Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
was a Dutch organist, teacher, and composer. He is widely considered to be the
greatest of Dutch composers and one of the most important figures in the development
of keyboard music in the century before Bach. Born in Deventer, he later succeeded
his father as organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, where his family were organists continuously for almost one hundred
years. His compositions include keyboard and both sacred and secular choral music,
though it is for his keyboard music that he is best known today. Sweelinck was
extremely influential as a teacher, especially of German students (including Scheidemann, Scheidt, Praetorius, and Hasse)
who would propagate his compositional techniques far into Eastern Europe.
In addition
to his large body of keyboard works, Sweelinck produced well over 200 vocal pieces, the largest group being six volumes of
Psalm settings in French.
Hodie Christus
Natus Es is taken from his second publication of Latin motets, the five-voice Cantiones Sacrae of 1619. It is one of the most joyful of all Christmas motets, alternating dance-like triple-time sections for the
word “hodie” with more measured episodes for the rest of the text. The straightforward harmony allows the composer
to employ emphatic repetitions of melodic tags that, while not greatly sophisticated, embue the music with boundless optimism. At the words “salvator apparuit,” Sweelinck indulges himself by setting
them to a slowly ascending major scale in the bass, a typically madrigalian act of word-painting.