Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (1583 – 1643) was a
musician from the Duchy of Ferrara, in what is now
northern Italy. He was one of the most important
composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and
early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi
studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was
influenced by many composers, including Ascanio Mayone,
Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Claudio Merulo. Girolamo
Frescobaldi was appointed organist of St. Peter's
Basilica, a focal point of...(+)
Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (1583 – 1643) was a
musician from the Duchy of Ferrara, in what is now
northern Italy. He was one of the most important
composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and
early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi
studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was
influenced by many composers, including Ascanio Mayone,
Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Claudio Merulo. Girolamo
Frescobaldi was appointed organist of St. Peter's
Basilica, a focal point of power for the Cappella
Giulia (a musical organisation), from 21 July 1608
until 1628 and again from 1634 until his death.
Frescobaldi's printed collections contain some of the
most influential music of the 17th century. His work
influenced Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Sebastian
Bach, Henry Purcell, and countless other major
composers. Pieces from his celebrated collection of
liturgical organ music, Fiori musicali (1635), were
used as models of strict counterpoint as late as the
19th century.
Frescobaldi was, after Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, the
first of the great composers of the ancient
Franco-Netherlandish-Italian tradition who chose to
focus his creative energy on instrumental composition.
Frescobaldi brought a wide range of emotion to the
relatively unplumbed depths of instrumental music.
Keyboard music occupies the most important position in
Frescobaldi's extant oeuvre. He published eight
collections of it during his lifetime, several were
reprinted under his supervision, and more pieces were
either published posthumously or transmitted in
manuscripts. His collection of instrumental ensemble
canzonas, Il Primo Libro delle Canzoni, was published
in two editions in Rome in 1628, and substantially
revised in the Venice edition of 1634. Of the forty
pieces in the collection, ten were replaced and all
were revised to various degrees, sixteen of them
radically so. This extensive editing attests to
Frescobaldi's ongoing interest in the utmost perfection
of his pieces and collections.
Contemporary critics acknowledged Frescobaldi as one of
the greatest trendsetters of keyboard music of their
time. Even critics who did not approve of Frescobaldi's
vocal works agreed that he was a genius both playing
and composing for the keyboard. Frescobaldi's music did
not lose direct influence until the 1660s, and his
works held influence over the development of keyboard
music over a century after his death. Bernardo Pasquini
promoted Girolamo Frescobaldi to the rank of
pedagogical authority.
Frescobaldi's pupils included numerous Italian
composers, but the most important was a German, Johann
Jakob Froberger, who studied with him in 1637–41.
Froberger's works were influenced not only by
Frescobaldi but also by Michelangelo Rossi; he became
one of the most influential composers of the 17th
century, and, similarly to Frescobaldi, his works were
still studied in the 18th century. Frescobaldi's work
was known to, and influenced, numerous major composers
outside Italy, including Henry Purcell, Johann
Pachelbel, and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Bach is known to have owned a number of Frescobaldi's
works, including a manuscript copy of Frescobaldi's
Fiori musicali (Venice, 1635), which he signed and
dated 1714 and performed in Weimar the same year.
Frescobaldi's influence on Bach is most evident in his
early choral preludes for organ. Finally, Frescobaldi's
toccatas and canzonas, with their sudden changes and
contrasting sections, may have inspired the celebrated
stylus fantasticus of the North German organ school.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Frescobaldi).
Although originally composed for Voice (Bass) &
Continuo, I created this Interpretation of the "Canzon
à Basso Solo" (F 8.06c) for Cello & Piano.
