ABSTRACT
Long neglected because of a certain bias against the art of the intabulation in general, Heinrich Scheidemann's intabulations have only been published and become widespread since the 1990s. Within the context of the Sweelinck school his fourteen intabulations form a rather unexpected phenomenon. It is actually problematical to point to the well-known Hamburg tradition of the organ replacing the choir in motet performance as the main stimulus for Scheidemann, as is sometimes done. That the historical dimension present in the writing down of artful intabulations must have been apparent to Scheidemann is reflected by the fact that out of fourteen no fewer than six are dated, and they dominate the group of nine dates which certainly belong to the category of composition dates. However, when he learned in the meantime that it was actually an intabulation, he simply suppressed this paragraph altogether from the English edition, choosing not to discuss Scheidemann's intabulations at all.
