Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (also Gerolamo, Girolimo, and Geronimo Alissandro; September, 1583 – 1 March 1643) was a musician from Ferrara, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was influenced by a large number of composers, including Ascanio Mayone, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Claudio Merulo. Girolamo Frescobaldi was appointed “organist” of St. Peter's Basilica, a focal point of power for the Capella Giulia (a musical organisation) from 21 July 1608 until 1628 and again from 1634 until his death. Frescobaldi's printed collections contain some of the most influential music of the 17th century. His work influenced Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Purcell, and countless other major composers. Pieces from his celebrated collection of liturgical organ music, Fiori musicali (1635), were used as models of strict counterpoint as late as the 19th century. Louis Couperin (c. 1626 – 29 August 1661) was a French Baroque composer and performer. He was born in Chaumes-en-Brie and moved to Paris in 1650–1651 with the help of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Couperin worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court. He quickly became one of the most prominent Parisian musicians, establishing himself as a harpsichordist, organist, and violist, but his career was cut short by his early death at the age of thirty-five. None of Couperin's music was published during his lifetime, but manuscript copies of some 200 pieces survive, some of them only rediscovered in the mid-20th century. The first historically important member of the Couperin family, Couperin made seminal contributions to the development of both the French organ school and French harpsichord school. His innovations included composing organ pieces for specific registrations and inventing the genre of the unmeasured prelude for harpsichord, for which he devised a special type of notation. Gustav Leonhardt proves that he still can perform with erudition and freshness with these pieces by Frescobaldi and Louis Couperin. The sophistication of the music is all there, and so is the sense of improvisation. In the Frescobaldi, Leonhardt shapes phrases and sections of music to sound as if they were spontaneous dialogues and conversations between refined intellectuals. Even so, and at a moderate pacing, they are actively involved and not dryly academic. The refinement is also a strong feature of Couperin's highly stylized dances. Also at a moderate pacing that rarely varies, even between movements of the suites, his music comes across as being used for dances at the highest levels of society. It is as if only the finest people, dressed in the finest silks and satins, would dance to Couperin's music, and yet Leonhardt still infuses it with some warmth so that it is not at all staid. The only unfortunate aspect of this album is that sameness of tempo throughout the program. Without the contrast of more widely varying tempos between pieces, particularly in the Couperin suites where every piece is also in the same key, the listener can easily lose focus and thereby miss out on the details of the music and the performance, both of which deserve attention.