Buxtehude: Ciaccona Il mondo che gira (Alpha Collection)

Featuring

María Cristina Kiehr
Victor Torres
Stylus Phantasticus
Dietrich Buxtehude

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Historical Context

The 17th century saw the general acceptance of the solar system model, with Galileo asserting the Earth's rotation and Kepler calculating planetary trajectories, alongside Harvey's discovery of blood circulation.

Compositional Technique

Buxtehude's chamber music sonatas, though varied in structure and style, often alternate between slow and fast tempos and include fugal movements, ostinato pieces, gigues, and sarabandes.

Instruments

The harpsichord used in this recording is an Italian model by Gian Franco Facchini from 1995, and the organ is a 1996 G. & H. Klop instrument, modeled after the 1610 Compenius organ in Frederiksborg Castle.

Composer's Artistic Vision

For Dietrich Buxtehude, a highly cultivated humanist, works based on an ostinato were a means of commenting on a specific conception of the world.

Compositional Technique

The technique of building a constantly varied work over an obstinately repeated bass line, known as ostinato, is very old, dating back to a 14th-century English canon.

Composer Biography

Buxtehude published two collections of trio sonatas around 1692 and 1696, and other sonatas survive in manuscripts collected by his Swedish friend, Gustav Düben.