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Georg Muffat (1653-1704)
Sonata Violino Solo. G. Muffat, Praga July 1677
Adagio / Allegro / Adagio / Allegro / Adagio

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Sonata per il Violino e Cembalo di J. S. Bach (BWV 1021)
Adagio / Vivace / Largo / Presto



Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Biber worked in Graz and Kroměříž before he illegally left his employer, Prince-Bishop Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, and settled in Salzburg. He remained there for the rest of his life, publishing much of his music but apparently seldom, if ever, giving concert tours. Biber was among the major composers for the violin in the history of the instrument. His own technique allowed him to easily reach the 6th and 7th positions, employ multiple stops in intricate polyphonic passages, and explore the various possibilities of scordatura tuning. Among other pieces, Biber wrote operas, sacred music, and music for chamber ensemble. He also wrote one of the earliest known pieces for solo violin, the monumental passacaglia of the Mystery Sonatas. During Biber's lifetime, his music was known and imitated throughout Europe. In the late 18th century, he was named the best violin composer of the 17th century by music historian Charles Burney. In the late 20th century Biber's music, especially the Mystery Sonatas, enjoyed a renaissance. Today, it is widely performed and recorded. The Annunciation is the sonata that opens the Rosary or Mistery Sonatas, most of them written in scordatura to give a different spirit to each moment of Jesus’ life. This first one announces to Mariah that she’s going to conceive a child, depicting with music the arrival of an angel and the opening of the sky.

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer was an Austrian composer and violinist of the middle Baroque era. Almost nothing is known about his early years, but he seems to have arrived in Vienna during the 1630s and remained composer and musician at the Habsburg court for the rest of his life. He enjoyed a close relationship with Emperor Leopold I, was ennobled by him, and rose to the rank of Kapellmeister in 1679. He died during a plague epidemic only months after getting the position. Schmelzer was one of the most important violinists of the period, and an important influence on later German and Austrian composers for violin. He made substantial contributions to the development of violin technique and promoted the use and development of sonata and suite forms in Austria and South Germany. He was the leading Austrian composer of his generation, and an influence on Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. The Sonata Quarta from Unarum Fidium clearly shows the ostinato of a Ciaccona bass, enriched by all the ornamented ideas, full of imagination, freshness, and beauty. A real jewel for early baroque music.

Georg Muffat is best known for the remarkably articulate and informative performance directions printed along with his collections of string pieces Florilegium Primum and Florilegium Secundum (First and Second Bouquets) in 1695 and 1698. Muffat was, as Johann Jakob Froberger before him, and Handel after him, a cosmopolitan composer who played an important role in the exchanges between European musical traditions. The information contained within the Florilegium Primum and Florilegium Secundum is nearly unique. These performance directions were intended to assist German string players with the idiom of the French dance style and include detailed rules for the tempo and order of bow strokes in various types of movement, as well as more general strategies for good ensemble playing and musicianship. These texts remain extremely valuable for modern historically interested musicians. Sonata Violino Solo is his first dated composition known in our days, and it is his only sonata for violin solo known today. It is handed down to us by a manuscript to be found in the library of the archbishop’s castle at Kroměříž. The first printed edition dates to 1977. The manuscript is written very clearly and accurately. Figuring of the thorough bass is placed very exactly. Music, title, and the signature at the end of the piece have been written by the same hand. Nothing is known about Muffat’s occasion of writing the sonata. After two periods of apprenticeship in Rome and Paris he looked for a position. On his way he spent some time in Prague where he wrote the sonata. However, the slow middle part of the sonata with its outstanding enharmonic harmonies may remember us of those experimental harpsichords with 24 and more keys per octave having been constructed to solve the problem how to find a suitable tuning for keyboard instruments. Maybe, Muffat had access to one of those instruments existing in Prague at that time?

François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand (Couperin the Great) to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family. Couperin acknowledged his debt to the Italian composer Corelli. He introduced Corelli's trio sonata form to France. Couperin wrote two grand trio sonatas. The first, Le Parnasse, ou L'Apothéose de Corelli (Parnassus, or the Apotheosis of Corelli), was written to show his great debt to Corelli and published in 1724. The other, L'Apothéose de Lully, was published a year later and composed in honour of Jean-Baptiste Lully. It used both French and Italian styles of Baroque music, to reconcile the very different styles in what Couperin called a réunion des goûts (a reunion of tastes). The same year as L'Apothéose de Corelli was published, Couperin published a set of ten pieces, Nouveaux concerts, ou Les goûts réunis, that also combined these two different styles of Baroque music. His most famous book, L'art de toucher le clavecin (The Art of Harpsichord Playing, published in 1716), contains suggestions for fingerings, touch, ornamentation, and other features of keyboard technique, as well as eight preludes in the keys of the pieces in his first two books of harpsichord music and an Allemande to illustrate the Italianate style.

At the same time, the great genius that was Johann Sebastian Bach, wrote many of his pieces, inspired by the French Music of those times, having François Couperin as a model to follow. This big love for the French style is clear in works as Orchestral Suites, the French Suite for harpsichord and many other music by him. The Deuxième Concert Royal is an example of refinement, elaborated writing, and the search of beauty in every movement. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. Bach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic, and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular. He composed Latin church music, Passions, oratorios, and motets. He often adopted Lutheran hymns, not only in his larger vocal works, but for instance also in his four-part chorales and his sacred songs. He wrote extensively for organ and for other keyboard instruments. He composed concertos, for instance for violin and for harpsichord, and suites, as chamber music as well as for orchestra. Many of his works employ the genres of canon and fugue.

Adriana Alcaide & Wikipedia