Antonio Bertali: Ciacona
+Dario Castello: Sonata seconda
+Marco Uccellini: Sonata prima
+Tarquinio Merula: Canzone quinta
+Giovanni Paolo Cima: Sonate für Violine solo
+Biagio Marini: Sonata variata
+Maurizio Cazzati: Sonata prima "La Pellicana"
+Giovanni Battista Fontana: Sonata seconda
+Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ballo del Granduca
+Claudio Monteverdi: Jubilet aus "Salve morale e spirituale"; Duo Seraphim aus "Vespro della Beata Vergine"

The northern Italian courts along the Po Valley - Mantua, Milan, Cremona, Ferrara, Parma, Modena and Bologna, as well as Venice as a kind of "honoris causa Padanian" court - were the epicentre for the development of new forms, new styles and new performance techniques in the field of instrumental music in the first decades of the 17th century.

Among the protagonists of this phase were the composers presented in this program, and the growing interest in this "new music" on an international level drew some of them to other European centers - Vienna (Bertali and Buonamente), Warsaw (Merula), Neuburg and Düsseldorf (Marini) and Prague (Buonamente again) - which led to the consolidation of a success story of Italian music that had begun in the previous century with the madrigal through the works of these composers for violin and continuo.

The modern listener is impressed by the development of refined instrumental techniques and the variety of forms. In terms of technique, Manfred Bukofzer noted in Music in the Baroque Era, from Monteverdi to Bach (1947) how "the virtuoso character of the violin sonata made itself felt not only in the fiery scale passages, the wide leaps and the use of high registers rarely used in ensemble music, but especially in the astonishing transfer of vocal idioms to the violin." Nevertheless, "the music retains an essentially instrumental style due to the continuous rhythm of the solo passages, the upbeat patterns, the idiomatic figurations and such violinistic features as double and triple stops, pizzicato, col legno and the use of harmonics."

In terms of form, "the earliest stage of the sonata is represented by numerous works that progress without interruption from beginning to end and are subdivided only by changes of meter, tempo or thematic material ... In the violin literature of the early 17th century ... there are many sonatas of this type" (Willi Apel, Italienische Violinmusik des 17. Jahrhunderts, 1990).

Marini's Sonata variata is one of them. Compositions based on traditional melodies, both from the vocal and instrumental repertoire, on the other hand, are forms of variation. In Uccellini, as in Buonamentes Ballo del Granduca, Guerra and Molardi use the original "a tre" notation on only two instruments: The organ plays one of the melody parts in addition to the bass.

A similar choice is made in their transcription of Monteverdi's Jubilet: The melody part, conceived for the voice, is entrusted mainly to the violin, which enriches it with ornaments, while the organ plays the recitative sections, also with additional ornaments.

Further information:
- Recorded in May 2023, Mantua, Italy
- Stefano Molardi plays a historical organ by Graziadio Antegnati (1565)