Still Life is the debut album of Música d’Outrora, directed by Pablo Devigo. Recorded in Birmingham in 2024 and set to be released by the British label Deux-Elles in September 2025, it explores the radical expressivity of the 17th-century stylus fantasticus. Featuring first recordings of works by Ignazio Albertini and Gregorio Strozzi alongside sonatas by Castello, Buxtehude, and Stradella, the project combines rigorous historical research with bold, imaginative performance. The recording was made possible with support from Angel Early Music and the Continuo Foundation, and co-produced by Pablo Devigo and Ignasi Cambra. Still Life invites listeners into a sound world where time suspends, emotions intensify, and contrasts illuminate the path to transcendence.
Documentary on the recording of Still Life, the debut album of Música d’Outrora, directed by Pablo Devigo. Filmed during the recording sessions at St Alban’s Church in Birmingham (UK) between July and August 2024, the documentary offers an inside look at the ensemble’s creative process, interpretative approach, and artistic vision. The album, which explores 17th-century stylus fantasticus repertoire, will be released in September 2025 by the British label Deux-Elles.
Castello’s Sonata Prima exemplifies the wild, expressive power of the stylus fantasticus. Structured as a dramatic sequence of contrasting sections, the piece oscillates between rhapsodic freedom and rhythmic clarity, creating the impression of spontaneous invention. Our performance draws on continuo orchestration practices from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, using varied instrumental textures—organ, theorbo, lirone, harpsichord—to intensify emotional contrasts. The result is a series of sonic tableaux, each charged with affective energy. In Sonata Prima, time does not flow—it halts and shifts, casting the listener into sudden bursts of grief, exuberance, or contemplation without warning or resolution.
Albertini’s Sonata X is among the most virtuosic examples of late stylus fantasticus, composed at the Habsburg court and published posthumously in 1692. The piece alternates long pedal points—stretches of harmonic stasis—with explosive, florid violin figuration. This juxtaposition creates a tension between meditative suspension and dazzling kinetic display. Our interpretation highlights these expressive polarities, exploring how virtuosity serves not mere display, but emotional intensity. In its extremes of register, dynamics, and articulation, Sonata X becomes a sonic metaphor for transcendence: an instrument pushed to the edge of possibility, shaped into a vehicle for affect and astonishment.
Strozzi’s Ancidetemi pur transforms Jacques Arcadelt’s Renaissance madrigal into a baroque fantasia of anguish and sublimation. Structured as a sequence of emotionally charged episodes, the piece reimagines Arcadelt’s verses through the lens of 17th-century stylus fantasticus, blending improvisatory gestures with rhetorical clarity. Our performance embraces this metamorphic logic, allowing each section to emerge as a distinct yet interconnected affective world. Strozzi’s treatment exemplifies how emotional excess—grief, ecstasy, surrender—could be artistically disciplined into form. It is a meditation on love as annihilation, where virtuosity becomes a means of spiritual and sensual transformation.