Sigismondo d'India, 'nobleman of Palermo', as he called himself, composer, singer and poet, was a true child of dawning century. Like his great contemporary Monteverdi, he succeeded in integrating polyphony into the new monodic style. But it is above all in his Musiche da cantar solo that he showed his measure as an innovator. These madrigals for solo voice, selected from around a hundred works he wrote in this genre, provide dazzling evidence of the fact.

This is the fifth and final volume in the Ligia series of the complete keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643). Previous volumes reviewed in Fanfare include the Primo libro di capricci and Secondo libro di toccate (both 34:2), and the Primo libro di toccate (34:6). The present volume includes published collections from the beginning, middle, and end of Frescobaldi’s career. The Primo libro delle fantasie was published while the composer was still in Milan; it served as a kind of audition piece that eventually won him the position of organist at St. Peter’s in Rome.

L'apparition de compositrices en Italie au Seicento, siècle d'un extraordinaire bouillonnement musical, est un phénomène unique par son ampleur et la qualité des musiques qui nous sont parvenues. Qui ne connaît la compositrice et cantatrice virtuose Barbara Strozzi, ou encore Francesca Caccini, première femme a avoir composé des opéras ? De même, les œuvres de Caterina Assandra et Isabella Leonarda, empreintes d'un réel mysticisme, sont saisissantes. La cantatrice Maria-Cristina Kiehr, à la voix d'une extrême sensualité, accompagnée du Concerto Soave de Jean-Marc Aymes, nous plongent au cœur de la vitalité artistique de l'Italie du Seicento.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.

La Lingua profetica del Taumaturgo di Paola, San Francesco est un oratorio inédit de Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661-1756). Il a été redécouvert en 2014 par Francesco Lora, un musicologue bolonais, spécialiste de ce compositeur. Cet ouvrage, commandé par le mécène de Perti, Ferdinand de Médicis met en scène trois personnages de la cour de France du 15e siècle : Charles VIII, son épouse Anne de Bretagne et Louise de Savoie.