Nel regno d'Amore – Music by Giovanni Felice Sances in solo, dialog and trio

Concert 1: Between Mars and Venus, Series XVIII, Season 2025/26 / Four concerts on subscription

Giovanni Felice Sances (1600-79) was an Italian composer and singer who received his first musical training from 1609 to 1614 as a boy soprano at the Collegio Germanico in Rome. In 1633, he dedicated two volumes of cantatas to Margrave Pio Enea degli Obizzi before becoming a tenor in Emperor Ferdinand II's chapel at the imperial court in Vienna in December 1636, where he also remained under Ferdinand III and Leopold I. In 1669, he finally succeeded Antonio Bertali as Kapellmeister, a position he held until his death. During his tenure in Vienna, he was active as a composer of sacred music, operas, sepolcri and secular chamber music.Sance's career spanned a crucial period in the development of Italian secular music and his works reveal a composer of great skill. Four of his published volumes of secular music have survived. The works in the first, Cantade - Libro Secondo from 1633, are among the earliest compositions to bear the designation “cantata.” In this concert program, Ensemble Phoenix Munich will present a selection of Sances' best one-, two- and three-part works - virtuosic, expressive and beautiful music - accompanied by theorbo, archlute, baroque guitar, harpsichord and harp. Between the vocal works, instrumental compositions by Sance's contemporaries in Vienna will be heard.