FROBERGER, JOHANN JAKOB

Internationally famous 17th-century composer and keyboard virtuoso; b. Stuttgart, Germany, May 19, 1616;d. Héricourt (Haute-Saône), France, May 6 or 7, 1667. Froberger was one of 11 children born to the conductor of the Protestant court chapel at Stuttgart. His brothers were active in this chapel, and his first musical training was undoubtedly a family affair. His professional training was completed under frescobaldi in Rome (1637–41), and it is thought that his conversion to Catholicism occurred during this interval. At age 25 Froberger was appointed court organist in Vienna; he continued in this position and in other royal chapels until 1657, thus providing one of the chief channels through which Italian and French idioms passed into Germany. His final years were spent under the patronage of dowager Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg. Extant sources indicate that his creative activity was in large part confined to composition for keyboard instruments. Like Frescobaldi, he composed multisectional canzonas, ricercars, capriccios, and fantasias, in which each section presents the main theme in a particular shape; he applied this technique to toccatas as well. The pattern of his suites (allemande, courante, sarabande) is that of French composers, and the texture of these dances is regarded as a transformation of French lute technique. Froberger's music is a particularly rewarding field for study of the development of tonal organization in the 17th century.

Bibliography: Gesammelte Ausgabe, ed. l. g. adler (Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich [1893– ; repr. Graz 1959– ] 8, 13, 21). m. reimann, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 4:982–993. g. frotscher, Geschichte des Orgelspiels und der Orgelkomposition, 2 v. (2d ed. Berlin 1959). a. pirro, Les Clavecinistes (Paris 1924). w. apel, Masters of the Keyboard (Cambridge, Mass. 1947). m. f. bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (New York 1947). g. j. buelow, "Johann Jacob Froberger," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. s. sadie, v. 6 (New York 1980) 858–862. f. lesure, ed. J. J. Froberger: Musicien Européen (Montbéliard, France 1998). t. norman, "Performance Practice of the Keyboard Music of Johann Jakob Froberger" (Ph.D. diss. Monash University 1991). d. m. randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Mass. 1996) 285–286. h. siedentopf, Johann Jakob Froberger: Leben und Werk (Stuttgart 1977). n. slonimsky, ed., Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (8th ed. New York 1992) 580.

[d. beikman]