Pensieri Adriarmonici
Source: IMSLP.org
Giacomo Facco Books and Music
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Tag Archives: Baroque violin
Giacomo Facco, 1676-1753
Selected Recordings
“Pensieri Adriarmonici” for strings, Op. 1 n. 1, in E minor
No sè què blando temor
Las Amazonas de España
Selected Sheet Music
Pensieri Adriarmonici
Source: IMSLP.org
Showcase Piece
“Pensieri Adriarmonici” Concerto Op.1 No. 4 in C minor
Notes and Commentary
Giacomo Facco was an Italian Baroque violinist, conductor, and composer. One of the most famous Italian composers of his day, he was completely forgotten until 1962, when his work was discovered by composer, conductor, and musicologist Uberto Zanolli.
Facco wrote a cycle of twelve concertos for violin, strings, and organ with the title of Pensieri Adriarmonici (Thoughts Adriarmonicous), published in Amsterdam, the first book in 1716 and the second in 1718. He also wrote solo cantatas—on his own texts, for he was a skilled poet. these were found at the National Library of Paris, and were presented by soprano Betty Fabila for the first time (conducted by Uberto Zanolli) in 1962 at the Castle of Chapultepec in Mexico City.
Facco is believed to have composed numerous sacred works for the Royal Chapel in Madrid, but these appeared to have been destroyed, along with many other compositions, in the fire of 1734.
Much of the information about Facco’s life and works was discovered by Uberto Zanolli, an Italian-Mexican composer who found Facco’s Pensieri Adriarmonici at the Vizcain Library in Mexico City in 1962. Since then, Zanolli has worked on putting together a biography of Facco and a musicological recovery of his work. Facco lived from February 4, 1676, to February 16, 1753.—Excerpted from Wikipedia
Books and Music
Selected Books
Esordi del melodramma in Spagna, Portogallo e America
Olschki, 1992
Annibale Cetrangolo
$68.19 on Amazon
Selected Music
Festejo Harmonico (1995)
Pensieri Adriarmonici Ouero (2008)
6 Concerti Op 1 Book 2 (2002)
Complete Works
Operas
Le regine di Macedonia
I rivali generosi
Penelope la casta
Amor es todo imbención
Amor aumenta el valor
Solo cantatas (Italian)
Bella leggiadra Armida
Clori pur troppo bella
Emireno d’Egitto
In grembo ai fiori
Menzognere speranze
Or che spunta
Perchè dici ch’io t’amo
Sentimi amor
Vidi su molli erbette
Solo cantatas (Spanish)
Bella rosa
El trinar
O qué brillar, cantata a la Virgen Maria
Si el ave, si la fiera y si la planta
Dialogues and serenades
Il convito fatto da Giuseppe ai fratelli in Egitto
Augurio di vittorie alla Sacra Real Cattolica Maestà di Filippo V
La contesa tra la pietà e l’incredulità decisa da Maria Vergine
Festejo para los días de la reyna
Serenata (Cañizares) for Philip V of Portugal
Instrumental music
Pensieri adriarmonici
A Select Concerto
a piece published in L’art de se perfectionner dans le violin
5 suites and a sinfonia for 2 cellos
Johann Paul von Westhoff, 1656-1705
Selected Recordings
6 Sonates for Violin et Basso continuo
Imitazione delle Campane
Suites for Solo Violin
Selected Sheet Music
Violin Sonata in A major
Source: IMSLP.org
Notes and Commentary
Johann Paul von Westhoff was a German Baroque composer and violinist. One of the most important exponents of the Dresden violin school, he was among the highest ranked violinists of his day, and composed some of the earliest known music for solo violin. He worked as musician and composer as a member of Dresden’s Hofkapelle and at the Weimar court. Westhoff’s surviving music comprises seven works for violin and basso continuo and seven for solo violin, all published during his lifetime. More works, particularly a 1682 collection of solo violin music, are considered lost. His work, together with that of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Johann Jakob Walther, greatly influenced the subsequent generation of German violinists, and the six partitas for solo violin inspired Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous violin sonatas and partitas. He lived from 1656 to April, 17, 1705.—Excerpted from Wikipedia
Selected Books and Music
Selected Books
The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011
Charles Brewer
$83.91 on Amazon
Selected Music
Sonatas for Violin & Basso Continuo (2005)
Partitas for Solo Violin (2010)
Complete Suites for Solo Violin (2004)
Complete Works
Erstes Dutzend Allemanden, Couranten, Sarabanden und Giguen Violino Solo sonder Passo Continuo (lost)
Sonata for violin and basso continuo
Suite for violin solo
Sonate a Violino solo con basso continuo
Solo partitas for violin
Ignazio Albertini, c.1644-1685
Sonatinae title page
Selected Recordings
Sonata No. 1
Sonata No. 5
Sonata No. 10
Selected Sheet Music
Sonata No. 3
Source: IMSLP.org
Notes and Commentary
Ignazio Albertini (Albertino) was an Italian Baroque violinist and composer. He is known by a single collection of music, the twelve Sonatinae (sonatas for violin and basso continuo) posthumously published in Vienna and in Frankfurt in 1692. The collection was prepared for publication by Albertini himself, but he did not live to see it printed.
His sonatas are multi-sectional pieces, very varied in content and structure, and all of the highest quality. Some idea of the rich variety of forms found in the Sonatinae may be gleaned from the following examples: Sonata IX is a passacaglia in which the main theme is presented as a canon at the fifth in the first and the last sections; and statements of the ostinato sometimes overlap with formal sections of the sonata. Sonata XII, the last in the cycle, consists entirely of imitative movements, unlike other sonatas, in which imitative movements are either absent or are surrounded by free sections, such as slow lyrical arias, toccata-like movements with rapid passagework over sustained bass notes, etc.
Albertini’s sonatas are very demanding technically, with frequent instances of difficult fast passages, leaps, sudden changes of register and, particularly in the last sonata, double stopping. He lived from c. 1644 to September 22, 1685.—Excerpted from Wikipedia
Like Schmelzer (and Biber, Westhoff, Strungk, and Walther among others) Albertini frequently downplays the dance in favor of more colorful and technically challenging free-form invention. In particular, the First, Fourth, Eighth, and 11th sonatas designated here (Albertini did not arrange them in any fixed order) include passages where the composer’s imaginative use of phrasing, dynamics, and ascending and descending scales is on par with his mentors.—Excerpted from Classics Today
Very little is known about his life, but he knew Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, one of the most important musicians at the Viennese court at the time, because Schmelzer in 1671 wrote a letter on Albertini’s behalf in praise of his musucianship. The letter was intended to help address some misconduct that Albertini was apparently accused of. Possibly as a result of some additional misconduct, Albertini died 14 years alter, in Vienna, the apparent victim of a stabbing. Read the On Baroque appreciation on the 328th anniversary of Albertini’s stabbing death.
Books and Music
Selected Music
Sonates pour violon & bass continue (2002)
Complete Works
Twelve Sonatinae
Sonata hyllaris ex C à 10 (lost)
suite of 7 pieces à 4 (lost)
Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli, c.1699-c.1773
Selected Recordings
Aria con Variazioni
Sonata for Violin and B.C. No.7 in A minor
Sonata for violin, parts 9 & 10
Selected Sheet Music
XII Sonate da Camera a Violino
Source: IMSLP.org
Notes and Commentary
Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli was one of the leading Italian violinist-composers active in London during the era of Handel. Reportedly a pupil of Corelli in Rome, he arrived in London in or before 1719, worked for a decade as leader of the orchestra at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and subsequently became a successful freelance violinist in great public esteem, whose activity extended to at least 1762. Converting to Anglicanism, Carbonelli married in 1730; in 1735 he was naturalized under the name of John Stephen Carbonell.
From the Journal of the House of Lourdes for Feb. 1735:
“Persons sworn, to be naturalized. Henry Wilckens, John Barnard Hoffshleger, Loth Specht, Wolfert Van Hemert, Noah Blisson, Peter Le Maistre, Diederick William Toderhorst, John Stephen Carbonell, and Misael alias Remon Malfalguerat, took the Oaths appointed, in order to their Naturalization.”
From the 1740s, if not earlier, he also operated as a wine merchant, becoming in 1759 an official purveyor of wine to the King [George II]. His descendants continued the wine business highly successfully for several generations. His main patron was John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland, to whom, in 1729, he dedicated his sole surviving music, a privately published set of twelve violin sonatas entitled Sonate da camera a violino e violone o cembalo (1729). Such is the musical quality of these sonatas that their neglect until very recently is hard to explain, but the rather grudging approval accorded to them by the historian Charles Burney (1789) and the lack of any further surviving works by Carbonelli may be the main causes. He lived from 1699 or 1700 to 1773.—Excerpted from Edition HH
According to the Museum of London, a wine bottle during the period in which Carbonella was a wine merchant looked something like this: 
Selected Books and Music
Selected Books
The Cambridge Companion to the Violin
Cambridge University Press, 1993
Robin Stowell
$34.19 on Amazon
“A great reference book that helped me gather information I couldn’t find online. Well organized and written, it should be on every violinist’s bookshelf.”—Paula on Amazon
Selected Music
Sonates pour violin & basse continue (2003)
Complete Works
1. Violin Sonata No. 10 in G minor: I. Largo
2. Violin Sonata No. 10 in G minor: II. Allegro
3. Violin Sonata No. 10 in G minor: III. Largo
4. Violin Sonata No. 10 in G minor: IV. Giga
5. Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major: I. Adagio
6. Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major: II. Andante
7. Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major: III. Largo
8. Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major: IV. Allegro
9. Violin Sonata No. 12 in B minor: I. Largo
10. Violin Sonata No. 12 in B minor: II. Andante
11. Violin Sonata No. 12 in B minor: III. Aria con variazioni se piace
12. Prelude and Aria
13. Violin Sonata No. 7 in A minor: I. Largo
14. Violin Sonata No. 7 in A minor: II. Andante
15. Violin Sonata No. 7 in A minor: III. Adagio
16. Violin Sonata No. 7 in A minor: IV. Giga
17. Violin Sonata No. 6 in A major: I. Adagio, Allegro, Adagio
18. Violin Sonata No. 6 in A major: II. Allegro
19. Violin Sonata No. 6 in A major: III. Aria con variazioni se piace
Georg Muffat: Selected Sheet Music
Georg Muffat: Selected Recordings
Concerti Grossi Nos. 7-12
Chaconne
Armonico Tributo Sonata No.2 in G minor
Georg Muffat Books and Music
More on Muffat
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Georg Muffat: Showcase Piece
Armonico Tributo
Georg Muffat Books and Music
More on Muffat
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Georg Muffat: Complete Works
Sonatas for various instruments (armonico tributo 1682)
Orchestral suites (florilegium primum & secundum 1695)
12 Concerti grossi (auserlesene… instrumental Musik 1701)
12 Toccatas for the organ as well as other pieces: passacaglia, chaconne, air with variations (Apparatus musico-organisticus 1690)
Partitas for the harpsichord
Religious works (notably three masses and Salve Regina) from which “Missa in labore requies” is preserved
3 operas (“Marina Armena,” “Königin Marianne die verleumdete Unschuld,” and “La fatali felicità di Plutone”—Excerpted from Wikipedia
Georg Muffat Books and Music
More on Muffat
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Georg Muffat: Books and Music
Selected Books
Georg Muffat on Performance Practice
Indiana University Press, 2001
David K. Wilson, trans.
$19.76
“A fascinating overall impression of the day-to-day concerns and working environment of a professional musician of the late 17th century.”—American Recorder
Selected Music
Concerti Grossi, Nos. 1-6 (2001)
Concerti Grossi, Nos. 7-12 (2002)
, 1 CD
On Baroque 
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