LONDON,
STERE() SOL 60038 J. J. FROBERGER - CLAVICHORD MUSIC THURSTON DART
EDITIONS DE
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THURSTON DART
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J. J. FROBERGER
CLAVICHORD MUSIC
played by
THURSTON DART
SIDE ONE
CLAVICHORD BY THOMAS GOFF
Tombeau de M. Blancheroche — Suite X (A minor) — Lamentation for Ferdinand IV
Capriccio — Suite XIV (G minor)— Allemande from Suite XX
SIDE TWO
Ricercar— Lamentation for Ferdinand III — Suite XIX (C minor)
Fantasia — Suite III (G major)— Allemande from Suite XXX — Suite VII (E minor)
Born at Stuttgart on 19 May 1616, Froberger was
appointed court organist at Vienna in his twenty-
first year. Shortly afterwards his patron, the music-
loving emperor Ferdinand III, sent him to study
with Frescobaldi in Rome, where he stayed for
about three years. Upon his return to Vienna in
1641 he resumed his court appointment, but late
in 1645 he seems to have been granted leave of
absence, and he spent the next eight years travel-
ling extensively. During this period he visited
France, the Low Countries, and Germany, making
a great impression by the skill of his playing and
the beauty of his compositions. From 1 April
1653 until 30 June 1657 he was court organist in
Vienna once again; the last ten years of his life
were spent in Austria, England and France, where
he died (in a house at Héricourt belonging to the
dowager duchess of Wiirttemburg) on 7 May 1667.
Famous throughout all Europe not only during
his lifetime but for many decades after his death,
Froberger was the Dowland of the keyboard. Like
Dowland he seems to have had an introspective
melancholy turn of mind, but he far surpassed the
lutenist in contrapuntal skill and in the powerful
originality of his musical idiom. He learned much
from Frescobaldi, perhaps also from the contem-
porary French school of harpsichordists led by
Chambonniéres and Louis Couperin. In his turn
he exercised great influence on more than a
generation of composers, from d’Anglebert to
Mattheson and Bach. His musicis poetic, personal,
expressive and rewarding to play, yet it is little
known; I hope this disc may encourage many
music-lovers to explore it for themselves.
The autograph copies of his own works preserved
inthe National Library, Vienna, give no indication
whatsoever of the instruments he had in mind for
the performance of his music. The Amsterdam edi-
tions (1697-98) of his keyboard suites describe
them simply as ‘Suittes de clavessin’; as a result
they have usually been discussed as though they
form part of the development of harpsichord music.
But the Mainz editions of 1693-96, from which the
Amsterdam editions appear to have been derived,
define his music as ‘for lovers of harpsichords,
organs, clavichords and spinets’. Any experienced
player of 17th-century music and 17th-century
keyboard instruments will soon satisfy himself
that Froberger’s Suites — perhaps also some of his
more contrapuntal pieces — were in the first
instance composed forthe clavichord, an instrument
whose special features gave rise during the 17th
century to a distinctive style of composition.
For the present disc I have selected a little
anthology of his clavichord pieces, chosen
primarily for their beauty, but also to show various
aspects of Froberger’s characteristic style. He
was apparently the creator of what soon became
known as the ‘French Suite’, consisting of an
Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue
(sometimes expanded by ‘Doubles’). The next
generations of German composers expanded the
form still further by the addition of other dance
movements between the Sarabande and the Gigue;
ona companion disc (OL 50208/SOL 60039) I have
recorded Bach’s six French suites of this kind on
the clavichord, since Iam convinced that this isthe
instrument for which they were composed. Many
stylistic elements suggest to me that Bach must
have known of Froberger’s suites when he sat
down to compose his own set. The present disc
also includes some of Froberger’s fugal pieces;
these seem to have much in common with Bach’s
own clavichord fugues, especially those included
in Book I of the ‘48’. The texts heard on the disc
are based on the DTO versions, which I have
collated with Cambridge copies of the Amsterdam
and Mainz editions, and corrected when the
readings seemed incomplete or faulty.
SIDE ONE — Tombeau de M. Blancheroche
(1652:DTO, X, 2, p.114) One of four elegies on
the accidental death of the French lutenist
Blancrocher, who was a close friend of Froberger
and died in his arms; the others were composed by
Louis Couperin, Denis Gaultier and Du Fault.
According to the MS, the piece is to be played
‘very slowly and freely, without keeping strict
time’.
Suite X, in A minor (DTO, VI, 2, p.27) A
typical and very eloquent example of the four
movement French suite.
Lamentation for Ferdinand IV (1654: DT6O, VI,
2, p.32) In memory of the infant son of Froberger’s
patron, the emperor Ferdinand III; the child was
elected ‘King of the Romans’ in 1653, but died the
following year.
Capriccio no. VI (DTO, IV, 1, p.88) An essay in
fugue, on a chromatic subject, owing much to the
style of Frescobaldi.
Suite XIV, in G minor (DTO, VI, 2, p.38) In one
source the Allemande has the subtitle ‘Lamentation
on what was stolen from me: to be treated freely,
and better than I was treated by the soldiers’. A
footnote tells how Froberger, journeying from
Brussels to Louvain, fell into the hands of a roving
band of soldiers who robbed him, beat him up and
left him for dead; ‘this piece was composed to
comfort his bruised spirits’. The Gigue is a
typical example of the jerky rhythms so often used
in17th-century gigues, and retained by Bach in the
Gigue to the first of his French suites.
Allemande from Suite XX (ibid., p.57) In the
Yale MS 21.H.59, the basis of the present text,
this is headed ‘Meditation on my future death: to
be played slowly and freely.’ Contemporary
references speak of it as Froberger’s ‘Memento
LOISEAU-LYRE
Mori’. No other 17th-century composer known to me
ever attempted so intimate an expression of
personal feeling.
SIDE TWO — Ricercar no. VI, in C sharp minor
(DTO, IV, 1, p.112) The three sections are based
on differing aspects of the same theme; the choice
of key cannot, I think, be paralleled at this early
date.
Lamentation for Ferdinand III (1657: DTO, X, 2,
p.116) Another of Froberger’s rhapsodic Alle-
mandes, unusual in that it consists of three
strains instead of the customary two. Perhaps this
is a conscious reminiscence of another style of
musical epitaph, the named pavan.
Suite XIX, in C minor (DTO, VI, 2, p.54) Very
similar in style to some of Buxtehude’s clavichord
suites, this contains a particularly beautiful
Sarabande.
Fantasia no. II (DTO; IV, 1, p.38) Based on
two contrasting versions of a single theme, in
the severe Phrygian mode (considered martial and
warlike by 17th-century theorists).
Suite III, in G major (DTO, VI, 2, p.6) The
Gigue is in the newer italianate style preferred by
most later composers, Bach among them. 2
Allemande from Suite XXX (1662: DTO. X, 2,
p.110) Subtitled ‘Plaint composed in London to
banish melancholy: to beplayed slowly and freely’.
A footnote tells how Froberger was robbed while
travelling from Paris to London, arriving w:thout a
penny in his pocket. According to Mattheson, this
took place in 1662; Christopher Gibbons, then
organist of Westminster Abbey and notorious
drunkard, offered Froberger the job of blowing the
organ-bellows during a recital he was giving before
the English court, upon the occasion of Charles
IIl’s marriage. Falling into one of his fits of
abstraction, Froberger forgot what he was doing,
so that the organ groaned into silence; under-
standably upset, Gibbons kicked him out of doors,
‘whereupon Froberger composed this piece’.
Suite VII, in E minor (DTO, VI, 2, p.18) Another
fine example of Froberger’s nervous, tense, but
expressive, style. A second version of the Gigue
exists, in which the rhythms are transformed into
the more normal triple time throughout.
One last point: the clavichord is an extremely
soft instrument, softer even than the guitar or lute,
and its sound is not at all easy to re-create
faithfully on a record — not least because the
microphones have to be very close to the player’s
hands, and can therefore pick up the percussion of
finger on key. The music will sound most like a
clavichord if the volume control is set fairly low,
with no cutting of top frequences.
THURSTON DART
Printed in England by Robert Stace.
DITIONS DE
J. J. FROBERGER: CLAVICHORD MU
Band 1—Tombeau de M. Blanct
Band 2- ite X bealtel
ISIN A
SOL 60038
J. J. FROBERGER: CLAVICHORD MUSIC
Band 1—Ricercar
Band 2—Lamentation for Fetdinand III
Band 3—Suite XIX (C minor)
Band 4—Fantasia
Band 5—Su Ill (G major)
Band 6—Allemande from Suite XXX
Band 7—Suite VII (E minor)
THURSTON DART
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