With Frescobaldi Italian organ music enjoys its finest hour and reaches the greatest heights of expression of its centuries-long history. The art of organ composition, which arose in the late Gothic era and developed during the Renaissance in close contact with the vocal expressions of gregorian chant and polyphony, quickly transcended the imitation of these vocal models to find its autonomy in forms specifically related to the organ, which in this period had reached a striking perfection in the balance of sonoric proportions, mirroring in the instrumental realm the aesthetic ideals within which the vocal ensembles operated.