The capriccio was a quirky seldom-used genre from the seventeenth century. Like the canzona it was a sectional instrumental imitative genre usually employing lively rhythms and also included some bits of toccata-like free improvisatory passage work separating some of the sections. Both Froberger and his teacher Girolamo Frescobaldi also treated the capriccio like a sort of theme and variations of a contrapuntal nature. Each section of a given capriccio features a subject of imitation that is somehow thematically related to the first subject at the beginning of the work. This capriccio is the fifth of the six capriccios collected in Froberger's Libro di Capricci e Ricercati some time around 1658. This is the shortest and most terse of Froberger's capriccios. It is in three brief sections. The first and last sections are similar and are both in common time. The middle section is in a triple meter. Also unlike most of Froberger's capriccios this one does not really include any toccata-like material in between any of the sections.

© Andrus Madsen, Rovi