Still Life

Música d'Outrora brings their debut album, Still Life, supported by a grant from Continuo Foundation, to the Oxford Festival of the Arts for their Emerging Ensemble Showcase concert.

At the heart of the concert is the stylus phantasticus, the free, improvisatory idiom that flourished across early seventeenth-century Europe. This was music conceived to wound and transform: dramatic, unpredictable, moving between passages of virtuosic intensity and moments of profound stillness. Like objects in a Baroque still life, each section captures a complete emotional world – whether devotional, theatrical, or dance-like – before yielding to the next through sudden, startling contrast.

The programme spans Italy and Germany through works by Dario Castello, Ignazio Albertini, Alessandro Stradella, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Gregorio Strozzi – composers who shaped the stylus phantasticus across sacred and secular worlds, from operatic drama to spiritual radiance to inward contemplation. Violin, viola da gamba, lirone, violoncello, theorbo, guitar, organ, and harpsichord bring this sound world to life.

Reason and passion intertwine. Beauty, held in suspension. Music that still lives. Read more about Pablo Devigo and the curation of 'Still Life' in this feature.