From Composition to Improvisation - On Developing Improvisations Inspired by Sweelinck
Presentation at Sweelinck Festival, Amsterdam 22/10/2021
Sweelinck was known in his time as an improviser, and many of his compositions could be regarded as written records of his improvisation practice.
Improvising is often understood as spontaneous playing, but, there is preparation involved with improvisation as with composition. One can also understand improvisation as a process of constant creative development- learning from existing musical ideas, and then making them one’s own, always being willing to change or ‘improve’. The same process is described by Banchieri in Cartella Musicale; a music student should first learn duos by good composers, and then, inspired by these, take a voice from an existing piece, and write another part. As Sweelinck played the organ every day in Amsterdam, one can imagine that he would have been a great influence to contemporary musicians, not only his organ students, but on all musicians in Amsterdam who would have listened to him. What would they have taken from his music?
Musicians could have taken the themes Sweelink improvised on, as Sweelinck also himself took existing themes. There are variations on Dowland’s Lachrimae Pavanne by Sweelinck (for organ) Schop (for violin) and Van Eyck (for recorder). By comparative analysis, we gain an insight into which musical elements were borrowed, and how these are transformed.
Musicians could have been inspired by how Sweelinck uses specific musical devices. For example, variation techniques or figuration. But also, the Fantasia ‘Bicinium’ is, in a sense, a course in canon and contrapuntal devices which could easily be improvised, and the Echo Fantasia focuses on the echo as a specific rhetorical device.
Leaning from the music of Sweelinck, and how he inspired his contemporaries, we explore practically how we can take his music as inspiration for own improvisations.