Heinrich Scheidemann's Keyboard Music: Transmission, Style, and Chronology (review)

Heinrich Scheidemann (ca. 1595–1663) has emerged in recent decades as perhaps the most important and original north German organist-composer of the early baroque. The author of the present volume has previously published a major study of Sweelinck, Scheidemann's teacher (The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Its Style, Significance, and Influence [Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1997], reviewed by this writer in Notes 55, no. 1 [September 1998]: 95–97). Both books focus on the difficult questions of authorship and chronology that afflict works attributed to the two composers.

This book presents a wealth of new information about sources, individual works, and certain issues of performance practice, and therefore will be appropriate not only for research collections but for those serving performers, especially keyboard players. Unfortunately, readers not already familiar with the music and previous relevant scholarship may be hard pressed to follow the author's dense, sometimes unidiomatic prose. Specialists will recognize that some of the inferences drawn about attribution and chronology are not clearly supported by the evidence cited. Dirksen makes little effort to situate Scheidemann and his music within their cultural-historical context, and he accepts without discussion the genre categories and analytical approaches to this music established by previous scholars, notably Werner Breig in the only previous monograph on the subject (Die Orgelwerke von Heinrich Scheidemann. Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Bd. 3 [Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1967]).

For many readers the most interesting matter may fall toward the end of the book, where a chapter on keyboard technique includes many music examples containing contemporary fingerings. Although there is no reason to think that these fingerings come from the composer, they reflect traditions distinct from what are now the better-known English and Italian practices of the period. Also valuable is a chapter on the great organ of Hamburg's Katharinenkirche, presided over by Scheidemann and his pupil Johann Adam Reincken, on which Bach played in 1722. Contributed by Ulf Grapenthin, this chapter shows that an existing Renaissance instrument had been essentially rebuilt early in the seventeenth century while Scheidemann's father David was organist. A fourth manual was not present until after Scheidemann's tenure, and the top note of the manuals remained a² (without g#² ) until the 1670s; both points are relevant not only for organ registration and performance practice but for manuscript evaluation. A final chapter argues for the long retention of colorful reed-heavy, Dutch-influenced stoplists in seventeenth-century north German organs.

The remainder of the book attempts to establish a canon of works by Scheidemann and an approximate chronology through close study of their sources and texts. Preserved solely in manuscripts, the works attributed here to Scheidemann are often anonymous and without concordances. Dirksen identifies a number of copyists and provides dates for several sources, but many questions remain open in the view of this writer.

Fundamental is Dirksen's view of two small tablature manuscripts in Wolfenbüttel as autographs; to these eyes the documentation for this is inconclusive (one must consult Katrin Kinder, "Ein Wolfenbütteler Tabulaturautograph von Heinrich Scheidemann," Schütz-Jahrbuch 10 [1988]: 86–103, for the handwriting evidence). Moreover, one of the copies contains apparent errors that one would not expect from a pupil of Sweelinck (see note 71 in my review of Heinrich Scheidemann: Sämtliche Werke für Clavier (Cembalo), edited by Pieter Dirksen [Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Härtel, 2000], Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 11, no. 1 [2005], online at http://sscm-jscm .press.uiuc.edu/v11/no1/schulenberg.html [accessed 21 November 2007]).

Dirksen also sees Scheidemann's hand in corrections in the so-called Düben tablature (Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, instr. mus. handskr. 408). But to these eyes there is, again, no clear match, although the low quality of the images provided here prevents a firm judgement. In any case it is pure speculation that portions...