Apparatus Musico-Organisticus (1690)

Toccatas, Ciacona, Passacaglia & Nova Cylopeias Harmonica Georg Muffats organ music is not as well known as his ensemble pieces. Yet, his 1690 Apparatus musico-organisticus, which replaced an earlier collection of toccatas, was popular enough to have been re-engraved after the composers death in 1704. Apparatuscontains twelve toccatas and four occasional pieces in what he refers to as his mixed style, which combined elements of French, German and Italian compositional practices. Unusually for seventeenth-century composers, he left precise performance instructions for his concerti and, expecting an international market, released his string music in German, French, Italian and Latin imprints. These are important to the performance of Muffats organ music since they discuss ornamentation, style and rhetoric. Editor Jon Baxendale has freshly translated these texts, drawing together those elements that are pertinent to the performance of the music contained in this volume. The preface also discusses stylistic antecedents and stylus fantasticus. It also considers ornamentation, registration and fingering using contemporary German manuscript and print sources.