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Jan throwing up a Low Country gang sign.

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Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - April 1562 - Oct. 16, 1621: "The Orpheus of Amsterdam"

For a successful, prolific, and influential proto-baroque improvisational organist and composer, Sweelink was a surprisingly dull man. The farthest he ever ventured from his Amsterdam home was to Antwerp to buy a harpsichord. Jan's forty-four year career was in the same place (the Oude Kerk - "The Old Church"; members of the Sweelink family held the position for almost a hundred years) and his life was listlessly free of scandals, feuds, substance abuse, salacious trysts, copyright infringement, weird habits, or even poor financial decisions. Wikipedia's third adjective for him is "pedagogue."  Yet he drew influences from the Franco-Flemish polyphonic tradition, the Italian madrigalists, and the English keyboard composers, and his subsequent innovations stand as seminal to the likes of Jacob Praetorius (a student) and eventually J.S.Bach, who, it is argued, learned from and perfected Sweelink's embryonic fugue forms.

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Hodie Christus Natus Est

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So why are we singing a choral piece by an influential, if somewhat pedantic, organ virtuoso? You'll understand once you've heard us perform it; it is a wonderfully inventive and joyful thing. The opening tenor line and answering  fanfare of voices - to become an occasionally inverted little rondo - is triumphant. The sectional call and response then dances between triple and duple meter - listen for a slowly rising, authoritative bass line decorated with cheery little fugal salvator apparuits - and the whole delightful melange ends with a glittering cascade of "alleluia!" and "noe!" that just, well, pops. Merry Christmas!

 

 

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Bel Canto Fredericton
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