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The Consort

This is the first 2-CD set in a series by Gilbert Rowland that will include all of Froberger’s keyboard suites; the next double CD will be recorded in July 2020. Each of the two CDs in the set includes six of Froberger’s suites, some of which survive in autograph and others in secondary sources. Since Froberger (1610-67) forbade the publication of his manuscripts, only two of his many compositions were published during his lifetime. Despite this fact, his music was widely known in Europe through hand-written copies, and he was one of the most famous keyboard composers of his day. Handel and Bach studied his music, and Mozart copied out his Hexachord Fantasia.

Froberger is chiefly remembered for his contribution to the development of the keyboard suite: through his innovative and imaginative treatment of the standard dance forms of the time, he prepared the ground for J. S. Bach’s more elaborate dance suites. Froberger spent time in Paris, where he absorbed French keyboard style, and influenced Louis Couperin, who in turn built on Froberger’s unusually free style to develop his own ‘unmeasured preludes’.

A typical suite by Froberger includes four movements, an allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, though not necessarily in this order. Each dance movement is in two repeated sections, but rarely in a standard 8+8 bar structure: it might employ 7+7 bars or 11 + 11 bars, and often the second section is shorter than the first. The gigues sound simple but are almost invariably fugal. In some suites there are doubles, and thematic material may be shared across more than one movement. Some suites include written indications such as f and piano (to denote an echo effect), doucement (‘sweetly’) and avec discrétion (‘rubato’).

This CD set is not intended as a varied concert programme – there are no toccatas or contrapuntal pieces to create variety. Rather it is a systematic collection of twelve of Froberger’s suites: I found that three at a time, heard during my tea, were just about right. Rowland’s detailed notes on each suite, balanced on my tea-tray, were very helpful, pointing out interesting features in each suite. This particularly applies to Froberger’s programmatic pieces, some of which form the first movement of a suite: he was one of the earliest composers to write such descriptive pieces.

For example, the first movement of the first suite on disc 1, in C major, begins with a lament on the death of Ferdinand II of Austria’s 21-year-old son: Ferdinand was Froberger’s employer in Vienna. Because of its early date (1656) and its style, it would be easy not to hear it as a lament. Purcell’s ‘When I am laid in earth’, written some 25 years later, with its repeated pathetic cries of ‘Remember me!’ are deeply passionate, but Froberger is more restrained, though quite original: the movement’s second section ends in a 2-octave ascending scale depicting the youth’s ascent into heaven.

The first movement of the third suite on the disc in E flat major is entitled Allemande faite en passant le Rhin dans une barque en grand péril (‘composed while crossing the Rhine by boat, in great danger’). Froberger annotates 26 passages in this relatively short movement, with a detailed explanation for each. Without the composer’s comments, it would be impossible to guess his intentions. The seventh suite on the disc, in G major is an early one (1649), with all its movements based on a German folksong, ‘Auff die Mayern’. an ode to bachelorhood, beginning with a set of six variations.

There are a number of recordings of Froberger’s keyboard music, some of them quite thrilling, and so this is to some extent a competitive field. My chief reservations concerning this CD are that the harpsichord sounds a century too late for the music, with no short octave, so that some left-hand parts cannot be accurately played (we are not given information about the instrument). Also, some ears might find the music too heavily ornamented, but Rowland’s three volumes of Handel Suites and his 3-CD set of Mattheson Suites have been well received, and like those two, this set is expertly recorded.