Excerpt from The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 2003, Vol. 24Though the compositions of Speuy, Sweelinck and van Noordt certainly inuenced composers beyond the Netherlands, the three will remain alone as the Old Masters of Dutch liturgical organ literature in the Protestant Netherlands. It may seem odd that a culture that placed such a high value on the organ as an instrument rendered so little extant organ literature. But the lack of printed music is not an indication of a fallow tradition. Rather, it points to the historical Dutch stance toward liturgical music that places a much higher value on improvised music, an approach that prevails in the Netherlands to this day.9 As published literature began to appear in the eighteenth century, it was clearly didactic in nature, a concession to organists who were not capable of improvising.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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