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The Germanic countries gathered within the Saint Worsen Romain Germanique knew during the period baroque several German schools of Orgue being attached to the traditions of Sweelinck on the one hand, of Frescobaldi on the other hand.

The pupils of Sweelinck were very numerous among the organists of Germany of north, and themselves (with the number of which particularly Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Scheidemann) formed the many ones and talented disciples of the generation preceding Johann Sebastian Bach: this tradition culminates in the work of Dietrich Buxtehude.

The musicians of southernmost Germany (remained countries of catholic culture) generally made the voyage in Italy to receive the lessons of the large Masters there such Giacomo Carissimi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Bernardo Pasquini… thus of Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Kaspar Kerll, Johann Joseph Fux, Georg Muffat. They did not hesitate, if necessary, to convert with Catholicism, condition sine qua non to go to Rome whose Pape was the temporal sovereign.

Thus Germany became a kind of crossroads of the European musical culture, because the exchanges between artists were numerous. Moreover, Frescobaldi had done itself a stay in the Spanish Netherlands, and it is not impossible that it could meet Sweelinck.

The situation in Germany is very different from that of France at the same time: in this unified country and very centralized, Paris is the dominating center of the culture in general and the music in particular - the musicians are employed there in an exclusive way by the Catholic church. On the contrary, the Germanic countries religieusement are politically and religieusement divided, which supports the multiplication of the centers of local cultural radiation as well as liturgical diversity.

With regard to the “schools” of organ, one distinguishes three in general from them:

The school of Germany of North (Norddeutsche Orgelschule)

The school of central Germany

The southernmost school

Bavaria and Austria are the bastions of Catholicism

As for Jean-Sebastien Bach, so geographically it is attached to the second, it must rather be regarded as the musician who operates, almost only, the synthesis of these various currents thus besides that French tradition (it recopied his hand the book of Nicolas de Grigny and one knows that the topic of its large “passacaille and running away” is resulting from a part of André Raison). He moreover met several of these artists personally: Buxtehude to which it returns a visit of several weeks in Lübeck, Reincken and Lübeck in Hamburg, Böhm during its training with Lüneburg. He studied thoroughly the whole of the organistic production of his predecessors and contemporaries, and he knew, by integrating these various influences, to be formed a very personal and really incomparable style.

  • See: its works for organ.

Forms

Works of the German organists can be classified in three main categories:

  • the prelude of choral and its various variations (harmonized, varied, running away, appeared, decorated, etc) - this form is more specific to the areas of Protestant religion - and, precisely, Lutheran;
  • parts of improvisation and virtuosity (preludes, toccatas, imaginations,…) especially works of the artists of north (the stylus fantasticus ) characterize when the Southerners cultivate the more antiquated forms inherited Italy (canzon, cappriccio in particular);
  • the fuguées parts , with a counterpoint often very developed. They have more a character shining in the north, more interiorized in the south.
Generally, their parts are proportions much more important than those of their French counterparts.

The organists of the school hambourgeoise operate a fusion of the last two types of compositions in works of great proportions, comprising free alternations of movements and movements runnings away (Lübeck, Buxtehude, Bruhns etc and with their continuation J.S. Bach).

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