Illustration - A feeling of bewilderment: "Saint Francis in the Desert", by Giovanni Bellini. "The Frick Collection", New York/N.Y.
Georg Böhm was born in Hohenkirchen bei Ohrdruf, south east Germany (Thuringia), on September, 2nd, 1661, member of a family with roots in the Bohemian land.
He was, from 1698 to 1733 (when death came upon him, on May, 18th), the successor of Christian Flor, organist of Johanniskirche, in Lüneburg, and also acted as an adviser when, from 1712 to 1714, Matthias Dropa rebuilt the instrument, one of the leading examples of North German organ manufacture, destroyed during World War II.
Until the discovery, in 2006, of what has come to be known as the “Weimarer Orgeltabulatur”, there had never been any glimpse of evidence of any direct/personal contact between Böhm and Johann Sebastian Bach, a fact which is now widely acknowledged, due to such document of paramount artistic and historical importance, published by Bärenreiter.
Böhm was beyond any doubt a great composer and organist, having absorbed principles of three different schools; 1) that from central and south Germany; 2) the north German style, whith its virtuosic pedal solos and marvelous organs, and 3) the French organ school. An example of such influences can be found in the most famous version of the chorale “Vater unser im Himmelreich”, already uploaded and commented in this video series.
Georg Böhm's Opus can be distributed into three categories: 1) The organ works (preludes pedaliter, chorale preludes and chorale partitas); 2) the harpsichord works (Suites); 3) those for organ or harpsichord (sets of variations on chorales, the Cappriccio and Preludes manualiter).
Here, we play a second version of “Vater unser...”, based on another versus, and written manualiter.