The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries

Exploring instrumental baroque music in Central and East Central Europe during the late 17th century, Brewer (musicology, Florida State U.) covers the stylus phantasticus and stylus hyporchematicus concepts of instrumental music, Johann Heinrich Schmeltzer (c. 1620/23-80) and music at the Viennese court, the chapel of Prince-Bishop Carl Liechtenstein-Castelcorn, Biber and Muffat at Salzburg, and the dissemination and dissolution of the stylus phantasticus. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Charles E. Brewer is Associate Professor of Musicology at The College of Music of The Florida State University and Director of the Early Music Ensembles. His research interests have focused on the broader questions of music and culture both during the Middle Ages and Baroque period. Beginning with his dissertation on the music of medieval Poland, much of his published work has been focused on the early music of Central and East Central Europe. He has worked in many of the archives and libraries in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia with the support of the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is also an avid performer on early keyboard instruments and is currently editing a number of unpublished sonatas by C.P.E. Bach.