Capriccio stravagante
Canzona - The hurdy-gurdy - The small shawm -
Variations on the hurdy gurdy -
Playing with the wood of the bow - Presto - Adagio -
Trumpets - Clarino - Timpani -
The hen and rooster - Presto - The tremulant (of the organ) -
The soldiers' fifes and drums - The cat - Adagio -
The dog - Allegro - Adagio -
The Spanish guitar - Adagio
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Carlo Farina, a virtuoso violinist and one of the important early composers for his instrument, wrote some of the earliest violin sonatas and helped introduce that new Italian genre in Germany. He spent his early years at Mantua and in 1625 became concertmaster at Dresden, where he would have known Heinrich Schütz. He held various positions in Bonn, as well as in Italy, to which he returned, and is known to have later worked in Vienna. It is conjectured that he died of the plague sometime around 1640.
The Capriccio stravagante, a humorous chamber piece for string instruments published in Dresden in 1626, is one of the most avant-garde works from a very experimental time in music history. Not only does it call for new effects on the violin -- glissando, pizzicato, sul ponticello (bowing close to the bridge), col legno (playing with the wood of the bow), tremolo -- some of them for the first time, but it is also full of musical jokes, imitating the clucking of a hen, the crowing of a rooster, an organist getting lost in his improvisation, the meowing and fighting of cats, the barking of a dog, and a closing section that ends in no particular key but simply slows down, gets softer, and fades away.
Boston Baroque Performances
Capriccio stravagante
January 27, 1987
Northwest Bach Festival, Spokane, WA
July 10, 1983
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Indianapolis Early Music Festival
February 19, 1982
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
November 4, 1977
Paine Hall, Cambridge, MA
October 1, 1977
Harvard Unitarian Church, Harvard, MA
September 29, 1977
Regis College, Weston, MA