Published
Lamentation faite sur la très douloureuse mort de Sa Majesté Impériale Ferdinand III (FbWV 633)
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. In the lamentations on the deaths of the lutenist Blancrocher and Ferdinand III, Froberger represents Blacrocher’s fatal fall down a flight of stairs with a descending scale, and Ferdinand’s ascent into heaven with an ascending one. In the Ferdinand III lamentation, he ends the piece with a single voice repeating an F three times. The Allemande, faite en passat le Rhin contains 26 numbered passages with an explanation for each. 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.