Das Husumer Orgelbuch von 1758

Tomadin, Manuel

95328

The late 17th century was a golden age for the proliferation of organ music in Northern Germany. While J.S. Bach – alongside Buxtehude – may be the first name to come to mind when we consider composers of this period, more provincial towns were also surprisingly rich centres of music-making. The Husumer Orgelbuch of 1758 comprises a collection of works for organ from Husum, a coastal town situated at the tip of Germany. Organist Bendix Friedrich Zinck, whose life spanned the second half of the 18th century, chose 17 compositions for the organ to include in the collection, mostly made up of parts of old compositions. We have one example of an Adagio by Nicolaus Bruhns, also known to be active in Husum, though many years before Bendix. A more substantial body has survived of music by Druckenmüller, an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach. His compositions for organ are some of the first examples of the ‘Italian concerto’ style in northern Germany, a concerto with three movements (fast-slow-fast) resembling the Italian concerto grosso. Another remarkable feature of this manuscript is the fact that a vast majority of the works are original compositions rather than transcriptions – a novelty for organ music at this time, which more often involved arrangements of orchestral works, such as Bach’s transcriptions of Vivaldi or Walther’s of Torelli.

CD x 2

Brilliant Classics

13/11/2019

5028421953281