Fantasia. | a . 4 .
Tabulatuur-Boeck van psalmen en fantasyen
(Amsterdam 1659)
Anthoni van Noordt was something of a successor to Sweelinck, holding in succession two of only three organist posts then available in Amsterdam (his brother held the other, at Sweelinck’s own Oude Kerk, following Sweelinck’s son). In 1659 Anthoni published his
Tabulatuur-Boeck van psalmen en fantasyen, containing ten cycles of variations on Genevan Psalm-
tunes (still for use outside of service-
time rather than for congregational singing). Many of the psalm versets require the pedal, and some require two manuals (though occasionally it is not quite clear how the parts should be realized at the organ), while the fantasias are single-
manual works equally suited to organ and harpsichord. In some ways these latter works are reminiscent of canzone or capricci, particularly in the outlines of their subjects, but their single-
section plan and rigorous and tightly woven imitative-
contrapuntal texture – the subject is almost always present in at least one voice, and the cadences are hardly ever stopping-
points – set them apart from the examples of those genres perhaps most familiar today. At the same time these pieces are more concise in plan and restrained in style than many others called ‘fantasia’; their allure and challenge lie in their elegant and closely fitted craft. Fantasia III, written in the enigmatic phrygian mode with its characteristic half-
step above the tonic or final, invites the use of the calm Principal stop alone, while the somewhat sprightlier Fantasia I is played on a brighter flute combination.
Fantasia II
Though it is absent in the first part of this work, a descending chromatic scale fragment appears after the only really conclusive internal cadence, three fifths of the way through (a proportion, roughly approximating the golden ratio, that also features prominently as a means of articulation in Sweelinck’s work). This chromatic figure joins the main initial subject of the piece and another countersubject already heard a number of times with it, and confirms that the work is based upon essentially the same set of three invertible subjects used in Sweelinck’s famous Fantasia ‘cromatica’ [d1]. Though this compact, canzona-
like fantasia is rather different from anything Sweelinck ever wrote, it is perhaps a work of homage to the older master, a ‘reflection’ of it, moreover, in that Sweelinck’s fantasia begins with the chromatic subject, while in Van Noordt’s the chromatic subject is the last to enter.