Josef Ferdinand Norbert Seger, Præambulum (L 1)

Today I start a new series, with music taken from manuscript Becker III.8.63, owned by the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden. This manuscript contains mostly (though not exclusively) music composed by Josef Ferdinand Norbert Seger.

Seger (in other spellings also knwon as [Czegert, Secrt, Seeger, Seegr, Segert, Sekert or Zekert] was born in Řepín in 1716 and died died in Prague in 1782. He was appointed organist of the Týn Church (c1741) and the Crusaders’ church (1745) in Prague, posts he held simultaneously until his death. Seger was the most prolific Czech organ composer of the 18th century, though none of his works was published in his lifetime. Most of his works survive in manuscript form, as even today a large portion of his compositions is still unedited. The evaluation of his output is made difficult by the attribution of many of his organ works to Brixi, Černohorský, Linek, Muffat and other composers and of the reverse attribution of several compositions of said to composers to Seger.

Manuscript Becker III.8.63 contains some 150 compositions, the largest part of which were composed by Seger. Some 30 of them were probably written by several other composers.

A difficulty with Seger’s music, is that the surviving manuscripts with his music notate the music on two staves. In rare cases some notes are indicated to be played with the pedals, mostly however, only the notes are written with no indication whether is music is meant as manualiter or as pedaliter composition. As Seger was highly regarded as an organist and the organ in the Týn Church includes a large pedal section it seems strange that Seger would write only manualiter compositions. It is unclear however, which of the compositions should be played with the aid of the pedals and which notes were possibly meant for the pedals.

I decided to transcribe the music contained in manuscript Becker III.8.63 as they are notated in that manuscript. They are therefore transcribed on two staves, leaving the choice to use pedals and which notes to play with the pedals to the player. The first Præambulum contained in Becker III.8.63 is a good example for the question whether pedals should be used or not. It sounds equally well as a manualiter piece as with the use of the pedals. In my performance I play it therefore twice: without ánd wit the use of pedals. And everyone can decide which version he/she likes best and play it accordingly.

The recording was done on the sample set of the Mascioni of the parisch church in Azzio, made by Piotr Gabrowsky.

Score
Seger, Praeambulum (L 1)

Performance

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