François Roberday

Roberday came from a family of goldsmiths connected with the musical world of the day: his father, a renowned goldsmith according to the English Wikipedia article, owned an organ, a “cabinet d’orgue”. The French article gives the date of baptism; the English article merely says that he was born in Paris, most probably in March 1624. On his father’s death he was appointed goldsmith to the King, and in 1659 he bought one of the posts of valet de chambre to the Queen; it is under that title that he signed his collection. The French article links to his work as a goldsmith a Flight into Egypt of about 1645, in hardstones, pearls and glass beads on a wooden core, now in the Louvre.

He was the brother-in-law of the harpsichordist Jean-Henri d’Anglebert, who in October 1659 married Madeleine Champagne, Roberday’s sister-in-law according to the Wikipedia articles, his “belle-fille” (stepdaughter or daughter-in-law) according to that of Musicologie.org. D’Anglebert was one of the musicians who supplied him with a fugue subject.

Roberday played the organ in several Paris churches; the articles name Notre-Dame-des-Victoires and the Petits-Pères, without giving dates. The English article says that he was also known as a teacher. A tradition, which nothing confirms, makes Jean-Baptiste Lully one of his pupils.

His business gradually declined. He withdrew to the country near Rambouillet and died in poverty at Auffargis on 13 October 1680, during an epidemic.

The collection, entitled Fugues et caprices à quatre parties mises en partition pour l’orgue, was completed at the press on 14 August 1660, in an edition of five hundred copies according to the French article. It contains twelve four-voice fugues; according to the English article, six of them, nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9, are followed by a caprice built on the subject of the fugue, whereas Charles Bouvet, in 1919, counted twelve fugues and twelve caprices. The writing proceeds mostly in long note values, semibreves, minims or crotchets, as Bouvet observes; several pieces fall into sections, and there are a few double fugues and some variation fugues.

The Advertissement explains the choice of open score, one stave per voice, rather than the usual two-stave keyboard notation: each part remains legible, and the pieces can be played “on viols or other similar instruments”. Roberday defends a few passages that some may find “a little too bold”: in his view, “whatever is pleasing to the ear must always be deemed within the rules of music”. Finally he asks that the caprices be played “at discretion and very slowly”, although they are written in quavers and semiquavers. He invites “those who make this art their principal profession” to follow his example, and declares himself ready, should the work please, to put something more to press.

Out of scruple, Roberday warns that three pieces are not his own: one by Frescobaldi, the fifth fugue, after his seventh ricercar according to the French article, another by Wolfgang Ebner, and the third by Froberger, both organists to the Emperor. The others are composed on subjects given by La Barre, Couperin, Cambert, d’Anglebert, Froberger, Antonio Bertalli, the Emperor’s master of music, and Cavalli, organist of St Mark’s in Venice, who had come to France in the King’s service just as the book was being printed. The Couperin of the list is Louis, according to Sébastien de Brossard; Bouvet, towards whose view Pirro also inclined, believed he could recognise his subject in the eighth fugue, close to the opening of a gigue in his harpsichord book.

These pieces are not intended for the liturgy. They place Roberday in the polyphonic tradition of which he is one of the last representatives, after Titelouze and Racquet according to the French article, after Titelouze and Louis Couperin according to the English one, which also stresses the Italian influence on the collection; Jordi Savall, among others, sees in it a forerunner of Bach’s Art of Fugue. The collection was republished by Alexandre Guilmant and André Pirro in the third volume of the Archives des maîtres de l’orgue in 1901, and by Jean Ferrard in 1972.