(bc1741; d after 1779). ?English mezzo-soprano and harpsichordist. She may have been the daughter of a Mrs Frederica who sang in the pasticcio opera L’incostanza delusa at the New Theatre in the Haymarket early in 1745. Cassandra was an infant prodigy as a harpsichordist; she played Handel keyboard concertos for her own benefit at the New Haymarket on 10 April 1749 at the reputed age of five and a half, and at Hickford’s Room on 29 April 1750. She and her mother gave two concerts at Amsterdam in July 1750. She studied singing under Paradies, and was engaged by Handel for his oratorio season of 1758, when she appeared in revivals of The Triumph of Time and Truth (Deceit), Belshazzar (Daniel), Jephtha (Storgè), Judas Maccabaeus (Israelite Man) and Messiah. On the last day of 1757 Lord Shaftesbury wrote that Handel ‘has just finished the composing of several new songs for Frederica his new singer, from whom he has great expectations’. These were the five additional songs (adapted from opera arias) first sung in The Triumph of Time and Truth on 10 February 1758; their compass is from b to f''. She sang in Arne’s Alfred at Covent Garden and Drury Lane early in 1759, and in the following year in Judas Maccabaeus and Jommelli’s L’isola disabitata at the Great Room, Dean Street, where she appeared also as a harpsichordist and on 14 January 1760 played an organ concerto. In July 1768 she gave a concert at Marylebone Gardens. She had a benefit in Arne’s pasticcio Love in a Village at the New Haymarket on 3 October 1775. Burney mentioned her as still living in 1779. She married Thomas Wynne, a landowner in south Wales, and is said to have greatly influenced the musical education of her nephew Joseph Mazzinghi.
WINTON DEAN
Fredrici, Gustaf.
A fictitious Swedish composer of the late 18th century invented by the director of music at Uppsala University, Sven-Erik Svensson (1899–1960), who claimed to have ‘rediscovered’ Fredrici, allegedly a pupil of Mozart and Haydn, in a memoir by a heretofore unknown Viennese music master with the generic name Josef Müller. Svensson not only published Fredrici’s ‘biography’, he also ‘found’ and ‘edited’ Kreisler concertos for violoncello and piano, a symphony, a rondo for piano forte, and a clarinet quintet. While the deception was quickly discovered, the music demonstrates Svensson’s skilful sense of 18th-century style.
S.-E.Svensson: ‘Gustaf Fredrici, en svensk wienklassiker’, STMf, xx (1938), 5–29
C.Nisser: Svensk instrumentalkomposition, 1770–1830 (Stockholm, 1943)
BERTIL H. VAN BOER
Fredutii, Massimiliano.
Italian musician. See underAccademico Bizzarro Capriccioso.
Free counterpoint
(Ger. freier Satz).
Contrasted with Strict counterpoint, the free application of the principles of consonance and dissonance and of part-writing in the general working out of contrapuntal ideas.
See alsoCounterpoint.
Freed, Isadore
(b Brest-Litovsk [now Brest], 26 March 1900; d New York, 10 Nov 1960). American composer of Belarusian birth. Taken to Philadelphia at the age of three, he graduated in music from the University of Pennsylvania (1918); among his early teachers were Bloch and Josef Hoffman. He taught at the Curtis Institute (1924–5), then went to Europe to continue his composition studies with d'Indy and Vierne. Returning to the USA in 1933, he became active in promoting new music (both secular and for the Jewish liturgy) and founded the first American Composers' Laboratory (Philadelphia, 1934). He taught at Temple University (1937–46) and was chairman of composition at the Hartt School of Music (1944–60). In 1943 he received the Society for the Publication of American Music award. Freed's music is pandiatonic and neo-classical; his most important contribution was as a composer of Jewish sacred music. He was the author of Harmonizing the Jewish Modes (1958). (E. Steinhauer: A Jewish Composer by Choice: Isadore Freed, New York, 1961)
WORKS
Stage: Vibrations (ballet), 1928; Homo sum (op, 1, after J.D. Townsend), 1930; The Princess and the Vagabond (op, 2, R. Sawyer), 1946
Orch: Triptych, str, 1932; Jeux de timbres, 1933; Pastorales, 1936; Appalachian Sketches, 1938; Music for Str, 1938; Vn Conc., 1943; Festival Ov., 1944; Sym. no.1, 1947; Sym no.2, brass insts, 1951; Concertante, pf, str, 1953; Concertino, eng hn, orch, 1953; Vc Conc., 1953; Antiphonal Fantasy, org, str, 1954; Elegy and Allegro, 1959; Fanfare and Fugue, 1960; Improvisation and Scherzo, hn, ob, str, 1960
Other inst: Vn Sonata, 1926; Str Qt, 1929; Sonorités rythmiques, pf, 1930; Str Qt, 1931; Scherzino, fl, pf, 1932; Pf Sonata, 1933; Str Qt, 1937; Rhapsody, va, pf/orch, 1938; Rhapsody, va, 1939; Trio, fl, va, hp, 1940; Vn Fantasy, 1950; Concertante, 8 brass, 1951; Vc Passacaglia, 1951; Rhapsody, trbn, 1952; Sonatina, ob, 1953; other pf pieces; org works
Principal publishers: C. Fischer, Peer-Southern, Presser, Transcontinental
RUTH C. FRIEDBERG
Freed, Richard (Donald)
(b Chicago, 27 Dec 1928). American critic and music administrator. He studied at the University of Chicago (Bachelor of Philosophy 1947). After working as an assistant to Irving Kolodin at the Saturday Review (1962–3) and as a staff critic for the New York Times (1965–6), he was assistant to the director of the Eastman School (1966–70) and director of public relations for the St Louis SO (1971–2). He was executive director of the Music Critics Association, 1974–90, and served as a contributing editor of Stereo Review (from 1973), record critic for the Washington Star (1972–5) and the Washington Post (1976–84) and consultant to the music director of the National SO (from 1981). Freed is the author of numerous articles and reviews for newspapers in New York, Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis and St Louis, and has written for such journals as Gramophone and Musical America. His other writings include liner and programme notes for the Philadelphia, St Louis, Houston, Baltimore and National symphony orchestras, and for RCA Victor and Vox Records; he has also developed and annotated a series of historical recordings for the Smithsonian Institution from 1985. He has received ASCAP-Deems Taylor and Grammy awards for his concert and record notes.