22 passages for harpsichord between love and folly. In a CD rich in sensuality, the pleasure promises in the erotic universe of XVIIIth century. Recorded in the cardinal’s hall at Villa Medici in Rome, using a historical harpsichord owned by the Académie française, this recording restores to us the melancholic languor, the most unbridled virtuosity typical of the great French harpsichord players, ranging from Couperin to Royer, including François Couperin’s incomparable elegance. The voluptuousness and obsession that lead to self-denial. Behind the abstract stuff of music that unveils and hides at the same time, the inaccessible peaks of the risky passions of that century. Listen and see.

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Composed by Marchegian authors at one of the most celebrated courts of the Italian Renaissance, this CD proposes music born in these places for these places. An unpublished heritage that has been today revived in a recording made with the original instruments by top-artists. The atmosphere created for the intimacy and the pomp of the Dukes in Montefeltro is given back to you in a magic, pleasant, evergreen listening. This recording, produced in 1997 in co-operation with the Superintendency for Artistic and Historical Heritage in Urbino, is regularly played inside the Ducal Palace in Urbino and is the first soundtrack ever created for visits to a historical monument.

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In full activity in Marche and Veneto in the first decades of the XVIIth century, Barbarino is one of the most interesting composers of the Baroque. He mingles the pleasure of “the marvellous” typical of that time with a streak of witty vitality. The voice must trace out these passions and with musicality alone untie the verbal knots of tangled emotion, it must be ductile and flexible. The voice must brave cascades of falling notes, then master tumultuous twists and flourishes; it must savour the long notes of a chromatic scale, then rush through a declamation of short, rapid figures. Sometimes the singer must lend himself to long passages of honeyed luxuriousness, or to the light, airy, accented rhythms of the canzonetta.

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Not much is known about the youth and first studies undertaken by the musician and composer Luigi Battiferri, born at Sassocorvaro in April 1614. His beautiful motets for solo voice, published in 1669, are recognizable for their extremely far-reaching free style, with frequent changes of tempo, echo effects, rallentandi and accellerandi, a style closer to the free one of the emerging accompanied monody, in which affetti played such an important role. Vocal power is explored and exploited to the utmost, the melodic inventions are always fresh and vivacious; a versatile creativity is revealed, ready to adapt to the needs of a style depending on solid expertise.

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Tombeau’ is a strong word, simultaneously indicating immediate tragedy and sweet memories. It is also an untranslatable word, marked by the sound of the French language and that is how we must use it. In music the Tombeau was invented by the lutenist Ennemond Gaultier the Elder, one of the most important figures in 17th century European classical music. It was invented in memory of René Mezangeau, who died in 1632 and who had greatly contributed to lutenist literature. This is because the Tombeau exists as a funeral oration, to be performed at the moment of parting from a family member, a friend, someone beloved. Eduardo Egüez’s splendid rendition provides us with the best of these three great masterpieces by the lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss.

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It is the year 1625, it is carnival time. They are waiting for the arrival of Giovanni Paolo Foscarini, the supreme virtuoso of the chitarra battente. For some time now tales have been circulating about his extraordinary playing and his compositions, at times joyous and at times haunting, capable of touching even the most hostile hearts. A carriage drives up to the Palazzo, a man wrapped in a cloak turns up at the door and is accompanied to the music room; he carries a guitar. He sits down; he tunes his instrument and starts to play. In a few moments all those present are overcome by an unknown emotion; the chords follow one another spread over the bass line of the Follia di Spagna. That new way of playing has never been heard before and the long wait is instantly forgotten.

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In the course of a long career which would take him far and produce many memorable works (from the Sacri Concentus of 1612 to the Secondo Libro de Motetti a Voce sola, 1635), we cannot fail to recognise in Ignazio Donati one of the most innovative and mature composers of Italian church music in the early years of the seventeenth century. He exhibits an approach which is both experimental and popularising, displaying an attentive eye for the practical details of performance, a heightened awareness of the physical space as a primary element in the process of musicmaking and a desire to explore a wide range of tonal effects, while always remaining affectionately faithful to the text. However difficult it may be to reproduce the effect of voices singing in the distance, this recording manages to recreate the illusion of one of the most fascinating vocal practices that has ever existed.

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A city on a distant hill represented freedom for Renzo in the Italian novel, The Betrothed. The city in question was Bergamo, in the proud territory of Veneto. There, Tramaglino hoped to put his endangered life beyond risk. And yet even the author of this classic tale, Alessandro Manzoni, was unaware that Giovanni Antonio Terzi, the prince of Italian lutenists, was alive and living in the city in the very period in which his story is set. Little evidence remains of the fact today, and little attention has been paid to his existence in the intervening years, yet Terzi was without doubt one of the best-known and the greatest Italian lutenists of the sixteenth century. The history of this excellent CD is mingled with that of a bizarre personality with a musical soul. A mysterious man, who came from and vanished into nowhere, contributed to the beauty of this production, leaving us a recording that leaves one totally speechless.

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“A man with a distinctive voice and unusual ability,” in spite of a highly impressive career, the Roman composer Felice Sances (c. 1600-1679) owes a large proportion of his fame to the fact that in the 1630s he was amongst the first to publish no less than four books of cantade, the term he used to describe a genre of compositions for one, two or three solo voices and basso continuo consisting of several sections with an alternation of recitative, arioso and aria, a form which was establishing its popularity in that very period. Listen to Tirsi morir volea, the famous text by Guarini set to music by Sances. Two lovers search together for a morte sì soave e sì gradita (such a sweet and welcome death), a death they will manage to attain together in the parody of a sensual and voluptuous embrace.

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Sung or recited as a prayer of thanksgiving for the day drawing to an end and of entreaty for the night that follows, Vespers are one of the most ancient and evocative parts of the so-called “liturgy of the hours” or “office”, hence that daily cycle of prayers, created by monastic tradition, which all those belonging to religious communities were obliged to recite. The music for Giannettini’s Vespers on which this recording is based, are reproposed following a liturgical pattern suited to a Marian solemnity and with music in conformity with the customs of the times. These imposing but agile polychoral compositions return to us the magnificence of the court of Francesco II d’Este, a sovereign who showed great interest in music, also patronising performances of operas and oratorios.

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