Heinrich Scheidemann is well-known as a composer of organ music, and rightly so. Especially after the discovery in the 1950s of the so-called Zellerfeld Organ Tablatures he now occupies a pre-eminent position in the illustrious North German organ school of the first half of the seventeenth century. Until recently however, it tended to obscure the existence of a sizeable body of harpsichord music, which equals his organ music in quality if not in quantity (it occupies only about a quarter of his surviving oeuvre), and which turns out to form a lively and attractive facet of this fascinating musical personality.

 

Scheidemann occupied an important place in the vivid musical life of Hamburg. He stood open to all novelties, not only the new Italian manner as evidenced by the 1657 Canzon, but also the mainly English/French tradition of writing small dance pieces. This is evident in a number of allemands and courants, many of which seem based on pre-existing pieces. Half a century of keyboard styles seem to come together in Scheidemann’s harpsichord music, confirming Mattheson’s portrait of him as an affable and open-minded musician, whose playing was distinguished by its ‘swift hand, good-natured expression and high spirits’.

 

Pieter Dirksen (1961) performs as soloist on both harpsichord and organ and as continuo player with diverse chamber ensembles. He publishes widely about baroque keyboard music, receiving his doctorate ‘cum laude’ with a dissertation on the keyboard music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. Further books have been devoted to Bach’s Art of Fugue, Sweelinck and Heinrich Scheidemann (2007), and critical editions appeared with music by ao Scheidemann, Düben, Buxtehude, Lübeck and Bach. Pieter Dirksen is a member of Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, the Netherlands Bach Society as well as the chamber music group La Suave Melodia.

 

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