Henry Purcell: Trio Sonata No. 1 in G minor , Z. 790

Title: Sonata No. 1 [in G minor]
From Publication: Sonnata's of III Parts: Two Viollins And Basse: To the Organ or Harpsecord. (1683)
Composer: Henry Purcell (1659 — 1695)
Catalogue Number: Z.780

Movements:
I. [Grave] (00:00)
II. Vivace (01:33)
III. Adagio (02:37)
Presto (03:38)
IV. Largo (05:01)

Performer: The King's Consort
Album: Purcell: 12 Sonatas of 3 Parts (2015)

Info:
Henry Purcell was an English composer of the middle Baroque period. The most important English composer of his time, he composed music covering a wide field: the church, the stage, the court, and private entertainment. In all these branches of composition, he showed an obvious admiration for the past combined with a willingness to learn from the present, particularly from his contemporaries in Italy. With alertness of mind went an individual inventiveness that marked him as the most original English composer of his time as well as one of the most original in Europe.

The Twelve Sonatas of Three Parts (published in London in 1683) are Purcell's most highly regarded instrumental compositions. From our perspective, they are loosely regarded as Trio Sonatas in the mold of Corelli (although predating Corelli's publications), and indeed Purcell is considered second only to Corelli in his mastery of the early Trio Sonata form. Purcell's stated aim was to introduce more Italian elements into these sonatas (along with the word itself), and this is undoubtedly the way that contemporaries heard them.

Following English practice, the bass parts in these sonatas are actually divided between specific lines for bass viol and continuo proper (in Corelli's case, there is only a generic continuo part below the two violin lines). This leads to some confusion in the posthumous publication of the Ten Sonatas in Four Parts, but these two publications use identical scoring -- it was only the nomenclature that changed.

Audio:    • Album - Purcell - Twelve Sonatas of Three ...  
Score: https://imslp.org/wiki/12_Sonatas_of_...)
Info: https://www.britannica.com/biography/... ; http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/hmu...