[Commentary about the specific works on today’s program will be provided during the performance by Mr. Schmidt.]

The development of solo keyboard music traces a long and fascinating history, a history we can only briefly survey here today. But in a program devoted to works by Frescobaldi and Froberger, the early stages of that tale are worth recounting in order to see how these two giants moved the evolution further along.
If we begin with music in the medieval period, 500-1300 AD, we find a world largely governed by vocal forms. (And simply for the sake of brevity, we will not extend our glance back to Neanderthal bone flutes or Ancient Greek lyres.) Instruments did exist, though they were rarely if ever used in sacred settings. To the extent that instruments like early flutes, trumpets, or drums may have featured in secular music-making or civic ceremonies, we rely largely on speculation as those traditions were not preserved in anything approaching the quantity of extant sacred music until 1150 or later. By that time, the wind-blown pipe organ was a permanent fixture in most of the large European cathedrals; indeed, it had been a coveted musical addition to sacred worship at least as early the Carolingian dynasty. Beyond accompanying singing or chant intonation of sacred texts, the organ could also perform solo repertoire based exclusively on those sacred vocal traditions.
The harpsichord and fortepiano marked later stages in the pro-liferation of keyboard instruments. We will have occasion in the near future to think more about the emergence of percussive, hammer-action fortepianos when we welcome the Festival’s 1830 Viennese piano this summer. For now, we can turn attention to the harpsichord and the accompanying explosion of idiomatic solo keyboard music.
All harpsichords share, more or less, the same means of sound production: the finger depresses a key that activates a plectrum to pluck a string. The sound of the vibrating string is amplified by a wooden soundboard placed just below the strings. As best as historians can de-termine, the harpsichord (also called a clavicembalo in Italian or clavecin in French) was invented in the late 1300s. New Grove Dictionary cites a 1397 reference to one Hermann Poll in Padua who had recently invented a “clavicembalum”; a harpsichord – or perhaps a related psaltery – appears by 1425 in northern German church iconography. All of the earliest instruments did not spring out of thin air, of course, and derived inspira-tion from the ancient zither, dulcimer, and lute.
During the gradual emergence and refinement of the harpsichord (roughly 1400-1600), vocal music was also undergoing dramatic changes. Renaissance humanists agitated for a neo-classical rebirth of subtle, highly emotive and text-centered song in line with what they thought existed in Periclean Athens. There was also a reaction against the excessive density and intricacy that marked late medieval vocal works, still almost exclusively sacred in purpose. Hence, composers from Willaert to Monteverdi experimented with a style of musical poetry, the madrigal, that opened stunning new directions for secular music. At the same time as they pushed into new territory, many of the same composers (such as William Byrd, Claudio Merulo, and the Gabrielis) retained one foot squarely in church music as organists, gradually infusing their organ works with elements borrowed from the madrigal.
A perfect example is Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643). He lived through a significant stylistic change in European music, and his early works summarize the Renaissance manner just as fully as his final works typify the High Baroque. Frescobaldi had the good fortune to be born in Ferrara into a well-to-do and well-respected household. His father enjoyed close contacts with important musicians, and the composer and organist Luzzascho Luzzaschi was the boy’s first teacher and possibly also his godfather. Luzzaschi was court organist to Duke Alfonso II d’Este, an incredibly active and generous patron of music. While much of the organ literature from this era does not survive, Luzzaschi’s dozens of madrigals (produced in 1601) reveal a masterful combination of melodic virtuosity, counterpoint, and rhythmic vitality. As his dutiful assistant, Frescobaldi could not help but imbibe his teacher’s guidance in both vocal and instrumental composition.
While Frescobaldi was still a teenager, the great Carlo Gesualdo visited Ferrara for an extended period, accompanied by a retinue of performers and composers. Gesualdo’s reputation hinges entirely on vocal music, madrigals in particular, including works that pushed the expressive intensity and harmonic daring of the genre to new heights. Gesualdo did not bequeath any legacy of keyboard music, but the players in his entourage – many of whom originated far to the south in Naples – adapted the master’s novel manner to keyboard music and brought their powerful technique to Frescobaldi’s doorstep. This tradition would serve him well as he accepted his first major posts in Rome around 1604.
Frescobaldi may have settled in Rome several years earlier. But with the help of his patron, he became principal organist at Santa Maria in Trastevere, the district of Rome west of the Tiber and south of the Vatican. We know that Frescobaldi soon traveled for nearly a year to Brus-sels with his employer, though little evidence of the visit appears in his music – despite the proximity of Flemish and English organ masters. By mid 1608 he was back in Rome to take up the prestigious position of organist at St. Peter’s. The child prodigy had achieved one of the highest posts on offer, and both his fame and wealth increased substantially. Throughout his mature years (apart from an aborted move to Mantua in 1615), Frescobaldi remained at St. Peter’s, composing vast amounts of organ and harpsichord works, vocal music, and taking on a number of private students. Later he accepted a position for several years in Florence as court organist, but he returned to Rome for the final decade of his life.
Taken as a whole, Frescobaldi’s musical style combines both conservative and innovative elements. Compared to other early keyboard works, his pieces adhere to the Renaissance vocal tradition of elaborate counterpoint. He is a particular master of fugue, for example, and his ability to develop and vary a single theme provides the structural outline for many of his best works. This primacy of melody creates more flow in comparison to the highly-sectional nature of most toccatas, fantasias, and ricercars. At the same time, his phenomenal talent as a performer translates into greater rhythmic interest as well as a new depth and variety of ornamentation, both made possible by his own technical facility. Frescobaldi was himself aware – and proud – of these innovations, but he never allowed these features to take away from his reverence for melodic counterpoint.
Today Frescobaldi’s name is hardly familiar to even most lovers of classical music; fans of the Baroque may have heard of him, though even then he is known less for his own works than for his influence on later composers. For instance, he was referred to as a “giant among organists” in a popular musical textbook published in the late 1600s. His works became much coveted by German composers, including Buxtehude and a young J. S. Bach, who copied out one of Frescobaldi’s most important collections by hand.
To this group must be added the name of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), an earlier musician who spent three years in direct contact and apprenticeship with Frescobaldi. Froberger was born in Stuttgart into a musical family; his father and four brothers all became professional musicians. Beyond those basic facts, however, little is certain of Jakob’s earliest years. Stuttgart offered a wealth of cultural opportunities, and many prominent foreign musicians visited, including several English instrumentalists with whom Jakob may have studied (the evidence is not clear which of the Froberger boys are meant). Nevertheless, his education must have been successful, for he became a paid organist to the Imperial court at Vienna in 1637. Later that year, having just turned 21, he was given an extended leave to study with the famous Frescobaldi in Rome until 1640.
During the next decade of his life, Froberger seems to have traveled quite widely: back to Rome, Florence and Mantua; onward to the Low Countries around 1649; stopping in Paris in 1652 to perform and meet the leading French composers; and finally also to England in early 1653 before returning to Vienna by that April. He remained at court until near the end of his life, when he was “let go” because of royal displeasure and granted a modest pension to retire upon. He continued to compose and produce collections of keyboard music until the very end.
Froberger is significant in the history of keyboard music for several reasons. He is perhaps the first composer who wrote exclusively (barring only two exceptions) for the keyboard. Thus while being trained via examples from the great sacred and secular vocal genres – motets, masses, and madrigals – he chose to only create works for organ and harpsichord. (And as organs from this time were typically single manual instruments with rudimentary pedalboards, there is little distinction between what keyboard, organ or harpsichord, is best suited for a majority of Froberger’s music.) Like Chopin in the 19th century, Froberger is a keyboard specialist to the exclusion of all else. Second, his training at the home of Frescobaldi offers a tangible and significant link, carrying the Italian’s idiomatic keyboard style north of the Alps to Vienna and beyond.
Finally, Froberger paid particular attention to cultivating the dance suite. He did not invent the suite as a form that combined various dances, including allemandes, courantes, minuets, and others. Moreover, the conventional order of the dances familiar from Bach’s era (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue) was determined usually by his publishers rather than Froberger himself. However, he did create a rich body of influential works where little existed prior; in particular, he injected contrapuntal sophistication and motivic interest, moving these works outside the strict confines of actual dancing and into a realm so attractive to Bach. In the end, it is true that the latter’s interest in Froberger helps to explain how his music has survived to the present day.

© Jason Stell, 2024