Arnolt Schlick
Highly regarded by his superiors and colleagues alike, Schlick played at important historical events, such as the election of Maximilian I as King of the Romans, and was widely sought after as organ consultant throughout his career.
[2] Schlick's surviving compositions include Tabulaturen etlicher lobgesang (1512), a collection of organ and lute music, and a few pieces in manuscript.
Johannes von Soest and an otherwise unknown "Petrus Organista de Oppenheim" could be his teachers, as could Conrad Paumann, if only for a brief time when he (possibly) visited Heidelberg in 1472.
In either 1489 or 1490 (the precise year is uncertain), Schlick travelled to the Netherlands: he alludes to the journey in his preface to Tabulaturen etlicher lobgesang, but his reasons remain obscure.
An older version of Schlick's motives was that he went to the Low Countries to escape from the plague which was then ravaging the Heidelberg area.
[9] In October 1503 King Philip I of Castile visited Heidelberg, bringing with him a large enoutrage that included the composers Pierre de la Rue and Alexander Agricola, and organist Henry Bredemers.
[10] The next known contemporary report that mentions Schlick is from February 23, 1511, when he played at the wedding of Louis V, Elector Palatine and Sibylle of Bavaria.
[13] Also in 1511, Schlick's son Arnolt the Younger pleaded to his father to publish at least some of his music; the father complied and published Tabulaturen etlicher lobgesang und lidlein uff die orgeln un lauten ("Tablatures of [Several] Canticles and Songs for Organ and Lute") the next year, a collection of organ and lute music.
A few of the biographical details are found in the preface to the latter work (which consists of Arnolt the Younger's letter to his father) and Schlick's reply.
Twelve more reports survive about such trips: among others, Schlick passed judgements on organs at St. George's Church, Haguenau, Speyer Cathedral, and the Stiftskirche, Neustadt an der Weinstraße.
The Spiegel is the earliest German organ treatise,[14] and also the first book on musical matters to enjoy an imperial privilege (issued by Emperor Maximilian to protect Schlick's rights).
[21] Schlick's book begins with a preface in three parts: the composer first thanks his patrons, then briefly discusses the nature of music, and finally describes the purpose of the Spiegel: it was not intended for organists and/or organ builders, as it may seem from the title, but for those church and monastery authorities who wanted to buy an organ, or had one entrusted to their care.
Quotations from these sources support Schlick's own views: that music has a profound effect on the listeners, and can heal both the body and the spirit.
[23] The preface is followed by ten chapters which cover practically every aspect of organ-building: tuning, keyboard construction, making of chests, bellows, stops, etc.
[25] Some of the stops Schlick mentions are difficult to identify precisely, due to the age of the treatise and the changes that took place in organ-building since the 16th century.
Perhaps the most mysterious is the hůltze gletcher, a stop with a percussive sound which Schlick admired and compared to "a bowl that idle journeymen hit with spoons.
For example, he recommends a compass of F-a'' in order to give "a good independent bass line", and he states that the pedal should not consist solely of low sub-octave stops, as this would "invert the harmony", presumably a reference to the increased role of the pedal in playing a cantus firmus melody that was considered to be a tenor line, now freed from its medieval subservience.
Numerous estimates have been suggested in the past, and some scholars (most notably Arthur Mendel) actually doubted whether the length of the line in question was rendered correctly during printing.
This technique, in which a motif treated imitatively "foreshadows" the entrance of the cantus firmus, later played a major part in the development of the organ chorale.
[33] Schlick's methods of creating complementary motives also look towards a much later stage of evolution, namely the techniques employed by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.
The former has been called "the first organ ricercar"[36] because of its use of imitation in a truly fugal manner,[37] but it remains unclear whether the composition is an original piece by Schlick or an intabulation of a vocal work by another composer.
Other organ pieces in the Tabulaturen employ a variety of methods, most relying on imitation (with the notable exception of Primi toni, which is also unusual for its title, which merely indicates the tone, but not the cantus firmus).
[39] A similar procedure, only with longer fragments of the melody used, is employed in Hoe losteleck, a piece based on a song which may have had secular character.
The first, Metzkin Isaack, may be of Netherlandish origin, and there is a possibility that Schlick learned the piece from Petrucci's Harmonice Musices Odhecaton.
[46] The second exception is All Ding mit radt, which is different from every other piece in the Tabulaturen: it relies not on the phrase structure of the song, like other settings, but rather on motivic and harmonic principles.
[49] The practice was rarely used in Germany at the time, but it appears in many contemporary French and Italian sources, such as collections of frottolas by Franciscus Bossinensis (1509–1511) or Marchetto Cara (c. 1520), and Pierre Attaingnant's publications (late 1520s).
The changes range from addition of modest ornaments, as in Nach lust or Vil hinderlist, to insertions of new material, as in Mein M. ich hab and Weg wart dein art.
