Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani was born in Florence and spent most of his career up to the 1670s at the Innsbruck court. When he published his trumpet sonata in 1678 (one of two in a volume of violin works) he had recently returned to Italy and was engaged in directing opera and oratorio in Venice, Rome and Naples. His trumpet writing is unusual in that it uses the C trumpet (instead of the D instrument that was becoming standard in Italy at the time), and this suggests that he wrote it in Innsbruck. The declamatory nature of some of the movements – a neat mixture of recitative and fanfare – suggests that they were intended for a large church.
from notes by Peter Holman © 1988
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