Fugal Improvisation in the Baroque Era—Revisited

Maxim Serebrennikov is a doctoral student at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where he is currently completing his thesis, “Solo Keyboard Thoroughbass Fugue of the Baroque Era.” His research interests lie in the history and theory of Baroque music, in particular discovering, studying, and publishing unknown sources of keyboard and organ music. His recent articles in Musicus, The Organ, and Harpsichord & Fortepiano focus on rarities of harpsichord and organ music of the 18th century. He is also active as a professional music typesetter and score and book designer, working with various publishing houses.

Introduction
In 2010 J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, and D. Scarlatti, who were born 325 years ago, once again were the main figures of the musical calendar. Once again thousands of performers and scholars strove to express their reverence for the genius of these artists. Once again millions of listeners and readers were eager to enjoy their great works.
How often, though, in celebrating these masters, we forget their contemporaries, possibly having no less sacrificially served their art. Alas, the names of these other musicians are frequently lost among the pages of history or altogether disappear without a trace. But it is precisely their activity that laid the solid foundation on which the masters constructed their monuments.
Until recent times, the name of Gott-fried Kirchhoff (1685–1746) was known only to a small circle of specialists. Meanwhile his contemporaries highly valued his output and enthusiastically praised his skill on the clavier and organ. German organist and theoretician Martin Heinrich Fuhrmann (1669–1745), recalling Kirchhoff’s playing, wrote: “I later heard the well-known Mr. Kirchhof play the organ in Halle, and his fingers so mastered the charms of music that I cried out, ‘What a shame that the hands of these two keyboard players in Leipzig and Halle must some day turn to dust!’”2 And further: “In my time, when in 1692 I was studying in Halle, Zachow was flourishing there, whom I heard on Sundays with a true hunger and thirst; and if I had to travel there again, and there were no bridge over the [river] Saale, and I could not reach the city, then truly I would swim across the river like Leander for his Hero, even to hear renowned pupils of his such as Mr. Kirchhoff.”3
The unexpected discovery of L’A.B.C. Musical in 2002 served as a new impulse for studying Kirchhoff’s life and works.4 The first monograph on Kirchhoff was published in 2004, along with the new edition of L’A.B.C. Musical.5 In 2005 and 2006, L’A.B.C. Musical became the subject of two master’s theses, which were defended at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at the Kiev Conservatory, respectively.6 In 2008 one more unknown prelude and fugue by Kirchhoff was discovered in the manuscript Mus. Ms. 11605, which is housed in the music department of the State Library in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung).7 Additionally, in 2009 the composer was honored through the naming of a music school in Bitterfeld, not far from his birthplace.
This is not to say that researchers have answered all regarding the life and work of Kirchhoff; quite the opposite—many questions remain. The greatest mystery at present is the fate of the composer’s oeuvre. Kirchhoff dedicated his entire life to music: from 1693 to 1709, he studied organ and composition in Halle under Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663–1712); from 1709 to 1711, he was Kapellmeister at the court of the Duke of Holstein-Glücksburg; from 1711 to 1714, he served as organist at the church of St. Benedict in Quedlinburg; and, from 1714 to his death, Kirchhoff held the position of Director Musices and organist at Our Lady’s Church in Halle. Even if Kirchhoff was not remarkable for the rate at which he produced works (such as, for example, Georg Philipp Telemann), his long period of professional activity must have produced an imposing quantity of works. Despite this, all Kirchhoff’s compositions known at present can be counted on the fingers of one hand. What has happened to all the rest?
Possibly, the passage of time did not spare Kirchhoff’s manuscripts, and a large portion was lost to natural calamities (fire, flooding, etc.). Possibly, the composer had little regard for his own creations and did not attempt to save them for later generations. Possibly, the fault for the loss of certain of these compositions falls on Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who succeeded Kirchhoff as Director Musices and organist at Our Lady’s Church in Halle.8
Nevertheless, hope remains for the restoration of at least some portion of Kirchhoff’s oeuvre. This is confirmed by unexpected discoveries of recent years, one of which we shall discuss here.

The Mylau Tablature Book
In 1910, Georg Schünemann (1884–1945), German musicologist and member of the commission for the revelation and studying of Monuments of German Musical Art (Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst), uncovered in the Mylau church archives a rich collection of organ works composed by the old German masters. The value of this find was difficult to overestimate: the manuscript contained not only works of composers to that time unknown, but also unknown works by well-known composers.9
Today this collection is still housed in the Mylau church archives, listed as MS H 3a. The manuscript is a book of considerable thickness (101 leaves) in upright format (c. 21 × 33 cm) and hard cardboard binding, covered with colored paper. The front cover of the binding carries the inscription “TABLATURE | Book | 1750” (“TABULATUR | Buch | 1750”), which is at the very least a misleading identifier. In fact, the Mylau Tablature Book does not contain a single example of tablature notation. The date “1750” also does not correspond to the real time of the manuscript’s creation.
In 1984 the Mylau Tablature Book was sent for expert appraisal to the German Book and Writing Museum (Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum, Leipzig), where museum staff member Gertraude Spoer determined that in the eighteenth century the manuscript had undergone restoration, during which the original binding was replaced by the current one. Subsequently, the inscription “TABULATUR | Buch | 1750” belongs to a later time than the manuscript itself. More than likely, this misleading title was added shortly following the change of binding. Furthermore, based on study of the paper’s watermarks, Spoer concluded that manuscript MS H 3a was made around the year 1725.10 Unfortunately, the copyist has never been identified.
The contents of the Mylau Tablature Book are truly impressive with respect to volume: the manuscript contains 176 pieces, dominated by preludes and fugues. The composers include such names as Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), Johann Krieger (1652–1735), Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), Andreas Kniller (1649–1724), Nikolaus Vetter (1666–1734), Andreas Werckmeister (1645–1706), Christian Friedrich Witt (1660–1717), and Gottfried Pestel (1654–1732). It is, however, these names alone that are noted in the manuscript. Many pieces were written anonymously, and the majority of these remain unattributed.11 Furthermore, those attributions that are given in the manuscript are not always credible.

Praelud: ex. C. dis â Monsieur Bach.
As has been mentioned, the Mylau Tablature Book was a valuable contribution to Baroque literature for organ. To date, this manuscript remains the single known source for many of the pieces that it contains. Among these is the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, recorded on pages 40–41. (See Example 1.)
According to the Mylau Tablature Book, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) is the author of this work. The name of the composer is indicated in the heading of the composition: “Praelud: ex. C. dis â Monsieur Bach.”12 At that time, “Bach.” and “J. Bach.” were common abbreviations for Pachelbel’s name, which was said and written in some South German dialects as “Bachelbel”. The period at the end of “Bach.” is a sign of abbreviation, enabling us to distinguish Pachelbel’s name from the names of members of Bach family.
The Prelude and Fugue in C Minor was first published in 1977 in the 39th volume of Corpus of Early Keyboard Music—the series founded by the American Institute of Musicology.13 Since then the pieces have been reproduced multiple times in other editions.14 Thanks to these publications, the cycle became accessible not only to musicians worldwide, but also strengthened its position as being a work by Pachelbel.
Recently, however, Pachelbel’s authorship of this polyphonic cycle has come under growing suspicion, given how strongly the style of writing in the pieces differs from that of other preludes and fugues by the composer. Thus, in the 2004 publication of The Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Works of Johann Pachelbel, these two pieces received the cautionary note “Ascription Questioned,” and in the new edition of the composer’s Complete Works for Keyboard Instruments they are shifted to the appendix as “dubious.”15
As it turns out, the doubts of the researchers were not without basis. In March 2008 we discovered a forcible argument in F. W. Marpurg’s Treatise on Fugue (1753–1754), which disclaims Pachelbel’s authorship of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor located in MS H 3a.

F. W. Marpurg’s Treatise on Fugue as a key to ascription
F. W. Marpurg’s two-part Treatise on Fugue was, in its time, truly an extraordinary theoretical work. It was the first paper to be dedicated entirely to fugue. At the same time, it was the most fundamental work on fugue, which generalized and summed up all the knowledge of fugue acquired by musical theory and practice to the middle of the eighteenth century. Lastly, it was the richest treatise with respect to the amount and breadth of musical material ever collected into one resource. The quantity of music examples used by Marpurg to illustrate his theses is so great that they constituted the whole two-volume appendices for each part of the treatise. Marpurg’s erudition defies imagination even today: the appended musical examples include, beyond those samples composed by Marpurg himself, close to 500 excerpts from the works of more than 50 composers.16
In the score appendix for the second part of the treatise (Tab. III, Fig. 1), Marpurg several times quotes a theme, which is surprisingly similar to the theme of the C-minor fugue from the Mylau manuscript. The ascription here, however, is not to Pachelbel, but to his younger contemporary, Kirchhoff. The name of this once-celebrated German organist and composer, fellow student of G. F. Handel and a good acquaintance of J. S. Bach, is indicated at the beginning of the example: “1st theme of Kirchhoff” (“1. th[ema] Kirchoffii.”).17 (See Example 2.)
One cannot, of course, fully rule out the possibility that Pachelbel and Kirchhoff, each independently of the other, composed practically identical subjects. Formularity was one of the most characteristic features of Baroque music. The study of fugue assumed, in part, the mastery of an entire series of stereotypical, standard subjects and possible devices for their treatment. For this reason, correspondences were unavoidable (especially when one considers how in church practice, fugue subjects were often based on the initial phrases of plainchant melodies). Yet, despite a single intonational vocabulary, exact correspondence was rare, even for music of that time. Working from one and the same intonation formula, each musician materialized it in his own way. By way of example, we offer a fugue subject from the 2nd mode of Prototypon longo-breve organicum (1703) by Franz Xaver Murschhauser. (See Example 3.)
In comparing the three subjects, it is clear that they share a single intonational impulse: a descending minor triad, intensified by a leap to the leading tone. Although in Murschhauser’s subject this formula holds to a different rhythmic pattern and melodic continuation, it, most importantly, does not stand apart as an independent syntactic unit.
In light of this example, the similarity of the “Pachelbel” and “Kirchhoff” subjects to each other is made all the more clear. It is undoubtedly worth considering them variants of a single idea thought up by a single author. Indeed, there is undeniable correspondence between those elements and parameters of the subject that secure its individuality, specifically: motivic head, syntactic structure, melodic skeleton, rhythmic pattern, and harmonic plan. The primary divergences, excluding tonality, come down to figuration of the harmonies and to cadencing of the theme.
It is difficult to say today with certainty from whom these differences have arisen. Possibly, Marpurg himself made the changes in order to make the sample more relevant to his didactic intentions. It is more than likely, however, that he simply had a different version of the fugue at his disposal, one that today remains unknown or has been lost.
In any case, this question remains: who is the true author of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor found in the Mylau manuscript—Pachelbel or Kirchhoff? We believe that testimony from the treatise of an authoritative theorist and well-informed musician deserves more confidence than testimony from a manuscript completed by an unknown copyist using unknown sources. Furthermore, the stylistic attributes of the music do much on their own to confirm that this work conforms to Kirchhoff’s creative signature.

L’A.B.C. Musical as one more
argument in favor of Kirchhoff’s
authorship
Kirchhoff’s name appears not only in the score appendix, but also in the body of the text of Marpurg’s treatise:

If the late Musikdirektor Kirchhof of Halle denoted the counterparts of his well-known fugues in all twenty-four keys with figures alone, he did this because he wanted to instruct his students in the various possibilities of thematic entrances and in the technique of figured bass at the same time.18
Marpurg quotes six various Kirchhoff themes in total. Although he never gives the title of those pieces that he quotes as musical examples (rather noting only the author of each piece!), it is natural to suggest that those themes he indicates as Kirchhoff’s come from those very same fugues he refers to in the text.
Earlier we stated the hypothesis that by “well-known fugues in all twenty-four keys” Marpurg meant the unpublished version of L’A.B.C. Musical (c. 1734) by Kirchhoff.19 First, this is the only known composition by Kirchhoff to contain, as the title page asserts, “preludes and fugues in all keys.” Second, one of the themes cited by Marpurg in the treatise’s appendix is identical to the theme of the A-minor fugue from L’A.B.C. Musical (Examples 4a, 4b). Third, the texture of every piece in the collection, including the fugues, is notated as thoroughbass, i.e., on one staff using various clefs and thoroughbass signatures.
Within a comment in his own edition of the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor from the Mylau Tablature Book, Michael Belotti rightly notes that the texture of the pieces is nothing other than a realized thoroughbass.20 Indeed, for the style of Pachelbel, who was trained in the contrapuntal tradition, this type of texture is atypical. However, for the style of Kirchhoff, whose emergence as a professional coincides with the blossoming of thoroughbass technique in Germany, this manner of writing is completely natural and consistent. All the known clavier and organ fugues by Kirchhoff can be included in the genre of the so-called thoroughbass fugue.21 It is highly likely that the original version of the C-minor Prelude and Fugue from MS H 3a was also recorded in codified form, and the variant that has reached us is someone’s realization. In any case, the texture of both pieces can be easily expressed in thoroughbass notation with no damage done to the musical material (see Appendix: Version 1).

Conclusion
These arguments clearly point to Kirchhoff’s authorship of the C-minor Prelude and Fugue from manuscript MS H 3a. In identifying the true author of these pieces, we not only restore historical justice, we also reveal one more previously lost page of Kirchhoff’s
oeuvre. It would be wonderful if this page were not the last to be revealed, if there were new finds ahead, which allow us to expand our understanding of the creative output of one of the forgotten composers from J. S. Bach’s circle and to objectively evaluate his role in the compositional style of his epoch. 

Examples of Enlivening a Figured Bass on the Harpsichord

Nothing is more dull in a performance of Baroque music than a continuo harpsichordist who mechanically plays a chord for every bass note in the score. Or who reverently plays a printed realization, which usually follows the same practice. Only rarely one hears a realization exhibiting some element of spark and imagination.

This "essay" consists of ten examples demonstrating various ways of treating a figured bass in a creative manner. The intended instrument is the harpsichord, not the organ, for the harpsichord is capable not only of furnishing chords, melodies, and polyphony, but is also--due to the noisy jacks--a percussive instrument, which quality may as well be exploited from time to time. Sometimes only jack-noise can be heard in an orchestral situation.

The most important advice is a) to be imaginative and do something different than a printed realization, and b) to be sensitive to the performance situation. These examples are intended for an orchestral continuo player, but some of the principles can be applied to chamber groups. (Continuo on the organ demands a different treatment.) All but the last example are from Handel's  Messiah, and include the printed realization available from Kalmus. I originally intended this article to be unencumbered with scholarly apparatus, but consultation with several colleagues prompted an annotated bibliography.

Bibliography/Notes

Arnold, Franck Thomas. The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass, as Practised in the XVIIth & XVIIIth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931; reprint, with introduction by Denis Stevens, in 2 vols., New York: Dover, 1965.  The title to ch. 4, "On Certain Niceties of the Accompaniment," is borrowed from C. P. E. Bach's chapter "Von gewissen Zierlichkeiten des Accompagnements" (Versuch, part 2, 1762, ch. 32; Mitchell trans., pp. 386-403). Arnold's book is the grand-daddy on the subject. Much of it, however, is about how to realize specific figures.

Ashworth, Jack. "How to Improve a Continuo Realization." American Recorder 26, no. 2 (May 1985): 62-65. P. 62: "The first axiom of playing continuo accompaniment from an editorially supplied part is that one must never hesitate to change it" (p. 62). Tips (p. 65): "1. Be sensitive to the frequent necessity of reducing the texture from four to three--or occasionally even to two--parts, depending on the volume of the solo instrument, the range in which it is playing, and the nature of the piece. 2. Do not feel compelled to play a chord on every bass note provided by the composer. In fact, don't even be tempted to. 3. Avoid doubling or going above the soloist's part in the realization. 4. Avoid playing full chords on bass notes taking the weak part of a beat unit. 5. Be sparing with ornamentation. 6. Above all, remain sensitive to the needs of the soloist, and accommodate those needs insofar as you can. Good continuo players must be as supportive as they are unobtrusive."

Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. Berlin, 1759, 1762. Trans. William J. Mitchell as Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. New York: Norton, 1949. Ch. 6, "Accompaniment," is the most relevant, especially the section "Some Refinements of Accompaniment," pp. 386--403, a "must read" primary-source primer on the subject. There are many cross-references to Arnold's 1931 book in Mitchell's notes. Several valuable quotes: "Of all the instruments that are used in the playing of thorough bass the single-manual harpsichord is the most perplexing with regard to forte and piano.  To make amends for the imperfection of the instrument in this respect the number of parts must be increased or reduced" (p. 368). "It is often necessary to strike chords over short rests in advance of their bass notes, as a means of retaining order and winning variety" (p. 418, in a section "Chords that precede their bass notes"). For recitatives, see pp. 420--25, which includes, for the organ: "In recitatives with sustained accompanying instruments, the organ holds only the bass, the chords being quitted soon after they are struck."

Borgir, Tharald. The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Baroque Music. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.  Ch. 19, "Neapolitan Continuo Practice: The Partimenti," 141--47, is the most important for this purpose. The term "partimenti" represents a bass needing realization in the treble, resulting in a piece that can serve as a keyboard solo. First developed by Gaetano Greco (ca. 1657--ca. 1728), it was further developed by Francesco Durante in a manuscript titled Partimenti, ossia intero studio di numerati, per ben suonare il cembalo. Durante's exercises consist of harmonizing ascending and descending scales (later called regola dell'ottave, rule of the octave). The advanced ones have written-out passages in the treble: scales or other motives in one hand imitating the other. Indeed, the third (and last) group of exercises is of fugues. Ch. 20 includes excerpts of written-out accompaniments, mostly in solo cantatas, by Francesco Gasparini (1695), Benedetto Marcello, Alessandro Scarlatti, and a sonata attributed to Handel for viola da gamba and "cembalo concertato."

Bötticher, Jörg-Andreas. "'Regeln des Generalbasses': Eine Berliner Handschrift des späten 18. Jahrhunderts." Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis 18 (1994): 87--114. This concerns a manuscript by "Herrn Musico Heering," dated 1771, which includes a realized edition of Largo and Vivace movements from a C-major sonata for two flutes by Johann Gottlieb Graun (pp. 111--13), with some examples of a right-hand chord on a beat where the bass part has a short rest. The issue also has these articles: Graham Sadler and Shirley Thompson, "Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the Basse Continue," 9--30; Arnaldo Morelli, "Basso Continuo on the Organ in Seventeenth-Century Italian Music," 31--45; George J. Buelow, "The Italian Influence in Heinichen's Der General-Bass in der Composition (1728)," 47--66; Regula Rapp, "Was der späte General-Baß?," 115--27; and see notes to the last item, below.

Buelow, George J. Thorough-Bass Accompaniment According to Johann David Heinichen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Rev. ed., Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986. An excellent guide to continuo playing by a highly respected scholar, based on the most important writer of the early 18th century (1711, 1728) on the subject. Heinichen took advantage of the publication of Gasparini (1708; see below). The most valuable section is ch. 6, "The 'Art' of Accompaniment: Specific Aspects of Style," pp. 175--218. Includes examples of changing right-hand realization in quarters or 8ths to 16th figuration; and even break up 8ths or quarters in the bass (pp. 194--202). But the reverse (pp. 202--03): change 16ths in bass to quarters or 8ths. There is a section (pp. 205--08) on imitating a solo voice in the right hand. Ch. 9 is a practical demonstration of realizing Alessandro Scarlatti cantata Lascia deh lascia al fine di tormentarmi più.

Daube, Johann Friedrich (1756), quoted in The Bach Reader, ed. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1966), 256:

For the complete practical application of thorough bass it is necessary to know three species: (1) the simple or common; (2) the natural, or that which comes closest to the character of a melody or a piece; (3) the intricate or compound.

The excellent Bach possessed this third species in the highest degree; when he played, the upper voice had to shine. By his exceedingly adroit accompaniment he gave it life when it had none. He knew how to imitate it so cleverly, with either the right hand or the left, and how to introduce an unexpected counter-theme against it, so that the listener would have sworn that everything had been conscientiously written out. At the same time, the regular accompaniment was very little curtailed. In general his accompanying was always like a concertante part most conscientiously worked out and added as a companion to the upper voice so that at the appropriate time the upper voice would shine. This right was even given at times to the bass, without slighting the upper voice. Suffice it to say that anyone who missed hearing him missed a great deal.

Daw, Brian A. "Alessandro Scarlatti's Continuo Realization of Da sventura a sventura (1690): An Analysis and Observations Relating to Late Seventeenth-Century Keyboard Practices." Early Keyboard Journal 4 (1985-86): 51--60. Shows (pp. 54--55) how Scarlatti anticipates or imitates motives in the solo voice; also keyboard textures a 3--7 (not necessarily the usual 4 parts), and distributing realization in both hands. Leaves out the 3rd in a cadence when it's sung by the voice. Main point: the continuo complements, not doubles, the voice.

Derr, Ellwood. "Concertante Passages in Keyboard Realizations in Handel: Some Guidelines." The Diapason, September 1985, 9--12. Liberally quotes Heinichen/Buelow. Subjects: arpeggiation; furnishing imitations, as explained by Heinichen, and with example from J. S. Bach; examples from Handel's "O thou tellest" (the descending scale, imitations by Handel). "What eighteenth-century writers have not commented upon is the matter of necessity, as occasions arise, for the treatment of the concerting harpsichord part to complete the musical surface. It is then the task of analysis to ferret out these details. While realizations of certain passages may be undertaken on the basis of examples in treatises, those made on the basis of contextual settings in real pieces by composers of stature are likely to be more successful still, especially in the hands of a capable continuo harpsichordist" (p. 12).

Donington, Robert. The Interpretation of Early Music. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1992. The section "Going Beyond the Figures," especially pp. 306--07, 313--15, is valuable, relevant, and includes quotes from 17--18th-century authors.

Dreyfus, Arthur. Bach's Continuo Group: Players and Practices in His Vocal Works. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. " . . . manuscripts . . . provide no evidence to indicate how keyboard players voiced the chords of the continuo realization. For this reason I have not discussed styles of continuo realization."

Gasparini, Francesco. L'armonico pratico al cimbalo: Regole, osservazione, ed avvertimenti per ben suonare il basso, e accompagnare sopra il cimbalo, spinetta, ed organo. Venice, 1708. Facsimile, New York: Broude Bros., 1967. Trans. Frank S. Stillings, ed. David L. Burrows, as The Practical Harmonist at the Harpsichord. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. Ch. 10, "Del diminuire, abbellire, or risiorire gli accompagnamenti" (diminution, embellishment, and adornment of the accompaniment) has examples of right-hand counter-melodies; ch. 11, "Del diminuire, ò risiorire il fondamento" (diminution, or adornment of the bass), has examples of breaking up or arpeggiating the continuo line.

Gudger, William D. "Playing Organ Continuo in Handel's Messiah." The American Organist 19, no. 2 (February 1985): 91--92. On use of organ vs. harpsichord, and how the organ was often used only to double bass line and imitative entries of the chorus. Handel normally had two harpsichords for oratorios--the first played by himself until the late 1730s, when he had a claviorganum (combination organ/harpsichord).

J. S. Bach's Precepts and Principles for Playing the Thorough-Bass or Accompanying in Four Parts. Trans. Pamela L. Poulin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Dated 1738, much is adapted from Friederich Erhardt Niedt, Musicalische Handleitung oder Gründlicher Unterricht (Musical guide or fundamental instruction; Hamburg, 1700/10). How to realize the figures; nothing more creative.

Keller, Hermann. Thoroughbass Method: With Excerpts from the Theoretical Works of Praetorius, Niedt, Telemann, Mattheson, Heinichen, J. S. & C. P. E. Bach, Quantz, and Padre Mattei, and Numerous Examples from the Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Trans. and ed. Carl Parrish. New York: Norton, 1965. From Mattheson, Grosse Generalbaß-Schule (Hamburg, 1731): break up right-hand chords like a pleasing toccata (p. 47). From Heinichen, Der Generalbass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728): instead of "poor kind of accompaniment" or "very plainly accompanied," "either 1) divide the accompaniment between both hands . . . or 2) undertake the full-voiced accompaniment with the left hand alone and thereby enable to the right hand with more ease to invent a separate song or melody to the bass, as far as our ideas, taste, and talent will allow" (p. 48).

Ledbetter, David, ed. Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Dated from 1724 and mid-30s, when he was teacher to daughters of George II, especially Princess Anne. Root, 6 chord, 6/4 chords, 6/5 chords, 2 chords, &c.; exercises in fugue, with models. Nothing especially creative.

Rogers, Patrick J. Continuo Realization in Handel's Vocal Music. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989. The first part deals with figuring in the sources; it's the second part, "Realization Problems," that is of more use: unison textures (play realized or unrealized?), and problems of realization in recitatives. Ch. 8, "Short Rests in the Bass," deals with whether to play a chord over a bass rest, and supports doing so from examples. Theorists of the time also describe the practice--for example, see quote from C. P. E. Bach, above. Mattheson's Grosse General-Baß Schule (Hamburg, 1731): ". . . it must be observed that the right hand must necessarily sound first when a sixteenth rest occurs . . . because the empty space offends the ear, which wishes most of all that everything be orderly and continuous, complete, and not broken up. Striking first with the right hand can be used with such rests throughout in accompanying, except for a few instances where the composer's intentions must be regarded" (quoted p. 148). Cites Telemann's Singe-, Spiel- und Generalbass-Übungen (Hamburg, 1733--34)--of 48 short songs, figured rests are used in six. Ch. 9, on pedal points, concludes, backed up by Heinichen, Telemann, and C. P. E. Bach, that figured pedal points generally should be harmonized, but unfigured ones not. Includes (pp. 186--87) detailed figuring of the Messiah's Pifa, meas. 1--11.

Rogers, Patrick J. "A Neglected Source of Ornamentation and Continuo Realization in a Handel Aria." Early Music 18, no. 1 (February 1990): 83--89. 1st: 2-part arrangement Ms. (ca. 1725) at the Fitzwilliam Museum of "Molto voglio" from Rinaldo, is included in Chrysander's 2nd ed. (1894) of the opera. 2nd: "Sventurato, godi o core abbandonato" from Floridante. 3rd: "Cara sposa" from Radamisto. These arrangements: 1) frequently contain at least part of the aria text; 2) usually are not literal transcriptions, and segments are recomposed and improved; 3) they are effective idiomatic keyboard pieces; 4) either are simple 2-part versions, which may relate to Handel's teaching duties, or more elaborate arrangements in 3 or more parts; 5) some have extensive ornamentation of the original vocal line. "Cara sposa" is a continuo aria, with complete text between staves. Rogers concludes that it's really a keyboard piece, perhaps freely based on pre-existing vocal ornamentation--best example of such ornamentation--and includes a complete edition in the article.

Thieme, C. A. Treatise, "Some Most Necessary Rules of Thorough Bass by J. S. B." [1725], once owned by Johann Peter Kellner, trans. in Bach Reader, 390--98. Basically how to realize chords from the figures.

Towe, Teri Noel. "Messiah: Reduplication without Redundancy: Editions and Recordings Past and Present." The American Organist 19, no. 2 (February 1985): 74--90. Occasional references to continuo playing in recordings.

Williams, Peter. Figured Bass Accompaniment. 2 vols. Edinburgh University Press, 1970. The best modern book on the subject, with many quotes and examples from the treatises, and vol. 2 has many unrealized examples, with interspersed suggestions for completing them. "When the bass rests on the beat, play the chord in the right hand" (p. 31, from Bologna Ms., ca. 1730; C. P. E. Bach, ch. 37; Manfredini 1775, 59). "Not all quick repeated bass notes have to be played; they may be omitted or broken" (Türk 1822, 293).

Williams, Peter. "Johann Sebastian Bach and the Basso Continuo." Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis 18 (1994): 67--86. Includes (pp. 77--78) a realization by Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber (Bach's pupil) of Sonata no. 6 from Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, Trattenimenti armonici per camera, op. 6 (Amsterdam, ca. 1712)--the realization (ca. 1724--25), according to Gerber, "durchcorrigirt von Sebastian Bach." Williams: ". . . at least a few ties between the upper parts are beginning to suggest an articulated part-writing." Also cites Bach's written-out accompaniment for the Largo of the Flute Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030, from the autograph score. "There is some evidence in Germany that players were sometimes encouraged to work towards a more 'künstlerisches' accompaniment than can easily be produced from a merely 'schulmeisterlich' harmonization in four parts" (p. 81). Bibliography, pp. 85--86.

J.S. Bach's Prefatory Message and Implications

Introduction

In an earlier article devoted to Bach's last printed composition, the presumably authentic title was established.1 The conventional reading in all printed editions was Die Kunst der Fuge; however, the correct version would read Die Kunst der Fuga. Amongst other observations, this spelling renders the title's gematrial sum as 158, identical to the result when converting the composer's full name Johann Sebastian Bach. An earlier article indicated numerous allusions to the system "wohltemperirt" within the composition.2 In order to demonstrate here the essential notion of the unitas in baroque music theory,3 in both spellings the title's 15=7+1+7 letters are centered upon the letter T=19--the number of intervals closing the circle in tuning.4 Further to the title, the first printed edition of the composition contains a short preface comprising seven lines, called Nachricht. Thanks to a remarkable booklet of great originality and richness of ideas by Vincent Dequevauviller,5 my attention was drawn to this message. Following my study devoted to the title itself, the purpose of the present article is to scrutinize that message more profoundly and interpret the outcome. Finally, new aspects as to how many bars, ideally, the unfinished fugue would comprise, are presented.

The preface to the first edition, 1751

Die Kunst der Fuga had two early editions in rapid succession, the first one 1751 and the following one already in 1752. These editions carry different messages as preface. The text published with the first edition of Die Kunst der Fuga, is shown in Figure 1 and below.

Nachricht

Der selige Herr Verfasser dieses Werkes wurde durch seine Augenkrankheit und den kurz darauf erfolgten Tod ausserstande gesetzet, die letzte Fuge, wo er sich bey Anbringung des dritten Satzes namentlich zu erkennen giebet, zu Ende zu bringen; man hat dahero die Freunde seiner Muse durch Mittheilung des am Ende beygefuegten vierstimmig ausgearbeiteten Kirchenchorals, den der selige Mann in seiner Blindheit einem seiner Freunde aus dem Stegereif in die Feder dictiret hat, schadlos halten wollen.

Preface

The late author of this work, due to his eye disease and his death occurring shortly afterwards, was rendered incapable to terminate the last fugue wherein he identifies himself by his name upon composing the third section; therefore one wished to compensate the friends of his muse by communicating the church chorale set in four parts and adjoined at the end which the late author, in his blindness, dictated into the pen of a friend in spontaneous improvisation.

As concerns this text, Dequevauviller argues, that--contrary to appearance and expectation--it had been written and prepared in advance by J. S. Bach himself! Thus, one might wonder, what further insight the present considerations could reveal. To report still further, Dequevauviller observed that the Nachricht counts 76 words in total: for the title 1, and 75 words for the remaining body text. As is known, Bach gave a Tri-Unitary representation of the number 75 via 31+13+31 in the bar-wise structure of Duetto II (in bars, 149=37+75+37). The digits 7 and 5 of 75 may be related to the number of fifths in the unequal tuning system "wohltemperirt" of Werckmeister/

Bach.6 Let us now structure these 75 words via the unitas by writing 75=37+1+37 such that the central word upon which the text is pivoted emerges as bringen. Following this word, within this single rather long sentence, Dequevauviller mentions the partition by a semicolon.

Although the Nachricht comprising 76 words is somewhat long and continues via . . . bringen; . . . up to . . . wollen--knowing the baroque traditions, practice and procedures--it is tempting to convert that text into a number via Henk Dieben's alphabet and gematria.7 Summing up to the respective end of the words concerned, yields the result in Figure 2.

Here the gematria-sum of the last 37 words that follow after bringen, up to the final word wollen, amounts to 4466-2323=2143. It is striking that this sum 2143 is by only 5 too large, such as to yield 2138, corresponding number-letter wise to BACH. This "problem" suggests taking a closer look at the text of the Nachricht. Immediately a suspect word shows up, namely Stegereif (meaning a spontaneous improvisation). Certainly, this word, in modern German spelling would read Stegreif without the obtrusive letter E=5 that renders the sum too large by this amount. However, modern German is irrelevant in this historical baroque context and one ought to consult contemporary dictionaries to verify the spelling--or even better, texts of writers close to J. S. Bach. Provided one is familiar with those contemporary texts, one easily finds that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, in his treatise8 Versuch / über die wahre Art / das Clavier zu spielen, Volume 2, page 325, chapter 41, writes Stegreif, rather than Stegereif. (See Figure 3.) This succeeds in identifying the misprint of spelling within the Nachricht, first edition of Bach's Kunst der Fuga. The gematria-sum of the last 37 words can thus be corrected from 2143 to 2138, BACH--as expected.

What does this result signify? First of all, J. S. Bach's authorship of the Nachricht--in conformity with Dequevauviller--is corroborated and firmly established. Could it otherwise be imagined, that e. g., Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach--and for what reason--would have constructed that artifice? It is thus the composer's own authentic message. But in addition, one may realize that Bach has encoded here a profound personal theological statement into his last printed work. (See Figure 4.)

The composer, of faltering health, facing his death, shows himself in Christian creed aligned with and belonging to Jesus Christ. The correspondence of the initials J. CHR., 9+3+8+17=37 is "conventional," as shown frequently in several of my own papers and in the book of Harry Hahn as well.9

Dequevauviller presented the following example, Figure 5, in the context of the rupture of the unfinished fugue. In cantata BWV 106, Actus Tragicus, the choir's soprano, at the end of the second movement--final bars upon the words "Ja, komm Herr Jesu, Herr Jesu"--fades away into the last bar of--a pause! Associating with the termination of the second part of the Nachricht by 2138 = BACH with 37 meaning J. CHR., an allusion to rupture of life by death and transfiguration in Christ could be understood.

In this paragraph the firm connection linking the Nachricht to the unfinished fugue will be established. In fact, the study of Bach's message would remain incomplete, if after the count of the words and the application of Henk Dieben's gematria, the number of letters itself were not checked. Thus, the 76 words of the Nachricht, as printed, comprise 427 letters: 9 letters for the title and 418 letters for the body text. As the latter contains the misprint with the superfluous letter E, the length of the text of 75 words can be corrected to 417 letters, factorizing 3x139. On recognizes 1-3-9, the number of the circle of fifths 19, centered numerologically upon the 3 = Trinity. The number 417 depicts in juxtaposition the number of 4 well-tempered fifths, 1 tempering fifth and 7 perfect fifths of the system Werkmeister/ Bach. Converting 4,1,7 into letters yields D, A, G. My earlier article has shown that the first theme of the unfinished fugue is D,A,G,F,G,A,D. This accomplishes the proof of the connection between the unfinished fugue and the Nachricht via the number of 417 letters.

As there can be no longer any doubt about J. S. Bach's authorship of the prefatory message, this proves that according to his intentions, not only the unfinished fugue, but also the final chorale do indeed belong to the composition. Some editions omit the chorale, but future editions may take into account the present result and thus grant Bach--so to speak--the right to the architectonic structure he conceived for this composition and let the form of his last printed work be closed by the chorale.

The unfinished fugue: midpoint and length according to the unitas

The following section investigates the unfinished fugue in more detail, the first theme of which my preceding article in The Diapason (March, 2000, p. 13) associated with "wohltemperirt," as described above. Dequevauviller presents convincing arguments that Bach intentionally and expressly left the fugue unfinished! Musically, the ensuing rupture of flow depicts death dramatically and in a macabre fashion. However, Dequevauviller sees an ambiguity and remains undecided, whether there are 238 complete bars to be terminated by 38 further bars or 239 bars for which 37 bars are lacking. For details, his original paper ought to be consulted. On the contrary, it will now be shown that the rationally admissible viewpoint is that the manuscript of the fugue holds 239 bars terminating at the last bar-line Bach put there. (See Figure 6.) There are 37 bars missing.

From bar 238 to bar 239, the bass descends by a fifth A-D. In numbers, as A=1, D=4; there follows 14=BACH in juxtaposition. Why should this "signature" within these two bars of the autograph be truncated and discarded by assuming only 238 bars? As concerns this signature AD=14, see also the 8th and 9th keystroke of Fugue N° 1, C-major, Das Wohltemperirte Clavier 1. 10 Furthermore, in bar 239 itself, following the quarter note D of the bass, Bach's manuscript notates a single eighth-note of the tenor upon A, into the system of the bass. Juxtaposing again within bass-system, there now holds DA=41=J. S. BACH, representing a further and ultimate signature in bar 239 at the termination of the unfinished fugue. Its manuscript--contrary to the printed version--is written into the two systems of soprano and bass-key. Had the tenor been written, as in the edition, into its system of the tenor-key, such a signature would not have been feasible. It is incoherent to recognize on the one hand via the digits of the partition 239=1+238 the letters of 2138=BACH and on the other hand, assume the factual last bar of the fugue were 238. There is no way out: the fugue, as it exists, logically extends over 239 bars; the completed one totaled 239+37=276 bars. It may be worth noting, and must have been known to Bach, that the number 239 also corresponds to Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her.

How can the ideal extension of 276 bars for the fugue be made plausible, or corroborated? For this purpose, let us now evoke the principle of the baroque unitas with this even number. Thus, 276=138+138, showing that the complete ideal fugue would be pivoted upon the two central bars 138 and 139. (See Figure 7.)

Incidentally, upon separating the two syllables of NACH-RICHT (13,1,3,8-17,9,3,8,19), its first half terminates letter-numberwise as (13)138, but this observation is numerology and means nothing in itself; nor, that the letters, except the last one of the second syllable, yield 37. These midpoint-bars, at first sight, appear somewhat inconspicuous. Nevertheless, four characteristic and pertinent features will be identified therein. The literally exact midpoint (bar-wise) of the completed fugue clearly would be the bar line between 138 and 139.

* Regarding the voice of the alto, the bar-line 138/139 separates the note C from the note A: Henk Dieben's number alphabet yields C=3 - Trinity, and A=1--Unity. Hence, the completed fugue of 276 bars appears to be appropriately centered upon the Tri-Unity. This is as well the basis and principle for the tuning "wohltemperirt." At this point, a correlation with the 75 words of the Nachricht emerges. The representation 75=37+1+37 showed the midpoint, the word bringen, pivoted itself upon the letter N. (See the appendix for the details of the relation with tuning.) The letter N converts to 13--the juxtaposition unitas-trinitas. The Tri-Unity can be represented by a single letter N=13--but not its form 31. In the alto voice, flanking this bar-line, the notes C, A transform to 3, 1. Incidentally, that alto voice reminds us that J. S. Bach is told to have played himself in the orchestra the part of the viol.

*In the first central bar, 138, the two lower voices of bass and tenor attack 7 and 5 notes, respectively. These numbers correlate with the tuning system Werckmeister/Bach. It comprises 7 perfect fifths and 5 fifths "wohltemperirt." The Nachricht counts 75 words plus its heading.

*In the second central bar, 139, the tenor attacks 5 notes, and the alto 3. The system Werckmeister/Bach derives from the triad of C-major--center of tonality--wherein third and fifth beat in unison. In thoroughbass, these numbers 5 and 3 represent the intervals of fifth and third.

*The last manifestation of the central pivot point is perhaps the most esoteric, profound and comprehensive one. Going from bar 138 to the onset of bar 139, the tenor holds a suspension on E, whereas the bass, figure of a catabasis, falls into the F. This reminds about "Fa mi et mi fa est tota musica,"11 Bach set to his Canon BWV 1078. Here, at the partition point via the unitas of his "last fugue," Bach addresses, what represents for him "the totality of music"! Unfortunately, the utilization of this suspension, in particular at central points (unitas) has not yet been systematically investigated within Bach's compositions, such as cantatas as well. A different most characteristic setting, simply the sequence of the notes F-E within a descending scale, occurs at the exact center of the Four Duets,12 wherein Bach had musically and mathematically specified the tuning "wohltemperirt."

At this stage, of course, one might start searching across the unfinished fugue, to find further passages where the four aspects above occur simultaneously. Or else, define different criteria for midpoint-characteristics and check whether there are possibly other candidate-midpoints under such criteria. At about twice the bar number of such places identified, the completed fugue would terminate. However, I have not yet succeeded in finding any different midpoint more convincing and significant than the one indicated within the existing part of the unfinished fugue, bars 138/139.

For completing the fugue it is thus confirmed that 37 bars are missing, related to the number of the 37 final words of the Nachricht, that succeed the semicolon. The ideal length of the complete fugue amounts to 276 bars--in agreement with the outcome of Dequevauviller's ingenious intuition and despite his ambiguous reasoning.

The autograph manuscript terminates with: "NB Ueber dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme// BACH im Contrasubject// angebracht worden, ist// der Verfasser gestorben" (Upon this fugue, where the name BACH is applied in the contrasubject, the author passed away). Whilst keeping in mind the 37 final words of the Nachricht, together with the 37 missing bars of the fugue, this sentence converts via Henk Dieben's alphabet to 867, factorizing 17x3x17. On the way to this total, when summing the text across its word BACH, up to and including the letter C--center of tonality--the intermediary result becomes 266 = Das Wohltemperirte Clavier. Alternatively, according to the triangular alphabet, the factors of the total are 6657=3x7x317. Herein, 317 may be seen as 37=J. CHR., centered upon 1=unitas.

Conclusion

Having established the corrected sum 2138 via the number alphabet for BACH in the second part of the Nachricht now proves beyond doubt that the composer himself was its author. As a consequence, that message--as concerns the contents and extension of the composition--can be trusted and taken literally. Thus, the unfinished fugue does, of course, belong to the composition and the complete work terminates with the chorale. The parallelism between the 37 words of the message's last part (37=J. CHR.) and 2138 meaning BACH, can be interpreted as a profound theological statement within his last printed work--did Bach take the last 37 bars with him when rejoining Jesus Christ? Finally, again numerous allusions or references to the tuning system Werckmeister/Bach could be identified within Die Kunst der Fuga.

For its second edition, Marpurg replaced Bach's authentic Nachricht by a "Vorbericht." The latter, although not without praise, admiration and meritorious commercial and sales intentions, can be dismissed as gibberish if compared to the significance of the composer's own message: Bach's work and concepts cannot easily be improved upon! Fortunately enough, the first printed edition has survived.

Epilogue and outlook

Contemplating this article on Die Kunst der Fuga, I realize and admit that I am myself most and principally interested in the psychology--the obvious one and the one implied--of this personality of a composer/mathematician. It is hoped that by presenting paradigmatically these results, the psychological approach apt for studying musico-mathematical baroque mentality, not only Bach, but e. g., Werckmeister and Zelenka as well, is initiated. And thus, that the official and institutionalized European Bach-research can be relieved from its present deadlock.

Appendix

Applying the gematria between the semicolon at the midpoint of Nachricht to its end yielded 2138. The body text of Bach's message counts 417 letters. These digits specify the three types of fifths in the system. Therefore it is tempting to apply gematria from the onset of the 75 words--excluding the title--and check the sum up to and including the central tri-unitary letter N=13 of BRINGEN. The result is 2217. Rearranging digits will make identification obvious: 1722. This is the year Bach has dated Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, showing 1 tempering-fifth (B-F#), 7 perfect fifths and two pairs of fifths wohltemperirt (C-G, G-D and D-A, A-E). As to the factorization, 2217=3x739. Obviously, 3 means the Trinity, and writing the other factor as 7-3-9, centers 79 upon the Trinity; whereas Johann Sebastian Bach corresponds to 158, its half is 79; a representation investigated already a long time ago.13 It is worthwhile to stress that BRINGEN has at is center the letter N and this was the word at half the length of the message.

Finally, the word BRINGEN itself, at the midpoint of the Nachricht, has several remarkable properties that can best ited in form of a table. (See Figure 8.)

The seven letters of BRINGEN, according to 3+1+3=7, are centered upon the Tri-Unity, N=13, the juxtaposition of unitas-trinitas, the basis of the system wohltemperirt. The sum of the first three letters, BRI, yields 28, secundus numerus perfectus. Such numbers are made up by the sum of its parts, 1+2+4+7+14=28. Or else, 6=1+2+3, primus numerus perfectus. Werckmeister, in his treatises, quotes perfect numbers up to 33550336(!). Looking now at 28 and at the midpoint 13, permits the numerological contraction and juxtaposition to 2813, a permutation of BACH = 2138.

The group of letters GEN, 7,5,13, obviously can encode the 7 perfect fifths together with the 5 well-tempered ones by a procedure14 I have called "appearance method." Otherwise, the final letters EN, appearing as 5-13, show 53 centered upon the 1 = unitas. This may be associated with 5 = fifth in thoroughbass and 3 = third. In the C-major triad of the system Werckmeister/Bach, third and fifth beat at the unison. In analogy, similar to the exercise of this appendix, the title-word NACHRICHT itself may undergo further numerological interpretation, but this is left to the reader.n

Notes

                  *               In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death on 28 July 1750.

                  1.              Kellner, Herbert Anton, "Johann Sebastian Bach and Die Kunst der Fuga." The Diapason, March, 2000, p. 13.

                  2.              Kellner, H. A., "How Bach encoded his name into Die Kunst der Fuge together with his tuning."     The Diapason, May, 1999, 14-15.

                  3.              Dammann, Rolf, Der Musikbegriff im Deutschen Barock Laaber 31995.

                  4.              Kellner, H. A., The Tuning of my Harpsichord. Schriftenreihe 18. Verlag Das Musikinstrument, E. Bochinsky, Frankfurt/Main 1980.

                  5.              Dequevauviller, Vincent, L'art de la fugue, un "problème algébrique." ISBN 2-9513089-0-6. Association pour la connaissance de la Musique Ancienne, 75005 Paris, 10, rue Guy de la Brosse. 1998.

                  6.              Kellner, H. A., "A Mathematical Approach Reconstituting J.S. Bach's Keyboard-Temperament." BACH, The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Berea, Ohio. Editor Melvin Unger. Vol. 30/1, Spring-Summer 1999, 1-10

                  7.              Kellner, H. A., "Le tempérament inégal de Werckmeister/Bach et l'alphabet numérique de Henk Dieben." Revue de Musicologie Vol. 80/2, 1994, 283-298.

                  8.              Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Versuch über die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen. First edition I/II 1753/1762; Facsimile, Ed. Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht 1958, 71986.

                  9.              Hahn, Harry, Symbol und Glaube im 1. Teil des Wohltemperierten Klaviers von J. S. Bach.  Wiesbaden 1973.

                  10.           Kellner, H. A., "Review of Musique et Tempérament by Pierre-Yves Asselin." Revue de Musicologie Vol. 72/2, 1986, 294-296.

                  11.           Duparcq, Jean-Jacques, personal communication, drawing my attention to this canon's text, and that the number alphabet converts "est tota musica" to 158--as well as Johann Sebastian Bach, equal to the value for Die Kunst der Fuga.

                  12.           Kellner, H. A., Barocke Akustik und Numerologie in den Vier Duetten: Bachs "Musicalische Temperatur." In "Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß Stuttgart 1985," Ed. Dietrich Berke and Dorothea Hanemann, Kassel 1987, p. 439-449, as well as Kellner, H. A.: "How Bach quantified his well-tempered tuning within the Four Duets." English Harpsichord Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1986(87), 21-27.

                  13.           Kellner, H. A., "Das wohltemperirte Clavier" --Implications de l'accord inégal pour l'œvre et son

autographe. Revue de Musicologie Vol. 71, 1985, 143-157.

                  14.           Kellner, H. A., "One typographical enigma in Werckmeister, Musicalische Temperatur." English

Harpsichord Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 8, 1985, 146-151; in particular p. 148.

Paul Collins lectures in music at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and holds a first class honors MA degree in Performance and Musicology (Organ) from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is currently pursuing doctoral research at the music department of that university, where his supervisor is Professor Gerard Gillen. His dissertation will investigate the stylus phantasticus and its expression in north German organ music of the seventeenth century. Collins studied organ and harpsichord at the Dublin Institute of Technology Conservatory of Music and Drama, where he was awarded the Actors' Church Union Prize for advanced organ playing. He also holds a Fellowship Diploma in organ from Trinity College, London. He has performed in Ireland, the US, and Italy and is director of the Marmion Recital Series at Holy Cross Church in Dundrum, Dublin, where he is resident organist. In addition to his activities as musicologist and performer, he has composed works for keyboard, voice and chamber ensemble.

The music encyclopedist Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), in Part 1, chapter 10, of Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739) mentions the names of  two Italian composers whom he believes to have been exquisite executants of the "fantastic" style, namely Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) and Michelangelo Rossi (1602-1656). Before offering his readers a thumbnail sketch of their work, Mattheson expresses the hope that neither of these "fleissige Fantasten," or "diligent fantasy makers" will ever have their names consigned to oblivion. In choosing this term to describe these Italians and also Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), Mattheson highlights the inherent tension in the dual r?¥le of performer-composer, that of the "fantastic" spontaneous performer or improviser and the "diligent" composer who must commit structured ideas to paper.

We know, for example, that Rossi, like the later Nicolaus Bruhns (1665-1697) in northern Europe, was renowned as a virtuoso violinist in Rome, so much so that it was recorded in the register of his death in 1656. "Michelangelo il Violino," as he was referred to on occasion, even graced the performance of his single extant opera Erminia sul Giordano (1633) with his own playing, in which he took the part of Apollo in the last act. The Rome-based Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), who first coined the term "fantasy style" or stylus phantasticus in his Musurgia Universalis (1650), was among those who witnessed Rossi's playing at first hand at a private concert given, in Kircher's own words, by "three incomparable musicians, whom I would not be wrong in describing as the Orpheuses of our age."1 The three musicians in question were Rossi, Salvator Mazzella and the lutenist Lelio Colista (1629-1680) and the concert featured music for two violins and the-orbo. Describing the experience in his Itinerarium exstaticum (1656), Kircher leaves us in no doubt that this recital, the exact date of which has been consigned to oblivion, left a deep impression on him. He writes:

. . . though I may avow that I have delved with some distinction in the field of Music I cannot recall having heard anything like it, as they mingled diatonic with chromatic harmonies, and these with enharmonic modulations: it is scarcely possible to express the degree to which the unaccustomed mixing of these styles aroused the emotions of the mind.2

This concert performed before a single auditor--Kircher himself--is significant in itself in terms of the musicians it brought together. Musicologists in recent times have regarded the perspectives of Kircher and Mattheson on the "fantastic" style as being, by and large, mutually exclusive, but it is interesting to note that Kircher chose a sinfonia for four lutes by Colista as one of his five examples of the stylus phantasticus, while Mattheson, eighty-nine years later, considered the works of Rossi--in this context the composer's fourteen toccatas--as examples of the fantastischer Styl. Of further interest is the fact that Mattheson, in his Capellmeister treatise (§92), also mentions the violin and the lute as two of the most appropriate instruments for the realization of this style.

The German theorist's biographical information is not always as accurate as one would wish, however and in the case of Rossi, he can state merely that the composer "lived around 1635, the time of [Giovanni Battista] Doni."3 If we wish to further understand Mattheson's enthusiasm for Rossi's toccatas we must consider these works in the light of the "rules" for would-be "fantasy makers" given by Mattheson in §93 and §94 of his tenth chapter "On the Style of Music." The fantastic style, according to Mattheson, is above all an improvisatory style, with the primary focus on the performer and his extemporary ability. This is underlined by the fact that Mattheson situates his discussion of the fantasy style within the broader context of the genus theatralis, or theatrical style. One is restricted in this a mente non a penna style ("improvised, not written down") only by harmonic considerations, Mattheson making the general comment that "order and constraint" are the antithesis of its aesthetic. The style is to be a vehicle for the spontaneous musical orator, who is exhorted by Mattheson to please, dazzle and astound his listeners. It is characterised by much freedom with respect to "beat and pitch," even though these, as Mattheson notes, may have previously been carefully committed to paper. The fantasist was to avoid developing a "regular" motive or melody and rather incorporate all sorts of strange musical detours and embellishments, the object of which were, to quote another of Mattheson's works, "the movement of the affections and the touching of the heart."4

How then, does a work like Rossi's Toccata prima (measures 1-8 of which are shown in Example 1) realise Mattheson's "rules"? The variety of styles encountered in this and other Rossi toccatas realise Mattheson's aesthetic of immediacy, in which a work's surface features are all-important. Rossi's multi-sectional pieces in the toccata genre constitute, in the words of Erich Valentin, a Mosaikform5, in which many musical patterns and procedures are juxtaposed to form a quasi-improvisatory whole. In the Toccata prima we can see the composer's penchant for distinct, non-interdependent sections, giving the impression of a constantly changing musical landscape in which no one idea is, to paraphrase Mattheson, properly "worked out." It is possible to divide the toccata into four main sections, namely measures 1-8, /9-22, 23-45, /46-53. After the typical chordal incipit, section one comprises an imitative-style passage based on an angular motive. Following this is a section that begins imitatively but quickly becomes much freer, with the introduction of a rising-scale figure in the left hand in measure 10 and the abrupt and almost arbitrary harmonic shift in measures 10-11 (Example 2). Such daring harmonic juxtapositions and rising-scale ideas in fast note values are most often associated with the free or "loosely pulsatile"6 sections of toccatas and in measures 15-16 the full rhetorical import of the section is most clearly captured in the dramatic drop in register from a≤ to d# (Example 3). After the cadence in measure 22 the third, fugato section begins. This is the most "clearly pulsatile"7 of the toccata's sections, there being no dissolution of the texture until measure 42. The fourth and final section, another imitative section, begins on the upbeat to measure 46 and here again there is a necessary constraint on pulse fluctuation.

Mattheson would clearly have been attracted to Rossi's work for many reasons. The division of the toccatas into discrete sections, with little recapitulation of previous material, affords the performer the opportunity to vary the pulse between and frequently even within sections, thus heightening the sense of drama. In the Toccata prima, with the exception of measures 23-42 and 46-52 where we find purely imitative writing, the term con discrezione could be used to describe the manner of playing throughout.8 The idea of not being tied to a pulse in the interest of expression had, of course, been discussed in Italian prefatory writings from the beginning of the seventeenth century, most notably in the preface to Le nuove musiche (1602) by Giulio Caccini (c1545-1618) and in Frescobaldi's preface to his first volume of toccatas (1615). Caccini's concept of sprezzatura, or "artful carelessness," despite its original association with vocal performance, can also be applied to keyboard music, while Frescobaldi's instruction to the player not to be subject to the beat ("non stare soggetto ?† battuta") has its roots in the affetti of the madrigal. To return to Mattheson, we can easily imagine the German theorist praising the Toccata prima of Rossi for its lack of "a regular principal motif and melody" as well as for its textural variety, with two-, three- and four-part writing throughout. Furthermore, he would have favored Rossi's arresting harmonic shifts in measures 7-8 and 10-11, with their potential to "astonish" the listener. Mention of the keyboard works of Rossi in the eleven-paragraph section devoted to a discussion of the fantastischer Styl in Der vollkommene Capellmeister is, therefore, wholly appropriate, given the dramatic nature of the Italian composer's toccatas. These "wordless madrigals" aptly illustrate Mattheson's concept of the stylus phantasticus, with its clear focus on histrionics.

Rossi's importance in the context of a discussion of the stylus phantasticus in the north German organ school is borne out on two main fronts. Firstly, research carried out by Alexander Silbiger and published in 1983 has suggested that we should view Rossi as a contemporary rival of Frescobaldi, rather than as a mere "emulator of the older master."9 The continued esteem in which Rossi's volume of Toccate e Correnti was held is evidenced by the fact that after its initial appearance, probably in the early 1630s, at least three further editions appeared over the next thirty years. Thus, by the beginning of the 1640s in Italy, Rossi's name as a composer of keyboard music was second only to that of Frescobaldi. It seems more than likely that if the older composer's publications were in circulation in the north German region during the seventeenth century that Rossi's keyboard music would have been known there also. Secondly, we know that one of the main bearers of Italian keyboard music to northern Europe, Froberger, was in Rome during the years 1637-1640/1 and in addition to his student-master relationship with Frescobaldi would undoubtedly have had some links with Rossi. Even more than Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693) and Johann Philipp Krieger (1649-1725), two other prominent south German musicians who studied in Italy during the seventeenth century, Froberger was to influence free keyboard writing in north Germany.

As noted earlier, Mattheson praises Froberger as a "diligent fantasy maker" in his Capellmeister treatise, remarking that the Stuttgart-born composer "did much especially in this style of writing."10 He quotes what he believes to be the incipits of two works by Froberger for those of his readers who need written examples of pieces in the fantasy style. Neither of these two incipits appears, however, among Froberger's works. Mattheson's first example, the "beginning of a toccata by Froberger," has been shown by Kerala Snyder to be the opening three bars of Buxtehude's Phrygian praeludium BuxWV 152, as transmitted by the manuscript "E.B.-1688" held at Yale University.11 The second incipit, entitled "beginning of a fantasy by the same person," features a single rhapsodic melodic line as in Mattheson's first example. This, likewise, could not come from the toccatas or fantasias of Froberger, as the former always commence with a sustained chord and the latter with a line in long note values. It is possible, given the similarity of the two incipits, that the second example also originated in the north German region. Of further interest is the fact that the opening motif of the Buxtehude example also appears at the start of Froberger's Capriccio, FbWV 502, from the composer's Libro di Capricci e Ricercate of c1658.12 While it is impossible to ascertain whether or not the Phrygian praeludium of  Buxtehude was influenced by Froberger's capriccio, we have evidence to suggest that north German composers wrote parodies on Italianate works composed by south Germans. For example, Friedrich W. Riedel has pointed to the similarity between a fuga contained in Yale University New Haven manuscript LM 5056 (ascribed in that source to "P. Heidorn ?¢ Crempe") and Kerll's Canzona III.13

Apart from the existence of north German parodies on south German, Italian-influenced works, we know that one important conduit for the transmission of Italian influence to the north German region during the second half of the seventeenth century was the Thuringian-born organist and composer Matthias Weckmann (c1616-1674). Weckmann, appointed organist of the Jacobikirche in Hamburg in 1655 was an admirer of Froberger's music and gained a legendary reputation as both a composer and virtuoso performer. Educated in Dresden and Hamburg, Weckmann studied with, among others, Heinrich Sch?ºtz (1585-1672) and Jacob Praetorius II (1586-1651). While he was most probably introduced to Italian music by Sch?ºtz in Dresden, his later friendship with Froberger was undoubtedly an important factor in his becoming acquainted with Italian keyboard music. The bold and imaginative writing that characterizes Froberger's toccatas is found in Weckmann's works in the same genre, which were probably intended for harpsichord performance. These are among the most remarkable free works to come from seventeenth-century north Germany.

A brief comparison between compositional procedures in the toccatas of Froberger and Weckmann may serve to highlight their similarities. Both composers wrote pieces in each of the two toccata "formats" common in Italy during the seventeenth century, i.e., toccatas in free style throughout and those that contain distinct imitative sections in canzona style. If we examine Froberger's Toccata IV, FbWV104, from the Libro Secondo of 1649 we find an example of the latter toccata type, with free sections framing the fugal material. This work is in four sections (in Rampe's 1993 edition, measures 1-8; 9-15; 16-22; 23-29), section three being a re-working of the preceding fugal material in triple time. The opening "free" section  falls into two halves: measures 1-4 and 5-8 (Example 4). In the first subsection we hear a stepwise rising-fourth idea followed by a falling fourth and thirty-second-note figure. These together comprise the raw material from which this initial eight-measure section is fashioned. The texture of the first four bars has been aptly described by John Butt as that of "imitative homophony,"14 while in the second subsection the imitation (based on the rising fourth idea) and harmonic rhythm become more regular. The section as a whole illustrates Froberger's delight in obfuscating the listener with regard to the "free" and the fugal, in this case within the context of an "improvisatory" section. The two fugal sections that follow form the core of the toccata and each concludes with free material that alludes to the opening section (Examples 5a and 5b). From measure 23 to the end of the work further allusions, this time to material from both free and fugal sections, are heard. The resulting fusion of previously disparate elements achieves a resolution of the work's contrasting free and fugal material, culminating in a cascade of sixteenth-note motion in both hands.

Weckmann's compositional strategy in his Toccata vel praeludium Primi Toni is similar to that in Froberger's toccata. This Weckmann toccata is one of six works in the genre to appear in the 1991 Siegbert Rampe edition of the composer's free keyboard works. Here again we can break the work into four sections: an opening free section (ms.1-10); a fugal section (ms.10-20); a tripla section featuring a variant of the fugal theme (ms.21-27) and a concluding free section (ms.28-40). As in the Froberger toccata, imitation features much throughout the opening section, Weckmann also making use of an up-beat suspirans figure (Example 6). In measure 2, we again hear a stepwise rising fourth idea followed by a downward leap of a fourth, while in the tripla section  (ms. 24-25) and concluding free section, rising and falling fourths constitute much of the motivic fabric. Measures 30-33, in particular, feature figuration very similar to that heard in the second half of Froberger's opening free section (Example 7; cf. Example 4). Common to both pieces also is an unexpected twist to the minor, Froberger, for example, offering the listener what Mattheson might have considered a delightful instance of musical deception at the end of his toccata, where a flattened e# colors the final cadence in C major.

Weckmann's toccata in A minor represents one of the seventeenth-century's most "fantastic" works. It is an example of the toccata type that consisted entirely of free material. During the course of its 78 measures we encounter a kaleidoscopic variety of moods and figuration, yielding a work full of drama and contrasting Affekten. We can see from the outset that this work perfectly fulfils Mattheson's "rules" governing the fantastic style, with its "ingenious turns and embellishments . . . without close observation of the beat . . . without a regular principal motif and melody . . . sometimes fast sometimes slow . . . yet not without a view to pleasing, to dazzling and to astounding" (§92). Weckmann, in short, seeks to delight his listener throughout with the element of surprise and focuses on the toccata as a vehicle for demonstrating performance skill. Chordal passages such as those in measures 8-11, 14-20 and 34-38 alternate with passages featuring scurrying sixteenth notes that are sometimes broken off in mid-flight. These latter abruptio gestures, found in measures 4, 13 and 24, are also part of the musical and rhetorical vocabulary of the composer's toccata in D minor,15 which, again, is in free style throughout. The employment of this rhetorical device in these works was, no doubt, inspired by Froberger's use of similar dramatic gestures in his toccatas (e.g., the end of Toccata III in G, FbWV 103).

One would expect Weckmann's contemporary, Franz Tunder (1614-1667), to have been a key influence on the compositional style of Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707), given that Tunder was the younger composer's predecessor at L?ºbeck's Marienkirche. While Tunder's large-scale chorale fantasias are probably the better known of his fifteen surviving works for organ, his four complete praeludia constitute a significant development of the hitherto short, undemonstrative praeambula of Scheidemann. Each of these four, more extrovert Tunder praeludia begins with a monodic flourish, a new textural device in north German organ music. The concluding free sections of the same works also feature animated writing. Such beginnings and endings sparkle with the brilliance and spontaneity that Mattheson associated with the fantasy style and like similar passages in works by Buxtehude and other later north German composers, would appear to have their origin in improvisational practice. In addition to Tunder's four complete praeludia, there exists a five-and-a-half-measure fragment of a fifth praeludium by the composer, which is of particular interest (Example 8). Here we see perhaps the most striking passage in all of Tunder's praeludia, one that appears to herald a new stylistic departure. This fragment resembles very closely the energetic passages that typically open Buxtehude's works in the same genre. Equally dramatic double flourishes, for example, are heard at the outset of the praeludia in D minor, BuxWV 140 and G minor, BuxWV 148, the latter opening being perhaps the closest Buxtehudian parallel to Tunder's fragment (Example 9).

With the establishment of his "Stock Exchange" concerts around 1646, Tunder began to provide the L?ºbeck merchants with musical entertainment when they gathered at the Marienkirche before the opening of the outdoor Stock Exchange. Central to these concerts, no doubt, was Tunder's playing of his own works, probably in their nascent, improvised form. Just as a praeambulum or praeludium had been used as introductory service music, so the performance of such works at the beginning of one of these concerts would have been entirely appropriate. Tunder can be credited, therefore, with the raising of the praeludium genre to the level of art music, liberating it from its hitherto purely liturgical function.

Given the opportunity to develop Tunder's Marienkirche concert series with his Abendmusiken, it comes as no surprise that Buxtehude, more than any other composer of the period, developed the praeludium into a dramatic monolith. In so doing, he put the genre on an equal footing with chorale-based works, which had been greater in importance during the first half of the seventeenth century. Without doubt, Buxtehude was the most "diligent fantasy maker" of the north German Baroque. Both free and chorale-based organ works share in this accolade, as do the composer's sonatas, which, following the principle of contrasting sections, have formal structures similar to those of his twenty-two pedaliter praeludia. The praeludia may be commented upon from a variety of perspectives, as Kerala Snyder has shown,16 and despite its limited application, Mattheson's concept of the stylus phantasticus constitutes one "lens" through which we can view these works. The exuberance, drama and virtuosity associated with the free sections, as well as the constantly shifting textures, square perfectly with Mattheson's description of the style. Indeed those praeludia that favor free writing above fugal sections, like the F-sharp minor, BuxWV 146 and D major, BuxWV 139 exhibit Mattheson's concept most successfully. As much has been written about the "fantastic" nature of Buxtehude's F-sharp minor praeludium, a comment on the D major work as an expression of Mattheson's stylus phantasticus concept is merited. Containing only one fugue lasting 35 measures, BuxWV 139 has substantial opening and closing free sections of 20 and 41 measures respectively. Like the praeludium in F sharp minor, with its famous "recitative," the D major praeludium contains a decorated chordal interlude (measures 87-94) that introduces much harmonic color (Example 10). Other features shared by these two praeludia include the motoristic rhythms and an extended sequential passage, while the Peroratio of the D major work offers an example of the abruptio gesture (measure 103) typical of many of the praeludia which have a closing free section (Example 11).

Buxtehude's praeludia reveal both a skilled composer and an accomplished performer at work and could be said to represent a synthesis of the ideas of both Kircher and Mattheson regarding the "fantastic style." Most discussions of the concept of stylus phantasticus in relation to the composer's free organ works have nevertheless focused on Mattheson's description of the style in order to account for the inherent drama of these works. By exploring a middle way, however, a concept of "fantastic" that embraces Buxtehude the composer, skilled in learned counterpoint, and Buxtehude the accomplished performer, we can, perhaps, reconcile two concepts with very different emphases in one musical persona. Such a meeting of opposites can only do justice to the composer's multi-faceted praeludia.

It is also possible to discuss the "fantastic" elements in the free works of Buxtehude and other north German composers within the broader context of rhetorical analysis. According to the latter perspective, the late seventeenth-century north German praeludium may be regarded as a tightly organised work and an accomplished example of musical rhetoric in its fulfilment of even the minimal demands of a classical dispositio. An analytical approach to praeludia of the late seventeenth century based on one or more concepts of the stylus phantasticus need not omit a consideration of the structural sophistication and eloquent rhetoric that such works exhibit. The two approaches, that of a stylus phantasticus perspective and one based on rhetorical analysis, are complementary, if individually subjective and limited in their application. An analysis of, for example, Buxtehude's praeludia from the perspective of the stylus phantasticus is impoverished if it fails to draw on musical-rhetorical concepts and figures, using the template of rhetorical analysis to highlight the significance of each of the various sections within the context of a complete praeludium. A rhetorical analysis, on the other hand, which omits a consideration of the chameleon-like concept of stylus phantasticus is in danger of offering an assumed compositional "recipe," or to quote Mattheson, albeit out of context, "something . . . inflexible."17 Both forms of analysis focus on a work in relation to how it "speaks" to the listener, and on the composer's attempts to transform what is, in the case of a praeludium, wordless music into dramatic speech. While the alternating textures of a Buxtehude praeludium may indeed suggest a careful sequence reflecting the traditional parts of a classical oration (i.e., Exordium, Narratio, Confirmatio and Peroratio), we must be wary of assuming that the achievement of such a rhetorical sequence was foremost in the composer's mind. We are not on safe ground if, with reference only to Mattheson's concept, we try to play down the importance of the stylus phantasticus in such free works.

This article has concerned itself with following what could be termed the "fantastic thread" in the toccata genre from Italy, the origin of "diligent fantasy making" for Mattheson, through south Germany to northern Europe. We could say that the following of this thread to north Germany parallels an investigation of the progress of Italian influence in that region during the latter half of the seventeenth century.

Olga Savitskaya was born in Minsk (Belarus) and earned a Ph.D. with a specialty in musicology at the Belarusian State Conservatory, where she is now assistant professor and music theory chair. A member of the Belarusian Union of Composers, she lectures on harmony, form and analysis, and polyphony. Her research interests include instrumental music of baroque period, Belarusian symphonic music, and modern composition techniques. Her publications include many books and articles.

The end of the 17th century through the beginning of the 18th century was a period of development for the trio sonata and its two varieties: sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera. Being formed in the works of Corelli, “the typical form of a church sonata of four contrasting parts: Grave (homophonic or imitative, C), Allegro (treated fugally, C), Adagio (homophonic, 3/2), Allegro or Presto (treated fugally or homophonic, C or 3/2)”1 appeared to be one of the most universal and flexible formulas of musical-logical development of the large instrumental concept in the baroque period. Influenced by the principles of the cyclic organization of the church sonata, the structure of the violin solo sonata and the concerto grosso evolved. Thus, the musical-historical phenomenon of the church sonata appears in the combination of two aspects: 1) as a genre during the 17th and early 18th centuries, moving from the bounds of church music into the sphere of secular concert music; 2) as a type of the baroque large instrumental form whose organizational principles (primarily crystallized in the genre of a church trio sonata) were adapted and developed at the end of the 17th century through the first half of the 18th century.
The highest achievements in this sonata form are connected to the prominent masters—Corelli, Purcell, Couperin, Biber, Buxtehude, Bach, and Handel, etc.—whose works in many aspects have defined both the character of the baroque era as a whole, and the national and regional schools that developed in this period. The Italian sonata, embodied in the sonatas of Corelli, undoubtedly had a great influence on composers throughout Europe. But much more notable is finding the “national appearance” of the sonata in England, France, and Germany.
One of the high points in the history of this genre is seen in the 14 trio sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord of Dieterich Buxtehude, which were quite original when they were published in 1696.
The main features of Buxtehude’s sonatas are their general structure and non-specific number of movements, from three to seven. The sonata movements are mainly differentiated by tempo, style and degree of independence. The fantasy style of composition abounds in unexpected changes of rhythm, contrasted with strict fugues, improvisational interludes, and juxtapositions of different manners of writing. And though the contrast of polyphony and homophony as one of the basic traits of the sonata da chiesa retains its significance, fugues do not always take the central place. All this testifies to the fact that trio sonatas by Buxtehude are oriented not so much to the Corelli pattern, but to the German tradition of violin writing, where the principle of free thematic development and improvisational character of performing fuses with compositional techniques.
The fugues included in each of Buxtehude’s 14 sonatas are very different, ingenious, and exhibit the individual style of the composer, as well as a definite stage of evolution of this polyphonic form prior to the art of Bach.
The instrumental ensemble fugues reveal one of the bright sides of the complex, many-sided Buxtehude fugal style, which includes also his organ and vocal compositions. As V. Protopopov noted, their typical features are “vividness of themes, ease of motion, and a lack of concentrated philosophical musical images . . .”2 As a rule, the fugal subjects of trio sonatas are rather extensive, intonationally expressive, and based on the structure of core-development. The elements of dance music and style-intonation figures representing performing technique of stringed instruments give a special shape to them.
Two-voice fugues predominate, where the theme is expressed by solo instruments; the basso continuo functions as accompaniment (op. 1: no. 1 Presto, no. 3 Allegro, no. 5 Vivace, no. 6 Allegro; op. 2: no. 2 Allegro, no. 4 Allegro I, no. 5 Allegro I). However, three-voice fugues in which the harpsichord participates in concertante alongside the two soloists (op. 1: no. 1 Allegro; op. 2: no. 2 Vivace, no. 6 Vivace, Poco Presto, no. 7 Allegro) are also frequently used. In some cases three-voice fugues are used only in the exposition, subsequently replaced by two-voice fugues with accompaniment (op. 2: no. 1 Allegro).
According to the tradition of pre-Bach fugues, in Buxtehude’s trio sonatas the tonic-dominant alternation of subjects is mainly a result of the interchange of expositions and counter-expositions that becomes the basic structural characteristic. However, even in rather small and “simple” fugues, expansion of the texture and attention to the architectonical aspect of composition is obvious. An essential role belongs to episodes.
As an example we shall give the scheme of the three-voice fugue of the Sonata in F Major, op. 2, no. 7, Allegro I (Example 1). At the same time in trio sonatas of Buxtehude, fugues having two or three parts are also frequent. Such are the two-voice fugues of sonatas in C Major (op. 1, no. 5), E Minor (op. 1, no. 7), and A Minor (op. 1, no. 3).
All these examples show a definite development: from a fugue as the combination of expositions and counter-expositions by means of episodes to three-part fugue with functional differentiation of sections and exceeding the limits of tonic-dominant relations through modulation. Such development, which looks forward toward Bach’s fugues (especially chamber-instrumental), is not, however, the single one for Buxtehude.
The unrestrained imagination of the baroque artist and the aspiration to the new and unusual are manifested also in the interpretation of a fugue, resulting in expansion and complication of its structure and assimilation of the elements of other genres and forms. The structure and organizational logic of these Buxtehude fugues are not repeated, but as a whole one can see a similarity to his organ works, the successive line from which leads to grandiose Bach organ fugues. Let us examine specific examples.

Sonata in G Major (op. 1, no. 2)
Its structure emphasizes a cyclic three-part form, while the weakened role of polyphony and significant role of dance themes testify to the effect of an instrumental concerto. The principle of composition “in mixto genere” (in a mixed form) is in part I, the result of synthesis of two forms: a complex double fugue with a joint exposition and the concerto form.
Lively dance themes do not contrast but supplement each other in free development when complementary rhythms underline the linear independence of the voices, with homophonic duplication of the melodic motives in tenths and thirds. Development of themes in exposition and counter-exposition, which constitute a fugue itself, is divided by the episodes based on the new material in the manner of the homophonic ritornellos of the violin concerto. (Example 2)
In essence, in this work, and in the entire cycle, not only interaction of various musical forms takes place but also the more complicated synthesis of “the old” and “the new” genres: the church sonata, which has reached its full maturity, and the young instrumental concerto, which rapidly developed in Europe at the end of the 17th century.

Sonata in B Major (op. 1, no. 4)
Another combination features the interaction of a fugue and basso ostinato. In the Sonata in B Major (op. 1, no. 4) the element of ostinato seems “to be splashed out” outside of 32 variations of part I by subordinating a final fugue. In its middle section Buxtehude, being the master of musical rhetoric, specially combines two principles of organization—fugue and ostinato. At first the brief fugal subject is stated by the solo instruments. Then it dissolves in figurations, and its function in the thematic process temporarily transfers to the basso ostinato. The final section again affirms the fugue, but a reminiscence of the basso ostinato returns in the last bars of the coda.
The ostinato principle takes a special place in Buxtehude’s compositional technique. The German master’s adherence to ostinato seems to be consistent even against the background of its pervasive occurrence in music of the 17th century (perhaps only Purcell can be compared with him in this respect). Buxtehude makes use of basso ostinato in organ compositions: Chaconnes in C Minor (BuxWV 159), E Minor (BuxWV 160), Passacaglia in D Minor (BuxWV 161), Preludes in C Major (BuxWV 137) and G Minor (BuxWV 149); and in the cantatas Jesu dulcis memoria (BuxWV 57), Laudate pueri (BuxWV 69), Liebster, meine Seele saget (BuxWV 70), etc.
In the 14 trio sonatas, basso ostinato is almost as necessary as fugue (the ostinato is absent only in two sonatas). Its various forms can be divided into two groups—the less numerous so-called arias for basso-ostinato (Strophenbas arie), and the basic group, consisting of basso-ostinato forms of passacaglia type.
Basso ostinato is employed in lively (op. 2, no. 3 Vivace) and slow (op. 2, no. 3 Andante), outside (op. 2, no. 6 Allegro) and middle (op. 1, no. 1 Andante) movements. In some sonatas (op. 1, no. 4; op. 2, no. 5), the basso ostinato principle appears to be the predominant compositional idea and is implemented under different tempo and texture conditions.
A variety of basso ostinato uses derives from the character and structure of ostinato themes and the whole ostinato layer of basso continuo, thematic peculiarities of the high voices, structural-semantic interaction of the ostinato and upper voices, and, lastly, inclination to this or that type of composition—closed, precisely structured or free, and contrasting-compound.
At the same time all of these serve as the concentrated expression of the musical thinking of the composer. Thus, a fugue and a basso ostinato are the dominant constants of Buxtehude’s trio sonatas. The presence of a fugue is proof of observance of the major genre standards of sonata da chiesa, whereas the constancy and skilfulness of use of basso ostinato in the greater extent reflect the individual principles typical of Buxtehude’s style, which was based on the North-German tradition.

Other elements in Buxtehude’s trio sonatas
Other movements illustrate an extremely wide spectrum of genre, composition, and textural-timbral combinations. It is difficult and hardly reasonable to generalize the principles of cyclic organization in Buxtehude’s sonatas. The architectonics of any of them do not repeat exactly in any other, and each composition demands analysis of its individual logic. Besides a fugue and ostinato variations, these are small, without reprise, strophic, general and mixed forms. Among genre prototypes and patterns one finds the jig, chaconne, “echo,” chorale prelude, dialogue, toccata, “signal trumpet,” etc. The “formulas of imagination” acquire special significance, these indispensable attributes of improvisational style—passages, recitatives, arpeggio—creating, according to M. Lobanova, the “illusory, imaginary disorder” or the “intense pathetic development.”3 The sonatas combine genres, styles, affects and rhetorical figures.
In this “game of senses” the important role belongs to the thematic ties within the cycle. Strictly speaking, such ties characterize the sonata da chiesa, with its origins in the mono-thematic, multi-part canzona. But that sequence and ingenuity with which the thematic unity is realized in the sonatas of Buxtehude testifies that its role by no means is restricted to ensuring formal compositional integrity but acquires a distinct symbolic sense. Here it is reasonable to appeal to one of the central concepts of the baroque poetics being defined as the “witty conception.” The delicate, veiled differentiation of the themes in different parts of the cycle acts as a manifestation of baroque “wit,” whose purpose seems to display the obvious or hidden similarity, in what seemed to be on the surface, completely unrelated.

Sonata in C Major (op. 1, no. 5)
One of the instances is the Sonata in C Major, op. 1, no. 5. In this four-part cycle the first and the final fugues symmetrically frame the contrasting middle parts—an aria of a solo violin with a bass, and an ensemble jig (Vivace–Violino Solo; Allegro–Largo; Allegro–Adagio; Allegro).
Fugues are connected tonally. The source of their common material is the initial subject. Their motives and submotives, like the elements of a mosaic, are easily combined and rearranged to form new thematic configurations. The initial sections and the end of the final fugue are especially distinguished, serving to express a rhetorical idea of “connection,” the “concatenation” known under the name of symploce, or repetition (see Example 3).
The middle parts are also connected thematically: the motive of the second strophe of the aria with bass is unexpectedly “recalled” in the theme Allegro (Example 4). Finally, all thematic material of the sonata reveals as its basis a uniform intonational pulse, active, exclamatory (exclamatio) fourth (fifth) interval motion, a sort of the “intonational monad” as an indivisible core encompassing the whole world in it.

Sonata in A Minor (op. 1, no. 3)
The other example of thematic ties is found in the Sonata in A minor, op. 1, no. 3. The general idea is disclosed gradually, from movement to movement, revealing a semantic potential concealed within it.
In the melodic lines of the Adagio gradual downward motion (f-e-d-c-b-a-g#-a) covering a diatonic hexachord with adjoining introductory material is “summarized” by compact expressive formula saltus duriusculus (f-g#-a) (see Example 5a). Both elements are marked also in the themes of the Allegro: in the capacity of one of the motives of the fugue subject (hexachord by parallel sixths) and as the hidden voice of counter-subject (f-e-d-c-g#-a) (Example 5b). Further, the diatonic hexachord (including that which has been expressed by parallel sixths) becomes the thematic basis of the Vivace. Supplemented up to heptatonic, it is continuously exhibited in different voices, like a migrating cantus firmus in a chorale prelude (similar to its textual coincidence with the final phrase of Buxtehude’s organ chorale variations Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BuxWV 223) (Example 5c). Descending scale-like motion is retained in the finale (Presto), but already against a background, not in the parts of melodic instruments but in the basso continuo. The most characteristic baroque style figure—passus duriusculus, appearing in slow modulation binding sections (Lento, Largo) as ascending and descending pieces of a chromatic scale—is brought to the forefront. Only in the final Lento is the semantic orientation of the general thematic process “explained.” The descending chromatic motion, trebled by imitations that embrace all verticals of the ensemble compass and saturated with rhetorical figures of grief (catabasis, passus duriusculus, catachresis, parrhesia), closes the sonata. (Example 5d)

Conclusion
Dieterich Buxtehude’s trio sonatas are among the high points in the history of the genre. Standing out against the background of the rich tradition of ensemble music at the end of the 17th–beginning of the 18th century, they testify to the exclusive originality of the North German model of the baroque sonata. Created in the period of, probably, the greatest “purity” of the style, the sonatas of Buxtehude embody the baroque world image itself—which has lost its Renaissance integrity, being woven of “incongruous combinations” of contrasts opening into infinity by the kaleidoscopic unsteadiness of existence and at the same time blessed by the supreme harmony of all-reconciling unanimity. ■

One of the most interesting genres of music to arise during the 17th century was that of Portuguese and Spanish battle music written specifically for the organ. Iberian organs, highly versatile for their size and often equipped with formidable banks of horizontal reeds, were an inseparable factor in the development of this musical category, and still inform us how to play it. This article will examine the repertoire of Iberian battle music, its origins, and the impact of the villancico, ensalada, and the Iberian organ.

The repertoire

In an environment where composers wrote tientos and versets by the hundreds, the battle music repertoire seems quite small. Only about twenty pieces survive from the 17th century (Table 1), even if the list expands to include battle-like works with more generic names, or which appear to contain material borrowed from non-Iberian composers. Yet, perhaps because their unique battle-related content makes them fun to play, this small body of works appears on modern concert programs far more often than do the many tientos and versets that surround them in the manuscripts of the period. Mary Ellen Sutton¹ recommends in particular the battles marked in Table 1 with an asterisk as being of interest to modern audiences. Pieces marked + are nearly identical. The selection marked § has been attributed to both composers, or neither, as will be discussed later.

Most of the manuscripts containing battles (batalla in Spanish, batalha in Portuguese) came originally from monastery or cathedral libraries, no doubt because their composers were cathedral organists, some of them in holy orders. All of the manuscripts are now held in central libraries in or near Oporto and Braga, Portugal, and Madrid and Barcelona, Spain. Most of these works are available in modern transcription, but because so many of the anonymous pieces have similar names, I have included the original manuscript and folio numbers in Table 1.² 

In fact, almost all are described simply as a battle in a given mode. Mode designations imply that the compositions were intended for liturgical use. Fifth and sixth modes are the most common. The seven pieces in sixth mode have key signatures of F major. The four in the fifth tone are in C major. Although fifth mode is generally thought of as an F-based mode, its tenor is C. Sutton suggests that the use of C major here accompanies a general shift towards tonality. Three fifth-mode batallas, which are for all practical purposes written in the key of C, appear in Madrid MS 1357 in volumes indexed by mode. All of the fifth-mode versets in the first two volumes of MS 1357 were transposed to C.³ One of the two eighth-mode works, both thought to be by Aguilera de Heredía, is also in C major. The choice of key signature could be, of course, editorial. However, after playing the battles, I would agree with the editorial decisions. 

Most of the composers of battle music (Table 2) were famous musicians of their time and place. Pablo Bruna was considered one of the best organists and teachers in Spain. Blind since birth, he was known as “el ciego de Daroca” (the blind man of Daroca). Juan Batista Cabanilles was a master of the Spanish Baroque style, which enlarged on Renaissance practices and does not resemble the styles composers preferred in other parts of Europe during this era. A colleague said, “The world will crumble before a second Cabanilles appears.”

Some of the composers are less well known. The name of Diego (or Diogo) da Conceição appears in only one manuscript, where his few compositions are the best in the collection. Others remain unidentified, although stylistic similarities suggest that some of the anonymous pieces could be copies or variations on works by known composers. All of the known composers of battle music worked in Portugal or the Castilian region of Spain, where Iberian organ builders made improvements to the organs that facilitated this genre.

Borrowing from other composers was more acceptable in the Baroque era than it is today, and several of the battles demonstrate this procedure. The most notable is Cabanilles’s Batalla Imperial, which is identical, other than the ordering of the sections, to that of Johann Caspar Kerll, a slightly older German composer who worked in Austria. Who borrowed from whom is questionable, Mary Jane Corry positing a third composer entirely.⁵ In his article on Cabanilles in Grove Online, Barton Hudson attributes the battle to Kerll. In another example, two batalhas in Porto MS 1607 are quite similar to each other; Doderer suggests that based on their style, these might be different versions of a work by Cabanilles. In a third case, measures 58–159 of the Batalha de 6º Tom by Torrelhas are virtually identical to a section of one of José Ximénez’s Batallas.

Origins of the organ batalla/batalha

In approaching this topic, a person might ask what actually makes a composition a battle. The most basic consideration is the title. It is a battle if the composer says it is. However, battle pieces generally imitate the commotion of war with busy voicing, ostinato figures, lively rhythms, and percussive chords that simulate musket or cannon fire. They also often imitate the music of battle in the form of trumpet signals or fanfares. It is perhaps this trait that makes the music sound warlike in the 21st century. Trumpet signals are still in limited use in today’s military and are familiar to most listeners from ceremonies and the entertainment media.

The earliest music with these characteristics is the 14th-century caccia, which imitates the hunt with fanfares and rallying cries. A 15th-century battaglia by Heinrich Isaac for instruments with keyboard accompaniment has several characteristics that appear in most later battle music, such as ostinato figures and alternating duple and triple meter. It is interesting to note that Isaac also may have written his work for voices first, since Bianca Becherini found a poem whose text matches the music.

The music that began the battle craze in earnest, perhaps because it so cleverly captured the sounds of battle despite being written for unaccompanied voice, was Clément Janequin’s chanson La guerre. It immortalized a French victory over Swiss and Italian forces at the Battle of Marignano in 1515. Written in two large sections, this is a four-voice vocal work filled with a variety of techniques for making it sound warlike. Melodies imitate the calls of war trumpets, using actual tunes employed in battlefield communication. The onomatopoeic text that accompanies these may have come directly from the syllables players used when learning their music. Triadic figures in a simple harmonic background reflect the ensemble formation trumpeters of the time used, and quick notes simulate both the action of battle and more of the ceremonial trumpet sound.

La guerre was wildly popular and quickly spread across Europe, not only in its original form but also in imitations and transcriptions. Fifteen years later Matthias Werrecore wrote a retort, La battaglia taliana, commemorating an Italian victory over the French. Published in Germany, it was known everywhere as Die Kleine Schlacht, with Janequin’s chanson now being called Die Große Schlacht. Werrecore borrowed not only Janequin’s key (F Ionian) but copied the beginning motive from La guerre’s Secunda pars. This opening gesture, or variants of it, as well as the F-based mode, appear in a number of battles and tientos. I believe that Janequin’s motive was so widely admired because it was more than just a clever compositional device: it also accurately captured the sound of battle trumpets, both harmonically and melodically. 

The trumpet

To understand just what this battle sound was like, it is helpful to know a little about the trumpets that created it. From ancient times until the modern invention of radio, the trumpet was the primary means of battlefield communication. Art from ancient Egypt shows trumpet-playing soldiers on the march. After a hiatus following the fall of Rome, the trumpet appeared again in Europe as war booty collected from the Saracens. As the art of trumpet making progressed, the instruments developed from examples that could play only one low note to models that could play more than an octave above middle C and had a few diatonic notes. The trumpet ensemble became a symbol of power in the Renaissance court, and trumpet players were valued more highly than other performers.

Prior to 1975, scholars knew much about the Renaissance trumpet through two books published during the 17th century. These were Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle (1635), and Girolamo Fantini’s Modo para Imparare a sonare di Tromba (1638). Both books contain examples of battle trumpet calls, with syllables written under the notes, possibly to indicate tonguing but apparently also to aid the instrumentalist in learning the music. Scholars were able to see by studying the trumpet tunes that Janequin and his imitators had used real battle music in their compositions. While the syllables Mersenne and Fantini indicated were not the same as those Janequin used, that did not mean Janequin’s were not accurate for his time and location.

In 1970 historian Edward Tarr published a facsimile and translation of a third manuscript, Cesare Bendinelli’s Tutta l’arte della Trombetta. In 1614, Bendinelli had donated to a library his instrument and a manuscript containing a wealth of music and pedagogical material, and there they had lain for the next three and a half centuries. Bendinelli had gone a step further than Mersenne and Fantini. He described not only the notes but also the system by which Renaissance trumpeters played:

Here all the trumpeters begin to play, in the field, at princely courts, or in other places. I point out that a single [player] begins and the others follow in order, as is the custom . . . First the grosso; second the vulgano; third, alto e basso, that is, he who imitates the sonata with his notes, only lower, and who has to be quite expert; fourth the one who leads; and fifth, the clarino, who avoids octaves since they clash and are not used by those who understand music.

We can understand now why a Renaissance sovereign might have required twenty-four trumpeters. A chart of the harmonic series shows what notes each of the performers named by Bendinelli would have played (Example 1).

Understanding that Renaissance trumpeters played as an ensemble rather than as soloists now clarifies why composers so often imitated the opening gesture of La guerre’s Secunda pars. It represented not only the notes but also the harmony of the war trumpet sound of Janequin’s time. James South implies that even Janequin’s key of F may have been taken from practical example. Bendinelli’s own trumpet sounds close to our modern key of E, which may have been the F of his time and place.⁹ Bendinelli labeled the chart describing his own trumpet’s range as Trombetta Antigua, perhaps referring to the older war trumpet as contrasted with the newer C trumpet that had replaced it.

Example 2 shows how Bendinelli’s battle trumpet formation appears in Janequin’s much-imitated second section. In the first measure, all voices simulate trumpet harmony; then the bass and tenor sing the lines that the grosso and vulgano trumpets normally would have played. The rhythm of the short notes with the syllables “Fre re le le lan fan” is that of the rotta, a flourish with which both military and ceremonial trumpet music might end. I have discovered that the rotta figure features in many organ battles (Example 3). 

Perhaps the most imitated trumpet motive Janequin uses is the Boutez selle (“put on the saddle”) (Example 4). Distinctive and easily heard through the busy texture of the chanson, this figure appears in all of the Renaissance trumpet methods. In Bendinelli’s it is entitled Buta sella and includes an example of mnemonic syllables like those Janequin may have had in mind when he wrote La guerre. The Boutez selle figure appears repeatedly in the organ battles, and I have observed that it is often accompanied by battle trumpet harmony (Example 4).

The organ battles of Iberia do not simply copy Janequin’s chanson, however. They use fanfares and other trumpet-like figures that the composers no doubt heard as part of ceremonies, or perhaps even composed for trumpet as well (Example 5). Because these figures are still used today for similar purposes, we recognize them immediately.

Portuguese and Spanish organ battles also depart from Janequin in their overall structure. The actual battle depiction in La guerre, Secunda Pars, falls into roughly two parts. The first uses trumpet motives, and the second drum and gunfire sounds. The texture remains quite consistently in four voices. There are some meter changes, but the listener does not perceive discrete sections. 

Iberian organ battles, on the other hand, are distinctly sectional. The texture varies between full block chords and the battle ensemble depiction of solo voice over triads (on the organ these can also appear under the chords). Meter changes often delimit the sections. The unique shape and style of Iberian battle music developed due to the influence of three musical elements exclusive to Spain and Portugal and their colonies in the western hemisphere. These are the villancico, the ensalada, and the particular direction Iberian organ builders took with their creations.

The impact of the villancico, ensalada, and Iberian organ developments

The first of these influences, the villancico, vilancete in Portuguese, is a song form. Villancicos had vernacular text, folk melodies, and an energetic rhythmic style replete with syncopation, hemiola, and meter changes. The villancico was strophic with a refrain (estribillo) and sometimes many verses (coplas). Villancico-like characteristics in the organ battles may include changing meters, hemiola, and a dance-like 3+3+2 rhythm that often appears at cadences (Example 6).

At first a secular form, the villancico moved into the realm of liturgy as devotional coplas were created to accompany estribillos that often remained secular. It became customary to perform these following each lesson at Vespers and during the elevation of the Host during the Mass.¹² Buelow suggests that battle pieces, closely related to the villancicos as they were, would also have been performed at the same points in the Mass.¹³ Phillip II of Spain banned the performance of villancicos in his chapel in 1596, but his complaint apparently was that they were sung in Spanish rather than Latin, and not that they were too spirited. The rest of the Iberian peninsula ignored this prohibition, and the villancico remained popular in Spanish and Latin American churches until the 19th century.

A popular theme for villancicos was the battle between good and evil. A song might depict a battle between the Virgin or the newborn Christ Child and Lucifer. Often the battle image might become more worldly. One example from mid-17th century Coimbra begins with a symbolic battle between divine and worldly love, but then turns into a skirmish between Portuguese and Spanish troops. Amid the repeated cries of “Long live divine love!” comes the text:

Viva el Amor divino 

Que nos ha quitado 

la prisión esquiva

De un ciego traidor.   

Praise the divine Love

Who has rid us

Of the unreachable prison

Of a blind traitor.

It is not surprising that some images of actual war might creep into the texts of sacred music. During the 17th century, Portugal was often at war, both battling for political separation from Spain and sparring with Spain in the western hemisphere, as they divided up the Americas between them.

A second factor in the development of organ battle music was the ensalada. The word means “salad,” and in fact the ensalada was a hodge-podge, a kind of musical revue made up of hymns and villancicos, sometimes acted out. These were performed on feast days and were especially popular at Christmas, New Year, and Epiphany. Ensaladas were sung and accompanied by an interesting variety of wind instruments, all of them loud. A composition might specify two trumpets and a schalmei, although the oboe and organ were also popular. 

Because the ensalada was made up of a variety of individual pieces, it was by definition a sectional music form. Spanish keyboard music already had a sectional genre, the tiento, one based on imitation similar to the Italian ricercar. Organists had simply to move from accompanying an ensalada to writing one for the organ alone. Ricercar-like imitation, usually at the octave, appears in some battles (Example 7), and authors often include battles in discussions of the tiento.

The third factor to influence the development of Iberian organ battle music was the instrument itself. At the beginning of the 16th century, Spanish and Portuguese organs were constructed by Flemish organ builders and were the same as those in other parts of Europe. Flemish practices continued in the Catalonian region of Spain, but in Castile and Portugal local organ builders took the instrument in a new direction. 

One difference was the divided manual, or medio registro. Each half of the manual, from middle C down and from middle C# up, could have its own registration. This allowed a small instrument much more variety than it might have with just one setting for the entire manual. Composers wrote pieces for medio registro with one hand soloing and the other playing an accompaniment. On a medio registro instrument, an organist could use different registrations to create an echo effect with this type of imitation. In the battles we often see paired imitation with a figure played first in one octave and then in another (Example 8).

Another improvement was the swell box, which appears to have been developed in Spain before anywhere else in Europe.¹⁵ Some of the enclosed pipes included reeds. The swell could potentially create echo effects without changes of octave or registration (Example 9). Some Spanish organs of the 17th century even had devices that allowed quick change of registration, although this was by no means universal. 

Organs became more versatile as organ makers learned to build pipes that imitated the sounds of other instruments. Pipes might do a credible job of mimicking the bassoon, the oboe, buzzing reed instruments such as the crumhorn, schalmei, and dulzian, and trumpets in all registers. The organ could play these sounds with more volume and a greater range than could performers on the actual instruments, sounding a death knell for these players who until that time had been highly valued. 

During the 17th century organ builders began to place trumpet-shaped reed pipes horizontally for more brilliant tonal effect and visual beauty. Almost every battle has at least one solo that might have been played on horizontal reeds against a background of a quieter reed chorus (Example 10). However, Doderer believes that organists would also have used horizontal reeds for dense chordal passages, creating a truly immense volume of sound (Example 11).

Not all Iberian organs were equipped with accessory stops to simulate percussion instruments as was the one at Lérida Cathedral (it also had bells and six different birdsongs). However, composers definitely assumed that performers would imitate this effect through articulation. Batalha famoza includes an instruction to play the left hand quickly in order to imitate musket fire (Example 12). Possibly this could be turned into a special effect, since the full sound of a pipe might not speak when played with a very short stroke.

These organs had fewer pedals than do modern ones. Organs surviving from the 17th century generally have from one to three pedals that might play C, F, and/or G, depending on the organ’s basic pitch (some were based on 24′ F stops rather than the 16′ C stops common in Germany).

Performance considerations

Developing insight into the trumpet sounds Iberian organists were emulating in their compositions throws new light on how this music should be played. The triadic accompaniment to a solo line should not hide in the background, but sound like a trumpet chorus. The organist can phrase a fanfare or battle call so that it sounds as if an actual trumpeter were playing it.

Understanding the organ of the time provides additional clues to bringing this music to life. Sutton suggests using an organ with at least two manuals to create the contrast that one medio registro keyboard could generate.¹⁷ Use pedals sparingly, since the organs for which the battles were written could only play sustained notes in common cadence pitches. One registration possibility would be a strong solo reed and bright reed chorus contrasted with full organ at sectional divisions. Barbara Owen suggests avoiding gaps in the registration or allowing it to become too foundational or too top-heavy.

Battle music remains a satisfying part of the organ literature today. Because their trumpet fanfares and battle signal motives persist as part of our aural culture, modern audiences still respond to this sound. Today we use battle music in concert rather than as liturgical repertoire, since tastes in church music have changed. However, battle music might make a satisfying postlude on a festive occasion, much as this music was used four centuries ago. 

Notes

1. Mary Ellen Sutton, A study of the 17th-century Iberian organ batalla (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1978), 142–143.

2. Gerhard Doderer, Orgelmusik und Orgelbau im Portugal des 17. Jahrhunderts: Unteruchungen an Hand des MS 964 d. Biblioteca Pública in Braga (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1978), 198–199.

3. Sutton, Iberian organ batalla, 92.

4. Josep Elías wrote on the title page of a collection of the master’s works, “Ante ruet mundus quam surget Cabanilles secundus.” George J. Buelow, A History of Baroque Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 382.

5. Mary Jane Corry, “A Spanish-Austrian Battle.” Music/The AGO and RCCO Magazine (March 1970), 35.

6. Sutton, Iberian organ batalla, 65.

7. Cesare Bendinelli, The Entire Art of Trumpet Playing (1614), trans. Edward H. Tarr (Nashville: The Brass Press, 1975), 12.

8. Monteverdi provides a written-out example of the trumpet ensemble in the Toccata that opens his opera, Orfeo, 1607. See Example 13.

9. James South, “References to trumpet music in the battle chansons of Clément Janequin.” DMA diss., University of North Texas, 1990. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost.

10. Renaissance trumpets were generally pitched between modern B and F.

11. Walton, Clifford, History of the British Standing Army, A.D. 1660–1700 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1894), p. 467.

12. Buelow, History of Baroque Music, 371.

13. Ibid., 380.

14. Manuel Carlos De Brito, “A Little-Known Collection of Portuguese Baroque Villancicos and Romances,” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, No. 15 (1979), 17–37. Translation by Dr. Miguel Chuaqui, Professor of Composition at the University of Utah.

15. Douglas Earl Bush and Richard Kassel, eds., The Organ: An Encyclopedia (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005), 548.

16. Doderer, Orgelmusik und Orgelbau, 203.

17. Sutton, Iberian organ batalla, 123.

18. Barbara Owen, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 130–134.