Purcell: Fantazia 7 in C minor, Z. 738

After the success of 'The Nascita del Bologna & Violoncello', Bruno Cocset and Les Basses Réunies give us a new version of Purcell’s 'Fantazias' [British Library manuscript].

All the instruments played on this recording borrow from both families, the viols and the violins, taking the best from each: richness of timbre and development of the harmonics, so that each voice plays an equal part in the narrative while retaining its own identity.

Henry Purcell’s fifteen Fantazias for the viols, which exist in an autograph manuscript source in the British Library, were not published until 1927. They were composed for the most part during the summer of 1680 by a young man of twenty-one, who, despite his short life and therefore career, was to become a truly great musician and composer.

These pieces represent both the culmination and the demise of an instrumental tradition: that of the fantasia (also known as fantasy or fancy) for viol consort, a unique genre that existed for two centuries in England and represented instrumental chamber music at its most successful and elevated in Europe before the age of the string quartet. Purcell was the last to practise it.

André Mangeot described these works as being “of astonishing beauty”. Here they are performed by an ensemble which has received much critical acclaim on the “Hart House Viols”, a collection of instruments at the University of Toronto.

Such was his renown in the musical world ('one of the most celebrated Masters of the Science of Musick in the Kingdom and scarce inferior to any in Europe'), when Henry Purcell tragically died aged only 36 in 1695, he was essentially afforded a state funeral. This collection brings together the composer's complete works for strings.

Showing Purcell's success as a cutting-edge composer, both sets of sonatas showcase the contrapuntal technique with which he would become so intimately linked, demonstrating the techniques that Purcell detailed in John Playford's The Introduction to the Skill of Musick of 1694.

The act of pushing the boundaries of composition here is in stark contrast to the Fantasias, which resurrected a form that had been long since forgotten. The use of the viol - rather than its more modern counterpart, the violin - is also a curious choice, but this series of works may in fact be the last written for viol consort. Among them in this special collection is the magnificent 'Golden Sonata' as well as the 'One Note Fantasia', in which the tenor viol plays a sustained middle C for the entire piece, perhaps showing Purcell's impish sense of humour, with the part being intended for a particularly unskilled player.

The works are performed by Musica Amphion, a group dedicated to performing works of the 17th and 18th centuries on period instruments. The ensemble was formed in 1993 by harpsichordist Pieter-Jan Belder and the leader is violinist Rémy Baude, who is also concertmaster of Frans Brüggen's Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century.