Biber: Imitatio

Featuring

Maude Gratton
Philippe Pierlot
Sophie Gent
Tuomo Suni
Frank Coppieters
Kaori Uemura

Julien Wolfs
Sara Kuijken
Sanne Deprettere
Fredrik Hildebrand
Ricercar Consort
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer
Alessandro Poglietti
Johann Caspar von Kerll

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Historical Context

Emperor Leopold I of Vienna, who had a perfect command of music, composed in his spare time and devoted a considerable budget to music.

Compositional Technique

Biber's Battalia features humorous imitations, including drunken soldiers' songs, a drum sound created by slipping paper between violone strings, and a cannon effect using a violent pizzicato that strikes the fingerboard, now called a 'Bartók pizzicato'.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit, published a treatise on music in 1650, Musurgia Universalis, which became a reference work in central European monasteries and colleges.

Performer Biography

The Ricercar Consort, directed by Philippe Pierlot, gained an international reputation for German Baroque cantatas and instrumental music, and has recorded some fifty discs, including complete works of Nikolaus Bruhns and Matthias Weckmann.

Compositional Technique

The stylus phantasticus, a compositional style, allowed composers the freest approach to writing music, unconstrained by words or harmonic schemes, and was used for fantasias, ricercares, toccatas, and sonatas.

Compositional Technique

Alessandro Poglietti, a favorite musician of Leopold I, excelled at imitating natural sounds on the keyboard, as demonstrated by the galloping effect in his Toccatina.

Composer Biography

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, a composer and violinist, was the first non-Italian to be appointed Imperial Vice-Kapellmeister in 1671 and later Court Kapellmeister, before dying of the plague in 1680.