sweelinck at all. Seeking to bring clarity to the polemic over what constitutes fugue and what constitutes imitation, Zarlino updated the definition of fugue to specify the identity of independent voice parts in intervallic construction and rhythm, and restricted the imitation to perfect intervals of the unison, fourth, fifth, and octave.129 Imitation occurred when the similarities were approximate, but not identical. Further division was possible if the imitation of fugal writing happened for the duration of the piece, called fuga legata (bound or tied fugue), or if the device broke away after a few notes, which he coined fuga sciolta (loose or free fugue). A fifth technique of imitative 127 These manuscripts first appeared in Hermann Gehrmann’s compilation of Sweelinck’s Opera Omnia. See Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck, Werken, vol 10: Compositions-Regeln Herrn M. Johan Peterssen Sweling, ed. Gehrmann. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1901). 128 See Paul Walker, “From Renaissance ‘Fuga’ to Baroque Fugue,” 93-104. 129 This definition harkens back to slightly earlier practice, where imitation only qualified as fugue if the solmization syllables under the hexachord system were the same. Thus fugue was only possible when transmuting between the natural, hard, and soft hexachords. The replacement of the hexachord system with the octave solmization system necessitated Zarlino’s further explanation. 9 9 counterpoint, strict canon with just a few note deviations to make for smoother writings, was also provided. The Sweelinck manuscript replicates all of these in proper order, directly translating Zarlino’s terminology for “gebundene Fuge,” “gebundene Imitation,” “ungebundene Fuge,” “ungebundene Imitation,” and “halb Fuge, halb Imitation.” The manuscript defines fugue as imitative counterpoint at the unison, fourth, fifth, or octave, with exact imitation. Imitation as defined took place at the second, third, sixth, and seventh, and was not exact. This reading is not entirely in keeping with Zarlino’s definitions, however, as imitative counterpoint at a perfect interval does not necessarily mean that the imitation is exact. Sweelinck’s definition stopped at the interval of imitation, rather than considering what followed, an error also made by Giovanni Maria Artusi and Orazio Tigrini, two of Zarlino’s own Italian students.130 Although the Compositions-Regeln follow Zarlino’s text relatively faithfully, a few glosses in the Sweelinck manuscript are particularly telling. Fugue and imitation, for example, are both found under the heading “Here follow various sorts of fugues.” The primary purpose for Zarlino in writing his text in the first place was to clear up this sort of ambiguity; that all imitative counterpoint was not necessarily fugue, and that imitation and fugue were not interchangeable terms. A fugue has imitation by proxy, but not all imitative writing is fugal.131 It is perhaps not surprising that Sweelinck disregarded the nuance of Zarlino’s definitions here. Given Sweelinck’s remarkable use of imitative counterpoint, and relatively sparse use of 130 Paul Walker, “From Renaissance ‘Fuga’ to Baroque Fugue,” 98. 131 As Walker is ultimately interested in tracing the development of fuga/fugue from Josquin to the eighteenth- century, his text and findings are centered on whether the Sweelinck manuscripts should be considered part of that lineage or not. His final conclusions are that, though Weckmann and Reincken copied the Sweelinck manuscripts as received from their teachers, their own authored treatises on the subject are far more interested in new theories of imitative counterpoint from Italy, most especially the possibilities created by real and tonal answers to a fugue subject. 10 0 fuga techniques as a strict restating of a melodic idea to the letter, one can easily imagine Sweelinck explaining the different types to his students as they existed in theory, but emphasizing loose imitation (sciolte in Zarlino’s words) as a more serviceable technique in practice. In fact, only in the echo fantasies of Sweelinck does one find a systematic representation of Zarlino’s fuga legata, given their exact repetition of a melodic statement either at the unison or octave.132 While the aim of the Compositions-Regeln is quite clearly to introduce principles of Gioseffo Zarlino’s Istitutioni Harmoniche to his students, Sweelinck seems to allow for great varietas in the interpretation of these principles. The layout of the manuscript, where the texted description of the theory is introduced, followed by space to put the theory into notation, means that sometimes the various sources of this manuscript are in conflict. This suggests to Walker and others that the Compositions-Regeln served as a student workbook of sorts, dictated to students individually or en masse, with opportunities for them to put the theory into practice. The treatment of imitation and fuga, both advanced topics treated by Zarlino, is instead given broad summary by Sweelinck, essentially regressing from the nuance Zarlino intentionally embedded in his terminology and definitions to eliminate any preexisting ambiguity over what the terms meant and how they should be applied. Perhaps in areas of musical mimesis, already a hallmark for Sweelinck in his use of variation technique, and imitative writing in his fantasies and toccatas, the pedagogue saw risk in presenting this material in an overly obtuse manner, and saw fit instead to address the issue of fuga and imitation in intentionally broad strokes so as not 132 One noteworthy exception would be the Fantasia G3, found in the Turin tablatures (TorG6) with the title Fuga 7.toni J.P.S. Both Alan Curtis and Gustav Leonhardt dismiss this fantasia as spurious. Dirksen suggests instead that, if the work is Sweelinck’s, it stems from early in his career. Many of the interesting hallmarks of the piece come near the end in a series of augmentation studies, but per Zarlino’s definition, augmentation is a figure of imitation, not fuga. 10 1 to hinder creative possibilities in his students. Zarlino was clearly important for his students to know, and Sweelinck made no apologies for creating a direct translation for his students. When it comes to imitation, however, one finds it difficult to swallow the possibility that Sweelinck was careless in his gloss, particularly when he himself could enliven the topic so richly by means of his own examples. Playing by Example We have already established the high likelihood that Sweelinck, like his other counterparts throughout the Netherlands, performed for a public audience in what was suddenly a very public place after the Alteratie in 1578, and did so with great regularity if not on a set schedule. We have also determined that these public audiences, no longer divided by religious preference, saw the pipe organ as a symbol both of pride and resilience: pride in the organ’s newfound secular role and the municipalities great attempts to care for and enlarge the instruments, and resilience in the fact that the organ was often one of the few remaining vestiges of the old faith that was both spared iconoclastic removal or destruction and allowed to continue to sound, perhaps even in a more expansive way than before. For the organist’s part, the opportunity for autonomous music-making also represented new territory. In the early days of the Alteratie, following the removal of the Roman Catholic clergy, Calvinist preachers came from the laity and served only to function as preachers of sermons, largely leaving musicians to their own devices, as they were subordinate not to clergy but to municipal authorities anyway. This is not to suggest that the complete freedom to improvise as they wished was not appreciated by all. Writing twenty years after Sweelinck’s 10 2 death, Constantijn Huygens remarks of the cognitive dissonance between the end of the Calvinist service and the performances by the organist: The organ is playing while the congregation leaves in throngs, while friends talk to eachother, while some are speaking about the comforting things heard together through God’s grace, or about people using their capabilities well or badly: as it goes with most people, inquiries about health and news are made; new fashions are shown, tales are told about the joys and sorrows of the neighbours; one sets dates and hours for parties; and a thousand other things. I do not think that of the whole consistory anyone stays behind out of devotion to listen until the organ playing stops…Finally, a closing follows which is like the introduction, to which only the sexton and a few cripples listen. In this way, the unchristian show ends.”133 Several English writers commenting in ethnographic writings about liturgical life in the Netherlands corroborate Huygens’ observations, if not his sentiments. Especially in Amsterdam, the organ was generally not heard during worship until much later in the seventeenth century, and even then only for purposes of lining out a psalm tune to be sung by the assembly later.134 Instead, public recitals for the passive enjoyment of those tending to business in the Oude Kerk, or simply passing time indoors, may have been the most public forum for a composer/improvisor/pedagogue such as Sweelinck. While we have been perhaps too quick to consider the Alteratie as representative of a remarkable seismic shift in religious practice for Sweelinck and those affiliated with the Oude Kerk, Jurjen Vis suggests instead that relatively little had changed, and Sweelinck may well have been apathetic towards the Calvinist faith and the responsibilities it afforded him. The orientation 133 Constantijn Huygens, Use and Nonuse of the Organ in the churches of the United Netherlands (New York: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1964), 15. 134 For further discussion on the tenuous relationship between the organ and Calvinist worship, see Henry Bruinsma, “The Organ Controversy in the Netherlands Reformation to 1640,” 205-212. 10 3 of the pipe organs, choir stalls, altar and pulpit remained unchanged. Alhough his duties were no longer assigned by the church, city magistrates had long been tasked with the oversight of the churches, including financial arrangements made with their musicians. Even the public recital may have been taking place long before the Alteratie.135 While Alan Curtis and Frits Noske point to the baptisms of Sweelinck’s three eldest children, Dirck, Pieter and Diewer into the Calvinist faith as proof that Sweelinck himself must have converted, his three youngest children, IJsbrand, Jan, and Elsje, all born around 1600, were not. All of this is to suggest that the lack of empirical evidence to suggest that Sweelinck was profoundly affected by the Catholic/Calvinist schism may well mean that he was content focusing on the duties provided him, and on building a reputation to draw students from abroad to study with him. For a Lutheran student coming from Hamburg, as many of his students did, they appear to have found a largely tolerant population in Amsterdam, where as much as 15% of the population claimed a Lutheran confessional identity by the mid seventeenth century, the most of any city in the Dutch Republic.136 The connections between Hamburg and Amsterdam went both ways. Following the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1585, Protestant refugee resettlement in North Germany meant Hamburg had an unusually large Dutch population, forming nearly half the total population by around 1600.137 “Plattdeutsch,” the Low-German dialect spoken in Hamburg around 1600, appears a bit as a mixture of Fries, Hollands, and Hochdeutsch, and is also used in print texts 135 Jurjen Vis, “Sweelinck and the Reformation” In Sweelinck Studies, 39-54. 136 Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, Dutch Culture in a European Perspective, trans. Myra Heersping Scholz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 395. 137 Bernhard Studt and Hans Olsen, Hamburg: Die Geschichte einer Stadt (Hamburg, 1951), 90-91. 10 4 and hymnals.138 This further facilitated the studies of many Hamburg students, as Lutheran church wardens there would only grant study leave if students were able to continue the Lutheran faith and attend services while abroad.139 The Calvinist majority in Amsterdam reciprocated in 1604 when it was officially decreed that Lutherans were allowed to practice their faith as a parish, paving the way for the arrival of the first Lutheran students in Amsterdam to study with Sweelinck: Paul Siefert from Danzig and Jacob Praetorius from Hamburg, both in 1606. That Sweelinck’s students could move freely in Amsterdam between Lutheran confessional spaces and non-contested spaces like the Oude Kerk greatly enhanced their educational opportunities during their time there. Furthermore, that they had the benefit, both of studying individually with Sweelinck, and hearing their teacher perform publicly without the need to tailor his performances to a specific faith tradition, suggests that their experiences in Amsterdam may well have mirrored the “theory before notation” thrust of the Compositions- Regeln: individual theory with Sweelinck, then the opportunity to observe the theory put into practice in a public forum. Theory into Practice As the present study, like the Compositions-Regeln, moves now from theory into practice with the three case studies to follow, we do so with an eye towards the rhetorical principles developed here. First, I apply Frits Noske’s thesis of a Forma formans to the Chromatic Fantasia, perhaps Sweelinck’s most well-known keyboard composition. I assert that a rhetorical 138 Pieter Dirksen notes that the dialect survived until rather recently, recalling that Hamburger Johannes Brahms felt quite at home in Holland because the dialect of his youth allowed him to be understood there. 139 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 180. 10 5 understanding of this piece lies in uncovering Sweelinck’s juxtaposition of a novel chromatic descending theme, paired with rhetorical devices to encourage the perception of acceleration, deceleration, and stagnation. In Sweelinck’s Psalm 140, we find a rhetoric that balances surprise with predictability for the listener, which I argue invites a kinesthetic response in keeping with new modes of thinking about classical rhetorical terms through affective responses. Finally, pedagogical similarities found in the Echo Fantasies of Sweelinck and Samuel Scheidt, where imitation and mimesis are at its most heightened (fuga legata) state, will further magnify points made in the various iterations of the composition treatise, while also demonstrating great varietas in the treatment of an echo. We have seen through our study of mimetic compositions between teacher and student that Sweelinck taught by example. Structural elements found with regularity in the works of Sweelinck were culled from his students in their course of study. The Compositions-Regeln, a set of manuscript treatises attributed to Sweelinck and his circle of students, serve both as a bridge to the most prolific theories of imitation and counterpoint set forth by Gioseffo Zarlino, while also cultivating the same unbounded imitation ubiquitous in Sweelinck’s keyboard works. Finally, the unique environment in which Sweelinck’s students absorbed their teacher’s theories and bore witness to those theories in public performance, created opportunities for the synthesis of the composer’s rhetorical tools to be heard in the Oude Kerk, visualized in manuscript and at the keydesk, and felt through active and engaged listening. 10 6 Table 7. Sacred Keyboard Variations of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Melodies from Lutheran Chorales Work Number of Variations Allein Gott in der Höh, SwWV 299 4 by Sweelinck, 17 in total Allein zu dir Herr Jesu Christ, SwWV 309 4 Erbarm dich mein o Herre Gott, SwWV 303 6 Ich ruf zu dir Herr Jesu Christ, SwWV 305 4 Nun freut euch lieben Christen gmein, SwWV 307 3 Wir glauben all an einen Gott, Sw WV 316 Melodies from the Genevan Psalter Work Number of Variations Psalm 23: Mein Hüter und mein Hirt, SwWV 310 3 Psalm 36, Sw WV 311 3 Psalm 60, SwWV 312 2 Psalm 116, SwWV 313 4 Die Tien Gebot Gottes, SwWV 314a 4 Psalm 140, SwWV 314 5 Melodies from Roman Catholic Chant Work Number of Variations Christe qui lux es et dies, SwWV 301 3 Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris, SwWV 302 4 Puer nobis nascitur, SwWV 315 4 10 7 CHAPTER 5 CASE STUDIES The following case studies show application of rhetorical principles described in previous chapters to three keyboard pieces attributed to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. In each piece, I will highlight elements of Forma formans as they appear in different guises, as well as instances of embodied rhetoric that alters the manner in which one performs the pieces. I will also discuss unique aspects of the Oude Kerk listener’s experience that inform one’s understanding of the works of Sweelinck, and provide performance practice suggestions to deliver a rhetorically- informed rendition of these works. CASE STUDY 1: FANTASIA CHROMATICA Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica SwWV 258 claims broad appeal today and is likely the most frequently performed of his keyboard works, both on harpsichord and organ. The piece is an outlier in the repertoire for its systematic use of a descending chromatic theme as a unifying element of the piece, which had otherwise been only used as a tool of occasional use. The piece has been preserved in no fewer than five manuscript sources,140 and any study of the piece immediately reveals a tight contrapuntal construction providing ample challenges and rewards to the performer. In the annotations to his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Musick (1597), Thomas Morley provides an early description of the use of chromaticism that is both telling and trite: 140 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 384. 10 8 “Likewise by that which is said, it appeareth, this point which our Organists use is not right Chromatica, but a bastard point patched up, of halfe chromaticke, and halfe diatonick.”141 This particular figure, a “point which our organists use,” which Morley identifies in his examples as an ascending chromatic fourth from E to A, suggests that players found chromatic motion useful as a theme in keyboard fantasias and improvisations; a valuable observation, considering that few if any English pieces exist before 1597 that employ such chromatic motion.142 As discussed previously, organists employed by the church were also usually instructors by proxy, so the “point which our organists use” likely has pedagogical implications as well, particularly for the teaching of the construction of counterpoint, but also for rhetorical delivery. Morley’s second point, that the figure in question is “not right chromatic,” speaks to questions of tuning and temperament that also color discussion of Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica. Theories of a 31-note scale described by Vicentino in 1555 and a 19-note-per- octave harpsichord described by Zarlino in 1558 were certainly known by Morley, and nomenclature questions surrounding whether these instruments (or later instruments with split keys) could be described as playing true chromatic, or some combination of the Greek diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic, had yet to achieve consensus. Such questions have been a hallmark of Sweelinck scholarship as well.143 141 Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, Part 1 (London, 1597), 81. 142 Peter Williams, The Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 23. 143 Hans Van Nieuwkoop first claimed that subsemitonia were added to the large organ in the Oude Kerk during overhauls completed in 1619, using notated pieces like the Chromatic Fantasy and others attributed to Sweelinck as evidence- a point that Pieter Dirksen refutes. 10 9 Of course, calling the chromatic fourth a “point which our organists use,” also suggests some disdain for keyboard music as distinct from madrigals, for which the figure had been in use at least since Cipriano de Rore’s “Calami sonum ferentes” published in 1555, over forty years earlier. Perhaps Morley’s impetus for taking up the subject, however briefly so, is because the figure was a recent discovery that needed acknowledgement in a new treatise, having been made familiar to his readers by, for example, Claudio Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals in 1592, or the slow rising chromatic line present in the 1593 Pavane and Galliard Doloroso attributed to Francis Tregian in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Justification for its use in vocal music abounds amongst the theorists Sweelinck knew, and only naturally so given its quick acceptance as an expressive device, particularly in the Italian madrigal. The development culminated towards the end of the sixteenth century in the chromatic extravagances of the Italian “mannerist” composers. For these composers, the word was supreme, and chromatic writing was always applied with an eye to the text being set. Gioseffo Zarlino wrote of a “sad effect (fa tristo effetto)”144 when applied to one or more chromatic intervals when introduced into counterpoint. Zacconi spoke of an ascending chromatic line “becoming very sweet and grateful (diventano soavissime, e gratissime).”145 Pieter Dirksen’s outline of a three-part form for the Fantasia Chromatica loosely follows the proportions of the chromatic subject: 144 Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558), 286. 145 Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica, seconde parte (Venice, 1622), 34. 11 0 Table 8. Pieter Dirksen’s explanation of three-part form in the Fantasia Chromatica146 EXORDIUM (1-70) Normal Proportion 70 bars (a) 1-42 exposition (b) 43-55 Counter-exposition (c) 56-70 Stretto, followed by concluding tenor entry MEDIUM (71-149) Augmentation 79 bars (a) 71-103 Introduction: normal proportion (b) 104-149 Augmentation FINIS (150-197) Diminution 48 bars (a) 150-171 Ostinato (b) 172-184 Stretto: single diminution (c) 185-197 Double diminution While an all-chromatic subject for a fantasia is certainly a novel choice, such a motive is by its very nature unstable and limiting without an amplificatio that provides for necessary variety. A chromatic theme is tonally ambiguous by nature, and offers no modal grounding as it meanders from tonic to dominant, or dominant to supertonic in the answer. Sweelinck identifies this problem and provides an extraordinary solution in the exordium. Two countersubjects are added in alternating descending and ascending movement. These two countersubjects comprise the first third of the piece, giving the impression of a single exposition. What results is triple invertible counterpoint, a rarity in Sweelinck’s output, which provides a grounding stability to the novelty of the chromatic theme. By altering their appearances in their respective voices, six combinations of these three themes are possible. The application of this technique would likely prove useful in Sweelinck’s teaching as well, as evident in their inclusion in his Compositions- Regeln. Although Sweelinck does not speak of chromatic treatment in his discussion of intervals (again, largely taken from Zarlino), the treatise does explain in great detail the creation and execution of invertible counterpoint much like the species present in the Fantasia Chromatica. 146 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 380. 11 1 The six-note chromatic theme is presented most frequently either in the tonic or dominant. The synonymia147 in which these entries are presented allows further possibilities beyond the triple counterpoint of the exordium, while also mitigating the tonal instability inherently present in a theme that scans as purely chromatic. Limiting entries to tonic and dominant provides for cadences that meet the listener’s expectations without calling for heroic re-interpretation by the improviser. From these slight alterations come significant variety. The early rhythmic alteration of the theme in m. 9, the dactylic representation in m. 26, and the entry of the subject on the supertonic in m. 43 provide this, the most chromatic of Sweelinck’s fantasies on chromatic themes with the necessary varietas.148 The proportions of the chromatic subject itself, presented first in half-note values, are then treated to augmentation, and finally diminution. While Dirksen’s model provides an apt description of the piece as it appears in notation, the outline assumes more than it should when realized in performance. The notated scores give no indication of an unwavering tempo, and slight fluctuations and inegalité were regular fixtures of a rhetorical performance.149 A performance unwavering in tempo that still leaves room for both whole notes that are not too drawn out and sextuplets that are neither too fast for the hand or the acoustic of the room would be nearly impossible. In terms of proportions, Dirksen’s assertion 147 Synonymia is defined by Bartel as an altered or modified repetition of a musical idea. Bartel also cites Quintilian, who defines synonymia as occurring when the beginnings and endings of sentences correspond to each other through varying words of the same meaning. See Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 405. 148 Four such fantasias exist: d1, G1, a1, and a2. Dirksen posits a lost fifth one, Fantasia a4. 149 Furthermore, we should consider the rhetorical and expressive device of staggered playing on the harpsichord. Known colloquially as “fringing,” this occurs when notes written to occur simultaneously are offset from one another so that the lowest pitch occurs first, and the highest pitch occurs last. See Yonit Lea Kosovske, Historical Harpsichord Technique: Developing La douceur du toucher, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 93-94. 11 2 both that the third section of the piece is nearly half the length of the second and that the Golden ratio, occurring at m.119 bears some significance leads to a conflation of ideas where form is concerned.150 Of the fifty-two chromatic theme entries in SwWV 258, five begin on the supertonic, descending from E and requiring use of a D#, the significance of which I will discuss further. The first of these, in m. 43 is obscured in a middle voice of a three-voice texture with the primary countersubject in the soprano voice. Voice exchange in m. 47 moves the supertonic chromatic theme to the soprano voice, with primary and secondary countersubjects supporting below. The third supertonic entry, perhaps the most jarring of all, occurs in a paronomasia subjected to katabasis as the chromatic motive is introduced first in A, then G, F, E, and finally in the tonic.151 These supertonic entries have a rhetorical particularity in common, and it is an effect that can go unnoticed, both in the Forma formata and in the many recorded performances of SwWV 258 on the harpsichord. The natural decay of the harpsichord, coupled with the possibility of a slightly broken, arpeggiated style on the performer’s behalf mitigates the out-of- tune D# that provides the first signal of the chromatic theme. Performances of this Chromatic Fantasy on the organ have no place to hide this note, which would have sounded especially jarring on the Meantone tuned organs (and harpsichords) of Sweelinck’s day. In its tuning, this is 150 As is also the case in the visual arts, the Golden ratio in music is derivative of any two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence expressed as a proportion, approximately 1.618. The arrival at this proportion in a piece of music often signals a moment of particularly heightened significance and meaning. However, to assign particular significance to this exact moment in the composition is to render the work fixed at the length prescribed in the notation. Dirksen’s evocation of the Golden ratio in his analysis assumes the piece was meant to be performed exactly as is. 151 In performance, this sequence is often missed, due first to the rapid scalar passage at m. 55, then to the rapid chromatic entries at mm. 57-58. 11 3 a parrhesia.152 The unexpected dissonance would have resonated in its hearers as a particularly jarring moment, especially when coupled with the rapid sextuplet patterns on the final supertonic entry in the exposed bass. A word about temperament A discussion of this piece would be incomplete without proper consideration of the tuning system at play, as this system has great sway on the rhetorical delivery of the work. In keyboard music of the late Renaissance, quarter-comma meantone tuning favored the pure major third, generally at the expense of the purely tuned fifth. In most meantone tunings, eight major thirds can be perfectly in tune provided that the remaining four major triads are not. An out-of- tune interval of B to D#, used three times in Sweelinck’s Fantasy, was not generally considered a significant loss in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because composers were not writing in such remote keys as to need these to be in tune (that is, without “beats”). Purely for purposes of comparison, in an equal temperament, a major third sounds at 400 cents, while a purely tuned major third found in meantone tuning measures 385 cents. This 15-cent difference continues to compound until it must be released in certain “wolf intervals,” typically hidden in key areas beyond those in common use. The pipe organs in the Oude Kerk were tuned in meantone with accidentals tuned as c#, E-flat, F#, G#, and B-flat,153 and most of Sweelinck’s music stays within these bounds. The 152 A parrhesia is the insertion of a dissonance on a beat where it is unexpected. Typically reserved for intervallic dissonances such as the tritone, I suggest the term be expanded to include harmonies outside the bounds of the temperament of the instrument, as the effect on the listener is similar. 153 The use of meantone temperament is indicative of the desire to achieve a more in tune major third, arrived upon by stacking perfect fifths until the desired major third is reached by octave displacement (C-G-D-A-E). The discrepancy between a beatless fifth and major third is accounted for by dividing the difference (known as the syntonic comma) between four perfect fifths, hence the common moniker of “quarter-comma meantone.” 11 4 Fantasia Chromatica is a puzzling exception given its use of the D#, which occurs on five occasions in piece.154 Pieter Dirksen contends that the multiple use of the d# is justification enough to suggest harpsichord over organ, as the difference between D-sharp and E-flat in quarter-comma meantone is not insignificant, and the correct note could be more easily obtained by tuning down the E-flats on the harpsichord than on the organ, occurring as they do in multiple octaves. When considering this piece in practical performance contexts, however, I find a retuning for a single piece difficult to justify. In performance situations, players would have to adjust their E-flats before playing the piece, and raise their pitches afterwards. When we consider the pedagogical strengths of the Fantasia Chromatica, it is important to remember that most of Sweelinck’s students were already well established organists, not necessarily practicing harpsichordists. Organ and harpsichord traditions followed more separate trajectories in North Germany than in the Dutch provinces.155 Finally, the Minoritenkonvent Vienna MS XIV714, one of the five manuscript sources of the Fantasia Chromatica, is an organ source dated to 1630 that includes a pedal line (with one of the offending D-sharps). Even if a pedal performance was not plausible on either of the organs in the Oude Kerk, the pedal line’s inclusion here suggests that, at least in some contexts, an organ performance complete with pedal is possible. In this instance, rather than using notation to assume organological characteristics, I suggest instead that we consider the occurrences of the D#s within the piece as a clue to its rhetorical performance. The passus duriusculus created when a consonantly harmonized E and D are interrupted by a D# causes an imbalance in the temperament that has otherwise not been 154 Dirksen counts only nine such uses of the D# in all the known works of Sweelinck. 155 Previous generations of scholars have used an assortment of frameworks in attempt to ascertain preference for one keyboard instrument over another in Sweelinck’s works. Robert Tusler (1958) saw stylistic differences between sacred and secular pieces as justification by extension for an organ and harpsichord style. Frits Noske countered that the stylistic differences lay in the differing nature of the tunes themselves, but did not go so far as to establish a preferred instrument. 11 5 explained rhetorically. Nonetheless, it is clear that Sweelinck knew that the intonation of this chord as result of the instrument’s temperament would affect the ear adversely given the manner in which the supertonic chromatic figure is so judiciously used. D# and the Supertonic entry The five occurrences of the D# always occur as the second pitch of the descending chromatic theme when that motive begins on E. The first three occurrences transpire in rapid succession (m. 44, 49, 53), followed by one appearance during a bicinium texture (m.152) and finally beneath rapid right-hand passage work (m. 168). The first three appearances, all harmonic in nature, take place during Dirksen’s so-called “counter-exposition,” and make extensive use of the initial answer, which appears first in the soprano, tenor, and soprano once more. The discord potentially created by playing an E-flat when a D# is called for is thus mitigated in each instance by the accented note of the answer immediately releasing away from tonic, leaving the ear with an augmented second instead of an out-of-tune minor third. The variety in treatment of the D# “problem” is akin to the varietas called for in Erasmus’ On Copia of Words and Ideas. Here the unifying thread is the D#/Eb, a pitch which lies at the remote edge of the temperament of any keyboard instrument. In each iteration of the problematic pitch, Sweelinck presents a different possible solution, each rendering the D# less problematic in its context. The B to D# problem is addressed directly in the next instance, however, when utilized in diminution in m. 152 against ascending diatonic motion in the second voice. This instance takes place during a period of bicinium texture, where the non-chromatic voice provides contrary motion in double diminution to the chromatic line. Sweelinck’s solution here is to establish the pattern earlier than usual, during a previous iteration of the chromatic voice on A, a tonal area we 11 6 are by now quite accustomed. While much of Sweelinck’s music is built on such patterns, his sense of varietas is typically far more creative than this, which amounts to mere five-fold repetition of a simple pattern, very uncharacteristic for the composer. In listening and in performance, the ear is drawn to the repetition and away from the dissonance. Some of the impetus for Sweelinck’s use of the supertonic theme may be pedagogical. In the sense that the Fantasy is meant to provide a ground for improvisation and the working out of compositional problems, the treatment of the Wolf Interval in syntonic tuning systems is just as tricky a problem as any. As Ibo Ortgies has documented, the North-German organs of Sweelinck’s students remained in close adherence to unmodified meantone tuning until at least the 1740s,156 though Dieterich Buxtehude’s experiments with temperament on the chapel organ at the Marienkirche in Lübeck in the early eighteenth century should also be noted here.157 One may also suggest further evidence moving away from a performance on the organ as a result of particular winding challenges due to a soft response and lead pipework. As had been employed to great effect by English Renaissance organists, rapid passages in one hand would rob a chord in the other hand of its necessary wind, causing the chord to shake as if given a rapid vibrato.158 The final entry of the supertonic chromatic theme at m.168, presented harmonically in one hand against rapid sextuplets in the other would be subject to this phenomenon, and the result upon the arrival of the D# could be otherworldly. This could be compounded further by the placement of the main organ on the western wall of the Oude Kerk, where more than five seconds of reverberation time could render most of this passagework inaudible. 156 Ibo Ortgies, “Die Praxis der Orgelstimmung in Norddeutschland im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert und ihr Verhältnis zurzeitgenössischen Musikpraxis” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Göteborg University, 2004). 157 Kerala Snyder, Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lubeck (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 85. 158 Described in John Shannon, Understanding the Pipe Organ: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Lovers of the Instrument (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2009), 23. 11 7 The difficulty with this argument, though, comes when extended to Sweelinck’s other styles, particularly those whose performance on the organ is uncontested. Rapid passagework is just as likely in the sacred chorale settings. The long reverberation time and extreme proportions (such as the augmentation and diminution of the descending theme in Fantasia Chromatica), suggest instead a much less rigid tactus within a given piece, allowing the acoustics to better inform rhetorical speech. We have already established that the difficulty in understanding and interpreting a Sweelinck keyboard score comes in the role of improvisation in the process, and the realization that the great separation in time and place between the music as it was heard and the music as it was written means that we cannot say with any assurance whether the notated artifact is prescriptive or descriptive. From this I advance the hypothesis that the rhetorical object here is the chromatic figure itself, not the rhythm in which it appears in notation. Table 2 shows each of the fifty-two entries of the chromatic figure, respective of starting pitch, incipit rhythm, and voice in the four-part structure. When compared with Dirksen’s plan, we see the significance of the finis, which sees nearly half of the chromatic entries that comprise the piece but accounts for only 42 of the total 197 measures. Application of Forma formans for this piece exists in two significant ways, and two such interpretations are possible when analyzing the piece with Noske’s method. It is certainly possible to look at any given moment within the fantasia, determine whether the note values are indicative of an acceleration, deceleration, or stasis, and adjust the length of the notes to match the perceived intention of the derivation of time. A passage that implies acceleration would be enhanced by a shorter note duration, where the player guides both the initial attack of the note as well as its release. Similarly, if the aggregate affect is of deceleration, the player should consider 11 8 more length to the note.159 The difficulty, however, comes in determining which voice part determines the rate of time perception. If we are to consider the aggregate of all voice parts, finding consensus of time perception is especially difficult. I suggest instead that the incipit of the chromatic voice should determine whether the overall affect is one of acceleration, deceleration, or stasis. In table 2, I provide the list of entries of the descending chromatic subject, the voice part in which they occur, and the duration of the incipit. Two options are possible. Either the first note is twice the length of the rest of the notes in the phrase, or all notes have the same note values. Acceleration is implied when the first note is longer (followed by notes of half duration), and deceleration is implied when all notes are of the same duration. Several instances of the same pattern constitute sections of stasis. Such an interpretation allows for a more cohesive and rhetorical performance, while also negating some of the common pitfalls that occur with this piece. The first challenge to a Forma formans approach occurs in measure 6, when the chromatic subject becomes the chromatic answer, and one is first introduced to the countersubject, a motive characterized by disjunct motion to a weak beat, causing unintentional accents that should be negated by the player. If the countersubject is allowed to become the prevalent voice, one risks treating the entire piece as an acceleration. Measure 10 presents another such issue often overlooked in performance. Players tend to emphasize the sixteenth notes, forgetting that the chromatic theme enters at the midpoint in the bass. That bass entry implies deceleration, though it begins partway through the written 159 The application of Forma formans in performance can only be achieved through fluctuations in tempo, which are possible but unlikely, or in the technique of agogics, or accents of duration. As Noske’s definition of Forma formans suggests alterations of note values to affect perception of time, I suggest that agogics be used to match the schematic of the piece. 11 9 out ornament. As such, that particular line should be split in two: first accelerating, then decelerating. We have seen through analysis of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s dramatic Fantasia on a descending chromatic theme how his unique rhetorical decisions have served to elevate an otherwise simple thematic idea to an artful improvisatory piece that transcends the emotive labels rhetorically placed on chromatically based compositions that have come before. Understanding Sweelinck’s applied rhetoric is an essential component towards a historically informed performance of this work. As has been made clear, the novelty of the chromatic theme is only as innovative as the musical choices that surround, elevate, or obscure its structural presence. The possibility of the Fantasia Chromatica as a teaching piece suggests special attention be paid to the specific pedagogical challenges of the piece, namely the careful articulation of each line in the opening triple invertible counterpoint, the approach and resolution of notes that fall outside the temperament, and the keyboardist’s approach to the cadences which delineate the structure at predicated moments, including the possible use of a “golden (or Fibonacci) section.”160 The choice of instrument will also greatly affect the rhetorical delivery of this piece, and there remain considerable doubts as to which historical keyboard instruments Sweelinck had in mind for any given piece. In the case of SwWV 258, the instrument must have a keyboard compass of D-a’’. Of course, this does not rule out the Flemish harpsichord, and we know from his 1623 obituary that Sweelinck owned one and improvised on it for hours on end when necessary.161 160 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 372. 161 R.H. Tollefsen, “Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck,” 91f. 12 0 Table 9. Order of chromatic subject entries in Fantasia Chromatica (entering pitch/note values) Measure Soprano Alto Tenor Bass Forma Formans 1 D/whh acceleration 5 a/whh 10 d/hhh deceleration 13 a/hhh 17 d/hhh To Stasis 21 a/hhh 26 d/hqq acceleration 30 a/hhh deceleration 34 d/hhh 38 a/hhh 42 e/hhh To Stasis 47 e/hhq 51 e/hhh 55 d/hhh 56 a/hhh 58 d/hhh 59 a/hhh 63 a/hqq acceleration 70 a/hhh deceleration 74 a/hhh 78 d/hhh 88 d/whh acceleration 104 d/www 119 d/www 126 a/hww deceleration 139 a/hww 149 a/qqq To Stasis 151 e/qqq 153 d/qqq 155 c/qqq(false) 157 Bb/qqq (false) 159 g/qqq(false) 161 a/qqq 162 g/qqq (false) 165 f/qqq (false) 167 e/qqq 169 d/qqq 171 a/qqq 172 d/qqq 173 d/qqq 174 g/qqq 176 d/qqq 178 d/qqq a/qqq 179 d/qqq 181 a/qqq 184 a/888 Acceleration 185 a/888 186 a/888 187 a/888 189 d/888 190 d/888 191 d/888 12 1 Siegbert Rampe suggests that appearances dictate an instrument other than the harpsichord, as all known Dutch and Flemish 8-foot harpsichords, including the Ruckers instrument Sweelinck purchased for the City of Amsterdam in 1604, already had a keyboard compass that far exceeded the common range of Sweelinck’s pieces. Rampe goes so far as to suggest that the instrument in mind may have even been a fretted clavichord, common for practice, not performance, but emphasizing the pedagogical nature of Sweelinck’s pieces.162 The Chromatic Fantasy of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck presents itself as a rhetorical, musical, and acoustical outlier in its use and manipulation of a novel theme the likes of which few composers in the surrounding centuries sought to attempt. At work here is a transcendent compositional prowess and keen understanding of the composer’s place as a musical orator, improviser and pedagogue. A fully developed understanding of this piece comes through acknowledgement of the form in flux, issues of temperament, organology, and the techniques of variety that turn a six-note katabasis into a masterful work. Case Study 2: Psalm 140 “First this way, then that” Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck composed approximately thirty-four pieces classified as toccatas or fantasias, against twenty-eight that are considered “variation works.” The latter works nearly always consist of multiple movements or sections of far greater proportions than the toccatas or monothematic fantasias. In other words, variation works quantitatively far exceed through-composed free keyboard works in Sweelinck’s oeuvre, and variation principle is a 162 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, ed. Siegbert Rampe, Complete Organ and Keyboard Works, XXV. 12 2 dominant factor in Sweelinck’s keyboard music, as evidenced by Baudartius’s previously mentioned eye-witness account of Sweelinck’s improvising variations “in twenty-five different ways, first this way, then that.”163 Because they are built on preexisting melodies, the variation pieces offer a keener glimpse into Sweelinck’s performance and pedagogical practices than the athematic works or pieces built on a theoretical construct (such as the Chromatic or Hexachord fantasias). If Sweelinck composed variations on a melody, and those variations were deemed worthy of written transmission by those familiar with them, we must assume he had use for these tunes in his teaching or performing, or at the very least, these melodies had special meaning for Sweelinck and his circle. The composer’s sacred variation cycles include three sets on melodies from Roman Catholic chant, nine melodies from the Genevan Psalter, and six Lutheran Chorales. The latter category would prove particularly useful for Sweelinck’s Hamburg students, though it is perhaps interesting that no corollary in Sweelinck’s vocal music exists, suggesting again a penchant for the pedagogical in the keyboard works that does not exist in the published choral pieces. Rhetorically, scholarship suggests that these works are set apart in their relationship to the written texts of the chorale tunes, though if Sweelinck had textual relations in mind, they are not explicitly manifest in any choral settings of these chorale melodies, nor are they accounted for in his Compositions-Regeln. The presence of these chant settings is worth noting; if Sweelinck did commence his tenure at the Oude Kerk in 1577, one year before the Alteration, he would have 163 Guillelmus Baudartius, Memoryen ofte cort verhael der gedenckweerdichste so kerckelicke als wereltlicke gheschiedenissen van Nederland…van den iaere 1603, tot in het iaer 1624 (Arnhem, 1625), 163; cited after Randall Tollefsen, “Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: a Bio-Bibliography, 1604-1842” 1625 in Randall Tollefsen, “Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: a bio-biography, 1604-1842” in Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 22 (2, 1971), 92. Translation after Tollefsen, 117-118. 12 3 started his career as a Roman Catholic organist, well-versed in the repertory of hymns, responsories, and antiphons, but his written variations on chant tunes would bear no prospect of performance in a liturgical context in the Oude Kerk after the Alteratie. Sweelinck’s biographers, including Noske, Tollefsen, and Dirksen all surmise that the composer maintained loyalty to the old faith throughout his life; one could further conjecture that these variation sets serve as some form of private devotion.164 Sweelinck and the Psalms Sweelinck’s keyboard setting of Psalm 140 consists of a set of five variations. There are no overt indications in the manuscripts to indicate a preference for one keyboard instrument over another, as is the case in most of Sweelinck’s other psalm variation settings. Psalm 116, for example, calls for two manuals and Psalm 36 has a pedal in the final variation. The primary source for Psalm 140 is the Fitzwilliam manuscript, but a similar version with one less variation exists in LyB2 as “De Tien Geboden Gods,” as the Dutch Psalter uses the same tune for Psalm 140 and “The Ten Commandments.” The first variation is a bicinium between an upper voice cantus firmus and an accompanying voice initially moving against the cantus per diminutionem at the ratio of 4:1 (whole notes in the cantus against quarter notes in the accompanying voice). The second variation is also a bicinium with the cantus in the upper voice, but a ratio of 16:1 is maintained throughout (whole notes in the cantus against sixteenth notes in the accompanying voice). The long note values of the cantus, contrasted against the short notes of the accompanying voice 164 For example, the notion of chant melodies set without prospect of performance mirrors precedent set in England. Sarum melodies set after the Reformation by Tallis, Blitheman and especially William Byrd were likely well-known to Sweelinck. Dirksen suggests that Sweelinck’s keyboard style in these variations indicates his familiarity with the English tradition of writing verses on obsolete chant tunes. See Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 131. 12 4 suggest that any instrument with a decaying attack (harpsichord, virginal, clavichord) can be ruled out given the textural characteristics of these two variations, as the cantus would not be heard. Moreover, I suggest that this ratio of texture is specifically suggestive of an English influence common in organ composition and performance. Small Tudor organs tended to have low wind pressure and a relatively small windchest. If a particularly florid line was cast against a melody in longer tones, the wind needed to play the florid line would be borrowed from the melodic line, creating instability in the constant stream of air through the pipe. Composers used the resulting waver in tone to great dramatic effect, and often remarked of its voice-like quality, not unlike our modern understanding of vibrato. Sweelinck’s large organ in Amsterdam likely bore sufficient wind to manage both voices, with an additional tremulant stop to artificially undulate the tone of all the voices simultaneously. In his analysis of Psalm 36, Pieter Dirksen notes instances where Sweelinck’s textural and rhythmic choices in his keyboard variations align perfectly with his vocal settings of the Marot and the de Bèze Psalter. “Here then one is confronted with concrete evidence that Sweelinck follows a text in an instrumental work too.”165 As such, a rhetorical analysis of Sweelinck’s psalm settings for keyboard may well reveal a deeper level of textual relationships. Were we to do so, the first task comes in reconciling the thirteen stanzas of Marot and de Bèze with Sweelinck’s five variations. Julia Dokter has suggested that Psalm 140 could be considered an example of non-functional alternatim.166 Typical practice in English liturgy (and likely in the Netherlands as well), was for organists to set the odd-numbered verses of hymns with many stanzas, leaving only the even-numbered verses to be sung out loud. When transferred to 165 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 175. 166 Julia Dokter, “Musical Rhetoric in Sweelinck’s Sacred Keyboard Variations,” 25-56. 12 5 variation form, then, the verses that are not sung are simply omitted, suggesting that the genre of psalm variations might be seen as a remnant of the ritual of hymn singing in alternatim. Dirksen has noted the presence of this phenomenon of non-functional alternatim, or alternatim not used for liturgical purposes with Sweelinck’s setting of Christe qui lux es et dies, “a hymn of seven verses. Traditionally, organ settings replaced plainchant on the even-numbered verses in alternatim practices, which resulted in three settings required for liturgical performance – also the number of variations in Sweelinck’s set. Sweelinck’s compositions cannot, however, have been conceived for alternatim purposes, as the second and third variations are bound together by a transitional passage. In Amsterdam there was, of course, no opportunity to perform this compline hymn in liturgical circumstances anyway. As Sweelinck probably remained a Catholic all his life one wonders if the number of variations – and indeed the choice of the hymn in the first place – can be interpreted as an ‘ideal’ reference to an obsolete practice.”167 Returning now to the Psalm variations, Julia Dokter suggests that there is “enough evidence to ascertain that when Sweelinck presents the first variation of any given cycle as a bicinium, he therefore implies the performance of a preceding homophonic variation not supplied in the manuscripts. This necessarily reorders the matching of text verses to specific variations: while normally we would consider the bicinium first variation as representing the first verse of the text, we now understand that the bicinium must be considered in conjunction with the second text verse. This allows the accurate matching of text to musical gesture; a matching that is validated by the subsequent high degree of music-text relationships at the local level.”168 If this is the case, we can superimpose the text of the even-numbered verses of the translation of 167 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 134. 168 Julia Dokter, “Musical Rhetoric in Sweelinck’s Sacred Keyboard Variations,” 28. 12 6 Marot and de Bèze onto Sweelinck’s work, where text verse 2 matches the added homophonic setting before the first bicinium, which is substituted for text verse 4. The six performed variations would thus substitute for text verses 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. When this process is applied to the companion setting of “The Ten Commandments,” Dokter argues that the same principle of non-functional alternatim applies. The first variation is a bicinium, so there is an implied preceding homophonic stanza. Dokter suggests that the odd- numbered verses are represented in this case, therefore text stanza 1 is the added homophonic variation, followed by text stanzas 3, 5, 7, and 9. Because the settings for both “The Ten Commandments” and Psalm 140 are nearly identical, I suggest that music-text relationships at the local level need not be examined for rhetorical turns here, though Dokter explains Sweelinck’s use of a variety of stock rhetorical figures for a musical decoration of the cantus firmus. Furthermore, though Sweelinck’s vocal pieces in French would have had a ready audience, if the impetus of the organ pieces was to keep the tunes in public consciousness, the rise of the vernacular as the language of the liturgy in Amsterdam would have rendered a textual reading in French obsolete. When considering the formal plan of the sacred variation pieces, the presence of alternatim principles in Sweelinck’s composition is entirely plausible and in keeping with preexisting custom. English organists in the first half of the sixteenth century regularly set odd- numbered hymn verses for the organ with the intent of even-numbered verses being sung, chanted, or merely implied. Though Sweelinck’s settings would not have seen regular use in a liturgical context, the tradition of alternatim would certainly have been both familiar to the composer and worthy of preservation. 12 7 Dokter’s recommendations for the performance of Sweelinck’s sacred variations mirror the aforementioned claims. She calls for greater sensitivity to the prosody of the original text in the keyboard variations, and magnifies Dirksen’s claim that Sweelinck consistently had a text in mind when composing for keyboard instruments. Girolamo Frescobaldi, well familiar with Sweelinck’s compositions also emphasizes this point: The manner of playing, just as in the performance of modern madrigals, should not be subjected to strict time. Although such madrigals are difficult, they are facilitated if one takes the beat now languidly, now lively, or holding back, according to the affection of the music or the meaning of the word.169 Of course, this suggests a profoundly different approach to what is essentially the same musical material if one is performing Sweelinck’s “Psalm 140” or its shorter melodic equivalent, “Die 10 Geboten Gottes.” Dokter further recommends that performers of this repertoire insert homophonic settings of the chorales before Sweelinck’s bicinium settings so that the correct number of verses are portrayed, even suggesting a pastiche of settings from multiple composers might be appropriate, citing Claude Goudimel’s homophonic chorales as particularly worth consideration.170 169 Girolamo Frescobaldi, ‘Toccate e partite d’intavolatura’ Book 1 (Rome, 1614, 1637) in Readings in the history of music in performance, ed. C. MacClintock (Bloomington 1979), 133. 170 Peter Dathenius, De CL Psalmen Davids published by Andreas Clouck, 1620. This contains a recommendation by Sweelinck to use the four-part psalm arrangements by Claude Goudimel. 12 8 Embodied Variations While a text-based rhetorical analysis of Sweelinck’s variation works is certainly attainable given Dokter’s assertions that every verse of the Marot/de Bèze psalter is accounted for, I suggest instead that a rhetorical analysis based on the variation principle itself is more compelling, with greater implications for performance. While Sweelinck’s French-language vocal works have a clear audience, we need not necessarily assume the same for the keyboard works. Whether Sweelinck’s compositions were meant to serve as formulas to inspire his students, or as useful fodder for an Oude Kerk recital with secular aim, the art of composing variations relies on the balance of predictability and surprise. As Calvinist worship took a turn towards the vernacular in Amsterdam, the transmission of the melodies themselves, not the pairing of text and tune would be of greater importance. As such, a rhetorical lens that centers the hearing body charged with the task of receiving and remembering the tune outweighs the transmission of a text in significance. David Huron proposes a chain of reaction, tension, prediction, imagination, and appraisal responses when a listener encounters a musical stimulus, and that musical expectation yields psychological opportunities through the use of particular musical (or rhetorical) devices.171 In other words, understanding rhetorical choices made by the composer/creator function to guide the response of the listener, and consequently, understanding the result of those choices helps to create a more rhetorically-informed performance of works such as the Psalm variations. Because the nexus of the keyboard variation hinges on work-length imitation and mimesis, the form is straightforward and easy to follow, and repetitive melodic material forms the primary structural handholds. For a more nuanced understanding of the rhetoric of these pieces, I suggest that we 171 David Huron, Sweet Anticipation. 12 9 begin with the listener, and work backwards from performer to composer to the generative processes that comprise the written score. Those generative processes, as I discussed previously with the work of Henry Peacham the Elder and The Garden of Eloquence, consider rhetorical responses to instill in the listener both an affect and a paired somatic response as well. Borrowing from Huron’s schema, I propose that a four-fold descriptive process of surprise and predictability can be found in Sweelinck’s variation cycles. These processes account for the dual nature of these pieces as pedagogical exercises and as likely pieces in an Oude Kerk pre- or post-liturgical recital. Because they do not rely on a Dutch or French linguistic rhetoric, they jettison the problem of language and vernacular present in Sweelinck’s psalm-based keyboard works. Finally, by identifying these elements, we can develop a rhetorical language and framework to consider the rest of Sweelinck’s variation-based oeuvre and identify some likely principles of period and genre-specific improvisation as well. When considering each variation, both in isolation and in relation to the musical material that immediately precedes it, the listener should expect predictability in four arenas: schematic, dynamic, veridical, and conscious. Likewise, the musical instances where the listener’s expectations are thwarted, or elements of surprise, align in the same four categories. As we have established, and in keeping with Dokter’s claims, Sweelinck’s Psalm 140 evokes the tradition of alternatim in its use of variation form. Listeners to the keyboard version should be easily reminded of the preexisting tradition as it existed in Roman Catholic liturgy in Amsterdam. Because the music has here conformed to an existing schema present in the listener’s consciousness, the composer in turn employed schematic familiarity, relying on the historic ear of the hearer to make the connection between contemporary manifestation and historical practice. 13 0 Predictability and Familiarity A close relation to schematic familiarity, veridical predictability is brought about by encouraging multiple hearings of the same piece, or the same musical material. Because the chorale tune forms the basis of each variation, veridical familiarity becomes a natural byproduct. The composer’s use of imitation in the opening variation is another example of veridical familiarity. Not enough information is given to inform the listener upon first hearing of this musical phenomenon – this is only deduced upon a subsequent listening, or close attention to a musical score. Figure 10. Psalm 140, Variation 1; Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. While schematic predictability strongly relies on the expectations brought by the hearer to a listening experience, dynamic predictability within a work and unique to the work itself can contribute to the sense of familiarity. In this case, the musical work evokes self-contained musical expectations that are carried out through repetitive processes. Examples of this may include motivic, thematic, and figurative repetition, ostinatos and sequences. Huron suggests that the fourth category, conscious predictability, lies largely beyond the composer’s control. While it is true that whether future musical events can be easily inferred or not depends largely on the experiences of the listeners and their relationship to the music itself, exposure to the rest of Sweelinck’s variation oeuvre can also build conscious predictability, as rhetorical techniques of mimesis and varietas tend to resurface in similar manners in all of the 13 1 composers variation works. Furthermore, the notion that Sweelinck’s notated music serves more as a model for improvisation and as an inspiration for further composition and less as an artifact depicting a performance as it actually happened contributes to the repertoire’s ability to build conscious predictability, a particularly useful means of building expectation when serving a didactic purpose. Because these psalm melodies ultimately needed to be remembered to be sung, and because organists in Sweelinck’s circle were asked to improvise in this manner for the specific purpose of teaching a congregation these melodies, conscious predictability was a necessary aspect of the musicking experience. Surprise and Innovation When considering the use of surprise and innovation, and by extension, a rhetorical performance that elevates these elements, an interpretation of the variation keyboard works ought to first identify the predictable and familiar expectations from which Sweelinck departs. Those expectations are either external or internal to the work itself. External expectations, or musical presuppositions the listener brings to the experience, are either schematic or veridical. Schematic surprises do not erode as the listener becomes more familiar with the work, while veridical surprises gradually lose their effect as the work progresses, or upon subsequent listenings. The mere fact that this is an instrumental manifestation of a previously existing vocal practice qualifies as veridical surprise. An audience for this music would note the musical irony here, and likely appreciate the novelty of a Genevan Psalter tune presented in a manner previously reserved for Roman Catholic chant. 13 2 Variation four is an example of schematic surprise. The three preceding variations set the example of a soprano cantus beginning immediately at the start of the variation itself, with no introduction. Variation four, in contrast, uses a tenor entry offset by an introduction. The introduction itself is also deceptive, because it contains the incipit of the chorale tune in diminution, present just long enough to allow the “correct” tenor entry before transpiring into free counterpoint. This is also an example of the “garden path” phenomenon described previously, where understanding the musical irony here requires the listener to recall the previous soprano entry, or be privy to the printed score.172 The false entry could also be considered dynamic surprise, as this is a violation of a work-specific expectation. Figure 11. Psalm 140, Variation 4; Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. 172 First proposed by David Temperley, the “garden path” phenomenon describes instances where musical irony occur when the listener assumes the most common approach or “path,” until a later event causes this approach to be reevaluated. A grammatical corollary might be considered in the phrase “The old man the boats.” One’s first reading assumes “old” to be the adjective modifying the noun “man.” Upon completing the sentence, we realize that the sentence must be parsed “old-man” as noun-verb. See also David Huron, Sweet Anticipation, 279-280. 13 3 Forma Formans Frits Noske cites three pieces by Sweelinck that adhere to the variation principle: the secular variation sets “Fortune my Foe” and “Under the Linden Tree” and variations on “Ich Ruf Zu Dir,” a Lutheran chorale melody. His analysis, and mine, eschews the need to delve into text- specific revelations as they may concern rhetorical performance of these works. To require as much assumes both a French rhetorical orientation for the keyboard works when none is called for, and a starkly different approach depending on whether a sacred or a secular work is under consideration – both monikers that did not bear the same significance in Sweelinck’s time. Instead, Noske’s interest lies in the manipulation of time structures in these works, and the application of techniques to evoke acceleration, deceleration, and stasis to form a composite sense of stretto through the entirety of a variation work.173 Many of the techniques Noske cites can be mapped onto the same schema of four-fold surprise and predictability. He is particularly interested, for example, in the use of canon and imitation as a tool for augmentation of the Forma formans time structure. Similarly, I have singled out these elements as tools of schematic and dynamic surprise in their static use, while also predictable in their ubiquitous use in the works of Sweelinck and his predecessors. The fifth and final notated variation of Psalm 140 provides for an excellent application of Forma formans. When considering the ratios of the non-melodic voices, we see a gradual acceleration, first of quarter and eighth notes against a whole-note cantus (1:4:8) at m.111, then quarter and sixteenth notes (1:4:16) at m.117, followed by eighth and sixteenth notes (1:8:16), and finally half notes against six-grouped sixteenth notes (1:2:24). This pattern of rhythmic acceleration, which the body experiences as a speeding up of time (in spite of no such indication 173 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,” see especially the discussion of “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”, pp. 47-51. 13 4 in the score), is unexpectedly halted at the final pitch of the melody, where the acceleration of formans time gives way to a sudden deceleration before the coda. I suggest that this particular phenomenon, well accounted for by Noske as a common occurrence in Sweelinck’s pieces (we should note that the music presented in the previous case study ended with similar proportions), is an example of the elusive conscious surprise: a work-specific expectation is implied, but violated at the moment the listener would least expect. Conclusions In the previous case study, I offered the performance suggestion that Forma formans should be interpreted through use of agogic accents, or accents of duration. Moments of acceleration are magnified through greater space between the notes, deceleration through less space, and stagnation somewhere in between. Rather than suggesting a similar (and perhaps conflicting) approach when mapping Hurons schematic of surprise and predictability, I suggest timbral alterations be employed to magnify their effects on the listener. Because surprise generates a short-term negatively-valenced limbic response, as described previously, successive moments of surprise may be softened by less contrast in organ registration, or magnified further by dramatic changes in timbre and location of the sound source when possible. We do not know whether Sweelinck cultivated dramatic shifts in his performances so as to magnify moments of surprise, though accounts by Constantijn Huygens certainly suggest that some organists may have overdone this. Our accounts of the soundscape of the Oude Kerk certainly suggest that Sweelinck had plenty of background noise to cut through, and if these performances were the only opportunity for Sweelinck to emphasize a specific musical point to a student on a pipe organ, perhaps he did over-emphasize these moments in his playing. As the 13 5 writings of Peacham the Elder and the framework of David Huron suggest, Sweelinck considered these elements in his delivery and responded accordingly, as should performers today. Case Study 3: The Echo Fantasia Having addressed Sweelinck’s understanding of copia and variation in his psalm-based works, we must address what could be considered the rhetorical opposing force to the variety achieved in these works: the so-called “echo technique.” In contrast to variation technique, where the ear is guided through subtle alterations to the original musical material, the echo technique used by Sweelinck calls for short portions of music material to be repeated exactly, most often either on a contrasting softer manual or with displacement of an octave.174 The works are enigmas both for what they bear and what they lack. Even to the untrained ear, the pattern of systematic repetition is so immediately clear as to be of great amusement, and abounding potential for virtuosity on many fronts. Simultaneously, they are devoid of much of the contrapuntal skill for which Sweelinck is so well regarded, and they exhibit great restraint in their use of figuration- a stark departure from our other two case studies. As such, previous generations of scholars have attempted to yoke the Echo Fantasia with either the Fantasia or Toccata genres. Like the fantasia, the pieces tend to be of tripartite structure with a polyphonic exordium, an echo medium, and a motivic peroratio.175 Like the toccata, they employ shifting tonality, rely heavily on the use of musical sequence, and are not monothematic. That they 174 A table of Sweelinck’s non-fugal fantasias can be found in the Appendix. 175 In classical rhetoric, the peroratio, or final part of a speech served as a recapitulation of the significant parts of the speech, and as a final opportunity to influence the emotions of the audience. Composers often treat the final moments of a musical “oration” much the same way. 13 6 occupy a liminal space between genres and comprise a small portion of Sweelinck’s known keyboard compositions relegates these works to scant treatment by the previous generations of scholars, some of whom saw it easier to claim Sweelinck’s connection to the works only because of misattribution.176 Further compounding the curiosity of these pieces is the mere fact that the tradition of the echo fantasia appears to have risen and died with Sweelinck. Pieter Dirksen suggests that seventeenth-century Dutch organists borrowed freely from this idea, but few clues corroborate this in an art that is primarily improvisatory.177 Save for one piece by Sweelinck’s student, Samuel Scheidt, no extant piece makes such extensive use of the echo as these works.178 Dirksen joins Frits Noske in suggesting that the inspiration for these pieces comes from vocal music and the double-choir technique so prevalent in late Renaissance choral polyphony. Had this been the impetus, one would expect to see greater use of double-choir techniques in Sweelinck’s vocal music, for which there is little. If anywhere, the polychorality of the madrigals, operas, and sacred music of Claudio Monteverdi and his circle ought to have influenced Venetian organists towards this technique, had the dimensions of Italian organs not precluded the possibility of timbral (manual) changes.179 176 For example, Frits Noske claims that the Echo Fantasy under consideration here was most likely composed by a South German composer, citing only similar motivic structures. Noske is neither able to specify a composer, nor a comparable work for comparison. See Frits Noske, Sweelinck, 94. 177 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 454-456. 178 It is perhaps worth noting that the echo principle does appear in early masters of the classic French organ tradition, including Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Nicolas Antoine Lebègue, and Liège composer Lambert Chaumont, all active at the end of the 17th century, and beyond the orbit of Sweelinck and his progeny. 179 Just as Sweelinck had two pipe organs at his disposal in the Oude Kerk, Italian organs could get around this problem if they had multiple instruments (and players, and bellows operators) in the same space. By Sweelinck’s time this was quite common. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna had two pipe organs. Giovanni Gabrieli’s large-scale works for instruments often employed a similar echo technique, taking advantage of the spatial characteristics of the Basilica San Marco in Venice. 13 7 Repetition as a rhetorical device can be described any number of ways. Paranomasia describes repetition with slight alterations and is usually reserved for the repeating of a single line within a polyphonic texture. Mimesis, a term which comes into its own in the generations preceding Sweelinck suggests to later writers a more disguised imitation, perhaps at a different intervallic level or subject to augmentation or diminution of the rhythm itself.180 Quintilian’s definition of the term emphasizes the mocking nature of mimesis, which certainly could provide for some fanciful interpretations of such a systematic use as found in the Echo Fantasies of Sweelinck. Instead, I suggest these figures be interpreted as epizeuxes, where the phrase repeated is done so immediately and emphatically. Noted first as a passionate repetition by Susenbrotus in Epitome, Henry Peacham the Elder most thoroughly discusses the figure in The Garden of Eloquence as a device of vehement and powerful stress: Epizeuxis, when we repeate a word agayne, for the greater vehemency, and nothing betweene, and that with a swifte pronunciation181 Through varied and contrasting examples, Peacham reminds his readers that vehemency can heighten any affection, be it love, sorrow, joy, or admiration. Further, Peacham compares the epizeuxis to the musical quaver or shake, stressing their common effect when reiterated without pause – a vehement and powerful stress is matched by a powerful impact on the listener.182 Here we see Sweelinck attempting to achieve much the same varietas as in the many variation works themselves. By viewing the echo technique as a derivative of the variation techniques described 180 Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica, 328-9. 181 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, 35. 182 Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica, 263-4. 13 8 in the previous case study, we can more clearly understand how direct repetition informs Sweelinck’s pedagogy and composition, and how these pieces would have been embodied by the performer and received by the listener. In this case study, however, I focus on the performer themselves. For the organist, performance considerations for the echo fantasies present in the movement of the body need be considered as rhetorical gestures. This includes an analysis of the somatic responses necessary for the performer, the manner in which these would have been heard on Sweelinck’s instruments in the Oude Kerk, and the transmission of these principles from teacher to student – Samuel Scheidt in this case – the only student of Sweelinck’s to attempt writing in this style. First This Way, Then That Disagreement abounds amongst older generations of Sweelinck scholars over what constitutes a piece in this style, and what does not. Dirksen’s discussion of the Echo Fantasies includes all fantasies that are non-fugal, amounting to eight works in total, though only five bear the name “echo” in the title.183 Of those five, the compass and tonal areas suggest to Dirksen that two are likely to have been performed on harpsichord, two on organ, and one that could be played on either instrument family. Two of the echo fantasies, C1 and C3, make use of an echo displaced by an octave. The right-hand leading voice is heard in a higher octave, and the echoing voice an octave lower. In no case does the echoing voice descend lower than the accompanying voice, played by the left hand. Occasionally the roles are reversed, where the melodic and echoing voice are in the lower register and played with the left hand, while the right hand provides chordal accompaniment. For 183 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 454. 13 9 performance of these fantasies, a single manual instrument is possible, though even Dirksen’s claim that the pieces are meant for harpsichord allows for two contrasting sounds. Fantasy d4 requires a contrasting manual as the echoing voice plays in the same register as the original voice. The echo technique begins after a short exordium in strict counterpoint, but the canon between the original and the echoing voice carries the piece to its conclusion. This contrasts with Sweelinck’s other pieces in an echo style, where the proportions between exordium, medium, and finis are generally more balanced, and conclude with rapid scalar movement similar to those found in the toccatas. The intervallic and rhythmic construction of the echo is always an exact replication of the original. The contrast lies in the accompanying harmonic voice, played by the left hand throughout the excerpt. Here we see subtle alterations in chord structure, voicing, inversion, and range between the two repetitions of the same thematic material. The achieved varietas again recalls Erasmus of Rotterdam and copia, in a manner suggesting that the rhetorical aim of these pieces is to achieve variety in harmonic ideas specifically as they relate to timbral changes between replications of the same material. The harmonic choices Sweelinck makes appear to be directly informed both by the desire to achieve varietas and the causal relationships between his harmonic choices and timbral shifts between original and echoing voice. Embodying the Echo Much of scholarly discourse around the most appropriate instrument for the repertoire centers around the scores themselves, which for Sweelinck are greatly separated by time and space. General maxims are sometimes employed: these move closer to considerations of the instruments themselves as the best teachers for the appropriate pairing of keyboard and 14 0 repertoire. Here I wish to add also the embodied position of the player themselves as a means of further understanding this relationship between the sounds created, the player creating them, and the instrument in question, whichever it may be. It is widely known that keyboardists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were expected to move with great fluidity between all available keyboard instruments, including virginals and spinets, which are not accounted for here. Yet the organological differences between the pipe organ, harpsichord, and clavichord of Sweelinck’s time could not be more profound.184 Our consideration of the Fantasia d4 will approach those differences from the position of the keyboardist themselves, accounting for contrasting embodied tactile and aural sensations one experiences as a simultaneous student of the pipe organ, harpsichord, and clavichord in Amsterdam during the period in question. I accomplish this with the assistance of principles set forth in Elisabeth LeGuin’s seminal work Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology.185 Although speaking specifically of kinesthetic synapses felt by a cellist playing the works of Luigi Boccherini, who is active some 200 years after Sweelinck, I find her framework for consideration of the relationship between the work, the instrument, and the performer of compelling worth in this repertoire as well. Such work will further contribute to scholarly discourse surrounding the use of these instruments under specific musical conditions and shed light on our understanding of early keyboard pedagogy in this region. 184 Clavichords tend to be omitted from most performance inventories in this era because of their small frame and limited volume. While musicians and performers with appropriate means would typically perform on a harpsichord, organ, or spinet, those without the means to procure these instruments often turned to the clavichord instead. Further, several scholars have noted the use of “suitcase” clavichords, or portable instruments suitable for student travel. Because I argue in this case study for the pedagogical implications of this fantasy, I include mention of the instrument here. Several performers, including Wim Winters most notably, have made compelling recordings of Sweelinck on the clavichord, an instrument Sweelinck undoubtedly used for practice as all organists did. 185 Elisabeth LeGuin, Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 14 1 Tactile similarities and contrasts between the clavichord, harpsichord, and pipe organ of Sweelinck’s time will be framed for our purposes in categories of key mechanics, compass, and situational relations between performer and keydesk. The profound differences in these areas are indicative of the intricate embodied processes at work when composing, performing, or improvising on these instruments. Likewise, the unique characteristics of Echo Fantasy d4 make the piece an apt case study for organological comparison. Key Mechanics It is crucial to first acknowledge basic mechanical differences in the transfer of motion from player to key to sounding source, be it a string struck by a plectrum or tangent, or the opening of a pallet in the windchest beneath an organ pipe. Harpsichords and clavichords can be classified as basic first-class levers, in which the downward force of the finger on the key (effort) is transferred past a fulcrum to upward force on the opposite end of the key mechanism. That upward force on a clavichord pushes a blade (called a tangent) into a string, which triggers a vibration and the subsequent tone. In the case of the harpsichord, the motion is similar, but to produce a tone, the plectrum (or quill) must be pushed past the string, requiring slightly greater force and timing on the player’s behalf. In the case of tracker pipe organ action, however, the downward force of the depressed key must result in downward force of the tracker in order to open the appropriate windway into the foot of the pipe. As such, an additional first-class lever, known as a backfall is introduced to transfer the motion again, this time from upwards motion on the back side of the original lever into downward (or pulling) motion on the tracker itself. The addition of the backfall increases the key depth necessary to produce a tone, and, in lieu of any later developments to minimize the force necessary, such as Barker-type machines common in 14 2 the nineteenth century and beyond, the greater the quantity of stops engaged on the pipe organ, the heavier the action. Figure 12. Components of a mechanical key action pipe organ186 From the player’s perspective, and as one well-versed in the mechanics of all of these instruments, I can attest to the profound technical differences each approach requires. A heavy touch on a clavichord is likely to cause a string to break, but too delicate an approach to the tracker organ leaves one susceptible to injury. From a pedagogical perspective, this suggests to me a two-pronged approach, where the tactile differences between the instruments need be 186 Colin Pykett, “The Physics of Organ Actions,” revised Aug 2017. http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/the_physics_of_organ_actions.htm 14 3 addressed first, followed then by the exercises demanded by the composition or the improvisation technique in question. Although the depth of action required to approach each of the three instrument types in question is anything but standardized, one may assume that the downward motion required would at least be uniform. Especially in the case of the clavichord, this is not the case. Clavichordists are capable of producing a vibration in the tone by adding a horizontal dimension to their key touch. After depressing a key, a simple rocking motion causes the tangent to move in similar fashion, causing a slight vibrato effect known as Bebung. Although increasingly common in later works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and other Empfindsamer Stil composers, scant reference to the use of keyboard vibrato in the sixteenth century does exist. Particularly interesting here is the comparison made to the organ tremulant: “…one usually produced a tremulant on an organ with a special stop; the same effect can be produced on this Clavier without a special stop, only by trembling and shaking slowly or rapidly with a free hand.187 Likewise, Koos van de Linde has suggested that the addition of the tremulant to pipe organ registration was far more regular than is heard in Sweelinck performances today.188 One of the most significant treatises on keyboard instruments of the time is the 1619 Syntagma Musicum of Michael Praetorius. Here he states that the relationship between clavichord and organ is a pedagogical one, and that the clavichord is seen as a precursor instrument to the organ, allowing the refinement of technique and individual practice with greater efficiency than the organ can provide, given constraints on the spaces the instruments occupy, as well as the need for a bellows operator: 187 Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 271. 188 Koos van de Linde, “Organs in Sweelinck’s Time” in Sweelinck Studies, 210. 14 4 Beginning organ students are first taught the clavichord. This is chiefly because the clavichord has no quills – and these usually cause much trouble and displeasure to the player; and it is also because its strings remain more constant than those of the harpsichord and spinet, which require many and frequent tunings. Clavichords often need not to be tuned for long periods of time, and this is particularly advantageous for beginning students who are not yet able to tune and quill instruments.189 The above description contrasts ample iconographic evidence which suggests the clavichord also had a home in amateur and civic music making. Henri Arnault de Zwolle describes a similar instrument in 1440, and a 1475 altarpiece by Utrecht carver Adriaan van Wesel is perhaps the first empirical record of a Dutch clavichord, and town magistrates of Hasselt commissioned a two-manual clavichord in 1621.190 Additional iconographic records suggest the clavichord was used in ensemble playing as well, its softer tone particularly well suited to accompanying the lute. Finally, Charles van den Borren writes of the appeal of the clavichord for accompanying and leading popular song, affirming that “even the populace developed an interest in keyboard music. At the beginning of the seventeenth century in Amsterdam there existed inns where music was played, and, among the various instruments which they provided were to be found harpsichords and clavichords.”191 Compass and Chromatic Range Clavichords, harpsichords, and pipe organs tended toward a relatively consistent 4-octave span during Sweelinck’s time. Both the large and small organs in the Oude Kerk, built by 189 Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord, 120. 190 Arend Jan Gierveld, “The Harpsichord and Clavichord in the Dutch Republic,” in Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 31/2 (1981), 126. 191 Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord, 134. 14 5 Niehoff in 1542 and 1545 respectively, had a compass of FGA-g2a2 with short octaves at both extremities. The exception is the middle manual on the large 3-manual organ, which extended to g3a3. The Hoofdwerck (manual II) could be used at either 12’ or 6’ pitch, and its orientation was symmetrical to the other manuals, meaning the pitches were vertically aligned between manuals I and III, but not between either manual and manual II, as demonstrated below. Figure 13. Vertical orientation of a three-manual keyboard instrument.192 The two-manual harpsichord, including the instrument by Johannes Ruckers that Sweelinck purchased in Antwerp, also had a displaced manual, but the upper manual of the harpsichord is a transposing manual at the interval of a fourth. Further, typical Flemish harpsichords have both 8-foot and 4-foot stops available, with the 4-foot stop capable of being coupled to the 8-foot for a fuller texture. Visually, the upper manual is “displaced” to the player’s right of the lower manual, but the relationship between the two manuals and the strings is perfectly vertical.193 This means that the upper manual sounds a perfect fourth higher than the lower manual. Though the orientation of the manuals between the two-manual harpsichord and the three-manual larger Niehoff organ in the Oude Kerk is identical, what is heard is profoundly different. 192 Koos van de Linde, “Organs in Sweelinck’s Time” in Sweelinck Studies, 205. 193 John Koster, “History and Construction of the Harpsichord” in Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord, ed. Mark Kroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 9-21. 14 6 This is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the performances of the Sweelinck’s Echo fantasias. Designed initially to highlight the contrasting sounds now possible on organs with multiple manuals, the echo fantasias are built on the manipulation of short passages of imitation between loud and soft sounds. In so doing, they become a sonic experience as well, as the spatial orientation of the organ is based on each manual or division operating with some sense of autonomy. Scholars have suggested that the echo fantasias could have been performed on harpsichords such as these, with the louder manual using the 8-foot and 4-foot stops coupled together. Doing so, however, would have required the echos to be transposed either a fourth higher or a fifth lower, but only when performed on the harpsichord. John Henry van der Meer suggests another possibility for this repertoire, namely, a so-called “mother-and-child” virginal, where a smaller 4-foot instrument fits inside and is coupled to a larger 8-foot instrument. The smaller instrument rests on the jackrail of the first, which suggests a particularly large distance between the two manuals.194 One could also side with Ton Koopman, who suggests instead that all of the echo fantasias belong on the pipe organ, for reasons that will become apparent later. Situational Structure Elisabeth LeGuin’s groundbreaking 2006 study on corporeal (carnal) musicology in the cello works of composer Luigi Boccherini provides scholars with a wellspring of new frameworks within which to conceptualize the compositional process, particularly when that process is so closely attuned to the instrument in question. LeGuin advocates an approach to scholarship that resonates well with Sweelinck studies. As Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers has 194 John Henry van der Meer, “Studien zu zwei niederländischen Virginalen” in Harmonie en perspectief- Zevenendertig bijdragen van Utrechtse musicologen voor Eduard Reeser, ed. Alfons Annegarn, Louis Peter Grijp, Paul Op de Coul (Deventer, 1988), 290-300. 14 7 shown, Sweelinck’s compositions for keyboard are very clearly worked out at the instrument itself, but the composition in score form is not fixed.195 Individual instruments command improvisatory choices based on many of the aural characteristics discussed below, and the performer’s reaction to the idiosyncrasies of an instrument constitutes corporeal choices. LeGuin suggests particular attention to the following processes, all of which are present in an embodied understanding of cello-and-bow thinking in the works of the late eighteenth-century composer: fixity vs. mobility, competing muscle groups, muscular extension and contraction, motion of limbs or digits toward or away from the center of the body, friction and the release of friction, and the use of/resistance to weight or gravity.196 Returning now to Sweelinck and the previously mentioned Echo fantasies, one can explore a similar checklist of characteristics present in an embodied performance of this repertoire. Fixity vs. Mobility The echoing and original voice are both played by the right hand in these compositions, which requires the keyboardist to split their body down a vertical axis. The left hand and left side of the body remain stagnant and fixed on the same manual, while the right hand travels between two contrasting sounds of loud and soft. In the case of a three-manual instrument, this involves three separate sonic environments: an accompanying voice, a leading voice, and an echo. The spatial relationship to the sound also varies greatly between performer and listener. For the echo to truly sound like an echo in the nave of the Oude Kerk, the subverted sound would be played in the Brustwerk and the original sound on the great, which comes from the highest part of the case 195 Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers, “The North German Chorale Fantasia: A Sermon Without Words,” 80-86. 196 Elisabeth LeGuin, Boccherini’s Body, 18. 14 8 and has the greatest advantage of the architectural acoustics. The registration possibilities of each manual also confirm this, as I will discuss later. From the performer’s stance however, this would be reversed: the echo would sound louder than the primary voice, since the Brustwerk is located closer to the player in the instrument197. Competing Muscle Groups When performing on a Dutch baroque instrument, such as the Niehoff organ described above, the right hand must also move laterally to find the echo voice, since manuals II and III are displaced vertically by interval of a fourth. As such, the physical space of the sound producing plane (the console itself) mirrors the sound of the echo. In relation to the performer, the original sounds are produced closest to the performer’s center axis, while the echo is physically displaced from the original sound in both horizontal and vertical ways. Sonically, however, the sensation is reversed: the echo sounds louder than the original voice in relation to the performer because of the console’s position in relation to the pipes producing the sounds in question. When performing this repertoire on a harpsichord, the echoing voice and the accompanying voice would be played on the same manual, and the leading melodic voice would utilize the coupled manual. 197 Pipe organs at this time were built on concepts known as Werkprincip. At its essence, a large pipe organ consisted of two or three smaller, semi-autonomous divisions. Each division contained a combination of stops that allowed it to function independently from the others, and were typically played from their own unique keyboard at the keydesk. In the case of the large organ in the Oude Kerk, one division sounded from immediately above the organist’s head, but because of the spatial arrangement of the room, what sounded the loudest to the organist was likely the softest for the listener. Another division at the organist’s back sounded softer to the player than to the listener. The largest division, which rested above the player, had the greatest advantage of the room’s acoustics. 14 9 Friction and the Release of Friction LeGuin is speaking here of the friction of the bow on the strings, but a similar application could be made when considering finger control of the articulation as it varies from instrument to instrument. Unassisted action on a Niehoff organ would require a far stronger initial stroke than the harpsichord or clavichord, as Praetorius alludes to above. The friction remains constant on the organ key while the tone is engaged, and the release of the note must also be guided by a controlled release of friction. Modern organ technique, perhaps best exemplified by the French Romantic school of César Franck, Marcel Dupré and others, suggests that the finger is always in motion, even when depressing a key. This helps maintain a constant fluidity of motion that aids in healthy technique, minimizes fatigue, and contributes to more musical legato, an articulation not native to Sweelinck’s music. Early technique, with its wide palate of agogic accents to control duration (and therefore imply volume) requires the same attention to detail, so as to ensure that the key mechanism on either the organ or harpsichord is not overly percussive. Tuning & Temperament In his 1619 Syntagma Musicum, Michael Praetorius provides a description of a clavichord with a range of four octaves and a whole tone,198 a range rivaling that of both the harpsichord and the organ. It is noteworthy, however, that these are fretted clavichords, in which case more than one note is played on a single string. No extant unfretted clavichords can be found that predate the eighteenth century, though their existence is not out of the question. In contrast to the harpsichord, for which each note has its own strings, the clavichord’s economizing of available space means that relatively few strings need to be tuned. For the 198 Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord, 118. 15 0 performer, this presents two limitations that need to be discussed here. First, any two notes sounding on the same string cannot be played contemporaneously. While this certainly eliminates the likelihood of the inclusion of strong dissonances, the degree to which this affects the player is related to the degree of fretting. Although there exist no surviving instruments from the Netherlands, Brauchli shows the trend in Italian clavichords in the sixteenth-century to fret three or four pitches per string (covering the distance of a minor third in some cases), and to two to three pitches per string in seventeenth-century German-oriented instruments.199 In all cases, the strings responsible for the largest expanse of pitches is relegated either to the upper extremes of the register, or beginning on notes where a harmonic minor third would be an unlikely requirement based on the keys and tonal areas of most repertoire of this period. The second consideration regarding fretted clavichords relates to musical temperament. No evidence exists for the presence of movable tangents on a fretted clavichord, and no other mechanism is in place to provide for the tuning of individual pitches beyond the string itself, which means that the temperament set by the builder likely remained with the clavichord. The portability of the clavichord, however, did provide for a greater consistency of pitch amongst the instruments than was possible on the harpsichord, and certainly on the organ. Some variant of meantone tuning was common on the organ and harpsichord, though the harpsichord has certainly demonstrated a greater deal of historical flexibility in terms of temperament. String measurements of the remaining clavichords from the period place A at ~440hz, though we are speaking primarily of instruments from the Italian peninsula here, rather than the Netherlands.200 Organ tuning varied greatly from instrument to instrument, as there was no 199 Ibid. 200 Ibid. 15 1 means by which to transport pitch with any continuity. Instruments in France and England, both of which otherwise displayed significant sway on organ building in the Netherlands, tended toward the higher Chorton, often pitched at A=~467hz or higher. The above represents an important consideration for the performer, and brings us back to the original questions concerning an embodied relationship between performer and instrument. When approaching an instrument, one ought to assume certain expectations in the relationship between physical motion on a specific key and the resulting tone. Such assumptions are not the case with these keyboard instruments, most particularly the organ, where pitch is a relative construct, while a more reliable metric is the intervallic relationship developed by a network of pitches. As such, I argue that the keyboardist builds a tactile tonal map201 when moving between each of these instruments and their respective transpositions. Such mapping privileges the distances between respective pitches, as well as the desired articulations, rhythms, and durations, rather than the absoluteness of the pitches themselves. All echo fantasies of Sweelinck begin with gestures that suggest the establishment of a tactile tonal map. A prolonged melodic gesture in the tonic begins each of these pieces, and the melodies created in their initial phrases of these pieces move in scalar fashion, as if to suggest the establishment of the tonal area in one’s ear and tactile consciousness. Although Sweelinck generally did not stray far from the Oude Kerk instruments, the function of these exordia serve purposes similar to the toccata. Just as the toccata served as an opportunity for the organist to 201 The organist, for example, needs to keep in mind that the sound of the instrument at the key desk varies greatly from what is experienced on the floor below. Marc Leman refers to this principle in his discussion of embodiment, noting the importance of gesture and action-perception couplings to the formation of musical meaning. The organist, far removed from the intended sound target (the audience) must understand how their gestures and resulting musical sounds, often counterintuitive and anathema in their own bodies, manifest in a profoundly different musical sound. Likewise, the listener builds a similar tonal map based on their perceived notion of the organist’s physical gestures necessary to achieve a specific sound. See Marc Leman and Pieter-Jan Maes, “The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Music,” Empirical Musicology Review 9 (3-4, 2014), 236-246. 15 2 warm up their fingers and determine the state of the organ, subject as it was to fluctuations of temperature and humidity, and a construction so complex that many things could go wrong with little notice, so too do these echo fantasies begin with an opportunity to orient the player and the listener to the instrument itself. In this manner the exordium of the piece mirrors the exordium of an oration. The performer states their intentions by determining the capabilities of the organ (and perhaps the player) in that static moment, before proceeding to the echo portions of the piece in the medium. Harmonic intrigue and chromatic colorations are saved for later in these pieces, after the echoing between contrasting sounds begins. Such habits were likely borrowed from Renaissance Toccatas, pieces designed to allow the organist to get their bearings on an instrument, to quickly check the tuning and timbre of each pipe, and to warm up their fingers before playing a Mass. The echo fantasies, d4 chief among them, serve as musical outliers in this respect; they lack the imitative imagination of a variation set or a toccata (as Sweelinck redefined it, and bearing greater relation to the Gabrielis than Frescobaldi), or the daring harmonic dissonances of a fantasy. Instead, the form is simple: a brief introduction establishing the initial tonal area, followed by the trading of brief musical ideas between contrasting manuals, all accompanied by a simple homophonic left-hand chordal pattern. Because of this structure, more representative of preceding toccatas than fantasies, I suggest that one such purpose of the echo fantasy was to orient the player on the keyboard, either the harpsichord or the organ in this case, and to allow the player to explore the timbral possibilities that lay within the capacities of that particular instrument. As has been established, keyboardists regularly encountered a wide array of instruments – harpsichords, virginals, clavichords, organs, and others – each requiring a different touch from 15 3 the player, each generating a significantly different sound and decay, and each utilizing space in a slightly different way. The keyboardist’s perception of the sound they are making at the organ keydesk – several meters away from the listener, is profoundly different from an informal gathering around a harpsichord. Decay Issues of sound decay center on two primary considerations for our purposes here: the acoustical properties of the spaces in question, and the relationship between the player and the sound source (not to be confused with the keydesk). As mentioned earlier, the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam had a larger pipe organ oriented to speak down the center of the long nave, and a smaller pipe organ with a crosswise orientation, shown in the diagram below. Figure 14. Map of the Oude Kerk. To face the large organ (a) is to face west.202 a- Large organ b-small organ c-Hamburg Chapel d-Sweelinck’s grave The stoplists and descriptions of the instruments themselves will follow shortly, but here we must consider the sound itself as it emanated from each of these instruments. Sound sources on the small organ were delineated by those immediately in the periphery of the player 202 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 614. 15 4 (Borstwerk), and those higher up in the case (Hooftwerck). Because the closer chamber, or division, on this organ bore only one flute rank at 4-foot pitch and two 8-foot reed ranks, I suggest that the orientation for this organ did not constitute the ideal for this repertoire as the echoing manual would have been directly at the performer’s face and would not have provided adequate contrast against the louder sounding manual. Furthermore, to take advantage of the building’s acoustics as an ideal for an echo fantasy, the larger organ should be considered. On a three-manual instrument, the divisional aspects of the organ can be better exploited for this repertoire. The accompanying voice has its own timbral characteristics and is relegated to a specific portion of the organ chamber, as are both the primary and echoing melodic voices. The main manual (Hoofdwerck) sits highest in the organ case and as such has greatest advantage over the acoustics of the nave, which is long and narrow, and contained several arches in the ceiling. The remaining two divisions were placed immediately behind and in front of the player. While the player’s orientation to the sound sources indicate that their sonic experience would not match that of the listener’s, this instrument allows the echoing properties to be heard by the listener both in terms of the timbres employed in registration, but also in the location of the sounds themselves. Table 10. Stop List of the Main Organ: Niehoff, 1540-1542203 1. Rugpositief II. Hoofdwerck III. Bovenwerck Prestant 6’ Doef 6’ Doof 6’ Coppeldoef 3’ Octaaf +super octaef 3’+1 ½’ Holpijp 3’ Mixtuer Mixtuer Floijte 3’ Scarp Scarp Nasaet 1 2/3’ Quintadena 6’ Ghemze hoern 1 ½’ Holpijp 3’ Pedael Simbel III Regael 6’ Pulldowns to HW at 12’ Sijvelet ½’ Barpijp 6’ Trompet 6’ Trompet 6’ Scalmey 3’ Nachthoern 1 ½ ‘ Cingke 6’ 203 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, ed. Siegbert Rampe, Complete Organ and Keyboard Works, XX. 15 5 Figure 15. Close view of the main Niehoff organ in the Oude Kerk Engraving by Jan Goeree in 1700. 204 Returning to the clavichord, which we have ruled out as a possibility for performing this repertoire, it is important within our discussion of this category to consider the relation of the player to the source of the sound. Because the lid of the instrument opens toward the player, and because the strings run perpendicular to the keydesk, the player has direct access to the sound in a manner not replicated by the harpsichord or the organ. Although a resonating soundboard and sound chamber occupy the space beneath the instrument, bass sounds come from the same vicinity as the bass notes, providing the player with a stronger connection between the sound as visualized through tactile sensations and the produced sound itself. The harpsichord, by contrast, runs its strings parallel to the keys, so this ideal location is best found in its crook, where a soloist might stand when performing with a modern grand piano. Such an orientation strengthens 204 Jan Goeree, Interieur van de Oude Kerk van Amsterdam, gezien naar het westen, Engraving on paper, 1700, (object RP-P-1905-464; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.117408 15 6 Praetorius’s earlier notion of the clavichord as a training instrument of sorts, or at the very least, an instrument more directly tailored toward the sonic experience of the player. Registration The larger of the two Niehoff organs had a Hoofdwerck division that likely erred on the loud side of the timbral spectrum. Composed entirely of principal (or prestant/diapason) sounds, save for one reed, the Hoofdwerck before the Alteratie rendered the organ useless in a worship context likely provided a great deal of homophonic accompaniment. The other two manuals (Rugpositief and Bovenwerk on the stop list above) are more evenly matched. As such, I suggest that the accompaniment was likely registered on the Rugpositief, the echoing melody on the Bovenwerck, and the leading melody on the latter Hoofdwerck. Doing so assumes a heavier reliance on principal sounding pipes, in contrast to the flutes often heard in modern recordings of these fantasies. Indeed, given the presence of reed pipes on both instruments in the Oude Kerk, their use could not be entirely out of the question on repertoire such as this. From Teacher to Student Understanding the pedagogical impetus for this technique is possible when considering the echo at the hands of Samuel Scheidt, who shows marked characteristics of Sweelinck’s teaching in his own compositions. His lone piece in the echo style appears in part two of his Tabulatura Nova, bearing the title “Echo ad manual duplex, forte & lene” and is catalogued as SSWV 128. In essence, Scheidt’s composition consists of two distinct pieces, marked by contrasting clefs, instructions to the performer, and treatment of the echo principal. The exordium matches the style and content of Sweelinck’s d4. The tonal area is introduced and the 15 7 incipits for the echoes to follow comprise much of the introductory material. In contrast to Sweelinck’s monophonic leading and following voice, however, Scheidt employs all four voices in the movement from principal to echo voice, jettisoning the accompanying voice altogether. No difference can be found in the leading and following voice; the echo is simply a direct repetition heard in a contrasting timbre. The second half of the work more closely aligns with the echoing sections of Sweelinck’s d4, though there is no new exordium before moving directly into the technique of leading and echoing voice over a chordal accompaniment, which remains in the left hand throughout. As in the Sweelinck example, we see Scheidt making use of contrasting ideas in the accompaniment, adding varietas to the repetition of the melodies that move between original and echoing voice. While Scheidt displays greater variation than Sweelinck in the length of his melodic phrases, the material itself is largely predictable, scalar, and conjunct in motion. The conclusion of Scheidt’s piece is particularly cheeky, presenting the echo in near mocking fashion as shown below. As Sweelinck’s d4 echo fantasia ends without finis, so too does Scheidt end abruptly on an echo. That the rest of Sweelinck’s echo fantasias bear a more thoroughly developed finis suggests that d4 serves as the model for Scheidt. While other scholars have called into question whether the work was composed by Sweelinck at all, I suggest instead that the d4 fantasia is best considered on pedagogical grounds as a study in melody and variatio of accompanying figures. 15 8 Forma formans Frits Noske makes only passing mention of the Echo Fantasies in “Forma Formans,” and he suggests that the attribution of fantasia d4 is uncertain, though he disagrees with Gustav Leonhart’s belief that the piece is an arrangement of an instrumental double-choir work.205 I suggest, however, that his basic structural factors of acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization remain at work in fantasia d4, especially when considering the varying length of the motives – a factor Noske uses to call the authenticity of the fantasia into question. Natural stabilization also occurs for the listener once the pattern of tune and echo is established. The listener is able to perceive the pattern, and in so doing, is able to further anticipate musical events before they transpire. Conclusions Given the above considerations that take into account the sonic affect of Sweelinck’s echo fantasy d4, as well as organological and kinesthetic observations, we arrive at a number of possible attentions for performers. When considering the echo and original voice, principles of Werkprincip should be employed on the organ, with special attention to the spatial orientation of the instrument in its space. Because the original keyboards were transposing, the hand motion from leading to following keyboard is not only vertical, but horizontal as well. Performances that disregard the original need for lateral movement not found on modern instruments will see the original and echoing sounds occupying too close a space. This also applies to echo fantasies played on a harpsichord with contrasting manuals. 205 Frits Noske, Sweelinck, 97. 15 9 The rhetorical performances of these works, however, lies not in the melodic voice, which follows gestures now characteristic of Sweelinck, but in the accompanying voice. Performers should consider the contrasts created in the harmonic left-hand of d4 as being of principal rhetorical interest, and should elevate its prominence accordingly, drawing the listener not to the timbral novelty of melody and echo, which wanes quickly, but to the manner in which the same melody can be accompanied in a myriad of ways. The Echo fantasies are among my favorite pieces of Sweelinck to play. Any instrument of two or more manuals can play them convincingly, and several of Sweelinck’s echo techniques simply use octave displacement for the echoing voice, meaning single-manual instruments and harpsichords can often play them. The premise of a keyboard echo is delightfully simple: repeating what one just said either for emphasis or reflection is perhaps one of the first rhetorical devices one learns, often in our formative years. Of course, Echo comes to Holland as a character in Greek mythology, bearing Hera’s punishment for keeping her in conversation by thereafter only being able to repeat what was just said. The effect of an echo is often associated with the outdoors, and mountainous landscapes – a topography quite foreign to a listener in Amsterdam. Although sonically simple in premise, the physical gestures required to execute these pieces in a compelling manner on an instrument such as Sweelinck’s Niehoff organ are far from elementary. A rhetoric realized in the body of the performer produces many effects that run counter to the desired outcome of such simple pieces. Just as Henry Peacham the Elder compels his readers to think of rhetorical terms in corporeal outcomes, Sweelinck’s echo fantasies ask of the performer a significantly heightened sense of mind/body duality. One need only be reminded once more of Peacham’s definition of mimesis in light of the Echo fantasies, which “both portrays and reveals human nature in all its complexity, simultaneously showing what is 16 0 perceptible to the eye, what is hidden to the sight, and what must be conjectured from external causes.”206 Table 11. Sweelinck’s non-fugal fantasias207 Fantasia SwWV Title C1 SwWV 253 Fantasia auf die Manier eines Echo C2 SwWV 256 Fantasia (à 4) C3 SwWV 255 Fantasia d3 SwWV 260 Echo d4 SwWV 261 Fantasia F3 SwWV 265 Fantasia (mit Bindungen) g3 SwWV 272 Fantasia a3 SwWV 276 Fantasia auf die manier eines Echo 206 Cinta Zunino-Garrido, “Henry Peacham’s Affective Rhetoric,” 112. 207 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 454. 16 1 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION Only one portrait of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck has survived from when he was alive, a painting by his brother Gerrit from 1606 which now hangs in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.208 Every time I look at this painting, my eye is immediately drawn to the composer’s hands at the bottom right corner of the portrait, where Sweelinck’s right hand appears to be resting on the frame, while the left hand extends from the “painting within a painting” bearing a very specific rhetorical gesture. This gesture, as described by John Bulwer is particularly fitting for a musician: 208 The other famous painting of Sweelinck, created posthumously by Jan Harmenszoon Muller in 1624, is believed to be based upon the 1606 portrait. The chironomic gesture Muller uses is of a left hand in a fist, and the right hand extended, palm up, with the thumb and index finger loosely extended. See Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “Jan Harmenszoon Muller as Printmaker – I” in Print Quarterly 11 (No.3, March 1995), 256. 16 2 The two inferior fingers shut in, and the other three presented in an eminent posture in the extended hand, is a speaking action, significant to demand silence, and procure audience. The ancient Orators, when they prepared to speak to the incomposed multitude, used this action.209 Chironomia, or the use of hand gestures or gesticulations to heighten a rhetorical effect, connects Sweelinck, not only to the Greek and Roman orators who developed and systematized them, but to the listening public as well. Although it is quite literally the hands of the keyboardist generating the rhetorical effect, the second part of Bulwer’s definition also bears great significance on Sweelinck’s relationship to those who experienced his music. After the Alteratie in 1578, this “incomposed multitude,” was not necessarily drawn to the Oude Kerk for purposes of worship or observing a religious ritual, nor perhaps were they specifically seeking out a musical experience at all. We currently have no way of knowing whether Sweelinck’s performances received the silence this gesture demanded, and if accounts of organ playing in other churches are any indication, the soundscape of the Oude Kerk was probably very lively indeed, even without the addition of organ music. This detail of Sweelinck’s hands, complete with the addition of their shadow cast upon the frame makes clear that he saw his craft as a purely rhetorical one, and the extension of the gesticulating hand outside of the painting suggests also the desire that the rhetorical cues found in his music speak beyond the two-dimensional world of the notated score. In this dissertation, I have argued for an analysis and discussion of the rhetoric of Sweelinck independent of the world of musical notation. This has included a study of the 209 John Bulwer, Chironomia: or, The Art of Manuall Rhetorique, consisting of the Naturall expressions, digested by art in the hand, as the chiefest instrument of eloquence, by historicall manifesto’s exemplified out of the authentique registers of common life and civill conversation: with types, or chyrograms, a long-wish’d for illustration of this argument. (London: Theodore Harper, 1644), 67. 16 3 particularly unique challenges of a burgeoning Calvinist faith in Amsterdam’s multilingual environment in the Golden Age. For a composer such as Sweelinck to write in an untexted medium of keyboard composition and improvisation, where the listeners’ schema is greatly influenced by their background and language of origin, this is a consideration that significantly impacts the rhetorical choices the composer might make. Furthermore, the majority of Sweelinck’s students represented a different religious tradition with a much more accepting attitude towards music, which required even greater versatility on behalf of the teacher. As stated previously, while we can view the manuscript record of Sweelinck’s composition as representative of the manner in which the composer thought, taught, and improvised, we should be cautious in interpreting the notated page as an exact replication of a specific musical event. Instead, the scores should serve as guides towards larger rhetorical ideas that inspire improvisatory music-making. These ideas have included alterations in time perception by means of a Forma formans, an intentional balance of predictability and surprise through the development of a schema of listening in the Oude Kerk, and an affective and kinesthetic rhetoric meant to instill profound physical reactions in the listeners and performers alike. Frits Noske’s articulation of a Forma formans in the works of Sweelinck can be credited with a fresh appreciation for the works of the composer, following a long-held belief amongst scholars that this music lacked coherence and form, as both scholars and some performances can attest. Instead, we see that Sweelinck’s intent in his keyboard works is not a Forma formata, or pre-planned form, but a form that forms as it goes, allowing for greater flexibility in performance. With this flexibility comes the possibilities of prolonged improvisations, or music 16 4 of unfixed length.210 One could look no further than the Fantasia Chromatica to discover that several opportunities exist through the progression of the written score either for a cadence point to draw the piece to a close in advance of its written ending, or a deceptive cadence to allow for additional strophes of improvisatory material on the chromatic theme, depending on the needs of a particular performance situation. An analysis of Sweelinck’s Fantasia works shows this to be a common feature. Portions may be eliminated, and opportunities to add musical material as the performer deemed necessary abound in the scores attributed to Sweelinck, which further speaks to his desire to cultivate varietas in his music, and to teach the importance of the concept to his students. I have shown the presence of Forma formans in the works of Sweelinck’s students, confirming that the perception of time as a fluid structure was not only part of how Sweelinck improvised in performance, but how he taught. A rhetorically informed performance of the works of Sweelinck would do well to consider the manner in which Forma formans creates moments of acceleration, deceleration, and stasis in the printed score. These are opportunities for alterations in tempo as well, perhaps slight accelerations to match an accelerated rhythm, or treatment of agogic accents to emphasize the pairing of lengthened notes with a deceleration, or a more marked articulation with an acceleration.211 I have discussed at length the need to consider the notated scores of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck as indications of an array of performance possibilities, rather than a fixed description 210 Thomas Turino discusses music of unfixed or unprepared length as representative of a participatory music event, in contrast with a presentational or performative one. This aligns well with Frits Noske’s thesis in Forma Formans, of music as an event fulfilled in its being experienced by performer and listener. See Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 23-63. 211 Because the force of the finger has no bearing on how a note sounds on a pipe organ and harpsichord, performers of these instruments rely on “agogic accents,” or accents of duration to provide points of emphasis and deemphasis. 16 5 of a particular event, or prescription for how a work should be played. This allows greater freedom in performance, realizing that the notation is not indicative of a fixed performance. When considering tempo, one should consider the possibility that acceleration and deceleration as realized by Forma formans, may well be realized by fluctuations in tempo that match that acceleration and deceleration. Although Sweelinck left us no treatises that speak directly to performance practice, and his notated keyboard works are not in his hand, we might consider the instructions given by his Italian contemporary, Girolamo Frescobaldi, who surely knew of Sweelinck, and whose scores contain explicit instructions for performance – instructions that provide for much more fluidity of tempo and rhythm than is often heard in performances today: To the reader: 1. This manner of playing must not follow the same meter; in this respect it is similar to the performance of modern madrigals, whose difficulty is eased by taking the beat slowly at times and fast at other, even by pausing … in accordance with the mood or the meaning of the words. 2. In the toccatas … one may play each section separately, so that the player can stop wherever he wishes … 3. The beginning of the toccatas must be played slowly and arpeggiando … 4. In trills as well as in runs, whether they move by skips or by steps, one must pause on the last note, even when it is an eighth or sixteenth note, or different from the next note [of the trill or run]. 5. Cadenzas [i.e., cadential passages], even when notated as fast, must be well sustained, and when one approaches the end of a passage run or a [cadential passage], the tempo must be taken even more slowly … 6. Where a trill in one hand is played simultaneously with a run in the other, one must not play note against note, but try to play the trill fast and the run in a more sustained and expressive manner . . . 7. When there is a section with eighth notes in one hand and sixteenth notes in the other, it should not be executed too rapidly; and the hand that plays the sixteenth notes should 16 6 dot them somewhat, not the first note, however, but the second one, and so on throughout, not the first but the second. 8. Before executing parallel runs of sixteenth notes in both hands, one must pause on the preceding note, even when it is a black one; then one should attack the passage with determination, in order to exhibit the agility of the hands all the more. 9. In the variations that include both runs and expressive passages, it will be good to choose a broad tempo; one may well observe this in the toccatas also. Those variations that do not include runs one may play quite fast, and it is left to the good taste and judgment of the players to choose the tempo correctly. Herein lie the spirit and perfection of this manner of playing and of this style.212 Frescobaldi is referencing the toccata style in Italy in his instructions, but trappings of the Italian-style toccata are found with great regularity in the works of Sweelinck, including in many of his variation and fantasy pieces. Although the instructions appear quite prescriptive, it is important to also note the first instruction, where the execution of these keyboard works are equated to performances of modern madrigals. Here, too, one is reminded that untexted music for instruments always had the voice in mind. Even without the presence of a text, music for instruments should remind one of the rhetorical possibilities present when the text is there. Sweelinck’s own output of compositions furthers this notion of a keyboard piece mirroring the style of a piece with text – music with the benefit of poetry, or a Psalm text to dictate musical characteristics and choices to heighten the understanding of the text is every bit the model for the keyboard works as well. The hundreds of settings of Genevan psalter tunes alone are indication enough that Sweelinck understood text setting for the voice, and Dirksen and Dokter have shown 212 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Toccate (1637); preface, in Willi Apel, The History of Keyboard Music to 1700, trans. Hans Tischler, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 456. 16 7 manners in which the texted settings of Sweelinck’s Psalms have found corollary in the untexted settings as well. Exercises in improvisation should utilize the Forma formans model as well, considering especially the model of Martin Düben, whose prescription for an overly verbose variation of Allein Gott appears to have been a bicinium on the tune, where the accompanying voice directs the ear through a formans progression of acceleration through repeated musical material, deceleration and stasis through new musical material, and acceleration again towards the cadence point. Sweelinck’s generous and systematic use of varietas (first this way, then that) is abundantly clear in the many variation works that exist for keyboard instrument. While these variation works occupy the vast majority of the composer’s known output, Forma formans does not fully account for the relationship of one variation to the next nearly as succinctly as it does in explaining what happens in a single closed section. To account for the need to explain what is transpiring in variation works in rhetorical terms, particularly rhetorical terms that consider music’s reception by the listener, I have suggested the use of David Huron’s descriptions of surprise and predictability. Rhetorical thinking in Sweelinck’s time, as demonstrated in Henry Peacham the Elder’s Garden of Eloquence, makes clear that good rhetorical choices should be felt by the receiver, and should invite a physical response. This includes the physical responses Huron describes when encountering a musical experience that is surprising: a negatively- valenced limbic response, brought about through the experience of something novel, or outside the schema a listener has generated based on their own environment or experiences, is as much a result of rhetorical choices as any corporeally-connected rhetorical term found in Peacham. By extension, this suggests that musicians and musical compositions, who saw their work as 16 8 synonymous with that of an orator or rhetorician, viewed their work as the byproduct of a mind/body rhetoric of sorts. For an organist in the Oude Kerk, this meant that a physical gesture upon a keyboard initiated a physical response in the listener. By anticipating the unique aural capacities of a listener in the seventeenth century, or a listener today, a modern performer can create a rhetorically compelling performance through this framework, highlighting by whatever means available the musical moments of conscious, schematic, dynamic, and veridical familiarity and surprise. Finally, I have argued that rhetorical devices of familiarity/surprise, and Forma formans should be considered for their somatic relationship to the body. For the listener, this is most tangible in physical responses to hearing something familiar – where the body is at ease and pleasure systems in the brain are most active, and something surprising or unfamiliar – which causes the body to be alert, perhaps even agitated. I have considered the significance of listening in the Oude Kerk, both as a secular space that bears strong remnants of a sacred past, and the manner in which Sweelinck’s organ performances in that space are heard differently in the soundscape, where the bodies of the listeners are also in motion. For the performer, such considerations include the profound differences in touch and action between the pipe organ and harpsichord, and aspects of performance of this repertoire that are frequently taken for granted today – the offset keyboard described previously, and increasingly active counterpoint for the pedal division to name but two. To render a historically and culturally informed performance of these works is to understand both their rhetorical construction as a byproduct of a particular time and space, and the significance of the notated scores as general descriptions of common practices rather than a prescriptive recipe for a specific musical event. Understanding and improvising in Forma 16 9 formans in manners previously discussed will greatly enhance a player’s interpretation of this wide body of repertoire, spanning not only the works of Sweelinck, but of other Dutch composers of his era, as well as ensuing generations of students. While Frits Noske’s assertion of music as always generative –“a present participle”213 has yielded greater appreciation of the scores of Sweelinck, performers too should consider their role in creating a musical event that exposes the listener to “psychic deviations” that alter perceptions of tension.214 The above constitute a rhetorical vocabulary that Joshua Rifkin reminds us was intuitive to performers in Sweelinck’s time,215 and performers would do well to recapture that same sense of effortless intuition again. Further Inquiry This has not been a dissertation about Sweelinck. The primary aim of the project has not been to fill in missing biographical information or contribute to the most recent prevailing discourse surrounding the authenticity of the available sources. In fact, the primary goal has been to counter the latter. For a composer whose works are known to us sometimes only through contested attribution, scholarship risks becoming bogged down by questions of authenticity and “who wrote what.” Rather than continuing to debate the validity of notated manuscript, I suggest instead a turn to the soundscape that may have cultivated these notated pieces, and the manner in which it may have informed the rhetorical choices of composers and performers. As I demonstrated in Chapter 3, orators believed their rhetoric should elicit a response in the body, 213 Frits Noske, “Forma Formans,”45. 214 Ibid., 47. 215 Bernard Sherman, Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers, 388. 17 0 and for listeners of organ music during the Dutch Golden Age, that body was experiencing this music while in motion. Furthermore, the churches themselves occupy a liminal space between secular meeting space and a sacred past, the vestiges of which remain present for several generations removed, as late-seventeenth century writings by Constantijn Huygens have demonstrated. Having used Sweelinck as a compelling case study, how do practitioners of early music move beyond our reliance on the printed score to reveal layers of meaning, intention, and truth independent of the authenticity question? The frameworks discussed here would bring greater insights into the works of other composers active in Calvinist churches in the early seventeenth century, such as Anthoni van Noordt, organist at Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk, and Gisbert Steenwick, active in Arnhem and Kampen. One could also expand the scope of the current study to include Sweelinck’s toccatas. Whereas the works examined in this dissertation have tended to be those built on a melody that belonged to preexisting schemas of those who heard it, such as a chorale or secular tune or chromatic descending motif, the toccatas do not utilize such material. Because they belong to a different schema, a different set of surprise and predictability variables are employed. These works tend to be easily analyzed for Forma formans, as Noske does in his article. Noske’s interest, however, lies primarily in rescuing the reception of Sweelinck’s keyboard works, which he feels were misunderstood and under appreciated by scholars writing previous to him. In his effort to explain Forma formans so that the listener can appreciate the concept, he stops short of recommendations of applications for the performer. As shown through the three case studies presented previously, I have suggested that performers use Forma formans as a tool in rhetorical performances. Through analysis of the score, with attention paid to note values in their proportional relationships to one-another, and to 17 1 the composer’s use of thin and thick textures texture that imply a time deviation, one should plot the moments of acceleration, deceleration, and stasis onto the musical score. Based on this analysis, the rhetorical options available include alterations in tempo or rhythm, and the use of accents of duration – all employed in the perception of these same psychological deviations from clock time that Noske has described. The perception of acceleration can be achieved by use of longer note values and releases guided so as to minimize the space between individual notes. Deceleration, by contrast, is easily perceived with more space between individual note, thus making the notes themselves shorter. The overall affect of the previously-described recommendations allows the movement of the finger to more closely mimic the affect desired in Forma formans. A deceleration, when executed with greater space between notes, thus more time to shift fingers as needed, causes the fingers to move more slowly. Likewise, an acceleration employing notes of longer duration and shorter “travel time” from note to note, requires of the fingers a more dexterous approach. As I have shown, rhetorical choices bore close connections to the mind/body dualism, and rhetorical gestures were meant to magnify a speech or oratory in such a manner as to amplify that which is otherwise only audible. Whether viewing the hand in performance on a harpsichord, virginal, or clavichord, or constructing an action-perception coupling that matches the sound of an organ where the performer is hidden from view, the rhetoricians make a compelling argument that what is heard should match what is seen. In the authenticity debate, Sweelinck’s toccatas bear the most ambiguity in determining a likely instrument for their performance. Pieter Dirksen believes that all but four of the fourteen toccatas he attributes to Sweelinck were indisputably meant for the harpsichord, and likely 17 2 served pedagogical purposes.216 As I stated earlier, students likely took their studies with Sweelinck on stringed keyboard instruments, since use of the organ required bellows operators and subjected teacher and student to ample noise and winter cold. Concepts taught on the harpsichord likely translated to the organ through demonstrations by their teacher in performance, but students likely received very little instruction from Sweelinck on the pipe organ. This is not to assume that concepts found in the toccatas did not find their way to the pipe organ, but a further analysis of the toccatas as pedagogical tools for demonstrating both techniques of varietas and Forma formans would prove most fruitful towards a more rhetorical performance. Frits Noske concludes his biography of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck with the observation that the composer’s genius does not reveal itself spontaneously; it is disclosed only by dint of insight and knowledge.217 For the historically and culturally informed practitioner, the search for this insight and knowledge extends far beyond the printed score, calling the performer instead to enter the soundscape of the composer’s world, and reimagine the musical rhetoric as it was performed, heard, and felt. 216 Pieter Dirksen, The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 575. 217 Frits Noske, Sweelinck, 132. 17 3 APPENDIX A FANTASIA CHROMATICA, SwWV 258 – JAN PIETERSZOON SWEELINCK 17 4 17 5 17 6 17 7 17 8 17 9 18 0 18 1 APPENDIX B PSALM 140, SwWV 314 – JAN PIETERSZOON SWEELINCK 18 2 18 3 18 4 18 5 18 6 18 7 18 8 APPENDIX C FANTASIA d4, SwWV 261 – JAN PIETERSZOON SWEELINCK 18 9 19 0 19 1 19 2 APPENDIX D SAMUEL SCHEIDT – ECHO AD MANUALE DUPLEX, FORTE E LENE; SSWV 128 19 3 19 4 19 5 19 6 19 7 19 8 19 9 REFERENCES CITED Atkinson, Niall. 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