Event

Stylus Phantasticus

This music is in a category all of its own. It is said that Froberger took the wild style with him from St. Marks Venice (where it originated in the music of Merulo and Frescobaldi) to Germany. At any rate, the highly dramatic style caught on fast there, and a contemporary describes it thus The fantastic style is especially suited to instruments. It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing, it is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject, it was instituted to display genius and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.

Tonights program features a sampling of this captivating idiom, with composers including Buxtehude, Erlebach, Krieger, and Schmelzer. All the players are well known to Barefoot audiences as interpreters of (among many things) German music of this period, the late 17th century. The Swedenborgian church is the perfect acoustic for this!