Scheidemann: Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl

Es spricht der | unweisen mundt | woll [H.S.M.]
     Lübbenau Tablature LyB2*
   (Danzig or Stockholm?, ca 1620s)
     Zellerfeld Tablature Ze1
   (Hieronymus Jordan, Braunschweig, ca 1635–45?)†
     Zellerfeld Tablature Ze2
   (Caspar Calvör, Braunschweig, 1668?)†

* lacks attribution
† lacks 4th verse

This setting of Luther’s paraphrase of Psalm 13 has been dated by Pieter Dirksen to the period between Scheidemann’s studies with Sweelinck (1613–14) and his assumption of the post at St Catherine’s, Hamburg (1629). This dating is based upon the following points:

· the inclusion of a bicinium and lack of a coloratura verse;
· the number and order of the voicing of its four verses –
   4 voices, treble melody
   2 voices, treble melody
   3 voices, tenor melody
   4 voices, bass melody –
· the style of figuration; and
· the emphasis on writing playable without the pedal.

The last of these points, however, bears further examination. Only the last variation absolutely requires the use of the pedal, in terms of the spans to be reached, and Dirksen seems confident that the others are to be played manualiter, and that the composer himself suppressed the last verse at some point so as to create a purely manualiter cycle. Approaching the music with Sweelinck in mind, we would indeed expect to play the other three without pedal, but on the other hand following the instructions in the 1624 Tabulatura Nova of Scheidemann’s fellow Sweelinck pupil Samuel Scheidt, the cantus firmus should ideally be played on a sound distinct from the others, which in this kind of writing requires the pedal. None of the manuscript sources for the present work gives any indication for the use of pedal (or for the use of more than one manual) in this work.

As with the other four-voice, treble-melody verses of this type attributed to Scheidemann and his early period (‘A solis ortus cardine’ 2 and ‘Durch Adams Fall’ 2), the present first verse can easily be played on one manual without pedal. Indeed the voice-leading from bar 27 to 28 (assuming that the only modern edition, that of Gustav Fock [Bärenreiter 1967], is faithful to the sources, none of which is available online) – in which the alto, having crossed the tenor, leads toward the same pitch as the bass but rests instead of playing a unison, so as to re-enter above the tenor a beat later – suggests that these voices, and as a result all four, should be played on the same registration so as to smooth the illusion of the convergence, and on the whole I am inclined to perform it in this way.

On the other hand, this kind of writing is not found in Scheidemann’s other aforementioned four-voice verses, and it raises the question of whether this early work might have been, as Sweelinck’s music earlier and Weckman’s later were, originally notated in keyboard score – which was largely agnostic of voice-leading – and the voice-leading reinterpreted by a scribe putting the work into tablature. Here is the voice-leading as given in Fock’s edition, but with the voices allowed to cross the staves: Laying out the music in this way immediately suggests that the voice-leading need not be so interpreted. If the alto and tenor were interpreted as not crossing at all (that is, if we simply removed the voice-leading lines I have added, there would be, not an imaginary unison on c', but rather an actual one on e' – – which in keyboard staff notation of the time might have looked like this: Interpreted in this way – the bass voice not being involved in this convergence – the way might then be clear to a pedaliter performance of the bass (because a distinct timbre would not ruin the illusion of convergence), and thus to a right-hand solo realization of the cantus firmus, as Scheidt suggests.

Another strategy used by some organists to bring out a treble cantus firmus, however, is I think more questionable: to play it on a 2-foot pedal stop. Such stops were, to be sure, in plentiful supply on the organs available to Scheidemann and his colleagues, but evidence from the period is far from clear as to whether 2- and 1-foot pedal stops were used in this way, as opposed to simply reinforcing a cantus firmus being played at nominal pitch. Praetorius (De Organographia, 1619) says the following (my translations are rough, but Quentin Faulkner’s – though the effort of his translation is laudable – are unfortunately unreliable):

Kleinflöitten Bass 2 ft.
ist auch gar gut zum Choral zu gebrauchen.
is also very good to use for the chant. [132]

KleinFlöiten Baß 1 ft.
Und sind nun diese kleine Stimmen / wenn dieselbe zu Aequal-Stimm Wercken mit und ohne Tremulant gezogen werden / gar gut und frembd am Klange zu hören.
And these little voices, when they are drawn with 8-foot stops, with or without Tremulant, are good and distinct* in sound. [133]

*   fremd is most often translated ‘strange, foreign’, and this is indeed its root meaning; Faulkner translates it here as ‘unusual’. Praetorius may mean this, or ‘curious’ or ‘wonderful/wondrous’, but I think he could perhaps also mean ‘distinct(ive), separate’, given his overall concern when discussing these high-pitched stops.

Klein Octaven Gemßhorn 2 ft.
...und auch ein schönen Baß im Pedal zum Choral zu gebrauchen gibt / und sich gar vernemblich und eigentlich hören lesset.
...and also gives a good bass in the Pedal to use for the chant, and can be heard precisely and clearly. [134]

Groß Flachflöit 8 ft.
Flachflöit 4 ft.
Klein Flachflöit 2 ft.
Geben auch im Pedal schöne Bässe zu vornehmen / denn sie etwas lauter / jedoch frembder / als die Gembßhörner am Klange seyn.
Also help to execute [or, bring out] good basses in the Pedal since they are somewhat louder, but more distinct, than Gemshorns in sound. [136]

Nachthorn 4 and 2 ft.
...und ist eine zierliche Stimme / bevorab im Baß anzuhören.
...is an elegant voice to hear particularly in the bass. [138]

Bawerflöit Baß / oder Päurlin 1 ft.
Von dieser Stimme wird bey uns in Deutschland / sonderlich / wenn man den Choral im Pedal führen wil / gar viel gehalten.
These voices are very popular with us in Germany, particularly when one wishes to play the chant in the Pedal. [140]

Cornett wird meistentheils im Baß allein gebraucht.
The Cornett is for the most part used only in the bass. [146]
(This statement has more to do with where the stop is found, or its range, than its actual use, since it follows the description of the Zink as an exclusively discant register.)

Some of these statements, such as the first, taken alone might suggest that these high-pitched stops could be used for a treble cantus. But taken as a whole, I think it more likely that they suggest that these stops were used – with 8-foot stops – only to make the bass clear and distinct. It is notable that Praetorius does not speak explicitly (as he does – only – with the 4-foot Principal, in the manual) of using any of these these higher-pitched stops alone.

It is even more striking that Scheidt does not mention such a practice even though he goes to considerable lengths – with not only a verbal explanation but also musical examples – to explain how 4-foot stop in the pedal can be used to play a cantus firmus in the alto voice, as though this were a novelty which the reader might have trouble grasping. It is of course possible that playing a treble cantus in the pedal was so common that Scheidt did not need to mention it – as is the case, presumably, with tenor cantus, about whose ordinary execution on the pedal Scheidt is silent.* At the very least, however, the evidence for the use of high-pitched pedal stops to play treble cantus is far from clear. In this case I have simply played the four voices on one manual.


If the first verse of Scheidemann’s ‘Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl’ presents some questions and perhaps some alternatives for performance, the third verse is somewhat more problematic. It can also be played on one manual without pedal, but repeated collisions in bar 30 between the sixteenth-note figuration in the treble voice and the semibreve in the tenor as the voices cross back and forth quickly –


– are not found elsewhere in Scheidemann (nor, quite, in Sweelinck – not even in ‘Ich ruf zu dir’ 2–3, where neither sixteenths nor a voice played in the opposite hand from the cantus firmus make this kind of interruption) and are so awkward to play as to give pause. Since the tenor note in question is the end of a melodic phrase, it might be plausible to release it early – but such a solution seems unsatisfactory here since the first collision occurs as early as the second quarter-note beat. It is therefore tempting to play the cantus firmus in the pedal.

On the other hand, to do so requires a 4-foot stop – explicitly mentioned by Scheidt for this purpose, as just noted, but not otherwise required in Scheidemann’s œuvre. (It is also true that, so far as we know, Scheidemann made no other setting of a melody ranging g–g', as this hypoionian tune does, thus exceeding the nominal compass of the pedalboard of that time and place).

More difficult is the fact that this tenor voice ends with a sixteenth-note flourish unsuited to the pedal. A couple of (admittedly not entirely satisfactory) explanations and solutions present themselves. It is just possible that the tenor and bass voices could cross at the end – and indeed if the work had been first written in keyboard staff notation, a transcriber could have missed such an intended voice-crossing – such that the pedal, after concluding the cantus firmus, plays the lowest concluding note, while the flourish is played in the manual (a tie from the last note of the cantus to that which follows it is not found in LyB2). (It should also be said that although, for example, Titelouze notates his cantus firmi within his two-staff scores, the only piece like the present one transmitted in staff notation in the Dutch—North German orbit, as far as I can think – Sweelinck’s ‘Erbarm dich mein’ – has its pedal part written in letter notation below the staves, which precludes any such confusion). Another possibility is that the pedal part should simply end with the last note of the melody, leaving the flourish to be played in the manual along with the final c of the bass. Either of these solutions works in practice if the manual and pedal registrations are not very different.


Finally, the number of verses in Scheidemann’s ‘Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl’ raises some questions not dealt with in Dirksen’s study. All four organ verses are found in only one (the oldest) manuscript source, Lynar B2; the next most reliable sources (the two Zellerfeld tablatures) omit the last verse, although it is found again in a late manuscript from the Pachelbel circle. Luther’s original text, reproduced in the two most important Hamburg song collections (to be more precise, the contents of Eler’s 1588 Psalmi D. Martini Lutheri... are in Low German translation), has only six. However, the 1616 Straßburg Kirchen Gesangbuch adds a final stanza – a paraphrase of the Gloria Patri – to this. Could this text (from this or some other source) or another like it have been known to Scheidemann during this period for which his whereabouts are unknown? Might then, as Dirksen suggests, the final verse have dropped out of use at a slightly later date – perhaps not in order make it a manual-only work, as he says, but rather for use with the six-stanza text?

*   Sources differ as to the stoplist of Scheidt’s 1624 Compenius organ at St Moritz, Halle; Andersen and Phelps both omit an 8' Pedal reed, which might account for Scheidt’s failure to mention playing a Tenor CF in the Pedal, while the list given in the Plotz Tablature lists both a Posaunen Vnter Bas and a Posaunen Bas, which suggests both 16' and 8' stops. Vogel’s ‘model specification’ based on this organ and the one it replaced, as well as all the stops mentioned by Scheidt, includes several 8' Pedal reeds, and a very odd stoplist which Andersen says was suggested by Scheidt (source unknown) includes a Pedal Trompete 8.