interest in French lute music. Basilius Froberger's music library probably also helped in Johann Jakob's education. It contained more than a hundred volumes of music, including works by Josquin des Prez, Samuel Scheidt and Michael Praetorius, as well as pieces by the lesser known Johann Staden, founder of the Nuremberg school, and Giovanni Valentini, the then-famous Viennese Kapellmeister who later taught Johann Kaspar Kerll. 1634–1649: Court service in Vienna and voyages to Italy The Hofkapelle Stuttgart was disbanded in 1634 in the wake of the Protestants' defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen. In Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (1740) Mattheson writes that a certain Swedish ambassador was so impressed with Froberger's musical skills that he took the 18-year-old musician to Vienna and presumably recommended him to the imperial court. This seems unlikely, however, because at the time Sweden was allied with Lutheran Württemberg against the imperial forces; so exactly why Froberger left for Vienna at around 1634 and how he managed to find employment as a singer in the imperial chapel, remains a mystery. In 1637 Basilius Froberger, his wife and one of his daughters died of plague. Johann Jakob and his brother Isaac sold their father's music library to the Württemberg court (this is how the contents of Basilius' library became known – through the court archives); the same year Johann Jakob became court organist in Vienna, assisting Wolfgang Ebner. In June he was granted a leave and a stipend to go to Rome to study under Frescobaldi. Froberger spent the next three years in Italy and, like many other musicians who went to study there, apparently converted to Catholicism. He returned to Vienna in 1641 and served as organist and chamber musician until the fall of 1645, when he took a second trip to Italy. It was previously thought that Froberger went to study under Giacomo Carissimi, but recent research shows that he most probably studied with Athanasius Kircher in Rome. If so, Froberger's intention must have been acquiring mastery of vocal composition of the prima pratica (Frescobaldi, who taught him instrumental writing, died in 1643). Sometime during 1648–49 Froberger might have met Johann Kaspar Kerll, and possibly taught him. In 1649 Froberger travelled back to Austria. On his way back he stopped in Florence and Mantua to show the arca musurgica, a powerful compositional device Kircher taught him, to some of the Italian princes. In September he arrived in