Published
Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancrocher (FbWV 632)
Johann Jakob Froberger’s Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancrocher (FbWV 632) was composed in Paris in 1652, immediately after the death of the lutenist Charles Fleury, Sieur de Blancrocher.
According to contemporary accounts, notably those of Louis Couperin and Johann Mattheson, Blancrocher died after falling down a staircase in his home. Froberger—who was either present or arrived shortly afterwards—was deeply affected.
Composition: Froberger wrote the Tombeau soon after as a tribute and personal elegy. It is one of the earliest European instrumental works expressly conceived as a “musical tomb,” or tombeau, a genre that would later develop in France.
The Tombeau de Monsieur Blancrocher is a slow, introspective and moving allemande in which Froberger transforms the language of dance into a sonic ritual of mourning.
Descending phrases symbolically evoke the musician’s fall.
The use of silence and prolonged dissonant chords creates an effect of suspended time, like a meditation on death and fragility.
The piece is one of the earliest explicit musical manifestations of personal mourning in Western history and profoundly shaped the later aesthetic of the French tombeau, as found in Louis Couperin, D’Anglebert, Marais and others.
Froberger was one of the earliest composers who produced programmatic pieces, which he would usually include in his suites. These pieces are always very personal, written in an affective style and with individual titles. They include the following (in alphabetical order):
- Allemande, faite en passant le Rhin dans une barque en grand péril
- Lamentation faite sur la mort très douloureuse de Sa Majesté Impériale, Ferdinand le troisième (FbWV 633) (1657)
- Lamentation sur ce que j’ay été volé et se joüe à la discretion et encore mieux que les soldats m’ont traité (FbWV 614) (1656)
- Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdita della Real Maestà di Ferdinando IV Rè de Romani (FbWV 612) (1654)
- Méditation faite sur ma mort future, la quelle se joue lentement avec discretion (FbWV 620) (1660)
- Plainte faite à Londres pour passer la melancholie (FbWV 632)
- Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancrocher (FbWV 632) (1652)
These works frequently feature musical metaphors. The structure and style of Froberger’s programmatic works contributed to the development of the ‘unmeasured prelude’.
Louis Couperin, Georg Böhm, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Pachelbel are among the composers who were influenced by Froberger. Various less known composers such as François Roberday or Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer also knew his music and borrowed from it. Johann Sebastian Bach was influenced by Froberger, although only to a certain degree. One of the fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier uses a subject from Froberger’s Ricercar No. 4 (FbWV 404); however, Bach probably picked the theme from J.C.F. Fischer, who borrowed it from Froberger for his Ariadne musica, published some 20 years before the Well-Tempered Clavier.