Hey guys. I would very much like to incorporate more early organ music into my typical prelude, postlude, and interlude repertoire. Any suggestions for composers? I'm looking for pieces like the one played on the positiv organ in the video linked below. Thanks for any help; I don't have much exposure to this genre so pointers are appreciated.
Most publishers have affordable anthologies of music for manuals only which feature late mediaeval, renaissance, and baroque pieces. These anthologies feature a wide variety of canzonas, organ chorals, organ versets for parts of the mass, and other pieces suitable for diverse needs.
Check into the catalogues of Concordia, Oxford, Cambridge, Novello, etc. For something affordable, but don't fail to have a look into the complete keyboard works of Tomkins, Bull, Byrd, Gibbons, Tallis, and The Mulliner Book, etc., in Novello's Musica Britanica series. I will enjoy imagining some of these being played at our sister (or daughter) parish at St Aelred's!
There are similar books from Boosey & Hawkes and Continental publishers such as Hinrichsen, et al., which feature short organ chorals, or canzonas, etc., and versets for singing alternatim - especially by the well known French composers. If one is not singing alternatim, one may cobble together two or three or more such pieces which work as prelude, offertory, or communion music of several 'movements'.
Ditto MJO's advice, but I'll add that you really should spend some time at a library that owns (for merely one example) the Corpus of Early Keyboard Music.
Speaking of the Montreal Organ Book, does anyone have a copy of the original edition they produced back in the 90s? It used to be hosted on a CA university site, but is no longer there. WIth no offense to the IMSLP score, the original was a legit scholarly edition. I had it saved somewhere, but now cannot find it.
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