This study is focused on an analysis of two single-subject ricercare in the keyboard music of Johann Jacob Froberger and examines possible pathways to the development of the Baroque fugue. This dissertation is divided into three parts. Chapter I contains the purpose, significance of this study and composer, as well as characteristics of the seventeenth-century single-subject ricercar. Chapter II details and examines Froberger's two ricercare. Finally, a conclusion of this study is presented in Chapter III. Two appendixes are included in this dissertation: a list of the single-subject ricercare of Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Johann Jacob Froberger; and an analysis of the two single-subject ricercare, FbWV 407 and FbWV 409, by Johann Jacob Froberger.

It is the purpose of this thesis to discuss and compare the canzoni of Frescobaldi and Froberger and to show something of their influences on their successors.