To celebrate Froberger’s 400th birthday in 2016, we are presenting an attractive, handy volume containing four works from his pen. A toccata, a fantasia, and a canzona invite us on a musical journey of discovery into his early-Baroque musical world. The volume concludes with his well-known variations “auff die Mayerin”, a work that has enabled Froberger’s music to succeed in enthusing pianists as well as harpsichordists of our time. Edited by Froberger expert Peter Wollny, this Henle edition will leave no wishes unfulfilled!
Content/Details
- Selected Works for Keyboard
- Toccata FbWV 103
- Fantasia FbWV 206
- Canzon FbWV 305
- Variation Cycle "auff die Mayerin" FbWV 606
Audio/video
Preface
In the history of music for keyboard instruments, and particularly in the development of the genres of suite and toccata, the imperial court organist Johann Jakob Froberger (1616 – 67) is among the outstanding figures of his time. He was born in Stuttgart in 1616, and was trained at the Viennese court and by Girolamo Frescobaldi in Rome. His playing and his compositions … more
About the composer
Johann Jakob Froberger
Along with Frescobaldi, he is regarded as the most important composer for the development of music for keyboard instruments. He studied with Frescobaldi and cultivated further the genres of keyboard music he inherited from him: toccatas, fantasias, canzonas, ricercari, capriccios, partitas. He was not the inventor of the keyboard suite (as was long assumed); rather, his partitas looked to French and English lute music for their models. His music influenced his contemporaries and subsequent generations, including Louis Couperin, Weckmann, Kerll, Buxtehude, Johann Krieger, Pachelbel, Johann Kuhnau; his music was widely distributed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During his lifetime, only two of his compositions were published; others survive in copies, and much is lost. Very little survives of his vocal works and his compositions for instrumental ensembles.
| 1616 | Born in Stuttgart on May 28, the son of a singer and Kapellmeister. |
| 1637–18 | Organist at the Viennese court (with some breaks in service). After 1641, his position there – which is to say, his remuneration – improves dramatically. |
| 1637–41 | Stay in Rome to study with Frescobaldi, made possible by Emperor Ferdinand III. |
| 1650 | Publication of the “Fantasia sopra Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La” in C major (FbWV 201) in Kircher’s “Musurgia universalis.” |
| 1650/52 | In the entourage of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, youngest brother of Ferdinand III. |
| around 1648/49 | Journey to Italy. |
| 1649/50–53 | (Concert) tour through Central and Western Europe, including to the court in Dresden, Brussels (belated wedding celebration for King Philip IV of Spain), the Spanish and United Netherlands, Paris (large-scale concerts attended by the royal family, contact with Louis Couperin), London. |
| 1660 | Publication of the five-voice Fugue in D minor (FbWV 407a). |
| 1667 | Death at Château d’Héricourt near Montbéliard on May 16 or 17. |
Man kann es deshalb nur begrüßen, wenn ein renommierter Verlag wie Henle mit einer kleinen aber feinen Werkauswahl an diesen frühen Meister der Claviermusik erinnert und zur Auseinandersetzung mit ihm anzuregen sucht. (...) Peter Wollny, ein ausgesprochener Kenner der Materie, hat alle Werke in den modernen Klaviersatz übertragen, der hier in bester Druck-Qualität präsentiert wird und zum Spielen einlädt.
The volume provides a very useful introduction to the different styles employed by Froberger for someone approaching his music for the first time. It is presented in clear printing.