Credits:

La Gioia Armonica

Description:

The sound of striking the strings, and the sound of plucking themThe splendor of Baroque court instruments, as conveyed by a master musician of rare talentThe star of this album is an instrument known in Italian as the sartelio, on which strings stretched across a box are struck with a hammer or plucked from above. Similar to the santur of classical Persian music and the cimbalom (known in English as the dulcimer), a folk instrument of Central and Eastern Europe, it is also related to the medieval psaltery; in fact, it was widely used in German-speaking courts and in Italy during the late Baroque period. It is well known that Pantaleon Hebenschtrita virtuoso of this instrument and a musician praised by Telemanndeveloped a larger version of the sarteio and named it Pantaleon after himself; however, this album shines a spotlight on works by Italian composers from the late Baroque through the