We begin this week with an hour of music from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque -- from the pageantry of the cathedral music of Gabrieli and Monteverdi to the elegance of Corelli's concerti grossi to a lighter madrigal of the same Monteverdi to the Flemish-school-influenced music of Vincenzo Ruffo.
We continue with a concerto for the keyed trumpet, an instrument that was in use only for a few years late in the time of Haydn, followed by a virtuoso piano concerto by Weber, and we conclude with Beethoven's Great Fugue in Bb a Baroque square peg that Beethoven hammered into a Classical round hole -- leading to the great consternation of both critics and the composer himself.