Among the leading musical figures spanning the close of the Renaissance and the dawn of the Baroque, Girolamo Frescobaldi produced keyboard compositions that count among the era’s most consequential. His output in sacred and secular vocal genres, while generally viewed as secondary, nevertheless holds considerable weight. Much of his sophisticated command of counterpoint together with his daring harmonic language appears to stem from studies with Luzzascho Luzzaschi. Issued in 1608, the twelve Fantasie display intricately fashioned polyphony alongside a somewhat dry, cerebral quality. Both volumes of Toccate, dated 1615 and 1627 respectively, introduced fresh approaches, the second exhibiting still more elaborate formal designs.
Ferrara was the birthplace of Frescobaldi, most likely in the middle of September 1583. His initial instruction probably came from his father, who is thought to have served as an organist. Displaying remarkable early ability at the keyboard, the youth entered the tutelage of Luzzasco Luzzaschi, the ducal organist and a composer of note. By age fourteen he had secured the post of organist at Ferrara’s Academia della Morte. Ambitious and already widely recognized for his gifts, he journeyed to Rome around 1599. Details of his first years in the city remain sparse. Between January and June 1607 he held the organist position at Santa Maria in Trastevere; an opportunity extended by his patron and friend Guido Bentivoglio, Archbishop of Rhodes, apparently prompted his departure. On 11 June 1607 Bentivoglio left Rome for Flanders, taking Frescobaldi along in his retinue for musical duties whose precise nature is unclear. The composer’s debut publications appeared the following year: a set of madrigals together with three canzones, all included in Alessandro Raverji’s anthology Canzoni.
Frescobaldi’s stay in Brussels lasted under a year. He returned to Rome and, through the influence of the Bentivoglio family, obtained the organistship at the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter’s. Although the salary attached to that post was modest, additional income soon arrived from service to Enzo Bentivoglio, the Ferrarese ambassador, whose concertino required the young musician to instruct its members. Around 1612 Cardinal Aldobrandini engaged Frescobaldi at nearly double the St. Peter’s rate. On 18 February 1613 he married Orsola del Pino, already the mother of his son and then expecting another child. Publication in 1615 of ten ricercars and five canzones for keyboard signaled his rising stature among Italian musicians. The ensuing thirteen years proved his most fertile, yielding further volumes of ricercars, canzones, and related pieces. The twelve Capriccios for keyboard appeared in 1624; volume two of the Toccatas followed three years later.
On 28 November 1628 Frescobaldi received leave from St. Peter’s and moved to Florence as court organist. Little documentation survives of his six-year residence there, during which he issued two volumes of arias and other vocal pieces under the title Arie musicali. He resumed his St. Peter’s duties in April 1634. Later that year the keyboard collection Canzoni da sonare was published. Additional important editions followed, among them the 1637 reissue, in two volumes, of the earlier Toccate. That same year he began instructing Johann Jacob Froberger, who remained his pupil until 1641. Frescobaldi died on 1 March 1643.
