PHANTASIA MUSICA

Seventeenth-century music is rhetorical music: everything notated by the composer conceals an intrinsic emotion. However the task of expressing these emotions rests solely with the performer, who must convey them in such a compelling way that the audience is captivated and moved. Thus, when performing rhetorical music the musician should play in the same way that one adapts his manner of speaking to the emotion of the moment, for instance by taking more time, speaking more calmly or agitatedly, louder or softer. The style of the works recorded on this album is often associated with Stylus phantasticus, a termoriginally applied to a compositional method in which teh composer's fantasy was the source of a composition. Later the term's emphasis shifted to the freedom of performance. Phantasia Musica was another term signifying the importance of performer's imagination, however the world "phantasia" here refers to improvisation; many 17th-century compositions are actually written-out impro