Pasquini: Virtuoso Music For Two Harpsichords

Attilio Cremonesi, harpsichord; Alessandro De Marchi, harpsichord

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710)
Sonate a due cembali (1704): Sonate I-XIV

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1717) is especially known for his keyboard music, explained by the fact that he held the post of organist at the most important Roman churches: the Chiesa Nuova, Santa Maria Maggiore and finally at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the church of the "senate and the Roman people". Pasquini's literally incessant didactic activities are in some way responsible for the sheer quantity and variety of his keyboard music, which has survived essentially in two groups of largely autograph manuscripts, conserved respectively in Berlin and the British Library. The 14 Sonate a due cimbali form part of the latter collection, which is dated 1704. The Sonatas were conceived by Bernardo Pasquini as exercises for his pupils in the extemporized contrapuntal realization of a figured bass.
"Only the two bass parts are notated in full by the composer; the precise harmonic conformation is indicated by the occasional use of figures. The realization of the compositions as such thus becomes the task of the performers. In Pasquini's time, the keyboard realization of basso continuo was by no means regarded as a pure exercise of creative imagination; on the contrary, it represented the didactic system par excellence for the study of composition or, as in the present case, for the practical examination of contrapuntal skills ... The practice of accompaniment or improvisation upon a figured bass is worthy of the same care and accuracy normally reserved for written composition. Composition and improvisation are two aspects of a single musical practice."
(Attilio Cremonesi and Alessandro de Marchi)

Price: $27.98