Frescobaldi: ''The Miracle of the Epoch''
Christine Tolstoy
The MHS Review Vol. 3, No. 4 • April 16, 1979
Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) has long been considered the very embodiment of the magnificence and drama of the Italian early Baroque. A dazzling performer and a virtuosic composer. Frescobaldi was known to his Baroque contemporaries as "il mostro de' suoi , tempo" ("the miracle of his epoch"). "stupore del tasto " ("a marvel of the keyboard"). and "mostro degli organis· ti" ("a prodigy among organists"). Contemporary critics credited him with being the inventor of a multitude of styles of playing (" inventor di tanti stili di suonare"), and said flatly that only those performers who adopted the manner of Frescobaldi could hope to find favor with the audiences of the day ("oggi chi non suona seconda ii suo stile, non e stimato"). After the rediscovery of Frescobaldi's music in the late nineteenth century. modern musicologists too were so mesmerized by the boldness and brilliance of his style that for many years they were content to accept the obviously questionable theory that he had invented the keyboard idiom of the Italian early Baroque virtually by himself.
Despite the stirring beauty of Frescobaldi 's music ,and his crucial position as a pioneer in the development of early Italian keyboard music. very little is known of his life. He was born in Ferrara, but the social status of his family is uncertain: some biographers have identified his father as a minor organist. others prefer to think that he was an impoverished member of the nobility. We do know that Frescobaldi's prodigious musical talent flowered at an early age, that he was elected a member of the prestigious Congregazione ed Accademia di Santa Cecilia (founded by Palestrina) at the age of 21. and by the age of 25 had secured a lifetime appointment as organist of St. Peter's in Rome. the principal church of Catholic Christendom. From church and city archives we learn that he married, and fathered five children. From the title pages and dedications of his published works it can be deduced that he was a pupil of theultra-progressive composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi. that he journeyed to Flanders as a young man, and that later in life he spent five years in Florence. apparently in an attempt to better his financial position. Almost everything else is speculative.
Frescobaldi's evident musical genius has led biographers to assume that he may have known composers such as Sweelinck. Philips, and Anerio, and have won continuing support from important patrons such as Pope Paul V. the Gonzagas of Mantua, and the Medici of Florence. but hard evidence is scarce. Only a few random bits of touching detail survive: we do know that Frescobaldi liked to demonstrate his contrapuntal prowess by singing an additional improvised cantus firmus while playing an already intricate contrapuntal composition on the organ. and that during an entire lifetime of service as organist of St. Peter's he was granted no additional salary beyond the original meager sum of six scudi a month. Nor have modern scholars done much to repay the debt which music owes to Frescobaldi: there is no complete works edition of his music and no adequate account of his life beyond a slim volume published in 1930.
Frescobaldi' s importance to the history of music, however. has been impossible to ignore. He published a book of madrigals, some strophic arias. and a selection of vocal sacred music. but his chief fame rests upon his eight published volumes of organ music, an oeuvre so impressive that for years scholars considered him an unnaturally isolated figure. a towering genius, the sole originator of an important segment of the early Baroque style. Recent investigation has shown that Frescobaldi's development was more normal: many of his innovations were inspired by the works of an active school of contemporary composers based in Naples.
An important musical center since the fifteenth century and the site of no less than four conservatories. Naples was famous in Frescobaldi's day as a hotbed of experimental chromaticism. It seems probable that Frescobaldi first came in contact with the works of the Neapolitan avant-garde through the offices of his teacher Luzzaschi. who in turn may have learned of them from his acquaintance Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a Neapolitan composer as famous for the scandalous double murder of his wife and her lover as for the wild chromaticism and overcharged modulations of his extravagantly passionate madrigals. It is almost undoubtedly from the Neapolitans. and particularly from Mayone and Trabaci, that Frescobaldi borrowed some of the most striking elements of his keyboard style, including advanced chromaticism, the use of dissonance. and specific contrapuntal devices. as well as such historically important musical forms as the variation-suite (ancestor of the Baroque suite). the linked toccata and ricercar (ancestor of the Baroque prelude and fugue). and the proto-typical Frescobaldian form, the monothematic variation canzona.
Frescobaldi was obviously an important synthetic thinker. but he was no theorist. Like Monteverdi, he left almost no explanation of his innovations, no defense of his radical views. There does exist, however, one short document in which he briefly states his musical creed. the preface to his 1615 collection of toccatas. Frescobaldi clearly
considered this preface important. for he later expanded it and had it reprinted, again and again: modern musicologists have also come to consider it one of the most important bits of evidence as to the proper performance practice for keyboard works of the Italian early Baroque.
It has often been said that Frescobaldi was the last of the great Italian organists ih the grand manner. His art did not die with him. however. Accounts and letters provide a gratifying picture of Frescobaldi as head of a large household of polyglot music students: among the famous composers he trained are Bernardo Pasquini. Bartholomeo Grassi. Michelangelo Rossi. Johannes Hecklauer. and Johann Jacob Froberger. The young generation of Italian organists abandoned Frescobaldi's hyper-Baroque manner. but his German pupils. perhaps thinking of the enormous German organs with multiple keyboards and extensive pedalboards which awaited them at home. took heed of his words. Johannes Hecklauer returned home to train Franz Tunder. the father-in-law of the legendary Dietrich Buxtehude. for the sake of whose concerts Johann Sebastian Bach walked the fifty miles from Arnstadt to Lubeck. Froberger. as the composer who reconciled the Italian style with the French and the manner of Frescobaldi with that of Sweelinck and thus laid the foundation for many generations of German keyboard music to come. earned an even more illustrious place in music history.
Sebastian Bach is known to have admired the music of both Buxtehude and Froberger. but the influence of Frescobaldi on Bach. even at a distance of almost a century. is more direct than might be supposed. When. after Bach's death. his first biographer. J.N. Forkel. wrote to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and asked for an account of the principal musical influences which had formed the style of the late Leipzig Kapellmeister, Carl Philipp Emanuel replied. "Besides Froberger. Kerl. and Pachelbel. he heard and studied the works of Frescobaldi." And there is no reason to question Philipp Emanuel's judgment. for there still exists a copy of Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali of 1635 which is signed with the name of its proud owner. "J.S. Bach. 1714."
Christie Tolstoy is a Ph.D candidate at CUNY. a harpsichordist. a teacher. and an editor of bel canto operas _______ _
Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) has long been considered the very embodiment of the magnificence and drama of the Italian early Baroque. A dazzling performer and a virtuosic composer. Frescobaldi was known to his Baroque contemporaries as "il mostro de' suoi , tempo" ("the miracle of his epoch"). "stupore del tasto " ("a marvel of the keyboard"). and "mostro degli organis· ti" ("a prodigy among organists"). Contemporary critics credited him with being the inventor of a multitude of styles of playing (" inventor di tanti stili di suonare"), and said flatly that only those performers who adopted the manner of Frescobaldi could hope to find favor with the audiences of the day ("oggi chi non suona seconda ii suo stile, non e stimato"). After the rediscovery of Frescobaldi's music in the late nineteenth century. modern musicologists too were so mesmerized by the boldness and brilliance of his style that for many years they were content to accept the obviously questionable theory that he had invented the keyboard idiom of the Italian early Baroque virtually by himself.
Despite the stirring beauty of Frescobaldi 's music ,and his crucial position as a pioneer in the development of early Italian keyboard music. very little is known of his life. He was born in Ferrara, but the social status of his family is uncertain: some biographers have identified his father as a minor organist. others prefer to think that he was an impoverished member of the nobility. We do know that Frescobaldi's prodigious musical talent flowered at an early age, that he was elected a member of the prestigious Congregazione ed Accademia di Santa Cecilia (founded by Palestrina) at the age of 21. and by the age of 25 had secured a lifetime appointment as organist of St. Peter's in Rome. the principal church of Catholic Christendom. From church and city archives we learn that he married, and fathered five children. From the title pages and dedications of his published works it can be deduced that he was a pupil of theultra-progressive composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi. that he journeyed to Flanders as a young man, and that later in life he spent five years in Florence. apparently in an attempt to better his financial position. Almost everything else is speculative.
Frescobaldi's evident musical genius has led biographers to assume that he may have known composers such as Sweelinck. Philips, and Anerio, and have won continuing support from important patrons such as Pope Paul V. the Gonzagas of Mantua, and the Medici of Florence. but hard evidence is scarce. Only a few random bits of touching detail survive: we do know that Frescobaldi liked to demonstrate his contrapuntal prowess by singing an additional improvised cantus firmus while playing an already intricate contrapuntal composition on the organ. and that during an entire lifetime of service as organist of St. Peter's he was granted no additional salary beyond the original meager sum of six scudi a month. Nor have modern scholars done much to repay the debt which music owes to Frescobaldi: there is no complete works edition of his music and no adequate account of his life beyond a slim volume published in 1930.
Frescobaldi' s importance to the history of music, however. has been impossible to ignore. He published a book of madrigals, some strophic arias. and a selection of vocal sacred music. but his chief fame rests upon his eight published volumes of organ music, an oeuvre so impressive that for years scholars considered him an unnaturally isolated figure. a towering genius, the sole originator of an important segment of the early Baroque style. Recent investigation has shown that Frescobaldi's development was more normal: many of his innovations were inspired by the works of an active school of contemporary composers based in Naples.
An important musical center since the fifteenth century and the site of no less than four conservatories. Naples was famous in Frescobaldi's day as a hotbed of experimental chromaticism. It seems probable that Frescobaldi first came in contact with the works of the Neapolitan avant-garde through the offices of his teacher Luzzaschi. who in turn may have learned of them from his acquaintance Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a Neapolitan composer as famous for the scandalous double murder of his wife and her lover as for the wild chromaticism and overcharged modulations of his extravagantly passionate madrigals. It is almost undoubtedly from the Neapolitans. and particularly from Mayone and Trabaci, that Frescobaldi borrowed some of the most striking elements of his keyboard style, including advanced chromaticism, the use of dissonance. and specific contrapuntal devices. as well as such historically important musical forms as the variation-suite (ancestor of the Baroque suite). the linked toccata and ricercar (ancestor of the Baroque prelude and fugue). and the proto-typical Frescobaldian form, the monothematic variation canzona.
Frescobaldi was obviously an important synthetic thinker. but he was no theorist. Like Monteverdi, he left almost no explanation of his innovations, no defense of his radical views. There does exist, however, one short document in which he briefly states his musical creed. the preface to his 1615 collection of toccatas. Frescobaldi clearly
considered this preface important. for he later expanded it and had it reprinted, again and again: modern musicologists have also come to consider it one of the most important bits of evidence as to the proper performance practice for keyboard works of the Italian early Baroque.
It has often been said that Frescobaldi was the last of the great Italian organists ih the grand manner. His art did not die with him. however. Accounts and letters provide a gratifying picture of Frescobaldi as head of a large household of polyglot music students: among the famous composers he trained are Bernardo Pasquini. Bartholomeo Grassi. Michelangelo Rossi. Johannes Hecklauer. and Johann Jacob Froberger. The young generation of Italian organists abandoned Frescobaldi's hyper-Baroque manner. but his German pupils. perhaps thinking of the enormous German organs with multiple keyboards and extensive pedalboards which awaited them at home. took heed of his words. Johannes Hecklauer returned home to train Franz Tunder. the father-in-law of the legendary Dietrich Buxtehude. for the sake of whose concerts Johann Sebastian Bach walked the fifty miles from Arnstadt to Lubeck. Froberger. as the composer who reconciled the Italian style with the French and the manner of Frescobaldi with that of Sweelinck and thus laid the foundation for many generations of German keyboard music to come. earned an even more illustrious place in music history.
Sebastian Bach is known to have admired the music of both Buxtehude and Froberger. but the influence of Frescobaldi on Bach. even at a distance of almost a century. is more direct than might be supposed. When. after Bach's death. his first biographer. J.N. Forkel. wrote to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and asked for an account of the principal musical influences which had formed the style of the late Leipzig Kapellmeister, Carl Philipp Emanuel replied. "Besides Froberger. Kerl. and Pachelbel. he heard and studied the works of Frescobaldi." And there is no reason to question Philipp Emanuel's judgment. for there still exists a copy of Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali of 1635 which is signed with the name of its proud owner. "J.S. Bach. 1714."
Christie Tolstoy is a Ph.D candidate at CUNY. a harpsichordist. a teacher. and an editor of bel canto operas _______ _