Chicago"s "stylish and exciting period-instrument group" (Chicago Tribune), Baroque Band presents works by the Bohemian-Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, "the most important Baroque composer before Bach" according to Paul Hindemith, and unquestionably one of the most innovative and influential composers of the second half of the seventeenth century. Biber"s Mensa Sonora (meaning "Harmonious Table") was music composed for aristocratic dining, though it is anything but superficial background music. The disc closes with the 10-part Battalia for strings, which uses several unique devices for the time: hitting the strings with the wood of the bow, placing paper on the strings of the basses to imitate a snare drum, snap pizzicatos (à la Bartók!), and folk songs rendered simultaneously in eight different keys to portray drunken soldiers.