The Orpheus of Amsterdam: The Musical Worlds of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

October 20–23, 2021 Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 USA

| Concerts | Performer Bios | | Travel to Cornell | Accommodations |

To mark the 400th anniversary of the Dutch composer and keyboardist Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s death, this festival offers an opportunity to revisit a remarkable body of inventive and pioneering music. Sweelinck’s erudition and imagination, his virtuosity as a composer and keyboardist, and his excellence as a teacher, inspired contemporaries to compare him to the mythical Orpheus whose musical powers could charm all things. Young musicians were sent to Amsterdam from across northern Europe to study with the great master, and his legacy stretched across the 17th century. The four concerts of this festival present the music of Sweelinck alongside that of his Italian and German contemporaries and his students, for organ and harpsichord alone, and in the company of voice and violin. Please see our full schedule of events linked above, as well as the festival’s concert programs and performer bios.



One of the choice instruments in the festival will be Cornell’s internationally admired baroque organ, housed in the campus’s Anabel Taylor Chapel. More information about the instrument can be found in our under-construction partner webpage, linked here.

For our main event webpage, hosted by the website of the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, click here.