The "Liber fratrum cruciferorum leodiensium" and Circulation of Organ Repertoire in the Netherlands

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the city of Liège, capital of a large diocese and of an imperial principality, was seen as a « priests’ paradise » with its immense cathedral, seven collegiate churches, some thirty parish churches and numerous abbeys and monasteries. However, very few inventories have been conserved that give an idea of the repertoire played in the religious institutions. The Liber fratrum cruciferorum leodiensium (University of Liège, ms. 153), the only musical manuscript preserved from the Croisiers of Liège, reveals that the people of Liège knew Italian music and the music of their English contemporaries working in the Low Countries. Dating from 1617, it contains 54 pieces for organ, including some unica of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Peter Philips as well as Fantasias and Echoes of Andrea Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo, Vincenzo Pellegrini, Christian Erbach, Paul Siefert, William Brown and of a Liégeois composer, Gérard Scronx. This manuscript is one of the oldest witnesses containing accurate indications regarding registrations.
The very modern aspect of organ music in Liège deserves to be highlighted in comparison with the inventories preserved for the same period in the Low Countries. The selections made by the copyist can be understood by studying the connections between Liège and the capital of the Low Countries. I propose to examine these connections in a number of ways: through the activity of Liégeois musicians in Brussels, in particular at the collegiate church of St Gudule which was itself closely bound to the court; through the musical inventories of Brussels; through the activity of organ builders; and, finally, through the links between the English organists who settled in Brussels and certain figures from Liège. It was thanks to what we can effectively call a network that a contemporary repertoire reached and developed in the city of Liège.