Baroque music is a world of gesture, colors, elegance and rhetoric. The composers from the baroque period created a style with a clear aesthetic. In this marvelous world of aesthetic, each composer created his own personal world.

Here are some notes about the different composers whose music Rubato Appassionato plays.

Francesco Barsanti (1690-1772)

Barsanti was an Italian composer born in Lucca. He studied scientific subjects at the University of Padua, and then devoted himself to music. In 1714 he went to London with Francesco Geminiani (also a native of Lucca); there he played the flute and oboe in the orchestra at the Italian opera, and published three sets of solo Sonatas. He spent eight years in Scotland, where he published his finest compositions, ten Concerti grossi (1742) and nine Overtures (c.1743). He also brought out arrangements of 30 Scots songs with basso continuo in Edinburgh in 1742. In 1743 he returned to London. By this time he had lost his place in London musical society and was forced to take a job as an orchestral viola player.

Barsanti's compositions are accomplished and original. His Op.1 recorder Sonatas are among the finest in the instrument's repertory. The Op.3 Concerti grossi have a contrapuntal glitter not unlike those of J.S. Bach; His Scots-tune arrangements are far more than a foreigner's temporary flirtation with local music-making. Italian virtuosity and Scottish sympathy join forces in in the op.4 Overtures.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689 - 1755)

Boismortier was a French composer born in Thionville. At the age of 33 he moved to Paris where he stayed for the rest of his life.

Boismortier introduced the Italian Concerto form in his Sonatas. This is a three movement form consisting of a fast/light movement followed by a slow/sad movement and ending with another fast/light movement. This form wasn't extremely common in France at the time, but isn´t rare when looking at music of other French Composers writing in an Italian influenced style (Michel Corrette, for example). Boismortier also has many Sonatas written in a more typical French form, consisting of dance movements and therefore creating a kind of a suite.

His music was published by himself. His lists of published compositions contain of 102 opus numbers as well as over 20 pieces without opus number and several manuscripts never published.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713)

The Italian composer and violinist Arcangelo Corelli exercised a wide influence on his contemporaries and on the succeeding generation of composers. Born in Fusignano, he studied in Bologna and established himself in Rome in the 1670s. By 1679 had entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had taken up residence in Rome in 1655. He obtained the support of a succession of influential patrons. Corelli's popularity as a violinist was equaled by his acclaim as a composer. His music was performed and honored throughout all Europe.

All of Corelli's creations are included in six Opus numbers, most of them being devoted to Sonatas and Trio Sonatas. The Violin Sonatas include a particularly well known set of variations on the popular ground "La Follia", which was published by Walsh in London for the recorder and basso continuo. The Trio Sonata was the foundation of the Concerto grosso, the instrumental concerto that contrasted a concertino group with the full string orchestra, which might double louder passages.

Corelli's achievements as a teacher were again outstanding. Among his many students were included Geminiani and Vivaldi. He occupied a leading position in the musical life of Rome for some thirty years, performing as a violinist and directing performances often on occasions of the greatest public importance. His style of composition was much imitated and provided a model, both through a wide dissemination of works published in his lifetime and through the performance of these works in Rome.

Charles Dieupart (c.1667- c.1740)

Dieupart was a French harpsichordist, violinist and composer, active mainly in England. In 1703 Dieupart accompanied Gasparo Visconti in some of Corelli’s Sonatas. He was a prominent member of the Drury Lane musical establishment. Dieupart played continuo with Haym in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Pyrrhus and Demetrius (14 December 1708), and he played in the Haymarket orchestra until 1710. Concertos by him were performed at Drury Lane for ‘Two Hautboys and Two Flutes’ (14 March 1722), ‘Little Flute’ (11 May 1722), ‘Hautboys, Flutes and Violins’ (15 May 1723), as well as a trumpet Sonata (14 May 1726). His last known appearance was in Hampstead on 11 September 1724, when he played ‘Violin Concertino’ and was billed as ‘Capt Dupar, Scholar to the late celebrated Signor Corelli, and late Musick Master to his present Highness the Prince of Orange’. The concert included ‘several pieces of his own composing, for the Violin and Harpsichord’. He died in very necessitated circumstances.

Dieupart is best known today for his Six Suittes de Clavessin, partly because J.S. Bach copied them out and was supposedly influenced by them in his English Suites. The Suites are all seven-movement sequences of Overture, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gavotte, Menuet or Passepied and Gigue, and mix elements of French orchestral music with an idiomatic harpsichord style. Dieupart’s treatment of the Suite as a form, with a fixed number of movements in a fixed order, was without precedent in French harpsichord music, as was the prefixing of an Overture to each Suite. Some of the Suite movements are linked thematically. Estienne Roger (c.1665-1722), French music printer active in the Netherlands, with agents in Rotterdam, London, Cologne, Berlin, Liège, Leipzig, Halle, Paris, Brussels and Hamburg, published them in two versions, for keyboard and for violin or recorder (voice flute and fourth flute) and basso continuo.

Francesco Mancini (1672-1737)

Mancini was an Italian composer born in Naples. He entered the Conservatorio di S. Maria della Pietà dei Turchini in 1688 as a student of organ, where he studied with Provenzale and Ursino; after six years he was employed as an organist. At the beginning of the 18th century he entered the service of the viceroy and in 1704 became the principal organist of the royal chapel. He was appointed maestro di cappella there in 1708 but by December of that year the post was returned to Alessandro Scarlatti and Mancini became his deputy (in 1718 he obtained a guarantee that he would succeed Scarlatti). In 1720 he became Director of the Conservatorio di S. Maria di Loreto, and so played an important part in the training of a new generation of composers. Mancini succeeded Scarlatti in 1725, remaining in the post until his death. In 1735, however, he suffered a stroke and remained semi-paralysed until his death two years later.

Mancini’s contribution to sacred music was considerable, and the wide distribution of his music in libraries throughout Europe is a reflection of its popularity. The peculiarity of his instrumental writing can be seen in his sonatas, for example the rich harmonies accompanying the melodies and the contrapuntalism of the second movements, which are often almost proper fugues.

Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739)

Marcello was an Italian composer born in Venice. His father taught him to play the violin, but later discouraged his developing interest in singing and counterpoint, wanting him to pursue a legal career. He was elected in 1706 to serve on the Grand Council of the Republic, which led to a succession of important posts in the civil service.

Marcello composed approximately 700 works, of which roughly 500 are secular works for one or two voices and continuo, 100 are instrumental, and 50 are the celebrated Psalms of David published in eight elegant instalments by Domenico Lovisa (Estro poetico-armonico, Venice, 1724–26); he also wrote four oratorios. No operas can now be attributed to him, although he composed several serenatas.

Marcello’s literary interests developed into a penchant for merciless criticism and satire. In Il teatro alla moda (Venice, 1720), a satire on opera that was published anonymously but can be securely attributed to him on the basis of censors’ records, the composer railed against both musical customs and social foibles particular to his time. Among the things he attacked were excessive ornamentation, unprepared dissonances, haughty prima donnas and chattering stage mothers.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

Telemann was a German composer born in Magdeburg. At the age of 10 he received singing lessons from Kantor Benedikt Christiani, studied keyboard with an organist, taught himself recorder, violin and zither and learnt the principles of composition. In 1704 he became Kapellmeister to a Prince Promnitz at Sorau, in 1708 Konzertmeister and in 1709 Kapellmeister at Einsenach and Muzikdirector of the church of St. Catherine. Between 1712 ans 1721 he was Kapellmeister to the Prince of Bayreuth, as well as at the Barfüsserkirche. In 1721 he was appointed cantor of the Johanneum and Muzikdirector of the five principal churches at Hamburg, post which he retained till his death. He made good musical use of repeated tours to Berlin and other places of musical repute, and his style was permanently affected by a visit to Paris in 1737, when he became strongly imbued with French ideas and taste.

Telemann, like his contemporaries Mattheson and Keiser, is a prominent representative of the Hamburg school in its prime during the first half of the 18th century. He was the most prolific composer of his time and he was unanimously regardedas one of the best composers: he was compared favourable both to composers of his own generation (J.S. Bach and G.F. Händel) and those of the succeeding generations (C.H. Graun and Hasse).

Telemann published his music himself. He wrote an autobiography, printed in Mattheson's Ehrenpforte and several treatises, but none appear to have been completed: on instrumentation (1717), on composition (1731), on the recitative (1733), on the theatrical style in church music and German recitative and on composing vocal music. Telemann's strong pedagogical leanings evident in basso continuo methods: Fast allgemeines evangelisch-musikalisches Lieder-Buch (1730) and Singe, Spiel, und Generalbass-Übungen (1733-34), in performance of recitative: prefaces of Harmonsicher Gottes-Dienst (1725-26) and Fortsetzung des Harmoninschen Gottesdienstes (1731-32), and in ornamentation practice: Sonate metodiche (1728), Continuation des sonates méthodiques (1732) and III trietti metodichi (1731).

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Vivaldi was born in Venice and died in Vienna. Between 1693 and 1703 he was trained for the priesthood at the local churches of St. Geminiano and St. Giovanni in Oleo. He probably learnt the violin from his father. A few years after his ordination (probably in late 1706) he ceased to say Mass. In April 1718 Vivaldi travelled to Mantua where he stayed until 1720. The Governor of Mantua (for the Habsburgs) was Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, a noted music lover. Vivaldi became his maestro di cappella da camera that he retained after leaving Mantua.

Having briefly returned to Venice, he was soon off to Rome, where he was invited twice to play before the pope. In 1723 the Pietà governors agreed to ask Vivaldi to supply the orchestra with two concertos every month. He wrote over 140 concertos between 1723 and 1729.

From 1726 to 1728 Vivaldi was again active as a composer and impresario at St. Angelo. Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione Op.8 appeared by 1725 and was dedicated to his Bohemian patron Count Wenzel von Morzin. The pioneering flute/ recorder concertos of Op.10 and the string concertos of Op.11 and Op.12 were issued by Le Cène in 1729. Between late 1729 and early 1733 Vivaldi travelled widely. He may well have visited Prague and Vienna.

During the period 1733–35 he wrote several operas. He increasingly promoted opera in smaller mainland centres like Verona, Ancona, Reggio nell'Emilia and Ferrara. From 1735 onwards Vivaldi styled himself maestro di cappella of François III, Duke of Lorraine and Grand Duke of Tuscany, the future Emperor Francis I. Meanwhile, he was reinstated at the Pietà as maestro di cappella in 1735. When Friedrich Christian, Crown Prince of Saxony-Poland, visited the Pietà in 1740 Vivaldi was asked to supply and direct the performance of three Concertos (rv 540, 552, 558) and one Sinfonia (rv 149); the scores, mostly autograph, were taken back to Dresden. On 27 or 28 July 1741 he died in poverty.

Vivaldi was the most original and influential Italian composer of his generation, he laid the foundations for the mature Baroque concerto. His contributions to musical style, violin technique and the practice of orchestration were substantial, and he was a pioneer of orchestral programme music.

During the period 1710–30 Vivaldi's influence on the Concerto was so strong that some established composers older than him like Dall'Abaco and Albinoni felt obliged to modify their style in mid-career. In most of Italy, and in France after about 1725, the Vivaldian model was enthusiastically adopted. Only in Rome and other parts of Europe, notably England, where the Corellian style had taken firm root, was its hegemony resisted. Because the influence of the Concerto permeated all forms of composition Vivaldi can legitimately be regarded as a precursor of G.B. Sammartini and the Bach sons in the evolution of the Classical Symphony.