Coperario - The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble

 Another composer that I feel is less known from the baroque era is John (Giovanni) Coperario (Cooper), this could partially be due to the fact that he supposedly changed his name after visiting Italy even though there is no evidence that he was in Italy. As Italian music was becoming popular he may have changed his name to capitalize on its impact. 

I find it incredible the amount of unknown and assumed information that we have on composers from this century due to lack of documentation. See my earlier post about Pergolessi.

Coperario was a viol player and wrote mainly for strings. He wrote almost 100 fantasies many of which were transcriptions of his Madrigals. This particular recording from the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble was originally written for strings, but is a great arrangement for early brass instruments. I have never seen or heard a tenor cornetto before this recording. The Bass Sackbut is more common to see.

Dark Horse Consort - Viedanck

The Dark Horse Consort is an early brass ensemble that is still touring and performing on period correct instruments. This recording of Johann Viedanck's Sonata 31 is a beautiful example of the pretty sounds that these instruments are able to produce.

Viedanck may be a lesser known composer so a little information about him was that he was a student of Schutz at the Dresden court chapel. He was a German violinist and cornettist as well as a baroque composer in the early 1600's.

The Dark Horse Consort often brings in other instruments and vocalist into their performances, but primarily consist of  brass quintet using 2 cornettist and 3 sackbuts. I point this out of the popularity of brass quintets and because of its similarities to the first brass quintet with the Distin family quintet that used 3 horns and 2 trombones.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and his 2 cornetti

 One of my personal favorite baroque composers is Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. Much like Justin Bieber he crossed both secular and sacred works. 

As a violinist, he wrote many instrumental works he often used 2 cornetti in with the orchestra. He also wrote vocal works for the church in the form on masses and motets. The use of cornetti is why I like him as a composer. It has nothing to do with his personal life where he illegally left his post to move to Salzburg where he eventually became kopplemiester.

Here is an example of 2 cornetti being used in his instrumental works.

 Another example is his sacred work, Missa Salisburgensis. Originally credited to Benevoli, but when the score was found being used to wrap vegetables almost 100 years later. They were able to give credit to the original composer. This huge choral work for 53 voices also uses to cornetti. Here is a recording of the whole work, the 4th choro really shows the 2 cornetti parts around 24:00 minutes into this recording.

Trio Sonatas of Dieterich Buxtehude

 If you are unfamiliar with Dieterich Buxtehude then you should study up on organists from the 1600's. But in all seriousness Buxtehude is one of the most important composers of the 1600's and had a major influence on J.S. Bach. 

Buxtehude wrote many works for keyboard and we have many vocal pieces that have survived. But its the trio sonatas that interest me the most. 14 trio sonatas that were originally written for strings and organ. They work extremely well for brass; Trumpet and Trombone, or cornetto and sackbut.

William Dingoes and the Le Concert Brise; an early music ensemble worked together to record many of these trio sonatas and some vocal works for cornetto and sackbut with organ. Here is an example from their album that demonstrates the versatility of Buxtehude's trio sonatas for brass players. 

Royal Fireworks - Alison Balsom

 Alison Balsom is one of the leading baroque trumpet. This album is a group known as the Balsom Ensemble. There each play on period correct instruments on an album full of arrangements of Baroque Era Music. Here is a video on Alison talking about the project and the album.

And is here a live recording of the Balsom Ensemble. It is wonderful playing and on natural trumpets. It is absolutely mind blowing example of period instruments.

Happy Birthday Queen Anne - Apple Classical Discovery

As promised, here is an example of Apple Classical Music discoveries due to their new search criteria. Although I think they need improving this new idea already is mind-blowing and changing the way we discover music.

I did a simple search of my favorite trumpet player; Matthias Hofs.

Discovered that he had played on a NDR Radiophilhamonie album title My Christmas.

He played on the piece by Handel, Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne.

Hofs recording is not on YouTube but here is another recording so you can hear the piece.

Apple Music Classical

 I have to take a minute to share the news of the release of Apple Music Classical. I have only been waiting for the last 3 years for it to come out and it finally happened. 

Before Covid reached America, I heard that Apple Music was working on a completely classical app with much more in depth coverage of classical music. I preordered this back in January of 2020 and 3 years later it came out.

I wanted to take a blog post to talk about why this is exciting and what implications this new app has for us. The app uses metadata which allows you to search for music under different criteria. For example, before when looking for Boston Symphony performing Mahler 1, the artist would be Boston Symphony and the title would be Symphony 1. Good luck finding it. Everyone has a symphony 1, just click through and hope you find it, memorize its position or album art cover I guess. 

But now with Apple Music Classical you can search by composer, performer, title, even conductor. You can search by ensemble, instrumentation, even genre like baroque or romantic. This app is exciting not just because it is easier to find exactly what you are looking for but also because you can find new things quicker with more information.

The next post I will tell you about the new pieces I discovered with the new app.