Chorale variations for organ (collaboration with other composers).
Since I have lived 10 years in Amsterdam in the same street as Sweelinck (Koestraat), on only some hundreds yards from the Oude Kerk where he was organist, I find it appropriate on his 450-st birth year to perform one of his works. Though in our own time he is known as a composer of keyboard music, seventeenth century Europeans saw J.P. Sweelinck pre-eminently as a teacher. He taught nearly all of the organists who would eventually be known as the North German Organ School, the lineage of which eventually would lead to Bach. His pupils from Hamburg were so prominent that Sweelinck -- who never went to Hamburg -- was called the "Hamburgischen Organistenmacher" (maker of Hamburg organists) despite the fact that he never entered the the Hanseatic city. Among those who flocked from Germany to Amsterdam to learn music from Sweelinck were Andreas Düben (in 1606-1609), Samuel Scheidt (around 1608-1609), and Peter Hasse (1614-1620). This remarkable set of chorale variations for organ survives with contributions by all four composers.