Story Behind the Song
Recorded August 10-11 1998, July 15 1999, (Skällviks Church, Söderköping, Sweden) & February 23-24, 1999 (Vor Frue Church, Roskilde, Denmark). Recording Engineers: Elin Pålbäck, Per-Gunnar Pålbäck & Torben Holdt Digital Editing and layout: Jens Nørbæk. Drawing: Matts Mattson. Instruments: Baroque violin by Herman Bächle 1991, Viol (after Bertrand) by Guy Derat 1990, Harpsichords: Flemish by Verner Pedersen 1989, Italian by Bengt & Peter Lönnerberg 1986, Organ by Nils-Olof Berg 1995. Tuning: Meantone, a=415 Hz. Thanks to Skällviks and Roskilde Parishes and Kristian Olesen, organist at Roskilde Cathedral.
Lyrics
The Stylus Phantasticus Sonata
In Northern and Central Europe 1630-1700
Instrumental music in the modern sense is generally recognized to have its roots in early 17th century Italy. The advent of the sonata in Venice is the result of several both culturally and practically advantageous factors. First, Venice had a strong vocal tradition; the earliest composers of instrumental sonatas with figured bass took the instrumental choir tradition as a starting point, with Giovanni Gabrieli as its main exponent. Venice also had the instruments. The sonata fulfilled the needs for a new form to explore the potentials of the rather recently invented violin and develop its features. The earliest sonatas by e.g. Cima, Marini, and Castello often specifically mention the violin in the score. Furthermore, Venice was by tradition a leading cultural center, which must have been a perfect milieu for the invention of new musical forms. Also, the 30 years war was raging in central and northern Europe 1618-1648, which substantially reduced the interest of spending money and efforts on culture in those countries.
The music theorist Athanasius Kircher, himself a refugee from the war, in his book Musurgia Universalis, Rome 1650, classifies the sonata, together with the toccata and ricercare, as a form of composition within the Stylus Phantasticus, the fantastic style. The definition of this style as fantastic probably refers to its allowing the composers almost unlimited possibilities of writing music free from any formal constraints. Thus, the sonata became multi-sectioned, with often extremely contrasting ideas, sometimes having elements reminiscent of true improvisation.
The Stylus Phantasticus sonata spread north by way of Italian musicians, who took service at central European courts after the ending of the war, and also by young central- and north European musicians who visited Italy to study, and brought the new ideas back home.
Antonio Bertali (1605-69) and Gioseffo Zamponi (c. 1615-62) were two Italians who successfully traveled north. Zamponi was active in Brussels from the end of the 30 year war, and his opera Ulisse is known to have been performed there twice to the Swedish Queen Christina, on her visit to Brussels in 1655. The sonata for violin and viol is found in manuscript in Durham Cathedral Library, England.
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