Froberger was a keyboard master in the sense of his time, which understood by this a command of both organ and harpsichord; his works circulated in numerous manuscript copies and were for the most part printed only long after his death. Johann Gottfried Walther’s “Musicalisches Lexikon” of 1732 relates that at the age of fifteen, on account of his beautiful treble voice, he was taken to Vienna by a Swedish ambassador and sent by the Emperor to Frescobaldi in Rome; that he was baptised in Stuttgart was established only in 1925. He spent his last years with Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg and Montbéliard, his harpsichord pupil.
Gerd Zacher arranges the programme in nine parts, the first four of them in C major. The Toccata (III) in C major FbWV 109 serves as an introduction in which the organist seems to improvise as if in unbound speech. The Fantasia (I) sopra VT-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA FbWV 201 on the hexachord, whose six notes were then regarded as the foundation of all music, was Froberger’s very first publication: Athanasius Kircher printed it in 1650 in his “Musurgia universalis”. The Capriccio (VI) in C major FbWV 506 takes up Frescobaldi’s ideas for multi-sectional pieces on a constantly changing theme. The Toccata (V da sonarsi alla leuatione) FbWV 111, a piece for the Elevation, opens the second part on other keynotes; the programme closes with the Ricercar (VI) in F sharp minor FbWV 412, whose remote key shows Froberger’s harmonic range long before the “Well-Tempered Clavier”.
Four partitas, as suites were then called, show the variety of Froberger’s style; in this widespread sequence of movements with its bows to the different nations, Zacher sees evidence of Europe’s cultural unity. The Partita I in E minor FbWV 607 is a pure dance suite. In the Partita auff Die Mayerin FbWV 606 the allemande is replaced by a cycle of variations on the folk song “Schweiget mir vom Weibernehmen”, which after the chromatic “Grammatica” turns into courante, double and sarabande. Two partitas begin with a lament: the lament of the Partita VI FbWV 612 on the death of Ferdinand IV is followed by a lively round dance that Zacher relates to Dante’s Paradise. He understands the Lamentation sur ce que j’ay été volé FbWV 614 not as a depiction of a robbery but as music with which Froberger consoled himself; its gigue is set in an encouraging dotted rhythm, “almost like a quick march”.
The organ of the old Premonstratensian church of St. Leodegar in Niederehe was built in 1714 as the first instrument of Balthasar König, who had settled in Bad Münstereifel. Hubert Fasen restored it in 1998 together with the state monuments office: rediscovered stop labels revealed the original specification, and the three surviving original stops the meantone tuning, which emerges with particular boldness at the cadences of the three sections of the Ricercar in F sharp minor. Zacher uses the 13-key pedal only in the Fantasia and the Capriccio; in the Toccata alla levatione the wind comes from the treadle bellows, operated by Klaus Kemp, on whose initiative the restoration was undertaken.