This sonata has all the hallmarks of the new style of music which was becoming popular through Opera. Castello's boss in San Marco, Claudio Monteverdi had composed the first opera just 20 years ago, and people loved the new hedonistic, soloistic style of the arias. The violin, also a relatively new invention, was the ideal instrument for expressing the variety of colours and moods that was now called for.

This sonata has 8 sections which run smoothly on from each other. Starting with a bold 'statement' in the bass line, the violin responds and develops the idea ending the secion in a flurry of notes, and leading into the second section which is a lively dance in three. As the music progresses, the character of the music changes, and often the secions are (as in the beginning) introduced in the bass first.

The ending is remarkable - starting very slow and mysteriously, it builds up very quickly into a final gesture which sounds peculiarly eastern.

The term also appears during the 17th century as the title of instrumental collections or multi-movement works of which Walther's collection is a noted example.

It was only in the early 18th century that scherzos began to appear as movements within larger works.

Relatively little is known about Giovanni Picchi. He is portrayed on the title page of Fabritio Caroso's Nobiltà di Dame (Venice, 1600), playing a lute; this serves not only to indicate his stature at that time but to show that he was a dancing master and lutenist as well. He served as organist at several Venetian religious establishments between 1615 and 1625.

One of his two publications, the Intavolatura di balli d'arpicordo (1621), holds an important position in the corpus of dance music for the keyboard. Dance music formed a kind of "low art" tradition distinct from the "high art" of toccatas and ricercars composed by St. Mark's organists. Picchi's collection is the last of its kind to be published in Venice, and its virtuosic contents present an astonishing wealth of interesting, sometimes bizarre, figuration. The opening set of Passamezzo variations presented in this programme, is particularly fine for its fiery and exciting display; Picchi is able to shift mood remarkably by changing the affetto of each variation of the harmonic bass-dance pattern.

In 1639 in Bologna, Leonardo Maria Piccinini published a lute book, ostensibly a posthumous collection of his father Alessandro's works. However, the 'Chiaccona cappona alla vera spagnola' is more likely to be the work of his uncle Filippo, who was for many years lutenist at the royal court in Madrid. The printed lute version is clearly corrupt, and many details suggest that it is an arrangement, perhaps of a guitar solo (the baroque guitar was known in Italy as the chitarra spagnola or Spanish guitar).

It has been arranged here for the theorbo, which preserves the bass register of Leonardo's original, whilst offering the 'campanella' cross-string fingerings of the guitar. The piece is printed in conventional triple time but the barlines are more a hindrance than a help, because the stresses clearly fall in alternate groups of five and seven beats, imparting an exaggerated swagger to the pulse. This may reflect the mysterious 'cappona' of the title, which is possibly a caricature of the lumbering walk of an obese capon, or more likely a castrato.

We have chosen three recercadas from this, the publication which has ensured his name to prosperity as being the first printed ornamentation manual for the player of bowed string instruments. With this set of recercadas, Ortiz becomes a starting point for the entire school of viola da gamba playing in Italy: these divisions will, in fact, constitute the only Italian solo literature specifically dedicated to this instrument. And, considering that divisions (or recercadas) were almost always performed on the spot by the virtuoso, these works are also amoung the few printed testimonies of the practice.

Many dances of the 16th and early 17th centuries (in particular gaillards, pavanas and passamezzos) are structured according to a scheme similar to that of the romanesca. The same scheme occasionally appears also under different titles such as in England - Greenleeves.

'It [is] wonderfull to observe what a skratching of Correlli there is everywhere - nothing will relish but Corelli; just as if in study no book [were] tollerable to read but Horace, and no reading good but of his Odes, Satires and Epistles; just as they are wedded to the solos, aires and sonnatas of Corelly. That his are transcendent wee grant; but that no style or compositions but his are valuable is, from a defect of copia in musicke.'

Arcangelo Corelli had done something hitherto quite unheard of - he had made an international splash with a publication of violin sonatas! Until now, it had been by composing Opera that one could become internationally renowned. That era was over, and with his well-timed publication in 1700 of the Opus 5 violin sonatas, Corelli broke the mold, and brought purely instrumental music into the spotlight. The violin was now truely the 'instrument par excellence' of the baroque.

'But now to observe the stepps of the grand metamorfosis of musick, whereby it hath mounted into those altitudes of esteem it now enjoys; I must remember that upon the Restauration of King Charles, the old way of consorts were layd aside at court, and the King made an establishment, after a French model of 24 violins, and the style of the musick was accordingly. So that became the ordinary musick of the court, theaters, and such as courted the violin. And that instrument had a lift into credit before, for one Baltazarre a Sweed came over, and did wonders upon it by swiftness, and doubling of notes, but his hand was accounted hard and rough, tho he made amends for that by using often a lyra-tuning, and conformable lessons which were very harmonious, as some coppys now extant in divers hands may shew; but this manner, which was but a complement to the lute, and not fitt for consort, did not take at all.'

Anthony Wood (1632-95), English antiquary and amateur musician, compared him several times with the English violinist Davis Mell, who 'play'd farr sweeter than Baltsar, yet Baltsar's hand was more quick and could run it insensibly to the end of the finger-board'. Mell was also in Oxford in 1658, and their divisions on John, come kiss me now probably record some sort of playing contest. They show that Mell was no match for Baltzar, as a composer as well as a player.