Luogo e data di registrazione		Pieterskerk, Utrecht (Holland) - 28 giugno / 1 luglio 1992
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive producer		Jan Höfermann
	Recording producer		Peter Laenger
	Balance engineer		Stephan Schellmann
	Editeing		Peter Laenger
	Prima Edizione LP		Nessuna
	Edizione CD		Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (BMG) | LC 0761 | 05472 77277 2 | 1 CD - durata 61' 05" | (p) 1993 | DDD
	Cover Art		Kathedrale Burgos: Christus am Kreuz.
	Note		Eine Coproduktion mit Festival de Beaune.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber Halready enjoyed a considerable reputation in his own lifetime - first and foremost as a violinist and as the author of exceptional instrumental works. And when Biber’s music began to be rediscovered in the early years of the twentieth century, people’s interest focussed at first on compositions such as the Rosenkranz Sonatas, or the splendid collections of ensemble music like Mensa sonora and Fidicinium sacro-profanum. But Biber’s outstanding achievements in the field of instrumental music should not make us forget that he was a very versatile composer - partly as a result of his various professional duties. From the beginning of the 1670‘s until his death in 1704, he worked in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He rapidly rose to the position of Kapellmeister at the Archbishop’s court, and in 1690 he was made a member of the nobility. His duties included the composition of operas, and teaching the choirboys who sang at church services. The church music practice in late 17th-century Salzburg is documented by a series of impressive sacred compositions from Biber’s pen, among them two settings of the Latin Mass for the dead. One of these, in the key of A major, represents a highly individual version of the Baroque pompe funebre with the radiant splendour of its trumpets. It is the sister work in F minor that is presented on this disc. Biber’s Requiem in F minor is an essentially liturgical work; unlike the great requiems of 19th century tradition, it was not conceived as a more or less independent work, but as part of a large-scale ceremony of mourning. The liturgical function of the work is reflected in its relative conciseness, but this does not affect its compositional structure, which is sophisticated in the extreme. However, whereas Biber’s instrumental works sound strikingly modernistic, the Requiem is deliberately written in a stricter, more traditional style which is only occasionally interrupted, e.g. in the virtuoso bass coloratura at the beginning of the offertory. Following traditional practice, Biber’s writing for the instrumental ensemble (trombones that double up the vocal parts and a group of strings dominated by the low register) is often rather vocal in character, so that the use of stylistic devices typical of a particular instrument is especially prominent - for example, the ‘trembling’ repeated notes at “Quantus tremor est futurus” in the “Dies irae”. This alternation between modern concertante style and the imitative writing in the stile antico is just one of many techniques used by Biber to give his setting of the Requiem ample contrast and colour. Other features worth mentioning in this connection are the alternation of solo and choral singing, and above all the juxtaposition of sections that offer a clear contrast to one another in terms of both character and motifs (this is particularly marked in the “Dies irae" with its large body of text). Biber’s Requiem is composed for one uni- fied ensemble, in contrast to some of his other sacred works, where the tutti section is split up into several groups placed in different parts of the church. This practice took the acoustics of the church into account as an integral part of the composer’s concept, and was widespread in the 17th century. One such work written in the coro spezzato tradition is the Missa Scala Aretina by the Spanish composer Francisco Valls. We know very little about Valls’s life. He was probably born around 1665; we know that he was already choirmaster at Barcelona Cathedral in 1696, and he died in that city in 1747. Of the ten settings of the Mass that Valls wrote, the Missa Scala Aretina of 1702, which is recorded here, is the only one to have become fairly well-known. The Latin name of the work refers to the six-step musical scale (hexachord) whose invention is attributed to Guide d’Arezzo. Like many other composers before him, Valls makes use of the sequence of six notes (both ascending and descending) as a kind of melodic formula that serves as a basis for developing the thematic material in one new variant after another. Valls’s Mass is set for four ‘choirs’: the first is made up of soloists, while the second and third are vocal groups of different sizes; the fourth ‘choir’ is an instrumental ensemble consisting of violins, frequently reinforced by oboes, plus trumpets that were obviously added later, and a sizeable continuo group that includes the harp obligatory in Spanish music at this time. Valls treats the instruments in similar fashion to Biber: they either reinforce the vocal writing, or take up the vocal melodies, but hardly appear as an ensemble in their own right at all, except for a few brief preludes and intermezzi. This treatment reflects the demands laid down by Valls forty years later in his theoretical treatise Mapa armónico. Incidentally, this treatise not only provides a comprehensive survey of musical practice and musical thinking in Baroque Spain; it is also one of the many documents of a theoretical musical dispute which was triggered off by a bold compositional innovation on Valls’s part. In the “Qui tollis" section of the “Gloria” in his Missa Scala Aretina, Valls makes the second soprano enter at the eleventh bar with an unprepared dissonance (a ninth), which actually represented an unforgivable mistake according to the strict rules of composition that Valls shows he is master of in pretty well every other bar of the work. Even though the Mass, as was usual in Spain, was exclusively intended for the use of Barcelona Cathedral, copies of the work circulated, so that it became known to a wide circle of musically educated people. No fewer than 57 Spanish musicians discussed Valls’s ‘breach of the rules’ in public, and the composer then defended his position in the Mapa armónico with the argument that this kind of discord was to be understood as a new expressive device. It seems remarkable that Claudio Monteverdi had been obliged to defend himself against similar criticism from the theorist Artusi a century earlier. Incidentally, the dispute was not restricted to Spain. One of the most prominent participants in the controversy beyond the Spanish border was Alessandro Scarlatti, whose criticism of Valls still met with such great interest at the end of the 18th century that the theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger reproduced it in German translation in his treatise Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik. In other words, Valls’s Missa Scala Aretina owes its subsequent fame well into the 19th century to just one controversial bar of music. The renown the work thus attained is indeed noteworthy, since Spanish Baroque music was then (and has remained to this day) almost unknown beyond its native territory. However, Valls’s expressive attack, which culminated in the scandal of the ‘forbidden’ ninth, is a characteristic of the entire work, and the rediscovery of the Missa Scala Aretina is without a doubt an immense gain for all lovers of Baroque music. Thomas  Seedorf Translation: Clive R. Williams