Metamorphosis and Italian Music

A passage from Kircher's Itinerarium exstaticum, written in Rome in 1656, could almost be describing a Palladian Ensemble performance of Italianate repertoire:

They began the composition which was for two small violins and the kind of lute known as a theorbo, with such agreeable harmony and extraordinary combinations of intervals, that I cannot recall having heard the like before.... and next, as they descended...... from high to low they became gradually more gentle, thus affecting the senses of the listeners with similar languor.... sometimes with wounds of sorrowful disdain, they drew forth a mood of melancholy and sorrow as if engaged in a tragic event.... Little by little they began to pass into more rapid and urgent figuration, joyful and dancing, until I was close to becoming overwhelmed with the violence of the mood. And finally, with a slackened impulse, I was brought to a calmer frame of mind inclined to compassion, divine love, and denial of worldly things, by such extraordinary grace and nobility that I am convinced that the heroes of old... never attained such skill .

While the most common treble pairing was two violins, the violin and recorder were also used, though the resulting liveliness of colour was not to everyone's taste. The Florentine monk Severo Bonini noted sourly, that sonatas played in church by violin, recorder, theorbo and violone;

"stir up unbridled youth...... to merriment and lust and profane the house and temple of God against all propriety."

We can only hope to do the same...