• Tracks

The history of music-making in Rome tends to focus on Renaissance polyphony, with an occasional nod to the Baroque thereafter. But thanks to composers like Giovanni Battista Casali (1715-92), choral music continued to flourish in Roman churches and other religious establishments in the eighteenth century, too, until Napoleon's occupation broke many of it's traditions. Casali's music, though, is as good as unknown, and this pioneering recording reveals a composer at home in the galant style - with a surprising fondness for the occasional dissonance.