Bernard Foccroulle Praetorius & Schildt Selected Organ Works

Bernard Foccroulle devotes his latest recording — the last of the anthology of Northern German organ music of the Baroque period — to Jacob Praetorius and Melchior Schildt, both pupils of Sweelinck. Praetorius and Schildt’s music is not only strongly marked by Lutheran tradition, in which the chorale played a fundamental part, but also by other influences, principally Italian, that prepared the way for the explosion of the stylus fantasticus at the end of the 17th century. Bernard Foccroulle was born in Liège (Belgium) in 1953.

Bernard Foccroulle devotes his latest recording – the last of the anthology of Northern German organ music of the Baroque period – to Jacob Praetorius and Melchior Schildt, both pupils of Sweelinck. Praetorius and Schildt’s music is not only strongly marked by Lutheran tradition, in which the chorale played a fundamental part, but also by other influences, principally Italian, that prepared the way for the explosion of the stylus fantasticus at the end of the 17th century.