Luogo e data di registrazione		Musée, Chartres (Francia) - aprile 1978
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Andreas Holschneider / Heinz Wildhagen
	Prima Edizione LP		Archiv - 2533 419 - (1 lp) - durata 62' 25" - (p) 1979 - Analogico
	Edizione "Collectio" CD		Archiv - 437 080-2 - (1 cd) - durata 62' 25" - (c) 1986 - ADD
	Note		-

FROBERGER: HARPSICHORD SUITES Shortly before the musically talented and accomplished Ferdinand III was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1632 the young Johann Jacob Froberger took up his duties as an organist at the Vienna court chapel, continuing in imperial service for the next 20 years. However, he often spent long periods away from Vienna, beginning in the late summer of 1637 when he received a stipend to study with Frescobaldi in Rome. Almost four years later he returned to Vienna but seems from 1645 to 1653 to have travelled extensively through various German states, Italy, the Low Countries, France and even England. For a time he was attached to the court of Ferdinand’s brother, Archduke Leopold, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, in Brussels. From 1653 until just after the Emperor’s death in 1657, Froberger was again at the Viennese court. His relations with his imperial patron seem to have been very harmonious, marked by mutual respect and sincere affection. Two of the beautifully decorated autograph volumes of Froberger’s music prepared for presentation to Ferdinand are still preserved in the Austrian National Library; alas, at least two more have been lost. We know from a letter dated September 1649, from Froberger to his old friend in Rome, the remarkable Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, that the composer was even accorded long private audiences to discuss fine points of contrapuntal technique with his patron. Ferdinand’s melomania even extended to taking the entire Vienna court opera along when travelling on state business. His bedchamber always contained a small keyboard instrument for his personal use. His successor, Leopold I, was also very musical, but he permitted Froberger to be dismissed at the end of June 1657, even though most of the Imperial Chapel musicians were kept on. The best evidence of the close bonds which linked Froberger and Ferdinand III is provided by the deeply-felt Lamentation in his memory. This unquestionably genuine piece has survived only in a single manuscript of the early 18th century. The composer consciously chose the unusual key of F minor and the archaic three-section form, neither ofwhich occurs elsewhere in his music, and ended the piece with a thrice-repeated F, all in tribute to the departed. Regardless whether he created the genre, Froberger is indisputably the earliest master of the keyboard suite. Some 30 from his hand have come down to us. The six recorded here are found in the autograph volume presented to Ferdinand III in 1656. Each contains the typical four movements of the Baroque keyboard suite, but in the unusual order which Froberger came to prefer after 1649, with the Gigue as the second rather than fourth movement. As with his earlier datable suites in the 1649 autograph, these 1656 dance sequences bear a close stylistic resemblance to similar pieces written by French lutenists of the mid-17th century, which circulated widely throughout Europe. The opening Allemandes, which in a sense also serve as preludes, are clearly written in a style luthé characterized by widely-spaced arpeggiated chords and ingenious little touches of quasi-counterpoint. There is no trace of the even flowing sixteenth notes (semiquavers) associated with this dance in the Bach and Handel period. The opening movement of the final suite in the 1656 set is another Froberger elegy, this one for the elder son of Ferdinand III who died in 1654. (The title is explained by the custom of referring to the heir-presumptive to the imperial throne as the “King of the Romans”.) The gigues in the six suites also employ the French lutenist’s favoured rhythmic patterns which prefer the more individualized, jerky dotted rhythms to the sequences of even triplets associated with the familiar Italian variety of jig. (The peculiar custom of often notating these gigues in duple metre and thus concealing the intended triple or compound time, was long a puzzlement to performers who could make little sense and certainly nothing like a jig out of the literal notation.) The graceful courantes are similarly cast in the Gallic mould. These are gliding rather than running dances, like the Italian variety of corrente. Froberger makes subtle rhythmic play with the ambiguity of the metre, which alternates between units of thrice two beats and twice three beats, respectively. The concluding sarabandes are highly stylized dances that bring the suites to a dignified close. Restoring the original order of the movements profoundly alters the effect on the listener of the suite as a whole. The uniquely personal element in Froberger’s suites, the intimacy and intensity of expression, set him apart from the great mass of his contemporaries and followers, with the notable exception of his friend and admirer, Louis Couperin. The suites, as well as the composer’s much esteemed polyphonic compositions, were circulated widely in manuscript, and were so highly esteemed that three decades after his death, two editions of ten suites (including two of the 1656 set) appeared simultaneously in Amsterdam. (It was these very publications which printed the suites in the conventional order, with the gigue last, that misled later editors and performers into ignoring Froberger’s express preference.) In an age almost exclusively taken up with the music of its own time, these posthumous printings were an extraordinary tribute. In our own time the reawakening of interest in the music of the 17th century has been relatively recent as compared with the attention paid to slightly later periods. In the domain of the harpsichord, especially, this has been most regrettable because much of the most moving and impressive repertoire for the instrument dates from the 17th century. Froberger can be viewed as a central figure in the constellation of composers for keyboard in this period. He plays a special role, a particularly German one in uniting and synthesizing various stylistic trends of his time. He is the link between the school of Frescobaldi and the early clavcinistes. But important as all this undoubtedly is to the historian of music, to the sensitive listener Froberger’s ultimate claim to greatness rests primarily on his capacity to convey to us the intense emotions that he was able to express in a few bars lasting but a moment or two. In this sense he was truly unique. Howard Schott