Jonathan Schakel is a native of Michigan, where he graduated from Hope College with degrees in history and music. He earned a masters degree with distinction in organ from Longy School of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied organ, harpsichord and clavichord with Peter Sykes and continuo with Frances Conover Fitch. His early training in piano was under the guidance of Thomas Gouwens. His other organ teachers include James David Christie and Peter Kranefoed. In addition, he has pursued further studies with Olivier Latry, William Porter, Lorenzo Ghielmi, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Christa Rakich and James Higdon. He has given recitals on organ and harpsichord throughout the United States and in Germany, frequently performing with his wife, soprano Megan Sharp. Together they direct the music program at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville.

Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G major shows the influence of his encounter with the music of Vivaldi and Corelli in the driving sixteenth–note rhythms, the strong I–V harmonies and the very stringlike writing of the fugue. Bach made a revised version for his son Wilhelm Friedemann’s (successful) audition at the Sophiakirche in Dresden.

Georg Böhm was organist at the Johanniskirche in Lüneberg from 1698 until 1733, including the time when Bach was in that town as a student. Bach may have studied with Böhm; at any rate, they became good friends — Böhm was one of the few people who had copies of Bach’s printed keyboard partitas for sale. In this choral prelude, which is preserved in a copy by Johann Gottfried Walther, Bach’s friend and cousin, Böhm treats the chorale in the style of a vocal aria.

The famous Roman organist Girolmo Frescobaldi had much of his keyboard music published at his own instigation. A copy of his Fiori Musicali was a part of Bach’s library. In the canzona, Frescobaldi alternates between the consort style typical of instrumental canzonas and a toccata style that is more idiomatic for the keyboard.

Finally, we arrive at some real keyboard music, not trying to imitate anything else. All three of these early English pieces are based on an accompaniment consisting of a short pattern that repeats over and over (ostinato), with the right hand providing the melodic interest. In the first, the title gives the notes of the repeating bass (in solfège syllables, as in The Sound of Music): A E D. In the next piece, it appears that my lady Carey is down in the dumps. Perhaps a hornpipe will cheer her up.

Spanish baroque organs usually had only one keyboard, but were designed so that different stops could be used for the lower and upper halves of the keyboard. This allowed solo and accompaniment and other colorful effects on either side of middle C. In this work, the blind Spanish organist Pablo Bruna took over seventy–four bars from the earlier composer Pedro de San Lorenzo, and then continued in a more modern (for him) style. The title translates approximately as “Organ piece for right hand [solo] and in the middle two treble parts.”

In a more modern style for us is the Salamanca of Guy Bovet, but a piece nevertheless designed to be playable on a one–manual Spanish baroque organ. Bovet based the piece on a folk tune of the area around Salamanca, and the music derives from his own improvisations on this theme.

The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, most well known for a “minimalist” style, wrote Pari intervallo in dedication to the death of a friend. The title derives from the basic musical material of two parts moving in exact parallel to each other, at the interval of a tenth.

Bach’s organ partite, variations on choral tunes, were written very early in his career, perhaps even from his student years in Lüneberg, where he became acquainted with the works of Böhm, whose partitas were almost certainly the model for Bach’s own. Bach never returned to the form, but left us a masterpiece in the eleven variations (not counting the first harmonization) on Sei gegrüßet, a Lenten chorale. All manner of styles are represented, from violin writing to basse de trompette, from the gigue to the penultimate polonaise. The final partita is a majestic five–part harmonization of the chorale.