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 surviving 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 Pasquini as exercises for his pupils in the extemporised contrapuntal realisation of a figured bass.

“In Pasquini’s time, the keyboard realisation 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

Recording date: 1991 (formerly available from Symphonia)