TOCCATA | Tertia
  Apparatus Musico-organisticus

(Salzburg 1690)

Georg Muffat was an important link among musical schools and cultures in the seventeenth century: he studied music with Lully at Paris and Pasquini in Italy (as well as studying law), and worked for the Archbishop of Salzburg and then was Kapellmeister to the Bishop of Passau. In 1690 he published his Apparatus musico-organisticus, which contains twelve very fine toccatas and several other works.

Muffat’s style expressly unites Italian, French, and German practices, but the fairly succinct and clearly sectionalized Toccata III seems more Italianate than anything (save perhaps some particularly rich harmony that might be called French). It is well known for the pedal-point passage that builds in intensity right to the end, which Grigny might have quoted in a somewhat similar passage at the end of his Livre d’orgue of 1700.

While allowing myself a certain amount of flexibility in the running passages, I have nevertheless tried to maintain the same basic tempo throughout the various Allegro sections (governed by what seems a reasonable limit for the imitative section) and to realize the proportion given in the 9/4 signature in the concluding section (that is, to play nine notes in the time previously taken by four).
program notes
