The Morlanda Organ A Historical Swedish organ
	IMCD 073 Recorded at Morlanda kyrka, Orust, Sweden may 2001 Producer: Hans Davidsson Recording Engineer: Erik Sikkema
Organ music included: Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr (4 verser) Hexachord Fantasi More Palatino (4 variationer) Matthias Weckman Toccata vel Praeludium Primi Toni Canzon C Toccata e Johan Kaspar Kerll Passacaglia Johann Jacob Froberger Capriccio Ricercar Toccata Georg Böhm Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig (9 variationer) total time: 63.26	Hans Davidsson Hans Davidsson is Associate Professor of Organ and Performance Practice at Göteborg University. In 1991 he received Sweden's first Ph.D. to include music performance with a thesis entitled "Matthias Weckman: the Interpretation of his Organ Music" (dissertation, music edition, and recording). He is the founder of the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) and was its director from 1995-2000. In 2001 he was appointed Associate Professor of Organ at Eastman School of Music in Rochester (USA), and continues to serve as the General Artistic and Research Director of GOArt. From the booklet, an introduction by Hans Davidsson: The Morlanda organ is a one-manual instrument based on a Principal 4-foot with a variety of flutes and principal stops, but no reeds. It has a four-octave compass with a short octave in the bass (CDEFGA-c3), and its original tuning has been restored: quarter comma meantone, the typical organ temperament of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with pure major thirds in all playable keys... Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was the foremost organ and keyboard performer and teacher in northern Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century, synthesizing English, Spanish and Italian keyboard traits. In the great musical architecture of the Fantasia-style, the composer was, according to Athanasius Kircher, supposed to "display ingenious in hidden design of harmonyŠand fugues." Common material for a fantasia was an abstract theme, for example a hexachord (the six-note scale cdefga). In Sweelinck's Hexachord Fantasia this theme appears throughout the whole piece surrounded by all kinds of imitations in different voices, with faster note values and an increasingly complex structure. Froberger's Ricercar is based on the same concept, although more severe and archaic in its slow and motet-like appearance and, typical for this genre, explores a partly chromatic subject. Johann Jakob Froberger and his friend Matthias Weckman, two of the most famous organists of the middle seventeenth century, both helped to bring the new, Italian, expressive and rhetorical style to the North. Froberger studied in Italy with Girolamo Frescobaldi and Weckman served as court organist for several years among the finest Italian instrumentalists at the court in Dresden. In 1655, he became organist in Hamburg, St. Jacobi. The toccata, canzon and capriccio are examples of the new, multi-sectional forms, in which contrasts between improvisatory sections based on harmony are followed by strict imitation in various meters. Weckman most likely played one of Brebos's organs around Copenhagen during the mid-1640s, when he served as court-organist and Capellmeister to Christian V in Denmark. The passacaglia, originated in chord-strumming patterns for the five-course Spanish guitar, and the variations played above this ground-bass pattern became a favorite baroque variation form. Johann Kaspar Kerll's Passacaglia is one of the finest examples of the South German version of this style. Kerll, like Froberger, had studied for Frescobaldi in Rome; he served as court organist in MÜnchen and later moved to Vienna. The chorale variations on "Allein Gott in der Höh sei Her" by Sweelinck treat the well-known orthodox Lutheran hymn of praise and glory strictly with early seventeenth-century figuration and the cantus firmus appears in the treble (v. 1, 2 and 4) and the tenor (v. 3) respectively. The variations on the Italian tune "More Palatino" display a quite different character: vivid, more elegant and dance-like figuration. The chorale partita by Georg Böhm on "Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flÜchtig," represents the late seventeenth-century style with more expressive and varied figuration. Böhm was the master of this art and in this partita he treats a hymn whose text was strongly influenced by pietism, addressing one of the favorite subjects of late seventeenth-century philosophy and theology in Sweden: the shortness of life and its vanity. This was the time when French opera came into style, when the form of the aria in secular as well as in sacred repertory became the norm, and when text painting was common practice in chorale variations. All these elements can be traced in the Böhm variations. Böhm's music exemplifies a trend around the year 1700 toward the synthesis of all of the various styles from the seventeenth century: Italian, Spanish, English and the new French influences. The growing importance of national rather than feudal political boundaries and the dawn of the new "Enlightenment" gallant style, from France fostered this synthesizing trend. The Morlanda organ, with its integration of elements of Brebos into the concept of Wittig, embodies at the same time this almost cosmopolitan North European baroque style and a Danish-Swedish regional idiom of organ building with roots in central Europe. It is a sounding artifact and witness to the truly European traits of our common historical organ heritage. After almost 400 years, it now sounds again and serves the congregation in Morlanda according to the inscription painted on the organ case in Marstrand, "Gloria in exelcis Deo."
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