FROBERGER Suites & Toccatas
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FROBERGER Suites & Toccatas 1 Tombeau faît à Paris sur la mort de monsieur Blancheroche (FBWV 632) 06:42 2 Suite XIX (FbWV 619 ) Allemande 03:26 3 Suite XIX Gigue 01:46 4 Suite XIX Courante 01:06 5 Suite XIX Sarabande 02:38 6 Toccata II (FbWV 102) 03:14 7 Suite II (FbWV 602 ) Allemande 03:03 8 Suite II Gigue 01:11 9 Suite II Courante 01:15 10 Suite II Sarabande 02:22 Alina Rotaru - harpsichord 11 Suite XII (FbWV 612 ) Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdita della Real Maestà di Ferdinando IV Rè de Romani 05:22 12 Suite XII Gigue 01:08 13 Suite XII Courante 01:10 14 Suite XII Sarabande 02:05 15 Suite XIII (FbWV 613 ) Allemande 02:35 16 Suite XIII Gigue 01:42 17 Suite XIII Courante 01:17 18 Suite XIII Sarabande 02:22 19 Ricercar VII (FbWV 407) 03:09 20 Toccata XIX 03:14 21 Suite XIV (FbWV 614 ) Lamentation sur ce que j’ay été volé et se joüe à la discretion et encore mieux que les soldats m’ont traité 04:51 22 Suite XIV Gigue 01:13 23 Suite XIV Courante 01:03 24 Suite XIV Sarabande 01:59 25 Toccata XI (FbWV 111) 03:45 A Fall Down the Stairs and a Stairway to Heaven If the most important contribution of German-speaking Baroque composers was, as Johann Joachim Quantz put it in 1752, their ability to “use their good judgement in incorporating the best aspects of various national musical styles,”1 then Johann Jacob Froberger was, without a doubt, the pivotal pioneer of this epoch-defining accomplishment. Unlike the later generations which Quantz may have had in mind (including, indeed, Quantz’s own generation), Froberger was not satisfied with a cursory glance at the rest of the world, nor with such simplistic observations as Quantz’s comments that non-Germans were “no longer happy with their own national styles,”2 or his chauvinistic judgments such as “the best” on one side, and “brash and bizarre” or “simple” on the other. Instead of merely studying the works of foreign composers, as many of his German colleagues did, Froberger actually made the effort to visit the important musical capitals of his day. His visits to the major cities of Rome, Dresden, Paris, and London, which he made between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-eight (1637-1658) while organist to the Imperial Austrian court, helped to transform him from the anonymous son of a footboy inspector into a European-style cosmopolitan in fewer than twenty years. It was especially under the reign of Emperor Ferdinand III that Froberger seemed to have taken on the role of musical scout and cultural-political envoy in earnest. Only a few months after he signed his contract as court organist, his employer bestowed upon him a stipend of 200 guilders in order to provide him with the capital needed for a trip to visit the world-famous master Girolamo Frescobaldi 1 Johann Joachim Quantz: „Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversière zu spielen“, Berlin 1752, p. 332 2 ibid., 333 4 5 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Ferdinand III had reached into his own pocket to machines and their inventor. Kircher had made available to the public only one, finance a research trip to the banks of the Tiber for his new organist at the same relatively simple machine, which could produce simple four-part compositions. time that the second printing of Frescobaldi’s Primo Libro di Toccate appeared on A further device, which could transform even counterpoint and stylistic differen- the market. However, as delightful as it may have seemed to purchase this volume tiations into mathematical operations, was shown only to professional colleagues of music, the engraved characters on the page could hardly have communicated and celebrated public figures.4 The fact that Kircher gave Johann Jacob Froberger the effect which Frescobaldi’s personal style of playing produced. When the master one of these wondrous “Arca Musurgia” to take back home with him was a sure improvised an arpeggiando out of the first chord of a piece, for example, or played sign of the high honor which Kircher accorded the young musician, fourteen years one measure first meltingly, then quickly, then pausingly, according to the affect, just his junior. This souvenir from Rome especially pleased the emperor: Ferdinand as in the modern madrigals of this age, then the music adhered much more to the III supposedly used the “Arca” quite often for the composition of his own works. inspiration of the moment than to some written-out dramaturgy.3 Even Froberger himself employed it at least once, in the composition of a Psalm- setting.5 However, it seems that he never used Kircher’s device for his harpsichord Johann Jacob Froberger stayed in Rome for three years as a guest of the Austrian music. It is probable that he wished to remain in control of the entire compositional Ambassador Scipio Gonzaga, and while there he certainly composed pieces under process in this context because of the special, individual character of the genre. Frescobaldi’s influence in the Roman style. However, researchers have searched in vain to this day for manuscripts from this period. The earliest extant collection of Indeed, the compositional style of the three Italian toccatas (numbers II and Italian-inspired compositions from Froberger’s pen dates from his second journey XIX, in D minor, as well as number XI, in E minor) displays a remarkable per- there, seven years later. Both the Italian title of this volume, Libro secondo, and sonal style and a loving attention to detail, especially in the freely-composed, his use of the Italianized version of his name, Giovanni Giacomo Froberger, on introductory passages. In these pieces Froberger shows how well he remembers its cover, as well as the harmonic language on the pages within clearly reveal the Girolamo Frescobaldi’s playing. Yet in their overall conception, the toccatas in D composer’s enthusiasm for typically Italian musical language. minor (numbers II and XIX) follow new paths, untried in Frescobaldi’s oeuvre. A seemingly improvisatory opening section is followed by several fugues, whose At the time of Froberger’s second Italian journey, Girolamo Frescobaldi had already themes subtly relate to each other. been dead for five years. However, this time, Froberger found two outstanding men- tors in Giacomo Carissimi and the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Kircher had invented The study of Italian music must have occupied the court organist long after his several automatic musical composition “machines,” which had made him famous research trips to Italy. Of the three toccatas on this recording, only the D minor throughout Europe, and had made Froberger’s employer especially interested in finding out as much as possible about these puzzling little musical composition 4 Sebastian Klotz: „Kombinatorik und die Verbindungskünste der Zeichen in der Musik zwischen 1630 und 1780“, p. 29ff. 5 cf. Claudio Annibaldi: „La macchina di cinque stili: nuovi documenti sul secondo soggiorno romano di 3 Quotations from: Girolamo Frescobaldi: „AL LETTORE“ to the „Primo libro di Toccate“, Rom 1617 Johann Jakob Froberger“, in: “La musica a Roma attraverso le fonte d’archivio”, Lucca 1994, p. 402 and 1637 6 7 Toccata (number II) originated in the context of an excursion to Italy. He wrote lamentation over the dead. The device of the “momento mori” as used by baroque the E minor Toccata (number XI) seven years later, and Toccata number XIX is poets, had obviously gained a foothold in the musical rhetoric of the seventeenth extant only in a posthumous copy by Gottlieb Muffat. The four-part Ricercar in D century. Given that until 1648, Froberger’s paths must have intersected again minor (VII) reflects on the musical experiences of a journey almost a decade earlier and again with various battlegrounds and areas afflicted by the Thirty Years’ War, as well. Even though Froberger wrote the piece roughly 15 years after his first trip his interest in the compositional use of “Vanitas” symbols and puzzling spiritual to Rome, its construction still closely follows examples either from Frescobaldi’s cryptograms seems specially understandable. Fiori Musicali (1635) or the newly expanded edition of the Primo Libro di Toccate. Both arpeggiated chords in dimished or augmented “duriusculus” intervals, as There was apparently little to hold Froberger in Vienna after his second trip well as suggestive musical rhetorical devices or scales with symbolic character play to Rome. The thirty-one-year-old was already on the road again in the late au- a large part in Froberger’s musical vocabulary. The “fall down the stairs” in the tumn of 1649. However, this time Froberger’s journey crisscrossed Europe so Tombeau Blancheroche is only one example of this. In addition, many performers completely that music historians have only a few meager, incoherent clues with have found that the number thirteen is significant in Froberger’s works, either in which to reconstruct his route over the next four years: In Dresden, he engaged numbers of measures or thematically important notes. There are two possibilities in a musical contest with the incumbent court organist Matthias Weckmann, for this numerological approach: according to the numerology of St. Augustine, after which his trail can only be followed sporadically in the northern Rhein- which the composer very probably knew, the number thirteen embodies attributes land and the Netherlands. Only in 1652 did he temporarily settle down in such as “sickness,” “transience,” and “sin.”6 However, in the numerology of the Paris, staying for the unusually long period of a half a year.