"Frescobaldi in the North: transmission of the stilo nuovo by keyboardists in Amsterdam and Hamburg"

A new style of expressive musical pictorialism marked the dawn of the Baroque in Italy, where composers sought above all to transport the listener to a state of intensified emotion by means of musical rhetoric and narrative. Gradually, composers such as Frescobaldi brought these ideals to the context of instrumental music, printing their virtuosic solo works for a readership that extended as far as Hamburg, where Italian works are found copied by Sweelinck's students. Abraham Ross will examine the transmission of Frescobaldi's style through the lens of organists and harpsichordists in Northern Europe, considering implications for both compositional style and performance practice.