Scheidemann, Heinrich

(b Wöhrden, Holstein, c1595; dHamburg, 26 Sept 1663). German composer, organist and teacher. A founder of the north German organ school, he was one of the leading organ composers of the 17th century, notable above all for his chorale-based works.

1. Life.

Scheidemann's father, David Scheidemann, organist at Wöhrden from 1594, moved to a similar post at St Katharinen, Hamburg, by 1604, when, like Hieronymus Praetorius, Jacob Praetorius (ii) and Joachim Decker, he contributed some pieces to the Hamburg Melodeyen Gesangbuch. From November 1611 to November 1614 Heinrich Scheidemann studied at Amsterdam with Sweelinck who dedicated to him, when he left, a canon ‘Ter eeren des vromen Jonghmans Henderich Scheijtman, van Hamborgh’ (facs. in J.P. Sweelinck: Werken, ix, Leipzig, 1901, no.14, p.77). The next surviving contemporary notice of him records him as occupying his father's former position as organist at St Katharinen, Hamburg, in 1629; according to Gerber he took up the post in 1625, but this cannot now be substantiated. He retained it until his death and was also clerk of the church from 1633. He died of the plague.

As organist of St Katharinen, Scheidemann not only held an important and remunerative position but was working in a city that enjoyed a flourishing musical life and offered many opportunities for fruitful friendship and collaboration with musicians and other artists, for instance with the Kantor Thomas Selle, with organist colleagues such as Jacob Praetorius (ii) and later Matthias Weckmann, with the leader of the Hamburg city musicians, Johann Schop (i), and with the poet Johann Rist. The organ at St Katharinen was an excellent instrument, which Scheidemann had enlarged by Gottfried Fritzsche in the mid-1630s to 56 stops (four manuals and pedals). He was highly esteemed as an organist, organ expert, composer and teacher. Apart from J.A. Reincken – his assistant from 1658 and successor after his death, who married his daughter in 1665 – his pupils included Werner Fabricius, Wolfgang Wessnitzer of Celle and Wolfgang Druckenmüller of Schwäbisch Hall. As both organist and organ composer Scheidemann exerted an influence on Weckmann, who had been a pupil of Jacob Praetorius (ii) and according to Mattheson strove ‘to temper the gravity of Praetorius with the sweetness of Scheidemann’.

2. Works.

Of Sweelinck's many well-known north German pupils, it is Scheidemann whose organ music survives in the largest number of sources. This is due not only to the chance survival of manuscripts but also to the fact that contemporary north German organists esteemed and disseminated his works. He concentrated almost exclusively on the single genre of organ music, where he was an important innovator. His organ works date from the early years of the north German organ school and represent its first peak; most of them came to light only when Gustav Fock discovered the organ tablatures at Clausthal-Zellerfeld in 1955 and 1960. Scheidemann's harpsichord works, though much less numerous and ambitious than his organ music, were apparently widely disseminated as well. He also published several continuo songs to texts by Rist, less, no doubt, from a love of the genre than from his friendship with the poet.

Scheidemann's style was forged in the first instance through his response to the keyboard works of his teacher Sweelinck, which are a blend of the style of the English virginalists – essentially conceived for the keyboard, with virtuoso figuration – and classical Italian and Spanish vocal and instrumental polyphony of the second half of the 16th century. His most important achievement as a composer lies largely in his extension of Sweelinck's keyboard style into a specifically organ idiom by harnessing the musical and technical resources of the north German Baroque organ. His finest and most important works are his chorale arrangements, and a series of four-movement Magnificat settings, which form a unified group by virtue of his complete exploration of the eight Magnificat tones and the use in each setting of a cyclic construction. Though Sweelinck's influence can be seen in all his instrumental writing, it is nowhere more apparent than in the technique of his organ chorale arrangements. Many of Sweelinck's arrangements involve a single, continuous, almost unembellished presentation of the cantus firmus in one part, and it was natural for Scheidemann to follow him in this procedure. But Samuel Scheidt, a somewhat older pupil of Sweelinck, seems also to have inspired him through his Tabulatura nova (Hamburg, 1624), especially its Magnificat arrangements, which adopt the form of the chorale ricercare frequently found in the third part of the volume. To these borrowed techniques Scheidemann added two forms that he himself helped to develop: the monodic organ chorale – embellished cantus firmus in the descant on the Rückpositiv, harmonically complementary inner parts on an accompanying manual, bass in the pedals – which can be seen as a transcription for organ of the solo song with continuo; and the virtuoso, musically sophisticated chorale fantasia either on two manuals or on two manuals and pedals. The latter, in which the north German organ motet appears enriched with elements of Sweelinck's style (notably the echo technique), became the north German chorale form par excellence, and Scheidemann sometimes extended it to over 200 bars. With 16 chorale fantasias, he can be considered both the actual creator and the main exponent of the genre. His influence on the younger composers of the north German organ school rested largely on these two modern forms conceived specifically in terms of the organ.

In his organ music without cantus firmus Scheidemann, unlike Scheidt in his Tabulatura nova, did not develop Sweelinck's form of the grand fantasia but cultivated instead the more modest form of the ‘praeambulum’, which developed from the short improvised introit. His praeambula are historically important. Their fugal middle sections, in which he sometimes referred to Sweelinck's echo fantasias and toccatas, are sometimes so long that they become the main part of the work, and since the final section is occasionally much curtailed, these works seem to approach the two-movement form of prelude and fugue. Of his other freely structured organ compositions the largest and most important is the Toccata in G (for manuals), in which he combined Sweelinck's formal ideas with up-to-date, typically north German treatment of the organ with more than one manual. Besides his original organ works he left arrangements of 12 embellished motets, almost all of them by Lassus or H.L. Hassler, in which he sometimes used musical and technical methods similar to those found in the chorale fantasias. These pieces probably replaced choral performances: it is known from the trial recital Weckmann had to give at the Jacobikirche, Hamburg, in 1655 that extemporization of such works was still part of an organist's duties after the middle of the century.

Scheidemann's harpsichord music can be divided into two styles. One has strong associations with the (dance) variations of Sweelinck, and the English virginalist tradition. It is characterized by a contrapuntal bias and by florid, virtuoso writing. The other style is more forward-looking, using modern dance forms with a lighter, more homophonic texture. Some allemande-courante pairs can be seen as early manifestations of the keyboard suite.

WORKS

Editions: Die Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur KN 208¹, ed. M. Reimann, EDM, 1st ser., xxxvi (1957) [R]H. Scheidemann: Orgelwerke, ed. G. Fock and W. Breig (1967–71) [O i–iii]H. Scheidemann: 12 Orgelintavolierungen, ed. C. Johnson (Wilhelmshaven, 1991) [J]H. Scheidemann: Sämtliche Motettenkolorierungen, ed. K. Beckmann (Wiesbaden, 1992) [B]H. Scheidemann: Harpsichord Music, ed. P. Dirksen (Wiesbaden, 1999) [H]

keyboard

anon., probably by Scheidemann

doubtful

sacred songs

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ApelG

EitnerQ

GerberL

M. Seiffert: ‘J.P. Sweelinck und seine direkten deutschen Schüler’, VMw, vii (1891), 145–260, esp. 227ff

M. Reimann: ‘Pasticcios und Parodien in norddeutschen Klaviertabulaturen’, Mf, viii (1955), 265–71

A. Sutkowski and O.Mischiati: ‘Una preziosa fonte manoscritta di musica strumentale: l'intavolatura di Pelplin’, L'organo, ii (1961), 53–72

W. Breig: ‘Über das Verhältnis von Komposition und Ausführung in der norddeutschen Orgel-Choralbearbeitung des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Norddeutsche und nordeuropäische Musik: Kiel 1963, 71–82

J.H. Schmidt: ‘Eine unbekannte Quelle zur Klaviermusik des 17. Jahrhunderts’, AMw, xxii (1965), 1–11

W. Breig: Die Orgelwerke von Heinrich Scheidemann (Wiesbaden, 1967)

P. Dirksen: ‘Eine unbekannte Intavolierung von Heinrich Scheidemann’, Mf, xl (1987), 338–45

K. Kinder: ‘Ein Wolfenbütteler Tabulatur-Autograph von Heinrich Scheidemann’, Schütz-Jb 1988, 86–103

C. Johnson: Vocal Compositions in German Organ Tablatures 1550–1650: a Catalogue and Commentary (New York, 1989)

M. Belotti: ‘Die Choralfantasien Heinrich Scheidemanns in den Pelpliner Orgeltabulaturen’, Schütz-Jb 1992, 90–107

M. Belotti: ‘Peter Philips and Heinrich Scheidemann, or the Art of Intabulation’, International Organ Academy: Göteborg 1994, 75–84

P. Dirksen: ‘Sweelinck's Keyboard Style and Scheidemann's Intavolations’, International Organ Academy: Göteborg 1994, 85–97

P. Dirksen: The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (Utrecht, 1997)

WERNER BREIG (with PIETER DIRKSEN)