The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

In 1587 the publication in Venice of a Ricercar per sonar by Andrea Gabrieli was symptomatic of a new order in the history of music. The sole vocation of the art of Europe was no longer to accompany a text, and purely instrumental music was now established in its own right. The city of Venice played a special role in the gradual abandonment of Renaissance forms, where the freedom of thought permitted by the republic and its status as the publishing capital of the world facilitated an unprecedented development of secular music, and it was there in 1617 that Biagio Marini published the first sonata for violin and continuo. The selection of 17th century pieces performed on this CD was entirely recorded by a four-part group (two violins, viola, and continuo), a typically Italian formation that was to lead to the birth of the string quartet in the eighteenth century.