Biography
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, the cosmopolitan composer and harpsichordist Johann Jacob Froberger spent the greater part of his career at the Viennese court while journeying extensively through Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands. In his keyboard works he absorbed the contrasting idioms of his European peers and fused them into a singular, musically compelling idiom.
From 1634 to 1645 he served the Viennese Hofkapelle; during this time the Italophile Emperor Ferdinand III awarded him a stipend that enabled him to complete his training under Girolamo Frescobaldi in Rome, where Froberger remained from late 1637 until 1641. Before 1649 he undertook a second Italian journey that took him also to Florence and Mantua. Between 1649 and 1653 he traveled still more widely, visiting Paris—where he encountered Chambonnières and Louis Couperin—the Spanish Netherlands, and England. After returning to Vienna as principal organist to the Imperial court from 1653 to 1658, he withdrew to the estate of Princess Sybilla of Württemburg-Montbeliard and died suddenly during a Vespers service in 1667.
Almost all of his music, written exclusively for keyboard, appeared only after his death, beginning in the final decade of the seventeenth century, precisely when a distinctively German High Baroque artistic identity was taking shape. Consequently his personal synthesis—Italian and French genres and techniques interwoven with characteristically German contrapuntal rigor—was promptly recognized as a cornerstone of that emerging national style. In his own autograph manuscripts the various genres are kept separate and presented according to their respective notational conventions: ricercars, fantasias, and other polyphonic pieces appear in open score to emphasize voice independence, whereas the Italianate toccatas are written on the customary Italian pair of staves (one of six lines above one of seven) that clearly separate the two hands. These toccatas reflect the manner of his teacher Frescobaldi as well as that of Merulo, yet their division into contrasting rhapsodic and fugal sections follows more closely the practice of Michelangelo Rossi.
The other Italian genre Froberger cultivated was the canzona, or capriccio. His harpsichord suites, first printed in the 1690s, fostered the erroneous belief that he had devised the formal template that would dominate eighteenth-century keyboard music: a sequence of binary dance movements in a single key ordered Allemande–Courante–Sarabande–Gigue. Although this view has been corrected by the evidence of his manuscripts, which display consistent yet varying arrangements, Froberger did unite French dance types into key-centered suites and, above all in the allemandes, infused the dance framework with an improvisatory Italian character. The resulting textures are richly voiced and derive from lute practice, a manner the French termed style brisé. A further innovation of his own was to replace the opening dance with a compact, affective character piece bearing a descriptive title, often a lament for a deceased court figure.
From 1634 to 1645 he served the Viennese Hofkapelle; during this time the Italophile Emperor Ferdinand III awarded him a stipend that enabled him to complete his training under Girolamo Frescobaldi in Rome, where Froberger remained from late 1637 until 1641. Before 1649 he undertook a second Italian journey that took him also to Florence and Mantua. Between 1649 and 1653 he traveled still more widely, visiting Paris—where he encountered Chambonnières and Louis Couperin—the Spanish Netherlands, and England. After returning to Vienna as principal organist to the Imperial court from 1653 to 1658, he withdrew to the estate of Princess Sybilla of Württemburg-Montbeliard and died suddenly during a Vespers service in 1667.
Almost all of his music, written exclusively for keyboard, appeared only after his death, beginning in the final decade of the seventeenth century, precisely when a distinctively German High Baroque artistic identity was taking shape. Consequently his personal synthesis—Italian and French genres and techniques interwoven with characteristically German contrapuntal rigor—was promptly recognized as a cornerstone of that emerging national style. In his own autograph manuscripts the various genres are kept separate and presented according to their respective notational conventions: ricercars, fantasias, and other polyphonic pieces appear in open score to emphasize voice independence, whereas the Italianate toccatas are written on the customary Italian pair of staves (one of six lines above one of seven) that clearly separate the two hands. These toccatas reflect the manner of his teacher Frescobaldi as well as that of Merulo, yet their division into contrasting rhapsodic and fugal sections follows more closely the practice of Michelangelo Rossi.
The other Italian genre Froberger cultivated was the canzona, or capriccio. His harpsichord suites, first printed in the 1690s, fostered the erroneous belief that he had devised the formal template that would dominate eighteenth-century keyboard music: a sequence of binary dance movements in a single key ordered Allemande–Courante–Sarabande–Gigue. Although this view has been corrected by the evidence of his manuscripts, which display consistent yet varying arrangements, Froberger did unite French dance types into key-centered suites and, above all in the allemandes, infused the dance framework with an improvisatory Italian character. The resulting textures are richly voiced and derive from lute practice, a manner the French termed style brisé. A further innovation of his own was to replace the opening dance with a compact, affective character piece bearing a descriptive title, often a lament for a deceased court figure.