Johann Heinrich Buttstett, Es stehn für Gottes Throne

This is my entry for the secretsoforganplaying contest, week 34. This week I spend a lot of my time on writing my own claiming and staking software. You can read about it here. Therefore I had not much time left to practice something new for this week's contest. I nearly decided to forego participating. The comments in this post however convinced to play something no too difficult anyway.

I dug something up I though I could play without too much practice. It is a composition by Johann Heinrich Buttstett, based on the chorale melody of "Es stehn für Gottes Throne." I published to score on my site (http://partitura.org/index.php/johann-heinrich-buttstett-es-stehn-fur-gottes-throne/) 5 months ago, and used this composition for my entry in the Openmic contest, week 135. So, it's not too long ago I practised this piece, and I should be able to sightread it, while recording.

Buttstett's prelude tot "Es stehn für Gottes Throne" is a three part piece, with the choral melody in the soprano voice. Intruiging is that in the manuscript source the scribe in three different places notates only half a bar. Perhaps in those places a half note rest is meant, though that seems strange as it interrupts the musical flow, and that does not seem very idiomatic for Buttstett's music. In the score I provide a suggestion to fill in these empty moments. If you want to play what's in the manuscript, just ignore the small notes and 'play' rests instead.

The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sample set, made by Voxus, of the Van Dam organ (1832) in Tholen (http://www.voxusorgans.com/en/tholen). The van Dam organ in Tholen leans towards the romantic sound ideal and is therefore not very idiomatic for German baroque music. To make it even worse, I use some of the more romantic sounding stop of the Bovenwerk for this performance. The sound is therefore entirely wrong for this composition. But I like it, and use it anyway.