General Biography on Froberger

The earliest composer presented in this program is Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-67). Froberger served as court musician and, apparently, as an ambassador of sorts in Vienna. His significance for the history of keyboard music can hardly be emphasized enough, and in recent years Froberger’s music has figured more substantially on recital programs. He studied with the famous Frescobaldi in Rome and was a pioneer in codifying a cosmopolitan, pan-European style of composition, suggested by his far-reaching travels to England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Like Louis Couperin, whom he met in Paris, Froberger penned a memorial “tombeau” on the tragic and accidental death of a lutenist named Blancrocher.
Couperin worked in Paris for most of his short career, during which he met and befriended a brilliant traveling musician by the name of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-67). Born in Stuttgart and trained at first by accomplished father, himself a composer, Froberger absorbed centuries of vocal music by perusing his father’s library. career centered on Vienna. But it would be the Wanderjahre (1649-53) that transformed Froberger into the living embodiment of the “national styles reunited.” In this grand tour he visited Rome and Florence, Dresden and Cologne, the Netherlands and Belgium, London and Paris—meeting composers, studying their works, and possibly gathering a bit of clandestine information for his Habsburg employers back in Vienna. Froberger came of age during rapid developments in secular, instrumental composition. He helped define the Baroque keyboard suite as a collection of core movements unified by key: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue.

(c) Jason Stell