Battles Music

Lovers of the Spanish Baroque may be surprised to see the subtitle "17th-century violin music in Spain" here, inasmuch as non-keyboard instrumental chamber music following Italian models has never surfaced before. Indeed, the booklet transmits statements by writers of the time bemoaning the lack of such violin music. What's happening here is that Spanish historical-instrument group La Real Cámara and its director-violinist Emilio Moreno have hypothesized that Spanish organ music might have been arranged for other instruments in the same way Italian music certainly was; Girolamo Frescobaldi specifically attested to this. The evidence for the practice in Spain is pretty slim, consisting mostly of the fact that violins (known by the intriguing alternate names biolino, rabele, rabelejo, or rebequino) existed there, and Moreno freely concedes his music represents an "optimistic" answer to the question of whether there was Spanish Baroque violin music. The musical results of his speculation, though, are pretty convincing. The basic contrast between tientos (contrapuntal pieces comparable in form and meaning to the Italian ricercar, the word means "tests") and batallas, or battle pieces, is one that isn't heard much elsehwere, for the representation of battles, though not unknown in Italy, wasn't especially common.

Who was Mario Pilati? A significant if shortlived (1903-38) figure in Italian instrumental music during the 1920s and 1930s: a gifted conductor, fluent pianist, practical teacher, essayist and perspicacious observer of the musical life of his times.

Carols floating across no-man's-land on Christmas Eve 1914; solemn choruses, marches, and popular songs responding to the call of propaganda ministries and war charities; opera, keyboard suites…