Girolamo Frescobaldi - Biography
Girolamo Frescobaldi renowned Italian Renaissance composer was born on September 13th 1583 in Ferraro Italy and died on March 1st 1643 in Rome. Frescobaldi father Filippo was a man of the upper class and an amateur musician. Frescobaldi was taught by composer and organist Luzzasco Luzzaschi. At fourteen he was already the organist at the Accademia del la Morte in Ferrara and by 1607 moved on to the more prominent position of organist at the Basilica Santa Maria at Trastevere. Frescobaldi left Italy for the only time when he visited Brussels and Antwerp Flanders (now Belgium) in 1608 as part of the retinue of a papal nuncio. Whilst in Belgium he met many musicians in the then highly developed Flemish musical culture that had an effect of broadening his musical horizons. In fact his major published work a collection of Madrigals was published in Antwerp. Upon his return to Italy he was appointed as organist at Saint Peter’s Rome and retained this position for most of his life.
Frescobaldi a distinguished sacred choral composer is remembered above all for great keyboard music that would have an influence on composers all through the Baroque era up to Bach. In all he published six collections of Keyboard music during his lifetime and inclusive of these were many brilliant Toccatas and Partitas for harpsichord. His magnum opus was the collection Fiori Musicale published in 1634. Frescobaldi was an important teacher who had many prominent students the most prominent was the famed German composer Johann Jakob Froberger. The one interruption in his Vatican service was when he moved to Florence in 1628 to be organist at the court of Medici’s where he stayed for six years. Frescobaldi unlike many composers of that era employed by the church didn’t take priestly vows and was in fact married and had five children. Frescobaldi died after a short illness in 1643.
Much of Frescobaldi’s work has been recorded there have been particularly fine performances by Harpsichordists Gustav Leonhardt and Scott Ross. Frescobaldi is composer of formidable intellect but the music has much lyrical grace and charm.
