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Welcome to the Castle Classics Baroque Music Page. Baroque Music, so named after the architectural style of the time, is generally held to have begun around 1600 and and finished with the death of Bach in 1750. We have included all of the composers whose lives spanned this period and wrote music immediately recognisable as "Baroque" in style. The real heavyweights of this time such as Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, Rameau and, of course, Johann Sebastian Bach, are joined by well over 200 lesser-known composers of more obscure, but beautiful Baroque Music.

J S Bach The Complete Works 160 CD set £119.99!  John Eliot Gardiner Bach Cantatas Special Offer.

Baroque Music Composers

CARUS83415 Various: Sonatas & Concerti - Leipzig Bach Collegium; Ludwig Guttler, Trumpet; Corno da Caccia - Ludwig Güttler's recording "Sonatas and Concerti", featuring works from Bach to Vivaldi, offers a fascinating insight to the diversity of the music of this period. Superbly played. £13.99

J S Bach: Bach Cantatas - Gardiner - Vol.25 - Katharine Fuge, Robin Tyson, Steve Davislim, Stephan Loges, Joanne Lunn, Daniel Taylor, Paul Agnew, Panajotis Iconomou; The Monteverdi Choir; The English Baroque Soloists; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor - SDG’s spring 2008 release combines Cantatas for the Fifth Sunday after Easter with those written for the Sunday after Ascension Day.  The first set of Cantatas were recorded in Dresden. It was here that Bach had been crowned unopposed keyboard champion in 1717, and also where the first two movements of what we now know as the B minor Mass were first performed in 1733.  The opening cantata, BWV 86 Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch is a great example of Bach’s skill to reinforce religious texts and their meanings. The final piece in the programme is BWV 97 In allen meinen Taten, a cantata without liturgical designation first performed in 1734. It uses the haunting Heinrich Isaac hymn tune ‘Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen’ in both its opening and concluding movements.
Recorded in Sherborne Abbey, BWV 150 Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich has no specified liturgical designation but is particularly apt in the period between Easter and Ascension. The two Leipzig cantatas Bach wrote for Exaudi share the title Sie werden euch in den Bann tun. BWV 44 was composed as part of Bach’s first Leipzig cycle in 1724 and BSW 183 followed a year later. To balance the performance of BWV 150, the disc ends with Johann Christoph Bach’s five-voiced motet Fürchte dich nicht. This is an uplifting programme recorded in a perfect acoustic setting.£16.99 2 CD Set
 

D Buxtehude: 7 Sonatas, BuxWV 259-265 - John Holloway, violin; Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba; Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord  £5.99
 

Various: Homage To Venice - Italian Baroque Concertos - Il Gardellino - Celebrating the enormous contribution Italian composers made to the development of the Concerti as a music form, this disc presents a number of concerti seldom performed before. Although the French 'hautboy' was well known throughout Europe in 1670, it did not become well known as an 'oboe' in Italy until 1700 and was introduced to Vivaldi in the Ospedale della Pieta where one of the girls in the orchestra played it.
The composers on this CD played a significant historical and stylistic role in the concerti evolution. £13.99
 

Various: Buxtehude & co. - Music of the 17th Century North German School - Caecilia-Concert - This CD gives a glimpse into the rich musical world of Dieterich Buxtehude and his contemporaries. These composers were active as Kapellmeisters and wrote music for the various Collegia Musica, often to be specifically performed during the concerts known as Abendmusiken. The Collegium Musicum was a musical association or society that was devoted to the playing and enjoyment of instrumental and vocal music.  The composers featured on the disc were also associated with the Hamburg or North German School of the seventeenth century.
Originally established to entertain businessmen who assembled in the Marienkirche in Lübeck to await the opening of the stock exchange at noon on Thursdays, the concerts known as Abendmusiken most probably began as organ recitals during the tenure of Buxtehude's predecessor Franz Tunder (1614-1667). Buxtehude's legacy was the addition of an orchestra and choir and a rescheduling of the concerts from during the week to five concerts on the Sundays between Martinmas (November twelfth) and Christmas.
Such organizations were largely comprised of members from the upper echelons of society for example, doctors, lawyers, well-to-do merchants or members of local government who would meet at some central place or in their homes. Music was made either by the members themselves or by the local Kantor or the town musicians. £13.99
 

Various: The Trio Sonata in 17th-Century Germany - London Baroque - BIS presents the third disc in London Baroque's journey through Europe to explore the genre of the Trio Sonata. On two previous discs, the ensemble looked at how the trio sonata unfolded in 17th Century France and England. Both these issues have met with great acclaim: the English volume described in Goldberg Magazine as 'A programme of outstanding music ... A gem of a disc'.
Now the ensemble has now arrived in Germany. The great masters of the period, Buxtehude (whose large output only includes a limited number of trio sonatas) and Biber are both among the ten composers represented here.
The great variety of styles and forms found on the disc fully reflect this diversity among the composers, while also serving to remind the listener of the fact that the trio sonata genre was just becoming established during the period. £13.99