Farina: Consort Music 1627

Featuring

Pietro Busca
Accademia del Ricercare
Carlo Farina

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Historical Context

This album features music from the period between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, marking the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque era.

Composer Biography

Carlo Farina, the composer on this album, was born in Mantua, a city that flourished under Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, who hosted figures like poet Torquato Tasso and composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Critical Reception

Farina's most famous work, the Capriccio stravagante, led some musicologists to label him the inventor of 'programme music,' though this view has been criticized as overly simplistic.

Composer Biography

Farina's life was marked by constant travel across Europe, including stays in Prague, Dresden, Parma, Lucca, Danzig (now Gdańsk), and finally Vienna, where he died of the plague.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Farina was admired for his audacious determination to employ all the technical and expressive resources of the violin, influencing the German violin school.

Composer Biography

Farina served as Konzertmeister in Dresden under Johann Georg I, Prince Elector of Saxony, a city that was a vibrant cultural center despite the Thirty Years' War.

Compositional Technique

During this period, instrumental music evolved from generic structures playable on "all sorts of instruments" to compositions conceived for specific instruments like the violin, recorder, or cornet.