ABSTRACT
Questions of attribution have been fundamental in studies of keyboard music by Philips, Sweelinck and their contemporaries. Attribution has been a constant obsession in Sweelinck studies from the work of Seiffert in the early twentieth century through that of Alan Curtis in the 1960s to Pieter Dirksen’s more recent magisterial study of Sweelinck’s keyboard works.1 The problem is perhaps less urgent for Philips, but a number of issues largely set aside in the edition of Philips’s keyboard music by David Smith have been taken up again by Dirksen, among others.2 Assuming broadly the idea of a ‘circle’ of composers or musicians, the present study reconsiders a number of problem pieces by Philips, Sweelinck and their contemporaries. After framing the investigation within the theoretical perspective sketched below, it proceeds to case studies of works from four of the most important genres within this repertory: toccatas, fantasias, dances and intabulations or arrangements of vocal works.
