Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria

5. Rome, 1634–43.

Perhaps at the behest of Cardinal Francesco, Frescobaldi dedicated a reworked version of the instrumental Canzoni (B.3) to Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia of Cremona, a Dominican who with Francesco had belonged to the committee that condemned Galileo. The Fiori musicali (Venice, 1635; A.7), comprising three organ masses, was dedicated to Cardinal Antonio Barberini: this was Francesco's younger brother, an equally brilliant patron of the arts, not their austere Capuchin uncle of the same name, as is sometimes stated. The address ‘To the Reader’ forms the last of Frescobaldi's important statements on the performance of his works. In 1637 Cardinal Francesco subsidized the republication of both books of toccatas (presumably from the plates in Frescobaldi's possession), his own arms now replacing those of Ferdinando Gonzaga on the title-page of the revised version of the first book (A.8). The aggiunta to this volume constitutes the last keyboard works by Frescobaldi published during his lifetime. (A posthumous collection of Canzoni alla francese (A.9) was issued by Vincenti in Venice in 1645.) In 1640 Pietro Della Valle wrote to Lelio Guidiccioni that ‘today [Frescobaldi] uses another manner, with more galanterie in the modern style … because with experience he will have learnt that to please everyone, this manner is more elegant, although less learned’. The relation between this observation, the aggiunta to the first book of Toccate and later manuscript works attributed to Frescobaldi remains a matter for investigation.

Frescobaldi did not take part in the brilliant series of operas produced by the Barberini in 1631–43, but he may have participated in the select household musical academies presented by Cardinal Francesco under the direction of Virgilio Mazzocchi, which featured instrumental soloists, polyphonic madrigals and a consort of viols. The writings of the theorist Giovanni Battista Doni, a former secretary to the cardinal, contain a number of unflattering references to Frescobaldi from this period. Doni denigrated Frescobaldi to Marin Mersenne as skilled only in keyboard music and virtually illiterate. In the De praestantia musicae veteris (1647) Doni reported that in about 1638–40 Ottaviano Castelli, ‘by means of frequent and free drinks’, had seduced Frescobaldi into convincing Cardinal Francesco to have an organ which he had commissioned for the restoration of his titular church, S Lorenzo in Damaso, tuned in equal temperament – a project thwarted by the opposition of Doni and of singers who refused to perform with such tuning. There is some evidence, however, that Frescobaldi was not in fact uncultured. His patrons were among the most sophisticated magnates of the period, and he was praised by Banchieri, Giustiniani, Mersenne, Bonini, Liberati and even Doni's protégé, Della Valle. The erudite Lelio Guidiccioni left in his will ‘the arpicordo called “the Jewel” by Frescobaldi’ (Hammond, 1994). Frescobaldi's choice of texts for vocal works included poets such as Marino and Carissimi's librettist Francesco Balducci.

During his last years Frescobaldi was active, always as a harpsichordist, in the celebrated Lenten performances at the Oratorio del Crocifisso. The most vivid picture of him as a performer comes from the Response faite à un curieux by the French gamba virtuoso André Maugars, who heard him at the Crocifisso in 1639. (Frescobaldi also performed there in 1640 with the two most celebrated Roman castrati, Loreto Vittori and Marc'Antonio Pasqualini.) The Crocifisso performances combined instrumental works with motets and Latin oratorios. Maugars described the ensemble as containing organ, large harpsichord, lira, two or three violins and two or three archlutes. The instruments alternated in improvised solo and concerted passages, ‘But above all the great Friscobaldi showed a thousand sorts of inventions on his Harpsichord, the Organ always holding firm’. Manuscript pieces in Uppsala exactly fit Maugars's description, in which improvisation by solo instruments is indicated (sometimes notated, sometimes not) over a held note in the continuo (Hammond, 1994). Maugars concluded that, ‘although [Frescobaldi's] printed works give sufficient witness of his ability, in order to judge of his profound knowledge it is necessary to hear him improvise toccatas full of contrapuntal devices and admirable inventions’.