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Girolamo Frescobaldi (baptized mid-September 1583 – March 1, 1643) was an Italian musician, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Events 86 BC - Lucius Cornelius Sulla, at the head of a Roman Republic army enters in Athens, removing the Tyrant Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest A composer (literally meaning 'one who puts together' is a person who creates Music, usually in the medium of notation, for Interpretation and Performance A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a Musical keyboard. Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600 Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750. There is no evidence that the Frescobaldi of Ferrara were related to the homonymous Florentine noble house. The Frescobaldi Family is a prominent Florentine family that has been involved in the political sociological and economic history of the Tuscany region since the
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Biography
Frescobaldi was born in Ferrara. Ferrara is a city in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara.
He studied under the organist and famous madrigalist Luzzasco Luzzaschi at Ferrara and is also considered to have been influenced by Carlo Gesualdo, who was in Ferrara at the time. A madrigal is a type of Secular vocal music composition written during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras Luzzasco Luzzaschi (c 1545 &ndash September 10, 1607) was an Italian Composer, Organist, and teacher of the late Renaissance This article is about the composer for the Italian town see Gesualdo (town. His patron Guido Bentivoglio[1] helped him get the position as an organist at the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in the spring of 1607. Guido Cardinal Bentivoglio d'Aragona ( October 4, 1579 – September 7, 1644) was an Italian cardinal, Statesman Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Frescobaldi travelled with Bentivoglio to the Low Countries before Frescobaldi became organist of St Peter's in Rome in 1608, a post he held until his death. The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt From 1628 to 1634 he was organist at the court of the Medicis in Florence. Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany
Frescobaldi died in Rome at the age of 59, and a grave bearing his name and honoring him as one of the fathers of Italian music exists in the Church of the XXII Apostles in the same city.
Keyboard works
The greatest majority of Frescobaldi's extant output consists of keyboard music. His renowned prowess at the keyboard earned him several important international students, such as Johann Jacob Froberger, who composed pieces highly reminiscent of Frescobaldi's. Johann Jakob Froberger ( baptized May 19 1616 &ndash May 7 1667 was a German Baroque composer keyboard Virtuoso, and Organist The Fiori Musicali and the two books of Toccatas and Partitas are his most important keyboard works.
The Fiori musicali (1635) is a collection of organ works designed to be played during the mass service. The Mass is the Eucharistic celebration in the Latin liturgical rites of the Roman Catholic Church. It also features ricercari, a delicate and sophisticated form of musical counterpoint which includes imitative (or fugal) devices. In Music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and Rhythm, and interdependent in Harmony
His two books of Toccatas and Partitas are written in copper-engraved keyboard tablature for the harpsichord or organ, and were published between 1615 and 1637. Both books open with a set of twelve toccatas written in a flamboyant improvisatory style and alternating fast-note runs or passaggi with more intimate and meditative parts, called affetti, plus short bursts of counterpointal imitation. In these toccatas, Frescobaldi makes ample use of sharp, unprepared dissonances and other harmonies daring for the time, as well as of virtuosistic techniques that make some of these pieces challenging even for modern performers--such as his Toccata IX of Book II, which he himself labeled with the words "Not without toil will you get to the end. "
Besides the toccatas, these books feature partitas on popular motives and basses of the time, as well as 6 canzoni, dances, hymns and other compositions such as the Cento Partite Sopra Passachagli, one of his most virtuosic and experimental works. These two books are prefaced by Frescobaldi's own advice on interpretation, where the composer articulates the "theory of musical affections" prevalent at the time.
Other works
His other extant instrumental output consists chiefly in the 1st Volume of Canzoni to be Played with any Type of Instrument, 1628. This work includes instrumental canzonas for one, two, three and four parts over thoroughbass, as well as a few other pieces such as the Toccata for Spinet and Violin.
His vocal music includes a number of masses, motets and madrigals. For other uses see Mass (disambiguation The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions A madrigal is a type of Secular vocal music composition written during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras
Frescobaldi was one of the inventors of the modern conception of tempo, making a compromise between the ancient white mensural notation with a rigid tactus and the modern notion of tempo, which is characterized by acceleration and deceleration within a piece. Mensural notation is the musical notation system which was used in European music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. In Music, a pulse or tactus is beat (a series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in Time
Frescobaldi's music was a very important influence on later composers, among them Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach is known to have owned a copy of Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali). Johann Jakob Froberger ( baptized May 19 1616 &ndash May 7 1667 was a German Baroque composer keyboard Virtuoso, and Organist WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section.2 This article is written in British English including maximised use of "-ise"
Trivia
- Sometimes jovially referred to as "Frisky Bald Guy" in musicological circles. A play on his name, it is a fitting description of his characteristically sporadic style of composition, and the receding hairline that is evident in his later portraits.
- A piece attributed to Frescobaldi, a Toccata for cello and piano, was actually written by Gaspar Cassadó. Toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch" is a Virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or Plucked string instrument Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu ( September 30, 1897 &ndash December 24, 1966) was an influential cellist and Composer of the early
Sound Samples
Organ
- Fiori Musicali: Toccata avanti la Messa della Domenica -
- Fiori Musicali: Kyrie della Domencia -
Harpsichord
- Toccata 3 -
Other Media
References
- Domenico Morgante, Girolamo Frescobaldi, in "Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti" (DEUMM), Le Biografie, vol. III, Torino, UTET, 1986.
- Frederick Hammond: Girolamo Frescobaldi. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-674-35438-9
- FREDERICK HAMMOND (1–7, bibliography), ALEXANDERSILBIGER (8–15, work-list): 'Frescobaldi, Girolamo Alessandro, §1: Ferrara, Rome and Flanders, 1583–1608', Grove Music Online (Accessed 4 December 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?section=music.10219.1>
External links
- Girolamo Frescobaldi free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Free scores by Girolamo Frescobaldi in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
- Kunst der Fuge: Girolamo Frescobaldi - MIDI files
- Girolamo Frescobaldi was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
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