Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) worked for most of his career at the same court in Germany's Thuringia region and never published much music. He was hailed as a top composer in his own time, but an archive fire destroyed most of his manuscripts. So he was almost forgotten. Historical-performance violin specialist Rodolfo Richter has unearthed a set of six Erlebach sonatas for violin, viola da gamba, and continuo, and they offer tantalizing hints that the fire might have robbed us of a compositional giant. The album ...
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Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) worked for most of his career at the same court in Germany's Thuringia region and never published much music. He was hailed as a top composer in his own time, but an archive fire destroyed most of his manuscripts. So he was almost forgotten. Historical-performance violin specialist Rodolfo Richter has unearthed a set of six Erlebach sonatas for violin, viola da gamba, and continuo, and they offer tantalizing hints that the fire might have robbed us of a compositional giant. The album contains six sonatas of five movements each; two are for violino discordato or scordatura (retuned) violin, and one uses a violino piccolo. As Erlebach himself pointed out and liner note Robert Rawson explains further, the composer aimed toward goûts réunis or at least mélangés in this work; he sought to infuse Germanic counterpoint into suite-like groupings of dances preceded by multipart introductions. To this end he emancipated the viola da gamba from its...
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