The Keyboard in Baroque Europe.(Early Music)(Book Review)

The Keyboard in Baroque Europe. Edited by Christopher Hogwood. (Musical Performance and Reception.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [xvii, 245 p. ISBN 0-521-81055-8. $75.] Music examples, analysis charts, facsimiles, index.

Collections of essays dedicated to a specific person can and perhaps should convey different aspects of that person's work and influence--Christopher Hogwood's The Keyboard in Baroque Europe does just that. The volume is dedicated to Gustav Leonhardt, commemorating his seventy-fifth birthday, and includes articles from several of his former pupils. Hogwood clearly sets out that the purpose of the volume is to publish writings by "scholar-performers," and the variety of pieces therein certainly confirms this path. He rightly attributes the source of inspiration in the area of "historically informed performance" to Leonhardt's work as both performer and teacher (p. xv). Consequently the volume as a whole illustrates the different directions in which his influence may be felt. With this in mind, I have decided to focus on three essays from the book--ones which will serve to exemplify the very diverse types of research represented within.

Rudolf Rasch's "Johann Jacob Froberger's Travels 1649-1653" (pp. 19-35) deals with a variety of documents, such as letters and official court papers, and treats both original sources and modern interpretations of them to carefully trace Froberger's movements around Europe during this period. This was a decisive time in the history of keyboard music, for the mid-seventeenth century saw the cross-pollination of numerous styles and influences circulating in various geographic areas, in addition to the publications (slightly later) of music by significant individual composers. Froberger figures chief among these, for he certainly was a highly renowned performer whose style was apparently so unique that on several occasions listeners were able to identify his playing without actually seeing him. Froberger's association with composers in Paris (such as the keyboard composer Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres and lutenists of the Gautier family) has been seen as a key moment in the history of keyboard music--one in which the stars were surely properly aligned so that the translation of expressive idiomatic elements of one instrument were conveyed to another, when one national style melted into another, and when many characteristic aspects of baroque dance suites crystallized. Froberger's association with Girolamo Frescobaldi, as student of the Roman organist, adds further luster to his career. His influence on English music has only recently been broached, but it seems to have been keenly felt there as well. Rasch presents a systematic, well-documented list of where Froberger traveled, or probably traveled, during these formative years, a major consideration when searching for influence at this crossroads in keyboard style. Rasch discounts most ideas that cannot be justified in extant documents and questions unlikely premises in the existing modern canon as well. With so much data at hand, one might wish that Rasch had been more speculative concerning possibilities. On the other hand, that so many scholars before him have chosen to do so with results that are now shown (mostly through Rasch's own work) to be false, may have given the author pause. Indeed, the essay clarifies the somewhat muddied biographical accounts of Froberger that have persisted to the present day, opening the door for more consideration of the influence and transmission of his music, as well as his own acquaintance with foreign music.

Christopher Hogwood's own essay, "The 'Complete Keyboard Music' of Henry Purcell" (pp. 67-89), is, simply put, a justification for his alterations to the new keyboard volume of that composer's complete works, forthcoming from the Purcell Society. Hogwood has expanded the "complete keyboard works" of Purcell from 47 compositions in the earlier Purcell Society volume (Henry Purcell, Works, vol. 6, Harpsichord and ...