...with horns and violins

"Amb trompes i violins" [with horns and violins] was a term used frequently in eighteenth-century Catalonia to express the conception and symphonic character of the music works. The combination of these two instruments typically involved an orchestral ensemble in the modern sense of the term, with a relatively large string section and thus in some respects fitting the bill for the indication “a totta orchestra”. Thus, while the chapel music of the solemnities sung at Mass was marked “amb trompes i amb violins”, the writer and music lover Baró de Malda also used these words in his famous diary (the so-called ’Calaix de Sastre’) to indicate the participation of the orchestra in his chronicles of concerts and other civic festivals in eighteenth-century Barcelona. And so under this title this recording gathers together and divulges an anthology of orchestral music by eighteenth-century Catalan composers.