Program Notes: Castro Valley Adult School Chamber Orchestra  March 8, 2008

Canzona Bergamasca (Scheidt-De Jong)
   (The Castro Valley ASCO Brass)

Alternate players: Harry Hanover, Trumpet; Dean Leonard, Trombone

Samuel Scheidt (1567-1654) was born in Halle Germany, 98 years before Halle's best known composer - George Frederick Handel. He was appointed organist at the Moritzkirche in Halle in 1603 and became court organist in 1609.   He is known to have studied with Sweelinck in the Netherlands for a year sometime between 1607 and 1609. It is during this period that Scheidt probably became familiar with variation and contrapuntal techniques favored by Sweelinck and the English keyboard composers (Byrd, Bull, Gibbons). Sweelinck was the teacher of several early 17th c. organists and the influence of the  'Sweelinck School of Organists" can be traced directly down to JS Bach (through Schiedt, Jacob Praetorius, Weckmann, Reincken, Thiele, and Buxtehude, among others). In 1620 Scheidt was made Kappelmeister -- a post which he held until his death in 1654.

In the 17th century Scheidt's compositions were considered equal to Schütz, Michael Praetorius, and Schein, and were widely circulated in. On at least two occasions, Scheidt, Praetorius and Schütz collaborated in major musical events, once in 1618 for ceremonies at the Dom (main church) in Magdeburg, and again the following year for music involving the dedication of a new organ in Bayreuth where Scheidt gave the dedicatory recital, an event recorded by Scheidt in the preface of his Concertus sacri (1622).  It was a small musical world where all of their paths crossed in a time period circa 1580 to 1650. 

Although Scheidt's modern reputation rests on his two major publications of keyboard music (Tabulatura Nova, 1624 and the Görlitzer Tabulaturbuch, 1650), he also composed five collections of instrumental music and many volumes of sacred music. The 30 Years War which engulfed Germany between 1618 and 1648 dealt a severe blow to Scheidt's career. Halle was occupied by Swedish military forces between 1625 and 1631 and all the instrumentalists and most of the singers were discharged. In addition, Scheidt was unable to get much of his music printed, and those compositions that were eventually published had to be revised and scored for fewer parts than originally intended. Letters from this period survive and are a testament to Scheidt's frustration.

[Of Scheidt's four volumes of Ludi musici only the 1621 collection survives complete: [Ludorum musicorum prima pars, continens,] Paduana, galliarda, couranta, alemande, intrada, canzonetto...potissimum Violistarum concinuta una cum basso continuo. Hamburg, 1621. The 32 works in the collection are generally arranged by dance type. The canzonas are generally based on a popular melody—Bergamasca (#26), Est-ce Mars (#29), O nachbar Roland (#28), and are excellent examples of variation technique where the melody is used in different types of duple and triple meter.]

The Canzona is a musical form that eventually merged into the fugue.  It was popular with Giovanni Gabriele, the great Venetian 16^th century composer who developed its use in many organ features.  The Canzona flourished and developed into using groups of instruments pitted against one another in alternating echoes.  Scheidt specifies strings (Violistarum) as the preferred performance medium in the title of the 1621 publication, but the preface to the second part of Ludi musici (1622) gives additional information stating that “...the work will sound best with low (tieffe) instruments such as 4 Violn de Gamba, or 3 Violn de Gambe and Violone (gemeine Bass Viol.), 4 Trombones (Posaunen), 4 Bassoons (Fagotten) or Dulcians...”

Modern brass players find this music to be an excellent addition to the repetoire.  You can imagine the dramatic effect of the brass sounds echoing from the stone walls of a medieval edifice.

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