DAS BUXHEIMER ORGELBUCH VOLUME 2 The 15th century was a period of great richness in the history of organ music, particularly in Germany, and manuscript...
DAS
BUXHEIMER ORGELBUCH VOLUME 2
The 15th
century was a period of great richness in the history of organ music,
particularly in Germany, and manuscript sources proliferate compared to the
previous century. But many are fragmentary or didactic, and only two contain
bona fide organ music exclusively. Perhaps the most important, certainly the
largest, is a collection containing more than 250 pieces at the Bavarian State
Library in Munich. It presents a conspectus of all the categories of keyboard
forms known up to that time - liturgical pieces on plainchant themes,
transcriptions of songs and motets of Flemish, German and English provenance,
preludes and teaching examples - serving, perhaps, as a workbook for active
church organists.
Until 1883
the manuscript was preserved at a Carthusian monastery in the small Bavarian
town on the Iller that bears its name. Das Buxheimer Orgelbuch reveals the work
of at least eight different hands (though the first 124 folios were recorded by
a single scribe) written between 1450 and 1470, presumably in Munich. They used
a form of 'tablature' notation in which the uppermost line is written on a
staff with everything below that in letters; not unlike the guitar symbols
published in modern popular music.
The name of
Conrad Paumann (c.1410-1473), a musician of international importance at the
time, appears only once in the manuscript; but there is an abundance of
surrounding evidence indicating that he looms as the principal figure in its
creation, if not directly responsible for much of the music contained therein.
As he was blind, he could not have written down any of it himself and it is
reasonable to assume that his pupils played an active part in the transmission
process. The manuscript also includes intabulations and arrangements of
well-known polyphonic ensemble pieces by Dunstable, Binchois, Ciconia, Dufaye,
Morton and Frye, whose famous names are sometimes given but more often not.
Then there are others whose identities are vague, and it is hard to ascertain
whether Putenheim, Gotz, or Boumgartner, for example, are the composers of
works that have been adapted for the keyboard or whether they are, in fact,
real composers of music specifically written for keyboard instruments.
Displaying
the stylistic culmination of keyboard composition during its first epochal
stage of development rather than heralding a new age, the music of Buxheimer
Orgelbuch evokes Gothic resonance. The cantus firmus settings, in particular,
seem to preserve some quality of Notre Dame organum. Often the music is marked
with astounding voice crossings, dissonances, and flamboyant polyphonic lines,
showing a gradual progression from two-part counterpoint, with a third note
added now and then to complement the harmony. These denser textures suggest the
genuine four-part writing of a later period. The important preludes and
didactic works, in which the practice of improvisation is implicit, require
insight into the compositional and performance conventions of the time.
Considerable information is to be gleaned from Johannes Buckner's Fundamentum
of about 1525, a work that summarises much of the playing and fingering habits
applicable to even the earliest tablatures. In the present recordings,
Buckner's precepts have been carefully contemplated, with respect to the
interpretation of the singular trill symbol which appears in the text, and
other elements of embellishment - flos harmonicus - appropriated to the organ
from the idioms of singing, and plucked and bowed string playing. These were
not fixed for posterity by the composer and fall within the domain of the
interpreting performer. Moreover, the application of musica ficta has been
carefully manipulated - 'by reason of necessity' and 'by reason of beauty' - as
are the subjective resolutions to the copious corrupt passages in the manuscript
itself. One is ever aware of an amalgam of older medieval principles of voice
leading with the more uniform, smoother approach to dissonance of the
mainstream Franco-Burgundian style which seems to be characteristic of much of
the music in the Buxheim collection.
The
Buxheimer Orgelbuch emerged at a time when organ design, particularly winding
methods, showed indications toward the incipient standardisation of two types
of instruments. There were the small, eminently transportable Portativ organs
used in processions and ensemble (Positiv if they were too large to be
carried), usually possessing a single rank of metal pipes and having a short
keyboard range that did not require excessively large pipes. Much larger were
the permanently fixed church instruments that extended the unified Blockwerk
concept. Now came the variety of mixture and mutation stops, as different ranks
of pipes could be used separately - the Tierce, Quint, Fourniture and Cymbale.
Reeds are mentioned by Arnaut de Zwolle in his treatise, around 1436, though
they were not commonplace in German organs until several decades later.
Mechanically, the organ had already attained all the essential attributes it
was to have until the technical novelties of the 19th century. Organs equipped
with two or three manuals and pedal board were not unknown; indeed, the Buxheim
score sometimes summons the use of pedals with which to emphasize the tenor or
contratenor line, or the execution of an independent bass part.
When Johann
Christian Rindt (1670-1744) was commissioned to build an organ for his town's
parish church in 1706, he incorporated two ranks of pipes (Gross Gedact 8' and
Principal 4' ) from previous instruments that date to the Late Gothic or Early
Renaissance periods, and thus provided us with an extraordinary sample of an
ancient 'country' organ aesthetic spanning several centuries. It is the only
extant organ made by this northern Hessian builder, and served the town church
of St. Johannes at Hatzfeld for over 160 years. After the rebuilding of a
romantic organ by Peter Dickel (1868), the Rindt organ was relocated to the
Emmaus chapel (formerly St. Cyriax), a twelfth-century edifice overlooking the
Eder Valley. It remained mute and in disarray until initial efforts by Dieter
Schneider prompted its complete restoration in 1984 by organ builder Gerald
Woehl of Marburg. The original 45-note short-octave keyboard has been retained,
along with its cone-tuning (A = 476 Hz), and mean-tone temperament.
@ 1995
Joseph Payne