The three main sources of instrumental music are all evident in the keyboard works of Girolamo Frescobaldi. Frescobaldi was the foremost organ virtuoso of the early seventeenth century, famed through much of Europe for his expressive and even extravagant improvising and composition. Organist of St. Peter’s in Rome, he was an influential teacher, and his influence reached far beyond his own pupils. A century later Johann Sebastian Bach — keyboard virtuoso in his own right and composer of an immense body of organ and harpsichord works — carefully studied Frescobaldi’s music.

We will hear Frescobaldi’s music on a modern organ specially modeled on an instrument of his own time. The player employs different registrations, that is, different combinations of the organ’s many sets of pipes.

Frescobaldi composed organ works in several distinct genres: