Joseph Werner (1637-1710): Allegorie der Musik

Historisches Museum Basel - Music Museum (Photo: HMB P. Borter)

Fiorita means flowering; our music is flowery. On paper, it often looks quite dry, but then we begin to improvise and to put in ornaments. That is Musica Forita!.

 

Meeting Point Basel. In 1990, 9 people from 8 countries meet at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. All of them study with great fervor old treatises, counterpoint and basso continuo: they rehearse in German; they argue in Italian, but when they play Musica Fiorita and speak the same language.

Meeting Point Seicento. The musicians of Musica Fiorita improvise with great delight and act out their appetite for ornamentation in the music of the high and late baroque. Simple adagios turn into opulent flower garlands.
The true discovery, however, is the music written early in the baroque period. It is full of harmonic boldness and rhythmic surprises. The modern age starts in the Seicento.

Meeting Point Archive. Roaming through libraries, leafing through manuscripts and studying old omnibus volumes, Daniela Dolci, harpsichord player and leader of the ensemble, has found the most diverse treasures in European archives: a Swiss composer, an Italian woman composer, a French opera that she brought to the stage with Musica Fiorita. Dead people live longer.

Meeting Point Concert. The concert programs of Musica Fiorita thrive on contrasts: French dances performed in a church; unbroken threads: women as creators and muses; but also on the cornucopia of the time: Europe united in the concert hall, baroque top ten in a palace.