This album features premiere recordings of works from the Opus 3 set of canzonettas and cantatas for two voices by Giovanni Battista Mazzaferrata (c.1640–1681). He was an Italian composer and organist from Pavia who studied with Tarquinio Merula and held capellmeister positions at Vercelli Cathedral (1658–63) and Ferrara’s Accademia della Morte (1665–81).

The Opus 3 set was published in Bologna in 1668 and dedicated to Count Angelo Porro of Milan, and this album features 6 of the 11 compositions comprising the collection: Libertà in Amor, Che impertinente usanza and Che t’ho fatto o Speranza are canzonettas; Angosciosi deliri and Tormenti, che volete? are more serious songs; and Rifiuto d’Amor is a cantata.

Formally, the compositions consist of several sections played attacca, featuring all the main baroque genres such as arias in duet, arias for solo voice with basso continuo, secco and accompanied recitatives and more ‘theatrical’ recitation. Mazzaferrata’s compositional technique achieves both expressive and textural contrasts between the sections. In accordance with the seconda prattica, there is a predominant ‘concerting’ (dialoguing) of the voices (even with the active presence of the instrumental bass) making use of counterpoint and imitation, canon, stretta and exchange of motives. The composer also employs rhetorical figures (theory of the affections) and madrigalisms (word-painting) in all of the works. The vocal parts are virtuosic, foreshadowing bel canto-type colouratura, featuring melismas and large leaps.

Mazzaferrata’s music gives an impression of versatility: on the one hand these compositions were written well before 1680, according to the rhetorical rules set out by Baldassare Castiglione in Il libro del Cortegiano including the effortlessness (‘sprezzatura’) of Caccini and Peri and the influence of Monteverdi; yet there is innovation in fragments amounting to near late-Baroque with Bachian basso movimentato. The composer therefore constitutes a bridge between the past and the future.