Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Influence

Influence

Sweelinck's only duties in Amsterdam were those of an organist. Contrary to custom, he did not play the carillon or the harpsichord on formal occasions; nor was he regularly required to produce compositions. Calvinist services did not typically include organ playing due to the belief in what is now called the Regulative Principle. The Regulative Principle restricted the elements of worship to only that which was commanded in the New Testament. However, the Consistory of Dordrecht of 1598 instructed organists to play variations on the new Genevan psalm tunes before and after the service so that the people would become familiar with them. Sweelinck was employed instead by the city itself. As he worked for Protestant magistrates the remainder of his life, it is likely that he was an adherent of Calvinism. In the 1590s three of his children were baptized in the Oude Kerk. His employment allowed him time for teaching, for which he was to become as famous as for his compositions. Sweelinck's pupils included the core of what was to become the north German organ school: Jacob Praetorius II, Heinrich Scheidemann, Paul Siefert, Melchior Schildt and Samuel and Gottfried Scheidt. Students of Sweelinck were seen as musicians against whom other organists were measured. Sweelinck was known in Germany as the "maker of organists." Sociable and respected, he was in great demand as a teacher. His Dutch pupils were undoubtedly many, but none of them became composers of note. Sweelinck, however, influenced the development of the Dutch organ school, as is shown in the work of later composers such as Anthoni van Noordt. Sweelinck, in the course of his career, had set music to the liturgies of Roman Catholicism, Calvinism and Lutheranism. He was the most important composer of the musically rich "golden era" of the Netherlands.

Sweelinck's influence spread as far as Sweden and England, carried to the former by Andreas Düben and to the latter by English composers such as Peter Philips, who probably met Sweelinck in 1593. Sweelinck, and Dutch composers in general, had evident links to the English school of composition. Sweelinck's music appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which further only contains the work of English composers. He wrote variations on John Dowland's famous Lachrimae Pavane. John Bull, who was probably a personal friend, wrote a set of variations on a theme by Sweelinck after the death of the Dutch composer.