An autograph manuscript of keyboard works by Johann Jacob Froberger appeared at auction at Sotheby’s London in 2006. The composer’s last, it has become absurdly known in the literature as “Sotheby’s” instead of by its own title, Livre Premier. It has since sadly disappeared from view.
Among the hitherto unknown works it contains is a Meditation on the future death of Froberger’s patroness, Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg. The superscription contains the surprising words, “faict à Madrid” – the only indication that Hanß’ extensive travels reached as far as Iberia. While chatting the other day with John Koster he mentioned a thematic concordance which could conceivably provide further evidence, not only of the German’s presence in Spain, but of his influence on one of the greatest Spanish composers of the time as well.
The themes of Ricercar I in Froberger’s 1656 autograph (no. VII in Adler’s widely accepted reckoning) and that of a Tiento de falsas by Joan/Juan Cabanilles in a Barcelona (Biblioteca de Catalunya) manuscript are nearly identical (see 1 and 2 below). There is less of a resemblance between the inversion of the theme of a Froberger fantasia (Adler VII) and another Tiento de falsas by Cabanilles found in two MSS, one in Barcelona and one in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional - see 3 and 4 below). The two pieces by Cabanilles are, by an odd coincidence, nos. 1 and 2 of the first complete edition (1927) by Higinio Anglès.
Cabanilles (1644-1712) was organist at the cathedral of Valencia for most of his life, and produced one of the largest and finest corpora of keyboard music of 17th-century Spain. He kept conservative traditions of the previous century alive, while adding newer elements of virtuosity and tonal adventure. Much the same could be said of Froberger. A tiento de falsas would have been called a ricercar di durezze e ligature by an Italian like Froberger’s teacher, Girolamo Frescobaldi. They are solemn pieces in strict counterpoint, full of dissonances and chromaticism, which carry on a tradition founded in northern Italy in the early 16th century.
The first of the tientos mentioned above, while it has nothing like the contrapuntal density and tightness of structure of Froberger’s ricercar, is a fine and evocative piece. It inverts the theme, as does Froberger, and even contains a chord that is a virtual Froberger trademark (see 5 below).
The second tiento is a simpler piece which contains an even more extreme iteration of the “Froberger chord” (see 6 below). But a connection to the alleged Froberger fantasia is more tenuous, and not only thematically. Fantasia VII first appears in a manuscript in German tablature dated 1692, compiled by Johann Pachelbel for his last pupil in Erfurt, J. Valentin Eckelt (Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellonska). There are a couple of later sources likely derived from this, but I seriously doubt the attribution to Froberger. It looks far more like something Pachelbel composed himself while working with Kerll in Vienna – a typical study work, in imitation of an illustrious predecessor.
The perceptive reader will have noted a far more significant connection. Transpose the second Cabanilles theme down a half-step and you have Bach’s C-sharp minor fugue from book one of Das Wohltemperierte Clavier.
What are we to make of these thematic (quasi-)concordances? There are those who find “quotes” of the smallest fragment of everything in everything else. But these themes are more individual than a random snippet. Cabanilles would have been around 20 years old when Froberger was in Spain. The latter could have conceivably had a copy of his 1656 ricercar with him, or, as Mr. Koster suggested, have improvised on the same or a similar theme, either in Cabanilles’ presence or that of a friend or correspondent. Aside from the theme, that chord would have stuck in anyone’s mind. Barring the emergence of new evidence, will never know what, if any, relationship between Froberger and Cabanilles existed.
As to the more problematic second couple: the inversion of Fantasia VII has the same shape as the Cabanilles. It lacks the first sharp, but goes chromatic at the end. I think this is enough to put the two themes in the same ballpark. Assuming piece was indeed originally Viennese, one could call to mind the Habsburg family relations between Austria and Spain. The same circumstance would apply if the fantasia were in fact by Froberger, and if Cabanilles heard him using either of these themes somewhere in Spain. Speculation abounds regarding personal exchanges of themes, or an international fund of themes for improvisation. There are a number of examples as well, such as themes shared between Sweelinck and Coelho, or Sweelinck and Bull.
Bach took fugue themes from various known sources, and/or from that nebulous common fund. For the shape of C-sharp minor fugue theme he needed to look no farther than the beginning of the Advent chorale, “Num komm, der Heiden Heiland”. That goes back to the Ambrosian hymn Veni redemptor gentium. It is not hard to imagine an organist in Valencia drinking at that font. But those melodies are modal, without the critical leading tone sharp and the consequent falsa of a diminished fourth. Perhaps both composers just independently struck on the same modification?
The first four notes of the “Froberger” fantasia, on the other hand, are an exact quote of the hymn and the chorale, rectus and inversus. Both Pachelbel and Froberger were straddling the Catholic and Protestant worlds; both were of Protestant origin, and both submerged themselves in Catholocism in different ways. But it is surely going too far to ascribe the topsy-turvy world of the fantasia, whoever wrote it, to religious schizophrenia?
November 6, 2023
PS The great Bach scholar Alfred Dürr did me the honor of providing notes for my recordings of Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (TelDec Das Alte Werk). He also suggested comical texts to the 48 fugue themes in his Das Wohltextierte Clavier. For Book I, C-sharp minor he suggested: “Ich hab’ so Zahnweh!” - I’ve got such a toothache.
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