girolamo frescobaldiby frederick hammond

Girolamo Frescobaldi by Frederick HammondReview by: Alexander SilbigerJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 593-603Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831339 .

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C REVIEWS -

Frederick Hammond. Girolamo Frescobaldi. Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 1983. xvi, 408 pp.

THIS IS THE FIRST life-and-works of Frescobaldi in English and the first truly comprehensive study of this composer and his music in any language.' The life-and-works genre has a venerable tradition, and many of us, in our younger years, acquired a sense of comfortable familiarity with the musical giants of the past from the devoted reading of such volumes. We struggled, suffered, and triumphed with them in the biographical accounts; we learned how their works were the fruit of their aspirations and of circumstances in their lives; and finally, we gained a deeper appreciation of a composer's greatness and his seminal position in the development of musical art.

Although the scholarly literature on music before ca. 1700 is vast and continues to expand at an awesome rate, few substantial life-and-works of major composers from earlier centuries have emerged from all this activity. There are several good reasons for the scarceness of this genre. The surviving documentation on most early composers rarely touches upon the personal facets of their lives; often it is limited to records of their baptism, employ- ment, marriage, and death. We are fortunate when there are letters to and from their patrons and agents, or dedications and notes to the performer accompanying their compositions. Owing to the vagaries of historical transmission, chronological gaps usually exist in such documentation, which rarely provides a secure basis for a convincing, full-length portrait of the artist. The attempt to present an integral picture of the works is often similarly plagued by doubts and uncertainties. The surviving works probably represent only a fraction of the total output, and for many pieces there may still be questions regarding their authenticity. Finally, our knowledge of other music of the time is frequently so limited that it is difficult to assess the composer's true historical significance.

The safest and easiest solution is to write what is essentially an extended Grove article or Ph.D. dissertation: the life becomes a chronological rendering of the documented biographical data, and the works an annotated catalogue of the opera omnia. Such an article or dissertation can be immensely useful to other scholars, but it does not fully satisfy those desiring to gain an intimate understanding of the composer and his works. With composers from remote periods, there is all the more need for guidance in approaching the music, since its idiom is often still comparatively unfamiliar, and the social setting from which it came is foreign to us.

I The three earlier monographs on Frescobaldi-Luigi Ronga, Gerolamo Frescobaldi (Turin, 193o); Fritz Morel, Gerolamo Frescobaldi: Organista di San Pietro di Roma, 1583-i643 (Winterthur, 1945); and Armand Machabey, Gerolamo Frescobaldi Ferrarensis (1583-i643) (Paris, 1952)--are of much smaller scope and, in almost every respect, must be judged out-of-date.



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Fortunately, Hammond decided to go beyond this extended Grove article format and gave us a true old-fashioned life-and-works that incidentally includes all of the hard data. Indeed, in its pages one finds an exhaustive documentation of the known facts about Frescobaldi's life and works, including transcriptions of many original documents, detailed catalogues of all the works and their sources, and all further relevant bibliographical information. It is clear that Hammond has meticulously retraced the steps of all the earlier scholars who have worked on this composer-a gigantic undertaking in itself-and that, in addition, he has uncovered much new information, some of it of considerable interest even to the nonspecialist. But beyond this, Hammond has painted an engrossing picture of the age and the environments in which the composer lived and worked; he has brought to life the many interesting and colorful personalities whose lives touched upon that of the composer; and he offers a guided tour through the works that reveals his profound knowledge of this music, not only from the outside, as a scholar, but also from the inside, as a performer. And it is surely to his experience as a musician that we owe a most useful chapter on how to perform Frescobaldi's keyboard compositions.

I called this study an old-fashioned life-and-works, and to an extent I was referring not only to the genre but also to the approach. There is little in the framework to prevent one from imagining that the book was published some thirty years ago. It remains aloof from recent fads and fashions. One sees no Schenker graphs among its musical examples, one reads of no semiotic codes or other trendy concepts. Hammond's history is one of brilliant courts ruled by munificent princes and cardinals, not one of global economic trends and social struggles. His book is closely (and probably quite consciously) modeled on the 1954 study of Domenico Scarlatti by Hammond's mentor, Ralph Kirkpatrick--one of the classical life-and-works of all times.2 Fitting- ly, Hammond's volume is dedicated to Kirkpatrick.

The biographical part of the book is simply superb. The mass of documentary facts is skillfully woven into a highly readable and at times quite suspenseful narrative; indeed, Hammond's elegant prose is one of the fortunate old-fashioned aspects of this book. In successive chapters we are introduced to the cities that served as settings for the stages of Frescobaldi's life-Ferrara, Mantua, Florence, and, above all, Rome. We learn about the churches with their rich musical ceremonies, the courts with their splendid artistic establishments, and their less-than-splendid intrigues; and we are given detailed portraits of the popes, cardinals, dukes, princes, musicians, and other characters who played a role in the composer's life. The only actor who occasionally seems to get lost among the crowd and the grand scenery is Girolamo Frescobaldi himself. He is at times nearly reduced to the status of passive participant or observer through whose eyes we experience all the people, places, and events in his life. Rarely do we get a glimpse of what motivated his physical or creative moves. Perhaps Hammond should not be faulted for this, given the dearth of information concerning the personal life of the composer; yet the author's reluctance to indulge in imaginative

2 Ralph Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti (Princeton, I953).



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extrapolation when data are scarce, may leave the reader somewhat unsatis- fied.

There is one episode in Frescobaldi's life during which we can observe him at close range: a messy court intrigue that took place in 1609, while he served as music teacher in the Roman household of the Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio. The incident has already been related by Anthony Newcomb, but Ham- mond adds new materials that he uncovered in the Archivio Bentivoglio.3 It seems that Enzo, early in 1609, had proposed to Giulio Caccini a match between Frescobaldi and Caccini's daughter Settimia, who was a singer at the Medici court in Florence. Enzo hoped thus to bring Settimia to Rome to join his musical establishment. Caccini responded with a counterproposal from the grand duke, who offered to employ Frescobaldi in Florence, promising a generous dowry and salary for the couple. By the time this offer was rejected, probably because Enzo did not wish to lose Frescobaldi, the Bentivoglio family had arranged another match for the twenty-five-year-old musician. It happened that Angiola Zanibella, a singer in their employ, had disgraced herself, and Frescobaldi was-rightly or wrongly-blamed. At the time Enzo was in Ferrara, and his wife, Caterina, wrote him that Frescobaldi taught Angiola "not music but other, merrier things, which I promise you I believe he knows backwards and forwards."4 The composer was pressured to marry the singer, who was promised a dowry. Frescobaldi initially consent- ed, then changed his mind. An attempt to bring his father, Filippo, into the fray so as to persuade the young man evidently backfired, since Filippo approved neither of Angiola's family nor of the size of her dowry. Both Newcomb and Hammond seem to believe that Frescobaldi was innocent and that the whole affair was a scheme to cover up for the indiscretion of someone else-possibly Caterina's younger brother, the Marchese Martinengo. Nev- ertheless, a son born to Girolamo and another unmarried woman, Orsola del Pino, was baptized in June of 1612; eight months later, with Orsola already expecting a second child, Girolamo was finally married to her in Rome's Santa Maria in Via.

In dealing with Frescobaldi's music, Hammond faced a formidable task. The authenticated keyboard works alone consist of some 16o compositions. The nature of these works is such that it is perilous to select a few pieces as typical or representative compositions in order to use them as a basis for generalizations; indeed, nearly every work manifests individual features that invite comment.

Hammond treats Frescobaldi's printed keyboard and instrumental ensemble works in the order of their publication, rather than by type or genre. For each publication he provides a general description of the volume, some historical background on the genres it includes, and a discussion of works by others that may have served as models for its contents. Then he points out general characteristics of the music in the collection and describes individual

Anthony Newcomb, "Girolamo Frescobaldi, I608-i6i 5: A Documentary Study in Which Information Also Appears concerning Giulio and Settimia Caccini, the Brothers Piccinini, Stefano Landi, and Ippolita Recupita," Annales musicologiques, VII (1964-77), 111-58; Ham- mond, pp. 39-43.

4 Translation from Hammond, p. 42.




works, drawing attention to distinctive features. All this is illustrated by a generous supply of extended musical examples.

Although the serious student of Frescobaldi's music will find this part of the book to be a most valuable reference tool, it does not lend itself to continuous reading, as does the first portion. Perhaps unavoidably, the successive descriptions of a large number of pieces tend to become a bit wearying. I also find myself at times somewhat frustrated by Hammond's approach, which fails to address some questions that I regard to be essential for arriving at an understanding of this music. Much of the time, Hammond seems to treat the composer's works as musical texts that exist-more or less in a vacuum-merely as scores for us to study and perform, rather than as the creative expression of an artist from another age and another culture. Hammond rarely ponders why they were written (other than to please a patron) or what they communicated to Frescobaldi's contemporaries. Why, for instance, all the different genres (toccatas, ricercars, canzonas, capriccios, fantasias, partite, etc.) each with its own distinct style and manner? What did these genres signify to the musical world of the time: what expectations were brought to them, and how far did Frescobaldi fulfill these expectations? What was the purpose of the mixing and fusing of elements from various genres and styles, especially in the later works? In other words, what was the cultural content and meaning of his works, as opposed to the synchronic meaning and content perceived by a present-day observer examining the scores.

Of course, answers to these questions can only be obtained within the context of an exhaustive study of the music and the writings of the period, and even then, the answers will probably be, at best, imperfect. It may be unreasonable to expect Hammond to address these questions within the framework of his book, since the descriptive survey he offers may well be a necessary first step toward such an undertaking. Nevertheless, one hopes that Hammond and other Frescobaldi scholars will, in their future work, address these issues; otherwise we have no hope of learning what this music really is about.5

The chapter on the performance of Frescobaldi's keyboard music (Chap. 15) is symptomatic of Hammond's approach. In the final analysis, he is not so

5 Essentially, I am calling for a historical approach more oriented toward criticism, in the sense proposed by Leo Treitler in his "History, Criticism, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," 19th Century Music, III (1979-80), 193-2 io. Although Treitler questions the very possibility of practicing criticism of this type with respect to medieval and even Renaissance music, for seventeenth-century music such a stance seems unduly pessimistic. An orientation toward meaning and purpose distinguishes a recent history of the music of this period: Lorenzo Bianconi, II seicento (Turin, 1982), see especially pp. 91-Io4. An interesting attempt to understand this music through a study of contemporary literary documents (but with little reference to the musical repertory) is made in two books by Gino Stefani: Musica barocca: Poetica e ideologia (Milan, 1974) and Musica e religione nell'Italia barocca (Palermo, I975). Valuable interpretations of the contemporary meanings of specific genres are given in Warren Kirkendale, "Ciceronians versus Aristotelians on the Ricercar as Exordium, from Bembo to Bach," this JOURNAL, XXXII (I979), 1-44; and Sergio Durante, "On the Contrapunto Artificioso in the Time of Frescobaldi," presented at the Madison Frescobaldi Conference (see n. 9 below). Specifically concerned with the meaning of the toccata and other genres in the works of Frescobaldi is Francesco Tasini, " 'Vocalith' strumentale della toccata frescobaldiana: Un linguaggio tradito," Musica/Realta, IV (1983), 143-62.



REVIEWS 597

much concerned with telling us how this music was played in the composer's time as with providing guidelines for its performance today. To be sure, the author is implicitly committed to the notion that the latter is determined by the former, and he provides a most useful compendium of historical information on performance practices. Nevertheless, he does occasionally mix observations based on concrete historical evidence with prescriptions coming out of his personal convictions as a performer (e.g., pp. 230-32 and 235-37). It is precisely this confusion of the role of the scholar with that of the artist/teacher that has compromised the value of much present-day musicological writing on performance practice. In all fairness to Hammond, it should be said that his suggestions are generally restrained, rarely controversial, and always ruled by musically educated common sense.

The discussion of Frescobaldi's vocal works has been relegated to an appendix, and the treatment is somewhat cursory (not a single musical example is provided). Compared with his instrumental music, their significance probably is secondary, but they are neither negligible in quantity nor in musical interest, and a fuller study is needed. Hammond likewise deals with the keyboard works surviving in manuscripts in an appendix rather than in the context of the other works, which is a sensible solution, since there are serious questions regarding the authorship of many of these pieces, and, with some notable exceptions, they do not contribute significantly to the value of the composer's output.6

Hammond's book touches upon many interrelated fields; in all likelihood, specialists in some of these fields will find a few matters to quarrel with. I will offer only a few minor quibbles here. In his discussion of Frescobaldi's instruments, Hammond writes: "The problems of temperament arise, of course, from the mathematical incompatibility of a system based on a series of perfect (2:1) octaves with a system based on a series of perfect (3:2) fifths" (p. 107). In fact, the incompatibility of octaves and fifths only poses a problem when a composer uses enharmonic equivalents, which rarely happens in the music of Frescobaldi and his contemporaries.7 Rather, it is the incompatibility of major thirds (5:4) with perfect fifths (and, as a result, the impossibility of a fixed tuning in which both the perfect and imperfect intervals have their just harmonic values), that forced musicians to resort to the compromises of meantone and other temperaments. Further, it is not strictly correct that "meantone temperaments also made acoustical realities of the affective characters claimed for various modes or keys," since in the usual meantone temperaments all intervals of a particular type (except for the

6 See, however, the papers by Darbellay and Annibaldi cited in nn. 12 and 19 below for new information regarding Frescobaldi's connection with the Chigi manuscripts. The 1645 Canzoni alla francese publication is also discussed in the appendix, since the connection of Frescobaldi with its contents remains uncertain.

7 Only five of Frescobaldi's keyboard works use enharmonic equivalents: Toccatas 5 and ii and Canzona 5 from the Secondo libro di toccate; the fourth ricercar from the Fiori musicali (all of which use both G sharp and A flat), and the Cento partite sopra passacagli (which uses D sharp and E flat as well). Such pieces might have been written for an instrument provided with split keys, or for one tuned in some sort of "circulating" temperament (in which the comma was distributed over all fifths, although not equally); or perhaps, when these solutions were not available, the wolf-which would occur only once or twice in each piece-was simply tolerated.




generally avoided "wolf' intervals) have the same value, and hence there is no acoustic difference between the intervals of different keys or modes.

Turning from the history of temperaments to that of instruments, I have some reservations regarding Hammond's conclusion that Francesco Barbe- rini's musical establishment was distinguished by "the cultivation of a consort of viols," i.e., of violas da gamba, or that these consorts probably performed works by Domenico Mazzocchi and possibly even Frescobaldi's four-part canzonas (pp. 84-85). It is true that the Barberini documents of the time contain numerous references to "viole," and that an inventory makes specific mention of a wooden chest containing "sei viole che fanno conserto" (six viols [?] which form a consort). In Italy at that time, however, the term viole was used both generically, for bowed string instruments, and specifically, for the intermediate size instruments. (When the sizes were specified, the smaller instruments were called violini and the larger ones violoni.)8 Since Hammond himself has reservations (p. 84), and because the French gambist Andre Maugars reported in I639 that hardly anyone in Rome played his instrument, we need more evidence of the cultivation of a viol consort than a single set of canzoni "da sonarsi con le viole da gamba" written by Cherubino Waesich (probably a Northerner) and published in Rome in 1632.

It is in the nature of a monograph of this type that its subject is presented as a tidy package, with all loose ends neatly tied up. A definitive life-and- works is not the place for the open questions and tentative hypotheses of research in progress. Nevertheless, regarding Frescobaldi there do remain a large number of loose ends. Undoubtedly the author is as much aware of these as anyone, and since the publication of this book, his continuing research on the subject has already borne new fruit. The scope of current Frescobaldi research was demonstrated dramatically in 1983-the composer's four-hundredth anniversary and the year when this book came off the press. In that year, at conferences devoted to Frescobaldi in Madison and Ferrara and at two other scholarly gatherings in Boston and Louisville, over forty papers were presented on the composer or on closely related topics. Although little was presented that invalidated or negated any items in Hammond's study, nearly all of the papers contained new information or interpretations that could be incorporated into a second edition. It is beyond the scope of this review to summarize all of the new evidence and ideas presented at these conferences, but some papers deserve discussion in relation to the volume under review.9

8 In fact, in a more detailed discussion of the Barberini instruments, Hammond cites a document including a reference to "tutte le Viole, Violini, e Violoni"; see Hammond, "Girolamo Frescobaldi and a Decade of Music in Casa Barberini: 1634-1643," Analecta musicologica, XIX (1979), io6, n. 46.

9 Publications of the papers presented at the Quadricentennial Frescobaldi Conference in Madison and at the Convegno internazionale di studi "Frescobaldi e il suo tempo" in Ferrara are in preparation; no publication has been planned for the papers presented either at the Frescobaldi Symposium of the Boston Early Music Festival or at a session of the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Louisville, 1983. A catalogue has been issued of an exhibition held in conjunction with the Ferrarese conference: Frescobaldi e il suo tempo (Venice, 1983), which includes numerous reproductions of documents and other pictorial materials as well as articles by Adriano Cavicchi, Dinko Fabris, and Oscar Mischiati. When citing papers



REVIEWS 599

Dinko Fabris presented some preliminary results of his systematic study of the Archivio Bentivoglio; thus far, he has uncovered some two dozen documents of relevance to Frescobaldi's career. 10 Most of them deal with the composer's relationship to the Bentivoglio family during the years 1607-1609 and with his appointment at St. Peter's (which the Bentivoglio actively supported). Although these documents shed no further light on the Angiola affair discussed above, they do include several from the woman herself.

In the introduction to his discussion of the keyboard works, Hammond expressed skepticism regarding attempts to determine the sources of Fresco- baldi's style, since "the available information in the form of surviving music and historical documents is insufficient in many cases to provide any answers whatever" (p. I 17). He is especially wary of attempts to credit Frescobaldi's stylistic features to a single composer or school, such as "a shadowy north Italian school," presumably associated with the composer's early years in Ferrara. He notes that, for example, only four keyboard works by Frescobal- di's teacher, Luzzaschi, are known to survive. A paper by Anthony Newcomb casts much light on this shadowy North Italian school and presents some persuasive evidence regarding its role in the formation of the composer's style.1" Newcomb not only draws attention to the recent discovery of an entire volume of ricercars by Luzzaschi, but also sees the true roots of Frescobaldi's early style--exemplified in the Fantasie of i6o8-in the Venetian ricercar repertory from about I550. As a hitherto missing link, Newcomb proposes a set of manuscript ricercars, which he tentatively attributes to Giaches Brumel, organist in Ferrara from 1533 to 1564. An interesting sidelight to Newcomb's theory is found in one of the letters presented by Fabris, which shows that Frescobaldi possessed a copy of ricercars by Adrian Willaert.

Some of the most exciting contributions to Frescobaldi research in recent years have come from the Swiss musicologist Etienne Darbellay, who presented several papers at the various conferences.'2 On the basis of ingenious detective work on both printed and manuscript sources, he has come to a number of startling conclusions (which I cannot even begin to summarize here) that affect the compositional and publication history of several works, the dating and authenticity of some of the manuscripts, and performance practices with regard to tempo and tempo relationships. In particular, his brilliant solutions to the structural and performance mysteries presented by Frescobaldi's Cento partite sopra passacagli will fascinate scholars

below, the conferences will be referred to by their location. (When the same paper was presented at several conferences, only the first presentation is listed.)

10 Dinko Fabris, "Risultati provvisori della ricerca presso l'Archivio Bentivoglio" (Ferrara). Other papers based on archival research included Claudio Annibaldi, "The 'Ritratto' of Frescobaldi: Some Problems of Biographical Methodology" (Madison); Susan Parisi, " 'Licenza' alla Mantovana" (Madison); and Hammond's "Girolamo Frescobaldi: New Biographical Infor- mation" (Madison), which presents supplementary material for the first part of his book.

I Anthony Newcomb, "The Anonymous Ricercari of the Bourdeney Codex" (Madison). 12 Etienne Darbellay, "The Tempo Relationships in Frescobaldi's Primo Libro di Capricci"

(Madison); "Les Cento Partite de Frescobaldi: Metre, tempo et processus de composition: 1627- 1637" (Ferrara); and "Les Manuscrits Chigi Q.IV.24 et Q.VIII.2o5/6 comme sources frescobal- diennes: Criteres philologiques d'autenticite" (Ferrara).



600oo JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

and performers alike. There is no doubt that Darbellay's conclusions require an emendation of Hammond's discussion of this composition and of several other matters, especially the explanations of Frescobaldi's use of mensuration signs and note values to indicate metrical and tempo relationships (Ham- mond, pp. 215-21 and 224-27).13

Among the relatively small number of analytical essays, one of the most provocative was Anthony Newcomb's explication of elusive structural principles governing Frescobaldi's toccatas.14 In a sample analysis of the ninth toccata from the 1615 collection, Newcomb demonstrates that this work, far from being a succession of independent, quasi-improvisational segments, is in fact a continuous and cohesive composition, in which the traditional, Renaissance contrapuntal organization has made way for one governed according to novel harmonic principles. While covering a wider repertory, the present writer, in a study of the pitch classes in Frescobaldi's keyboard works, rejected the notion that the composer's tonal system represents a transitional phase (affirmed, for example, in Hammond, p. 153: "[the toccatas] are neither clearly modal nor clearly tonal") and showed that his works appear to be governed by traditional pitch organizations rather than by major and minor keys.15

A study by James Moore of documents regarding liturgical practices at St. Mark's in Venice has interesting implications with regard to Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali. 6 Moore notes that the pieces in this collection would have been unsuitable for services at small parish churches, yet correspond exactly to those needed for the elaborate rituals at St. Mark's and possibly at other major North Italian churches. He observes that the Fiori were published in Venice; I might add that the composer's dedicatory letter is dated "Di Venetia adi 20. Agosto 1635."17

Several papers on Frescobaldi's vocal works will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of this part of his oeuvre. Four papers in Ferrara dealt with the motet collection of 1627 and included discussion of the problems of their liturgical function and of the reconstruction of the missing altus

13 Revisions will similarly be required in my study, Italian Manuscript Sources of i7th Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, i98o), with regard to the discussion of some of the Chigi manuscripts and their connection with Frescobaldi (see also n. 19 below).

14 Anthony Newcomb, "Guardare ed ascoltare le Toccate" (Ferrara). Three other papers dealt with the stylistic and structural issues regarding the toccatas: Emilia Fadini, "L'aspetto retorico del linguaggio frescobaldiano" (Madison); Victor Coelho, "Giovanni Geronimo Tedesco, Alessandro Piccinini and the Role of the Tiorba in the Toccatas of Frescobaldi" (Madison); and Alexander Silbiger, "From Madrigal to Toccata: Frescobaldi and the Seconda Prattica" (Boston); see also n. 5 above for a recently published article concerning the toccatas. In addition, three papers were presented on the keyboard and ensemble canzonas: James Ladewig, "Frescobaldi's Variation Canzonas: Fruit of the Ferrarese-Neapolitan Connection" (Madison); John Harper, "Frescobaldi's Reworked Ensemble Canzonas" (Madison); and Niels Martin Jensen, "La revisione delle Canzoni ed il suo significato per la comprensione del linguaggio frescobaldiano" (Ferrara).

'5 Alexander Silbiger, "Tonal Types in the Music of Frescobaldi" (Ferrara). '6 James Moore, "The Liturgical Use of the Organ in Seventeenth-Century Italy: New

Documents, New Hypotheses" (Madison). 17 It had already been noted by Cametti that the dates given in both the Fiori and in the

Canzoni of I634 (the dedication of which is dated Venice, Io January I635) fall in periods during which it cannot be proven that Frescobaldi was in Rome (Alberto Cametti, "Girolamo



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partbook.'8 Claudio Annibaldi shed new light on Frescobaldi's connection with the two polychoral Masses surviving in a manuscript in S. Giovanni in Laterano, which evidently contain some insertions in the composer's hand- writing.19 Of unusual interest was John Hill's discussion of the Arie musicali, published in Florence in 1634.20 Traditionally, this collection has been regarded as the fruit of Frescobaldi's years in Florence (1628-34), and its content was thought to reflect taste at the Medici court. Hammond expressed reservations about this theory and indicated that some of the pieces appear to be based on Roman rather than on Florentine models, while others seem to show the influence of certain works by Monteverdi (pp. 264-67). Hill confirmed Hammond's suspicion of a Roman background for these works; he showed that, for almost every piece, direct models can be found in monodies by a group of composers, including Raffaello Rontani, Ippolito Macchiavelli, and Cesare Marotta, all associated with the great Roman patron of the arts Cardinal Montalto. Hill, furthermore, presented documentary evidence that Frescobaldi was in direct contact with the composers in Montalto's circle at least during the years i6o8 to 1615. This strongly suggests that the Arie musicali were based on the practice of these composers rather than on either influences from the Florentine court or from Monteverdi, and that at least some of them may well date back to the composer's earlier days in Rome-a possibility also hinted at by Hammond (p. 265). The only work for which Hill found no clear precedent is the Aria dipassacagli, Cosi mi disprezzate, with its alternation of ostinato-aria and recitative sections; with this composition, Frescobaldi may have made his own important contribution to the history of the chamber cantata.

In a discussion of Frescobaldi's instruments, Denzil Wraight exploded the myth that the disposition of two 8' ranks represented the norm for Italian harpsichords throughout their history (see Hammond, p. 100oo).21 Evidence indicates that, until some time during the seventeenth century, most Italian harpsichords had a i x 8', i x 4' disposition, and that most were later altered to 2 x 8'. Wraight suggested that Frescobaldi may have worked with the

Frescobaldi in Roma, 16o4-i643," Rivista musicale italiana, XV [1908], 733). Although Ham- mond states that Frescobaldi seems to have been in Rome on the date of the dedication of the Canzoni (p. 83), his salary receipts at the Cappella Giulia date from December (when he received payments for both December and January) and from 30 January; hence these do not preclude the possibility of a trip to Venice to oversee the publication of that volume. The receipts forJuly and August were signed by his son Domenico.

18 Jerome Roche, "I motetti di Frescobaldi e la scelta dei testi nel primo Seicento"; G. Morche, "Freiheit und Zwang des Komponisten: Zum Liber secundus diversarum modulationem 1627 von Girolamo Frescobaldi"; Francesco Luisi, "Il Liber secundus diversarum modulationem 1627: Proposte di realizzatione della parte mancante"; and Christopher Stembridge, "Questioni di stile nella musica vocale di Frescobaldi" (all presented at Ferrara).

19 Claudio Annibaldi, "Ancora sulle messe attribuite a Frescobaldi: Proposta di un profitte- vole scambio" (Ferrara); in this paper Annibaldi also presented evidence for a close connection of Frescobaldi with the manuscript Chigi Q.IV.25 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

20 John Walter Hill, "Frescobaldi's Arie and the Musical Circle around Cardinal Montalto" (Madison). With respect to Frescobaldi's vocal works, mention should be made of a new edition: Frescobaldi's II primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, ed. Charles Jacobs (University Park, Pa., 1983).

21 Denzil Wraight, "The Italian Harpsichord in Frescobaldi's Time" (Ferrara); see also the author's letter in Early Music, XII (1984), 5'1.




earlier type of instrument, noting that a harpsichord made by Albani in Rome, 1628, originally had the i x 8', i x 4' disposition, although it has since been modified to 2 x 8'. He also pointed out that, while it was indeed difficult to change the registration in the 2 x 8' instruments (see Hammond, p. ioo), such changes were easily accomplished on the earlier type of harpsichord.

One subject that could have been treated more thoroughly in Hammond's book is the impact of the composer on musical posterity. The magnitude and longevity of this impact is, after all, the principal measure of his "immortal- ity," or, at least, of his historical significance. Hammond devotes just a few pages to the powerful and lasting influence Frescobaldi exerted on European music (pp. 93-96; see also pp. 323-25). Hence, one is all the more grateful for the comprehensive study by Friedrich Riedel on the Frescobaldi tradition in the German-speaking countries, which he traces well into the nineteenth century.22 Even the most fanatical Frescobaldi devotee cannot be other than surprised to learn how far-reaching the composer's influence really was. Riedel shows, for example, that it was the instrumental counterpoint of Frescobaldi, rather than the vocal counterpoint of Palestrina, that formed the basis of the contrapuntal style of Johann Joseph Fux (and hence, one presumes, of his teachings). The composer's works were studied not only by J. S. Bach and his pupils, but also by later eighteenth-century composers; arrangements for string quartet of some of his compositions exist from as late as 1830.

One looks forward to similarly comprehensive studies of the composer's Rezeptionsgeschichte in other countries, including the compositional and critical responses to his music from the later nineteenth century to our own time. To the single example of the French Frescobaldi tradition cited by Hammond (p. 95) can be added the four pieces in the Paris manuscript listed in his Catalogue of Works (p. 294). Mention should also be made of Frangois Roberday's claim to have included a (thus far unidentified) piece of Fresco- baldi in his Fugues et caprices (1660).

Similarly, to the evidence for an English tradition presented by Hammond (p. 96) I should like to add several English manuscripts: London, British Library, Add. MSS 23623, 34003, 36661, and probably 40080, as well as Oxford, Christ Church, 1113. All include attributions to Frescobaldi or copies of his printed works; they are listed in Hammond's Catalogue of Works (pp. 292 and 294) but not mentioned in his text. To the two citations by John Blow of excerpts from Frescobaldi's works (Hammond, pp. 96 and 278) must be added a Vers based in its entirety on the Quarto verso of the Hinno iste confessor; in addition, Brian Hodge has discovered an anonymous variant of the Primo verso of the Hinno della domenica in London, British Library, Add. MS 31403.23

22 Friedrich Riedel, "Influence and Tradition of Frescobaldi's Works in the Transalpine Countries" (Madison).

23 See Brian Hodge, "A New Frescobaldi Attribution," The Musical Times, CXXII (1981), 263-65. The title is misleading, since the article reports on an anonymously transmitted variant of a familiar Frescobaldi composition.



REVIEWS 603

There have been some earlier studies of Frescobaldi's Roman following,24 and at Ferrara, Sablich discussed the resurgence of Italian interest in the composer during the earlier years of this century.2s However, a comprehensive Rezeptionsgeschichte of Frescobaldi in his native country remains to be written.

None of these new contributions to Frescobaldi scholarship detracts in any significant measure from the value of Hammond's monumental achievement. There is no doubt that for some years to come this book will form an indispensable reference and point of departure for all scholarly work on this composer. I expect that, in addition, it will become a source of information and of inspiration to the performer and the general music lover. In short, the composer has been well served by Hammond's life-and-works.

ALEXANDER SILBIGER

University of Wisconsin, Madison

24 See Alexander Silbiger, "The Roman Frescobaldi Tradition, c. 164o-i670," this JOURNAL, XXXIII (I980), 42-87; and idem, "Keyboard Music by Corelli's Colleagues: Roman Composers in English Sources," Nuovissimi studi corelliani: Atti del terzo congresso internazionale (Fusignano, 4-7 settembre r980), Quaderni della Rivista italiana di musicologia, 7, ed. Sergio Durante and Pierluigi Petrobelli (Florence, 1982), pp. 253-68.

25 S. Sablich, "La rinascita degli interessi frescobaldiani presso i musicisti italiani del primo novecento" (Ferrara).

Eric Walter White. A History of English Opera. London: Faber and Faber, 1983. 472 pp.; 32 plates.

THE MOST REFRESHING ASPECT Of this comprehensive and learned book is its steadfast refusal to apologize for English opera. Eric Walter White is the first major scholar not to view his native music drama as the poor relation of the "pure" continental forms. He does not consider Purcell's stage works as monumentally missed opportunities to join the Italian mainstream; he does not see the entire eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as one long, dreary period in which vulgar bourgeois taste thwarted the honest efforts of Linley, Storace, and Balfe. Rather, White accepts English opera for what it was (and to some extent still is): essentially a play with music, even if occasionally sung from beginning to end.

The book is not concerned as much with the works themselves as with the circumstances of opera in England, the forces and conditions that gave rise to the astonishing variety of music dramas that have sustained London as the world's most opera-indulgent city for nearly three hundred years. Nor is this an introspective analysis of the national character; there is almost no theorizing about why English opera should have taken such a radically different path from its continental cousins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and little time is spent describing or defining the baffling array of native forms. The author succinctly defines his scope in the Introduction: "I have thought of an English opera as being a stage action with vocal and

