Sunday, 12^th of September

Girolamo Frescobaldi (9/12/1583 Ferrara - 3/1/1643 Rome)

Frescobaldi must be accounted one of the most important keyboard composers of the first half of the 17th century. He was born in Ferrara, where the musical tastes of the ruling duke, Alfonso II d'Este, attracted musicians of great distinction. Moving to Rome at the beginning of the new century, he was under the patronage of Guido Bentivoglio, who took him in 1607 to Brussels, an important centre of keyboard music in the northern European tradition. In 1608 he became organist at St. Peter's in Rome,where he remained until his death, with a brief absence for promised employment in Mantua in 1615 and a subsequent period of six years serving the Medici in Florence.

Jean-Philippe Rameau (9/25/1683 Dijon - 9/12/1764 Paris)

Rameau was the leading French composer of his time, in particular after the death of Couperin in 1733. He made a significant and lasting contribution to musical theory. Born in Dijon, two years before the year of birth of Handel, Bach and Domenico Scarlatti, Rameau spent the earlier part of his career principally as organist at Clermont Cathedral. In 1722 or 1723, however, he settled in Paris, publishing further collections of harpsichord pieces and his important Treatise on Harmony, written before his removal to Paris. From 1733 he devoted himself largely to the composition of opera and to his work as a theorist, the first under the patronage of a rich amateur, in whose house he had an apartment.
In the later part of his career Rameau also wrote a series of suites, the Pieces de clavecin en concerts, for harpsichord, flute or violin and second violin or tenor viol.