Search - Johann Jacob Froberger, Sergio Vartolo :: Johann Jacob Froberger: Toccatas and Partitas

Bach's Illustrious Keyboard Music Predecessor

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667) is considered the foremost German composer of keyboard music before Bach. He had studied with Frescobaldi and developed his own personal idiom that combined aspects of Italian, German and French stylistic features. His works strongly influenced Louis Couperin in France and those German keyboard composers leading up to Bach. All his extant music, with the exception of a couple of motets, are for keyboard. This CD contains Toccatas and Partitas found in the Austrian National Library played by the distinguished Italian musicologist and harpsichordist Sergio Vartolo whose earlier recordings of the music of Trabaci were also on the Naxos label; I wrote glowingly of those recordings a couple of years ago. For the Toccatas Vartolo uses an Italian harpsichord tuned in meantone and A=415Hz. For the Partitas (Suites), 'Lament,' and 'Tombeau de M. Blancheroche' he uses a French 2-manual harpsichord tuned in the Werkmeister III temperament and A=390Hz. Vartolo's scholarly notes are included in the booklet and an expanded version of those notes is viewable at www.naxos.com/557472bk as well. He writes a good bit about that fact that some of these works were published in tablature and others in score, and discusses the implications of this.



The characteristic Froberger toccata opens with an improvisatory section usually headed by block chords followed by a section built on a theme treated in quasi-contrapuntal imitation, sometimes called 'imitative homophony.' His toccatas are much more tautly organized than Frescobaldi's, using fewer short episodes but rather more extended sections. Chromaticism is fairly minimal but there is enough to spice things up.



Froberger is sometimes thought to be the creator of the partita, or keyboard suite, with its collection of dances (e.g. allemande, gigue, courante, sarabande). They are characterized by a loose-textured monophony in 'stylus choraicus' ('dance style') and binary form with repeats. Also included here are the moving 'Méditation sur ma mort future' ('Meditation on my future death') and 'Lamentation sur la mort de Ferdinand III.' Froberger was writing in the midst of a death-obsessed culture which followed the Thirty Years War.



These two CDs are a constant delight. Vartolo is certainly an expert technician and, more important, a first-rate musician. Both harpsichords used have a lovely, subtle tone. Sound is lifelike, recorded in a modestly resonant ambience. These are worthy additions to one's collection of Froberger keyboard music.



TT:

CD1=56:00

CD2=56:05



Scott Morrison"