Forcer, Francis
(b Durham, bap. 1 Dec 1649; d London, bur. 26 Jan 1705). English organist and composer. He was a chorister at Durham Cathedral from 1661 to 1665, when he became private organist to the Bishop of Durham. In 1669 he ran away from the bishop's household while on a trip to London, and despite this became organist of Dulwich College on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who mentioned his ‘skill in Musick’ and his ‘civill demeanor & sobriety of life’. He moved to St Giles Cripplegate in 1673 or 1674, and to St Sepulchre's, Holborn, probably in June 1676; he may also have been organist of St Bride's, Fleet Street, 1693–6. By the 1680s he was one of London's more prominent musicians. He was one of the Musical Society's stewards for the St Cecilia celebrations in 1684, and on 30 September 1686 he joined Blow, Purcell and John Moss in assessing the new organ at St Katherine Cree and choosing its organist.
Forcer also worked in the theatre. He wrote songs for Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso (May 1676), Aphra Behn's Abdelazer (?July 1676) and Thomas Otway's The Orphan (February 1680), all put on by the Duke's Company at Dorset Garden, and theatre suites for Mary Pix's The Innocent Mistress (?June 1697) and Charles Hopkins's Boadicea, Queen of Britain (November 1697), both put on by Betterton's company at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Some of his untitled suites were also probably written for plays. He was Richard Sadler's partner at Sadler's Wells, apparently from its opening in 1684, and on Sadler's death in about 1697 he went into partnership with James Miles. He was presumably responsible for establishing a music room there with an organ, and for putting on regular concerts in the summer. His son Francis (1677–1743) inherited property in Durham and Holborn, and eventually took over at Sadler's Wells.
Forcer was essentially a composer of light music. His songs are mostly simple tuneful airs, and while the dances of his theatre suites are attractive, he had difficulty coping with the demands of overtures; an extended five-part ground (in US-NYp Drexel 5061) is overambitious. His keyboard music is rather more interesting, and would repay investigation. He was the principal scribe of two manuscripts (US-NH Filmer 15 and 16), the first of which he seems to have used to teach Amy Filmer the keyboard, starting in the spring of 1678. It contains keyboard arrangements of songs by Purcell and William Turner, as well as pieces by Blow and at least one by Forcer himself.
WORKS -
24 songs, 16797, 16814, 16835, 16843, 16854, 16856, 16876, 16895, 16896, 16916, 16936, 16982, GB-Cfm
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O give thanks (anthem), DRc (inc.)
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Consort suites and dances, a 3, a 4, 16774, Lbl, Och, W, US-NH
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Ground, B, a 5, NYp
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Kbd pieces, 16897, ed. T. Dart (London, 2/1962); GB-Lbl (facs. of Add.39569 in SCKM, xix, 1987), Ob, US-NH, Wc (facs. in SCKM, xxi, 1987)
| BIBLIOGRAPHY
BDA
Day-MurrieESB
SpinkES
D. Arundell: The Story of Sadler's Wells 1683–1964 (London, 1965)
R. Ford: ‘The Filmer Manuscripts: a Handlist’, Notes, xxxiv (1977–8), 814–25
C.A. Price: Music in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor, 1979)
B. Crosby: Durham Cathedral Choristers and their Masters (Durham, 1980)
D. Dawe: Organists of the City of London 1666–1850 (Padstow, 1983)
I. Spink: Restoration Cathedral Music 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995)
PETER HOLMAN
Forcheim [Forchheim], Johann Wilhelm.
See Furchheim, Johann Wilhelm.
Forchert, Arno
(b Berlin, 29 Dec 1925). German musicologist. He was educated in Berlin: from 1947 to 1950 he studied music (with the piano as his main subject) at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik; from 1950 he studied musicology with Gerstenberg, Adrio and Dräger at the Freie Universität, where he took the doctorate in 1957 with a dissertation on the late works of Praetorius. From 1956 to 1960 he was director of the department of music education at the John Petersen Conservatory, Berlin, and from 1959 to 1967 he was an assistant lecturer in the musicology department of the Free University, where he completed his Habilitation in musicology (1967) with studies on musical thought in the early 19th century. From 1960 to 1969 he was also a lecturer at the Berlin-Spandau School of Church Music. In 1972 he was appointed professor at the Music Academy of Detmold. He founded a music department in 1977 run jointly by Paderborn University and the Detmold Musikhochschule to facilitate cooperation between these institutions; located in its own building in Detmold, its organization is unique in Germany. Forchert was appointed professor at Paderborn University in 1981 and president of the Heinrich-Schütz Gesellschaft in 1988. He retired in 1991 and was honoured with a Festschrift on the occasion of his 60th birthday (Festschrift Arno Forchert, ed. G. Allroggen and D. Altenburg, Kassel, 1986). He is principally involved with music of the 17th and 19th centuries, and is the editor of the collected edition of the works of J.H. Schein and (from 1989) of the series Detmold-Paderborner Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft.
WRITINGS
Das Spätwerk des Michael Praetorius: italienische und deutsche Stil begegnung (diss., Free U. of Berlin, 1957; Berlin, 1959)
Studien zum Musikverständnis im frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Habilitationsschrift, Free U. of Berlin, 1967)
‘Ein Traktat über die Modi musici vom Jahre 1652’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 57–63
‘Textanlage und Darstellungsprinzipien in Mendelssohns Elias’, Das Problem Mendelssohn: Berlin 1972, 61–77
‘Zur Auflösung traditioneller Formkategorien in der Musik um 1900: Probleme formaler Organisation bei Mahler und Strauss’, AMw, xxxii (1975), 85–98
‘Mahler und Schumann’, Mahler-Interpretation: Düsseldorf 1979, 45–61
‘Französische Autoren in den Schriften Johann Matthesons’, Festschrift Heinz Becker, ed. J. Schläder and R. Quandt (Laaber, 1982), 382–91
‘Heinrich Schütz als Komponist evangelischer Kirchenliedtexte’, Schütz-Jb 1982–3, 57–67
‘Die Darstellung der Melancholie in Beethovens op.18, 6’, Ludwig van Beethoven, ed. L. Finscher (Darmstadt, 1983), 212–39
‘Polemik als Erkenntnisform: Bemerkungen zu den Schriften Johann Matthesons’, New Mattheson Studies, ed. G.J. Buelow and H.J. Marx (Cambridge, 1983), 199–212
‘Musik und Rhetorik im Barock’, Schütz-Jb 1985–8, 5–21
‘Musik zwischen Religion und Politik: Bemerkungen zur Biographie des Michael Praetorius’, Festschrift Martin Ruhnke zum 65. Geburtstag (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1986), 106–25
‘Moderne Züge in der Kammermusik aus Regers Wiesbadener Zeit’, Reger-Studien, iii (1988), 11–24
‘Schumanns Spätwerk in der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion’, Schumann in Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf 1988, 9–24
‘Vom Ausdruck der Empfindung in der Musik’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus, ed. H. Danuser and others (Laaber, 1988), 39–50
‘Madrigalismus und musikalisch-rhetorische Figur’, Die Sprache der Musik: Festschrift Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, ed. J.P. Fricke and others (Regensburg, 1989), 151–69
‘Heinrich Schütz und die Musica poetica’, Schütz-Jb 1993, 17–23
‘Beethoven, 2. Klavierkonzert B-Dur op19 (zus mit Rondo B-Dur WoO8)’, ‘Beethoven, 1. Symphonie C-Dur op.21’, Beethoven: Interpretation seiner Werke, ed. A. Riethmüller, C. Dahlhaus and A.L. Ringer (Laaber, 1994), 151–69, 170–84
with A. Clement and M. Petzoldt: Wege zu Bach II Folge: drei Aufsätze (Stuttgart, 1995) [incl. ‘Bachs Textbehandlung und ihr Verhältuis zur Kompositionslehre seiner Zeit’, 24–32]
‘Die Hauptstadt von Sebastian Bach: Berliner Bachtraditionen zwischen Klassik und Romantik’, JbSIM 1995, 9–28
HANS HEINRICH EGGEBRECHT
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