The late-Renaissance keyboard music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck is virtuosic to a high degree, reflecting both his exceptional skills as an improviser and the secular role organ music was assigned in Reformed Amsterdam. Without a liturgical function to constrain his imagination or shape his music – Calvinist services had no place for it – Sweelinck was free to provide fanciful showpieces for his daily recitals in the Oude Kerk. Examples of his improvisational style can be found in the quasi-fugal Hexachord Fantasia, the witty Echo Fantasia, and the flamboyant Toccatas, of which three are included here. Yet Sweelinck's music is also rigorously logical and full of ingenious contrapuntal devices. These are readily found in his fantasias, but are prominently featured in his numerous sets of variations. His elaborate settings of the chorales Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr and Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, and his variations on popular melodies, such as the famous Mein junges Leben hat ein End, display his invention and thorough manipulation of his subjects in all registers. Perhaps better known as a harpsichordist, Robert Woolley is also a fine organist. Woolley has selected representative works from each of Sweelinck's favored genres and given them exceptional performances on the Van Hagerbeer organ of the Pieterskerk, Leiden.

Some of the Baroque releases on Canada's ATMA label have stuck close to established molds, but this one by the young Québécoise harpsichordist Catherine Perrin breaks them all. Perrin's career is unusual in itself; while many performers of early music stick to the specialized circles of players who do the same, Perrin has parallel careers as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio host, contemporary music performer, and musical theater enthusiast. Perrin subtitles her disc "Five Centuries of Preludes on the Harpsichord," but she intends something slightly different: an examination of the prelude as a musical idea. In her booklet notes she quotes writer Michel Chion, who situates the prelude in a space of unique freedom, "a privileged position in the vanguard," unleashed by "the fact that it occurs before the time has come to be serious or definitive.

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.

Following his acclaimed Linn debut, One Byrde in Hande, Richard Egarr turns to the music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck for his new recording of fantasias, toccatas and variations.

The large-scale Het Sweelinck Monument project, with Harry van der Kamp as its driving force, and with individual issues on Glossa over the last 6 years in book-CD format for the Netherlands and as multiple-CD sets for the international market, embraces the complete vocal and instrumental music output of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

Joseph Kelemen is one of the most renowned organists of our time and has recorded quite a number of CDs for OehmsClassics. In this box, the label presents the recordings of the North German organ masters Vincent Lübeck, Matthias Weckmann, Nicolaus Bruhns, Heinrich Scheidemann, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and the Praetorius “Family”.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was born in 1562 at Deventer and died in Amsterdam October 16, 1621. He was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue. His work is an important transition between the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque eras. He is known for his keyboard music, as well as the 250 works he wrote for voices (chansons, madrigals, motets and Psalms).