Frescobaldi in the North: Transmission of the “Stilo Nuovo” by Keyboardists in Amsterdam and Hamburg

A new style of expressive musical pictorialism marked the dawn of the Baroque in Italy, where composers sought above all to transport the listener to a state of intensified emotion by means of musical rhetoric and narrative. Gradually, composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi brought these ideals to the context of instrumental music, printing their virtuosic solo works for a readership that extended as far as Hamburg (where Italian works were copied by Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s students). In this event, Abraham Ross will examine the transmission of Frescobaldi’s style through the lens of organists and harpsichordists in Northern Europe, considering implications for both compositional style and performance practice.

Abraham Ross is speaking and performing at Green College in collaboration with Early Music Vancouver.

Abraham Ross enjoys an active career as a concert organist, harpsichordist, and conductor, presenting imaginative programs informed by the most recent research on performance practice, technology, and musicological research. A recent graduate of McGill University, he received a grant from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec for his doctoral thesis on contrapuntal organ improvisation and arrangement practices in early modern Italy. In addition to solo concerts throughout North America, Abraham enjoys collaborating regularly with ensembles and artists of diverse disciplines, and regularly features with groups such as Les Goûts Réunis (Montreal) and Resonance Collective (Los Angeles).