THE ISSUE OF SELECTING THE TEMPO IN WORKS BY JACOB VAN EYCK BASED ON SECULAR SONG MELODIES. A CASE STUDY

Der Fluyten Lust-hof by Jacob van Eyck (circa 1590-1657) is the largest collection of works for a solo instrument in the history of European music, which documents both the variety of techniques of early Baroque ornamentation and presents the vast repertoire of popular and folk songs of that time. It was that type of compositions that the blind recorder player also known as the Orpheus of Utrecht used to choose as the basis for his famous, improvised instrumental arrangements, which were later dictated by him in order to be published. After van Eyck’s death, his compositions lost popularity and were soon forgotten, and the new wave of interest in the works included in Der Fluyten Lust-hof only emerged in the 1970s along with the development of the historical performance trend. At present, van Eyck’s musical activity is relatively well explored, which we primarily owe to the work of Ruth van Baak Griffioen and Thiemo Wind. Despite that, some problems remain unsolved. One of the particularly important issues is related to the nature of separate compositions and the pacing in which they could be rendered at that time, which is still a subject of disputes among both musicologists and recorder players. Using three compositions as an example, this article presents a method to reconstruct this aspect of musical practice coming from the analysis of notation patterns and the comparison of the van Eyck’s ornamentation style with earlier written down compositions on the basis of which he created his improvisations. This last standpoint made it possible to show that the diminutions created by van Eyck in many cases do not have a purely technical character, and in some of them one can find numerous musical phrases indicative of a deeper connection between the variations included in Der Fluyten Lust-hof and lyrics of original songs and the specificity of their melodies than previously thought.

