The most excellent and at the same time the last of the great German Catholic organists until the nineteenth century was Georg Muffat (about 1645-1704). This really great artist deserves a much deeper appreciation than history has yet accorded him. His great work, _Apparatus Musico Organisticus_ (1690), consisting of toccatas, a chaconne, a passacaglia, and other pieces, displays as fine a quality of artistic feeling as is to be found in the period before Bach. ‘There is a human feeling about the music of Muffat, which removes it above mere counterpoint or exhibition of skill, and appeals to the heart more than any of the earlier compositions.’[101] Ritter, in his _Geschichte des Orgelspiels_, says of him: ‘In the toccata he surpasses all previous German masters except Buxtehude. Inexhaustible in the invention of new forms and possessing absolute mastery to express them, he is the first who leads the hearer from the realm of mere sound into that of real soul-inspired music.’ While organ music was thus developing in South Germany, a vigorous school was formed in North Germany, which waxed strong largely under influences that radiated from the great Dutch organist, teacher, and composer, Jan Pieter Sweelinck (1560-1621), at Amsterdam. So many of the leading organists[102] of the next generation in North Germany were his pupils that he earned the title of ‘Organist-maker’ and virtually became the founder of the North German school of organ-playing. His organ works are the most important products of his genius as a composer. He was the first to use the pedal as an integral part of the fugue and was the inventor of the organ-fugue as a form evolved from one subject with the gradual addition of countersubjects leading up to an elaborate finale--a form which Bach especially perfected.