BAROQUE MUSIC OF LOVE & WAR: FOUR CANTATAS FOR SOPRANO - Badinage, featuring Julianna Baird

Baroque Music of Love and War liner notes

The efforts of musicians to achieve an ever more vivid depiction of events, ideas, and characters saw the development of opera in Italy at the beginning of the 17th century. By mid-century opera had spread, with its sister genre the cantata, throughout all of Europe. Its major cities were crowded with outstanding musicians in the service of royal, aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and public musical establishments. This was fertile ground on which the cantata flourished. Intended for smaller audiences than opera, the cantata provided the composer an opportunity to experiment and to refine his skills; singers could display their abilities and cultivate a following; instrumentalists could make themselves noticed in obbligato parts or basso continuo playing: all this while augmenting their personal glory and their income. By the beginning of the 18th century, there was a torrential flow of printed and manuscript collections of cantatas in many musical styles and in many languages.