Sonata a tre (1610) Giovanni Paolo Cima (c.1570-fl.until 1622) )

Ciaconna Tarquinio Merula (1594-1665)

Canzone a due (1638) Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde (1580-1638)

Aria & Sonata Henry Butler (d.1652)

Set of Ayres Nicola Matteis (c.1678-1749)

(From Ayres for the Violin Book IV, 1684)

Sonata in D Antonio Bertali (1605-1669)

Toccata Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger (c.1580-1651)

From Book IV, published 1649

Sonata Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704)

From Sonatas for the Violin, published 1681

An admirable sonata Matteis

(From Ayres for the Violin Book IV, 1684)

In the 17th century Italian musicians travelled north over the Alps bringing with them the violin, and a passionate style of performance based on the newly invented opera. Austrian and German musicians seized on this style, raising the violin and its music to new heights of expressiveness and virtuosity. Musicians referred to this style as the ‘Stylus Phantasticus’.

We begin with what appears to be the earliest surviving trio sonata. Cima was a Milanese organist whose few sonatas exist in a single collection. Their lyricism and effortless contrapuntal mastery make one long for more, and wonder at the capriciousness of a fate which has left us with so few works by this composer and so many by (for example) Giovanni Legrenzi, who could be labelled the ‘Dame Agatha Christie’ of the 17th century trio sonata. This is followed by a dignified version of that wild American dance, the Ciaconna, by Tarquinio Merula (perhaps unusually so for him, as he was forced to flee Italy for acts of criminal lewdness!).

The more savoury motive of steady employment served to bring Bertali to the court of Vienna. While little is known of his life, we can hear in his music the new traits of warmth and romanticism that would become hallmarks of the Austro-Italian style.

Biber was one of the first important Austrian composers to grow up with this style and such was his virtuosity in instrumental writing that the immigrant Italians began to find the standard of competition increasingly difficult.

Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde was an Augustinian friar who was employed as a virtuoso bassoonist by Archduke Leopold in Innsbruck between 1628 and 1630. After Leopold’s death, he may have worked for Karl Ferdinand, Bishop of Breslau, for Selma’s only surviving collection of instrumental music is dedicated to him.

The growing standard and competition of court music-making in Austria, by both Italian visitors and native musicians, was perhaps the reason why Nicola Matteis, who began his journey in Naples, didn’t really pause anywhere en route to his ultimate destination: London. Roger North, the contemporary essayist, tells his story:

“I remember no Italians till Nichola came and he lay obscurely in the city, by the favour of a merchant whom he had converted to his profit; his circumstances were low, and it was said that he travelled though Germany on foot with his violin under a full coat at his back. But his pride and arrogance was incomparable, and if he had not found that easy merchant, he would have starved before he had been known. He was brought to play afore the King and diverse and great persons, in order to be pensioned, but his manner did not take. Sr. R. Lestrange, an exquisite violist, Sr. Wm. Waldgrave, that did wonders upon the archlieute, and Mr Bridgman that dealt a thro-base on the harpsichord, found him to be a superlative genius. But they were forced with all their eloquence to charm him into a complaisance with the English humour, which was to be easy, free, and familiar, and to let gentlemen, not the best hands, have his company in consorts.”

With his new manner the way was clear for Matteis to create a sensation with his virtuosity, as an entry in John Evelyn’s diary shows: “Nothing approached the violin in Nicholas’s hand: he seemed to be spiritato’d and plaied such things on a ground as astonish’d us all.” North records his later career as though it was a moral fable. “He began to feel himself grow rich, and then of course luxurious. He took a great house and lived as one that was married, had a child ... contracted bad diseases which ended in dropsies, and so he became poor. And died miserable.”

Practitioners in the field of early music tend to grumble about the present day but perhaps we should be grateful to a modern world which allows us to play such fine music for a living, without having to brave the attendant dangers of superstardom!

William Carter

The Palladian Ensemble