Johann Jakob Froberger

Baptized on 19 May 1616 in Stuttgart, Johann Jakob Froberger witnesses baroque in Germany (broadly) a couple generations after its emergence in Italy about 1600, he an important link from its prominence in Italy toward its future dominance in Germany. Froberger was Catholic but wrote secular works, most for keyboard: harpsichord or organ. He was also a singer but keyboard was his main occupation. Works for which he is best-known and most influential to the baroque are his numerous dance suites for keyboard(s) in which he originated the standard order of an allemande first, courante second, sarabande third and gigue fourth. Froberger's suites are called 'Suites' in the DTO cataloguing system of Guido Adler. Siegbert Rampe's more recent FbWV follows Adler with the exception of suites designated as 'Partitas'. Adler's DTO is from from 'Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich' ('Monuments of Fine Austrian Music') begun in 1894 and published in 1897. Rampe's FbWV numbers are from 'Froberger Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke' ('Froberger New Edition of the Complete Works') published by Barenreiter in 1993.

It is now reaching about two thousand years since classical Greece, the latter responsible for the Greek monody out of which baroque surfaced. Minus scattered accounts of Christian composing the history of medieval music begins in the Middle East with such as Romanos the Melodist and Yared a thousand years before Froberger to eventually wind its way up through the Roman Church toward the building of Notre Dame in France circa 1200 (yet in construction). Associated with the University of Paris, the intentional study of music at Notre Dame by Leonin and Perotin quickly made of composing a sophisticated craft. Troubadours, meanwhile, were traveling about from one estate to the next throughout France. Seeking patronage for secular music from royal courts led to the Burgundian school followed by the Franco-Flemish school in the Low Countries of which the Renaissance burgeoned in combination with humanism, the latter a scholastic revival of matters classical, that is, largely of ancient Greece. As the Renaissance arrived to its greatest muscle in the Roman and Venetian schools Germany experienced its own cultural Renaissance despite the mindset of Luther's Reformation as of 1517 which spread to England (Henry VIII) and France (John Calvin). Though far away Poland had had its Renaissance as well, yet greater distance yet left Russia largely an observer of matters European. At the same time that the completion of the dome at St. Peter's capped the high Renaissance in 1590 music had become an extremely conservative pursuit due to the rise of pious Protestantism and a Counter-reformation the same. A resurgence of humanist concern — something waning since the glory days of the Renaissance earlier that century upon the arrival of conservative Protestantism, and even as St. Peter's dome was ultimately of pagan (Roman) design — arrived to an even more conservative Greek monody, the old method of polyphonic counterpoint falling away (far from completely) as music started all over again from the raw crude of one voice with basso continuo (figured bass).

As the term implies, the Renaissance was a bloom of many parts both sacred and secular. Froberger's Europe was Roman Catholic from Spain to the West, Venice to the East and the Holy Roman Empire to the North. It was Protestant-embattled (contrapuntal, say) in Germany (Lutheran), England (Anglican) and France (Calvinist). Catholics and Protestants, however, weren't the only with an interest in temporal power. Nigh anywhere there was an aristocrat or royal court there was trouble as well, all from counts to dukes to emperors preferring to wield a relatively absolute power to one of no dominion at all. Among the endless omnipresent arguments between monarchical powers in Europe was the Thirty Years War in which matters Catholic versus Protestant were interwoven. Among the deadliest of disagreements in European history, the Thirty Years War began on 23 May 1618 four days after Froberger's second birthday. Stuttgart, where he was born, was situated midway between two of that war's main belligerents, France and Bavaria, that is, France and its allies, principally Dutch and Swedish, versus the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire that included, especially, Bavaria and Spain, and was allied, of course, with the Roman papacy. Stuttgart was located in present day Baden-Württemberg (belonging to Habsburg Spain) with France its western border and Bavaria (belonging to Habsburg Austria) its eastern. From three to more than eleven million were killed during the three decades of that struggle. The population in Germany was reduced by 25 to 40 percent. As the Thirty Years War didn't cease until 25 May of 1648 Froberger would have ineluctably experienced, been witness to and begun composing in the midst of the countless miseries of that contest.

During the more peaceful year of Froberger's birth in 1616 his father was kapellmeister to the Württemberg court and had a library which included above a hundred books of music. To own a book at all in Froberger's time in Germany was to have money, a witness of status since the overwhelming majority of the population could nether read nor write. Gutenberg had invented the printing press about 1440 but a book was yet an expensive thing to buy, something beyond the means of the common Joe more likely have no books at all. Despite the printing press, literacy in Germany and the rest of the continent, anyway, was far behind that of England at the time, particularly upon the reign of Elizabeth I. Though grand editions of this or that in Latin were priced for institutions like cathedrals, printing had made for an explosion of inexpensive sheet music due largely to the Reformation, hymns now getting published in languages which people spoke. An awakening of interest in educating the common public had also been a humanist concern. Ancient Greece was an educated Greece in which any wandering vagrant could join the conversation. All European nobility could read and write, some in multiple languages, which number shrank as status moved down to the gravedigger. Around 1640 when Froberger was 24 years old perhaps 30% of an urban population in Germany could read and write, but which other demographics as a whole yield a literacy rate of only 5% overall, or around Poland's rate of 10%. Overall literacy in England meanwhile was probably well above 20% followed by France. Literacy tended to grow along Protestant paths, not so popular in Catholic Italy or Spain.

Though probably safe to say that Froberger didn't have to learn how to drive a wagon as a child, what with thirty years worth of corpses to cart around, his education as a youth is otherwise speculative. Little is certain concerning Froberger until 1637, when he and his brother, Isaac, sold their father's library upon the latter's death of plague which took their mother and a sister as well. A more positive event arrived that year upon obtaining employment as an organist in Vienna. It is thought that Froberger's now lost 'Primo Libro' appeared sometime in 1637.

Granted a stipend to study under Frescobaldi in Rome, Froberger spent the next three years in Italy. He returned to Vienna in 1641 to work as an organist and chamber musician before returning to Italy in 1645 to study music under the Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher, in Rome. Upon his return to Vienna in 1649 he presented Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III, with his completed 'Libro Secundo', a volume of 24 pieces divided into four chapters containing six each of toccatas, suites, fantasias and canzonas. But the death of Empress Maria Leopoldine on 8 August of 1649, she a brief wife of Ferdinand's at age seventeen, left a climate on things such that Froberger left Vienna to spend the next few years traveling Europe from Germany to the Low Countries to Paris to London. He may have been employed, as well, by Ferdinand III as a diplomat or spy. In the meantime Kircher published Froberger's 'Hexachord Fantasia' in his 'Musurgia Universalis' of 1650, one of only two works by Froberger to see print in his lifetime. Froberger prevented the publishing of his compositions to keep hand-written manuscripts exclusive to his employers.

'Toccata in D minor'   DTO Toccata No.2   FbWV No.102   J.J. Froberger

From 'Libro Secundo'   MS A-Wn Mus.Hs.18706   1649

Organ: Jim Kosnik

'Toccata in G major'   DTO Toccata No.3   FbWV No.103   J.J. Froberger

From 'Libro Secundo'   MS A-Wn Mus.Hs.18706   1649

Harpsichord: Marius Bartoccini

'Hexachord Fantasia'   DTO Fantasia No.1   FbWV No.201   J.J. Froberger

Proper title: 'Fantasia Sopra Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La in C major'

From 'Libro Secundo'   MS A-Wn Mus.Hs.18706   1649

Pub in Athanasius Kircher's 'Musurgia Universalis' of 1650

Harpsichord: David Bolton

'Fantasia in A minor'   DTO Fantasia No.2   FbWV No.202   J.J. Froberger

From 'Libro Secundo'   MS A-Wn Mus.Hs.18706   1649

Harpsichord: Kenneth Yeung

Froberger authored the lamentation, 'Plainte faite à Londres pour passer la Mélancholie' in London in 1651. He had been accosted by pirates while crossing the Channel from Calais to England, by highwaymen on his way to London. 'Plainte faite à Londres' is No.1 of 4 of 'Partita in A minor' (DTÖ Suite No. 30) followed by a courante, a sarande and a gigue. He was employed in England as an organist by King Charles II, but soon fired. Then he was robbed by the Lotharingian troops of Duke Charles IV of Lorraine on his way back to Paris where he probably composed 'Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blanceroche' in 1652. Froberger likely became acquainted with composer, Louis Couperin, in 1652 before returning to Vienna the next year.

'Plainte faite à Londres pour passer la Mélancholie'   Lament   J.J. Froberger

'Lament made in London to pass away melancholy'

No.1 of 4 from 'Partita in A minor'   DTO Suite No.30   FbWV Partita No.630  comp c 1651

MS: 1-T-595 of c 1675 ('Bulyowsky Manuscript' aka 'Strasbourg Manuscript')

Clavicembalo: Stefano Lorenzetti

'Tombeau in C minor'   FbWV 632   J.J. Froberger

'Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blanceroche'   Comp 1652

Clavichord: Joan Benson

Like 'Primo Libro', Froberger's 'Libro Terzo' is lost. But his 'Libro Quarto' of 1656 completed in Vienna yet exists. Like 'Libro Secundo', 'Quatro' contains 24 pieces divided into four chapters, this time containing six each of toccatas, suites, ricercars and capriccios.

'Capriccio in G major'   DTO Capriccio No.7   FbWV 507   J.J. Froberger

From 'Libro Quarto'   MS A-Wn Mus.Hs.18707   1656

Organ: Joseph Kelemen   2000

Froberger transitioned to Leopold I upon Ferdinand's death in 1657. He that year dedicated 'Libro di capricci e ricercate' to Leopold. Political complexity at Leopold's court, however, found Froberger released from service in 1657. In 1660 François Roberday published 'Fugues et Caprices' in Paris in which his 'Fugue 5' was a version of Froberger's Ricercar 1, FbWV 401, of 1658. (G.B. Sharp has that as Ricercar 7 [refs below].) That altered version was the second and last of Froberger's compositions to see print during his lifetime.

Though known to have made a brief trip to Mainz in 1665, Froberger spent the majority of his last ten years in Château d’Héricourt in the employ of the dowager Duchess of Montbéliard. Thus far we've heard fantasias, toccatas, a lament, a tombeau and a caprichio. Froberger's 'Allemande in F minor' is possibly among his last compositions (not known). This is from a lost autograph titled 'Livre Primiere' filled with twenty pieces including fantasies, caprices, dance suites and a couple laments which eventually surfaced up at a Sotheby's auction in 2006.

'Allemande in F minor'   DTO Suite No.18   FbWV Partita 618   J.J. Froberger

MS: 'Livre Primiere'   Lost autograph emerging at Sotheby's in London 2006

Harpsichord: John Moraitis

We wrap this presentation of Froberger with MS 1-T-595 cited above, known as the Bulyowsky or Strasbourg Manuscript arriving posthumously in 1675 by the hand of Mihály Bulyovszky containing 22 pieces by various composers, 21 of which are Suites, Nos.1-14 by Froberger. I'll not attempt to date those beyond his 'Partita in A Minor' in the MS 1-T-595 (above) which had been composed circa 1651. They are certainly earlier than his possibly last compositions in 'Livre Primiere' above, but they present a square way to depart.

'Bulyowsky Manuscript' aka 'Strasbourg Manuscript'   J.J. Froberger

MS 1-T-595 by Mihály Bulyovszky c 1675 (posthumous)

Harpsichord: Ludger Rémy

 Album: 'The Strasbourg Manuscript'   cpo 999 750-2 Germany 2000

Froberger also composed choral works, two of his motets yet extant: 'Alleluia! Absorpta es mors' and 'Apparuerunt apostolis' [CPDL]. He died of apoplexy in Héricourt on 7 May 1667.