With Frescobaldi Italian organ music enjoys its finest hour and reaches the greatestheights of expression of its centuries-long history. The art of organ composition, which arose in the late Gothic era and developped during the Renaissance in close contact with the vocal expressions of gregorian chant and polyphony, quickly transcended the imitation of these vocal models to find its autonomy in forms specifically related to the organ, which in this period had reached a striking perfection in the balance of sonoric proportions, mirroring in the instrumental realm the aesthetic ideals within which the vocal ensembles operated.
Bortnyansky, although born about the same time as Berezovsky (on the other Caro Mitis SACD reviewed this time) and similarly starting as a choirboy at the court chapel in St. Petersburg and then being sent to Italy for study, lived a much longer life than his follow composer - to 1825. Upon his return to the Russian court he became director of vocal music at the court chapel and improved singing standards as well as composing many sacred choral works and three comic operas in French
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