1.Toccata prima

The grave, minor-inflected first notes of Toccata I are stunning in their historical implications. Frescobaldi's collection "Toccata e Partite Libro Primo" (1615) effectively ushered in new era of European music in which the keyboard supplanted the human voice as the reigning instrument, and this is the first piece in that landmark collection. Frescobaldi completely threw aside the contrapuntal polyphonic models that informed his earlier works in favor of an idiom entirely derived from keyboard performance and, particularly, from his improvisations. New as the style was, his performance directions to the collection of necessity included words from a private lexicon. Most significant is the phrase affetti cantabile (or songlike affetti), which refers to both a state of feeling (the affetti of a piece is its mood) and to the general indication that the many ornaments and figurations of the pieces should be played in a singing manner. These songlike affetti are in fact the expressive common denominator of all Frescobaldi's toccatas. His desire seems to have been to achieve a keyboard music so natural that it would almost appear—as if in nostalgia for the human voice—that no mechanical instrument was intervening. Toccata I is a good general example of the efforts in that direction Libro Primo contains. The piece is made up of three larger sections that are themselves built in short phrase sections. The large sections are called passi and their surprising variety is one of the key elements of Frescobaldi's magnificent style. Other notable elements are his chromatic harmonic idiom and the extraordinary richness of timbral colors he draws from his instrument. Toccata I opens with a harmonically drifting chordal section that is lightened/enlivened with a variety of short, imitative threads. It then shifts to a texture of scale passages that lead out toward a grand, climactic sweep through most of the range of the instrument. Under Frescobaldi's masterful hands, keyboard playing truly came to life for the first time.

© Donato Mancini, Rovi

7.Toccata settima

The publication in 1615 of Frescobaldi's first collection of toccatas, variations, and dances was a monumental moment in the history of keyboard literature. The publication was funded by the composer himself at the enormously high cost of 500 scudi, at a time when 70 scudi was a comfortable annual income. He correctly calculated that the financial risk was worth the reward: Il libro primo is a cornerstone of early keyboard music. Although Frescobaldi went on to publish many more collections of his work, it remains at the core of his oeuvre, an achievement he never quite surpassed. In Il libro primo, he made a radical break from Renaissance-based models of contrapuntal development into a mode fundamentally based on the art of improvisation and the new Baroque tonality. The animating force was no longer the development of horizontal contrapuntal ideas, but a dynamic interrelation of harmonic poles. The music is sculpted out of progressions of chords, scalar lines, and often elaborate figurations that spring precisely from the movements of Frescobaldi's ghostly fingers, present in every note. Precedents include the works of Andrea Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, and Paolo Quagliati. Frescobaldi rolled all of these into one, transcending all of their limitations in the most spectacular way, and opened up a new world of possibilities for keyboard music. Perhaps knowing the stir the book would cause, he attempted to soften the blow by prefacing the book with an idiosyncratic guide to the performance of the works, urging that the pieces be played in a cantabile manner. Among the things that distinguish these perennially surprising pieces is how clearly their vocal nature comes through even their most fabulously rich, dense textures. Frescobaldi also showed an unprecedented sensitivity to the range of tonal colors the harpsichord is capable of producing. The music is constantly descending into hallucinatory swirls of texture and color. The pieces are divided into numerous sections, clearly demarked by the passages in consistent rhythms. The copious ornaments (mostly written out) are to be played in flexible, accelerating tempi. From these ornaments, he flies off the handle of an otherwise conservative sense of harmony into strange (but fairly brief) chromatic outbursts. All successful performances of the pieces are generally very rubato in the handling of tempo and project an illusion of ingenious, if slightly mad, spontaneity.

© Donato Mancini, Rovi