The Annual

 Glebe Music Festival

In conjunction with The Glebe Society Inc

Pieter van Dalem was born in or near Liege around 1550 and died in Naples after 1601. He settled in Naples where he enjoyed an excellent reputation as organist, and adapted his style to the Spanish-Neapolitan taste. The Canzona Franzese is Dalem *s only composition for keyboard that is known of.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was born in Deventer around 1562. From his early youth until his death he lived in Amsterdam and was never away from there for more than a few days. He occupied only one post during his whole life: that of organist at the Oude Kerk from 1577. There is no Amsterdam musician of distinction traceable before Sweelinck and besides his father, who probably gave him his first lessons, the only teacher who is mentioned is Jan Willemszoon Lossy (1545-1629). The significance of Sweelinck is three-fold: (1) as a composer of instrumental music, (2) as a composer of vocal music and (3) as a teacher of the organ and composition. Throughout his life he was much sought after in his capacity as a teacher. As for his daily organ playing, there are several reports that it drew a multitude of music-lovers into church. For foreigners, attendance at Sweelinck's ‘ concerts' became mandatory. In 1594 Count Philip Louis II of Hanau-Munzenberg listed as the principal attractions of Amsterdam the Artillery House, a live elephant in the Hall of the Archers' Guild, and 'hearing the city's organist’.

As regards harmony Sweelinck's music is of great interest for the place it takes in the period of transition to classicism. The organ and harpsichord works show affinity with the works of the English Elizabethan composers. It includes fancies, echo fancies, toccatas, a preludium and variations on chorale melodies, secular songs and dances. The fancies - or fantasies - may be regarded as the earliest of worked-out fugues, and are in three subdivisions. The toccatas take the same place in Sweelinck 'S time as the 2- and 3-part inventions in Baches. He died in 1621 and was buried in the Old Church.

John Bull was born in 1562 in England. From 1582 until his death in 1628 in Antwerp, John Bull was by profession an organist, first at Hereford, then in the Chapel Royal, and lastly at Antwerp from 1617. Bull had to leave England "through the guilt of a corrupt conscience, to escape the punishment, which notoriously he had deserved, and was designed to have been inflicted on him by the hand of justice, for his incontinence, fornication, adultery, and other grievous crimes".

His keyboard music is to be found in two volumes transcribed and edited by John Steele (University of Sydney), Francis Cameron and Thurston Dart in 1960 and 1963.

Bull's connection with Sweelinck is of interest, andthe fact that the great Amsterdam organist included a canon by Bull in his work on composition, and that Bull wrote a fantasia on a fugue by Sweelinck within a few months of the death of the latter, seems to show that the two were on terms of personal friendship.

Abraham van den Kerckhoven was born around 1618, probably in Mechelen. In the year 1634 he succeeded Francois Cornet as organist of the church of St Catharine in Brussels; he retained this post until his death in 1701. In 1648 he was appointed chamber organist to archduke Leopold Willem of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1648 to 1656. His name is also mentioned in the archives as court organist in the period 1658-1684.

Guiseppe Tartini - born Pirano, Istria 1692, died Padua 1770. Italian violinist, teacher and composer, famous for his 'Trillo del Diavolo' sonata, founded a school of violin playing in Padua in 1728. Teacher of Dutch violinists such as Hellendaal.

Flor Peeters was born in Tielen, Belgium, in 1903 the son of a church organist. He was a pupil of Dupr6 and Tournemire and attended the Lemmens Institute, where he won highest honours in organ playing. From 1923 until 1952 he was professor of organ at the Lemmens Institute, and he also taught at the Royal Academy of Music in Ghent, the Academy of Music in Tilburg, The Netherlands, and the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. He was appointed head of the latter institution in 1952 and served in that position until 1968. He died in 1986 on the 4th of July (his birthday).

Valetti was born in 1575, Pachulski, Rebikoff and Vierne died between 1920-1940 and Mushell who was Professor of Music at the University of Tashkent, is contemporary.

THE INSTRUMENTS

The house-organ was build by Knipscheer cerca 1790 and restored by D. A. Flentrop in 1955, subsequently being brought out to Australia by Dr Vincent Sheppard. There is one keyboard of 54 notes and there are 4t ranks:

Prestant 8 '
Holpÿp 8'
Prestant 4 '
Fluit 4'
Octaaf 2'

There are a total of 246 pipes, on a low pressure of approximately 24 inches, the pipes being unnicked with quarter-mouths. The sound produced is unforced yet with a prominent attack and a remarkably penetrating quality.

The harpsichord is a Ruckers Flemish double by John Storrs with 8’and 4’on the lower keyboard and 8’ on the upper.