Instrument: Le pere Bellot, 1729
Edition: Howard Schott, Paris (Heugel), in preparation
Recording Chartres, Museum, 25.-26. 4. 1978
Producer Dr. Andreas Holschneider
Recording Supervisor and Recording Engineer Heinz Wildhagen
Released 1979 Polydor International GmbH, label Archiv 2533 419 . © 1979 Howard Schott
Editor Dr. Manfred Karallus

Side 1
00:00 Lamentation faste sur la mort tres douloureuse de Sa Majeste Imperiale, Ferdinand Ill, et se loue lentement avec discretion (1657)
Suite No. 1 in E minor (1656)
05:53 AlIemande 4’15
11:11 Gigue 1’38
12:51 Courante 1’05
13:56 Sarabande 3’44 Total 10’51

Suite No. 2 in A major (1656)
16:33 AlIemande 3’04
19:35 Gigue 1’12
20:48 Courante1’04
21:53 Sarabande 1’18 total 7’07

Suite No. 3 in G minor (1656)
23:33 AlIemande 3’48
27:17 Gigue 1’40
28:56 Courante 1’42
30:39 Sarabande 2’30 total 9’50 Gesamtzeit mit Pausen: 34’00

Side 2
Suite No. 4 in A minor (1656)
33:05 Allemande 3’10
36:16 Gigue 1’56
38:12 Courante 1’11
39:25 Sarabande 2’21 total 8’48

Suite No. 5 in D major (1656)
41:49 Allemande 3’47
45:33 Gigue 1’10
46:43 Courante 1’18
48:03 Sarabande 1’39 Total 8’04

Suite No. 6 in C major (1656)
49:47 Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdita della Real Maesta di erdinando IV, Re dei Romani 5’40
55:21 Gigue 1’20
56:44 Courante 1’40
58:21 Sarabande 2’21 Total 11’10 Gesamtzeit mit Pausen: 28’17

Shortly before the musically talented and accomplished
Ferdinand III was elected Holy
Roman Emperor in 1637, the young Johann
Jacob Froberger (1616-1667) 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.
Although his successor, Leopold I, was also very
musical, he permitted Froberger to be dismissed at
the end of June 165,7, although most of the Imperial
Chapel musiciarrs 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 memo~y. 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
of which 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
luthe, characterized by widely-spaced arpeggiated
chords and ingenious little touches of quasi-counterpoint.
There is no trace of the even flowing sixteenth
notes 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”.)

#PierreBellot #LePèreBellot #KennethGilbert