GIROLAMO FRESCOBALDI:
AN EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY

by Frederick Hammond

An extended version of Frederick Hammond’s biography,
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Harvard Press 1983.

This website is intended to be an online resource for anyone who seeks in-depth knowledge of Frescobaldi’s life and work.

updated: 3/2023

This website neither collects nor stores personal data.

Frederick Hammond passed away in the first week of March, 2023.
He served as the Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Culture and Music History at Bard College 1989 – 2013, and will be interred in the Bard College cemetery.

From Leon Botstein, President, Bard College:

Fred was an exceptional scholar and performer. He was a member of a pioneering post World War II generation of American music historians, many of whom, like Fred, were not only scholars, but performers. He was an undergraduate at Yale University where he also completed his Ph.D. He taught first at the University of Chicago, then at Queens College of the City University of New York, and subsequently, for almost a quarter century, at the University of California, Los Angeles, before coming to Bard. He was the first full-time music historian in Bard’s history.
 
Fred was a distinguished scholar of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. He is best known for his definitive biography and study of the works of Girolamo Frescobaldi. His other major contributions to scholarship concern patronage and culture during the Baroque era in Rome, primarily the contributions of the Barberini family. His scholarly interests made Fred Hammond an expert and connoisseur of all things Italian, including its ancient and modern history, its literature, and above all, its language.
 
Bard will miss Fred, as will musicians, scholars, and friends, here in the Hudson Valley, on the east coast, and others in Europe. His life and work will be remembered, as will his devotion to the towering achievements of the human imagination.