FRESCOBALDI, GEROLAMO. – Organist and composer, born in Ferrara, where he was baptized in the Cathedral on 9 September 1583; died in Rome on 1 March 1643. A pupil of Luzzasco Luzzaschi, while still very young he displayed a precocious musical versatility, rapidly mastering the technique of many instruments. In 1604, barely twenty years old, he was already enrolled in the Congregation of Musicians under the protection of St. Cecilia in Rome, as organist and singer. In the retinue of the Archbishop of Rhodes, Guido Bentivoglio, appointed by Paul V (1607) as nuncio in Flanders, F. undertook a journey to that region of high musical tradition; it was there that his first printed work appeared, the Primo libro dei madrigali (Antwerp 1608).
From a letter dated 29 July 1608 from Milan, it emerges that the composer was already in that city, urging the printing of the Fantasie, which were subsequently published during the year. In May 1608, following the dismissal of Ercole Pasquini from the post of organist in the Cappella Giulia, Alessandro Costantini served as his temporary replacement for some time; but F. was preferred to the latter and, at the age of barely twenty-five, became the Vatican organist, remaining in that office until the end of his life. Contemporary accounts testify to the degree of virtuoso excellence he attained on the instrument, in the composition of music for which he was to remain the unsurpassed Italian master; his fame quickly spread not only throughout Italy but throughout Europe. In addition to holding the office of Vatican organist, F. served the Aldobrandini household, perhaps under Cardinal Pietro (d. 1621), a ward of Pope Clement VIII, and later the Barberini household, which paid him a salary, as is shown by the accounts covering the years 1636 to 1642. In 1644, through Paolo Facconi, a singer in the Papal Chapel, he entered into negotiations with the Duke of Mantua, whose service he briefly entered the following year; but because of the Duke’s lack of concern for him and the delay in observing the agreed conditions, at the beginning of May 1615 the musician had already returned to Rome. The only lengthy interruption in his Roman activity occurred when F. entered the service of Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, staying in Rome in March 1628, had the opportunity personally to appreciate the exceptional skill of the Ferrarese composer. Having obtained the consent of the Chapter of St. Peter’s, F. remained in Florence from 1628 to 1634; on his return to Rome, he continued his service in the Cappella Giulia, universally honored as a supreme artist. After ten days of illness, F. died in 1643 and was buried in the Basilica of SS. Apostoli.
The culmination of F.’s work is reached, following the remarkable achievements of the contrapuntal style in the Fantasie (1608) and the Ricercari e canzoni francesi (1615), in the first book of Toccata e partite (1614), in the Capricci (1624), and in the second book of Toccate e partite (1627). F. dissolves the abstract boundaries between the rigorously contrapuntal style and that of free, imaginative invention: he achieves the most unexpected unity through his unsurpassed ability to “vary” the themes or subjects of his compositions. Yet, rather than themes, in the toccatas it is more accurate to speak of images or intuitions of inner illuminations, musical tendencies, nuclei without fixed limits, which unfold inwardly and ceaselessly seek one another, in order to integrate themselves into a succession that, as it develops, expresses the necessary motives of their own unfolding. Profoundly originating in feeling apprehended in its most immediate purity, a sense of poetry pours forth which, produced by this inner movement, is wholly and uniquely musical.
F. impressed upon almost every one of his works a character of such intimate and austere reflection, one might almost say of pensive recollection, as to justify the recognition of the deepest motive of his art in a religious inspiration, even when the work’s practical purpose was not explicit. But his last great organ work, the Fiori musicali of 1635, constitutes a kind of crown of religious lyrics, in which the conventional liturgical obligation, transformed for him into a new and intense artistic possibility, spontaneously led the author to the most unified creation, despite the variety of forms (versets, ricercari, canzoni, and brief toccatas for the Elevation). The profound fresco-baldian mysticism finds expression in accents of great sweetness and intense fervor.
Several books of canzoni for different instruments, with and without basso continuo, also survive from the great Ferrarese composer; they reveal a lively melodic mobility. In addition to the madrigals already mentioned, there is a book of religious motets (1617) for one or more voices, on a Latin text, and the two books of Arte musicali (1630), written under the evident influence of the Florentine recitative style.
Fresco-baldian art exerted a powerful influence on the development of European organ music, also through the master’s direct pupils, among whom, besides the distinguished Michelangelo Rossi, special mention should be made of Giacomo Freberger, who remained in Rome for three and a half years with a subsidy from the imperial court of Vienna, and Giovi Gaspare Kerll. From the technical and structural standpoint as well, F. proved a subtle and profound master of harmonic and chromatic audacities and ingenious solutions to contrapuntal problems; his importance was fundamental in the history of the fugue, and G. S. Bach himself showed that he had received the teaching of the great Italian predecessor through profound study, as is testified, among other things, by the transcription he made of the Fiori musicali.