The repertoire for these two instruments is vast and ranges from early XVII century until late XVIII century.
The harpsichord or continuo keyboard assumes different roles through the times, being an important support and accompaniment instrument, and taking later the lead to become the accompanied instrument, specially on works of the late XVIII century.
Programs
With David Alonso Molina
1) Sonatas da Chiesa in San Marco – Venice
The program that we present here is a fiction, an ideal combination of sonate concertate for a mass that could have happened in San Marco around 1650. Yet, we are only two musicians and the forces of the chapel at this time were 30 singers and 6 instrumentalists. Among them we could find Biagio Marini, Dario Castello and Giovanni Battista Fontana, who were maestri di concerto at the moment that Giovanni Gabrielli was primo organista and Claudio Monteverdi maestro di capella. The power and prestige of the State City of Venice shined not only because of its fleet and its Mediterranean commercial routes but also for their patronage of the sacred arts.
The chapel most important duty was to provide music for the services: masses and vespers. Vocal music was the centre of the liturgy: plainchant and polyphony. Although, if the Renaissance saw the invention and development of new instrument families, the XVII Century was the age when instrumental music attained a complete emancipation. New genres purely instrumental, such as Canzona, Sonata or Symfonia, were born from the motet.
Our proposal is to present a plausible set for the propium of a mass based on five extant collections of instrumental music.