tombeau

Tomb — a memorial piece lamenting a named individual's death, written in the French lute tradition and adapted by Froberger for harpsichord. In Froberger's hands, the tombeau is typically cast as a slow allemande of unusual expressive intensity, with a programmatic title identifying the deceased.

The tombeau should feel like a journey through grief, not a static portrait. Begin with contained sorrow and allow the expressive dissonances and chromatic turns to gradually accumulate intensity. The final bars are often more resigned than the middle — exhausted rather than resolved.