Over the past four decades, Musica Antiqua Koln has been one of the most influential, and often controversial, groups in the world of early music performance. Founded in 1973 as a chamber ensemble by Reinhard Goebel and fellow students from the Cologne Hochschule fur Musik, it immediately set the highest possible standards in the execution of baroque music. The works performed here are drawn from an anthology of trio sonatas gathered together by Franz Rost, cantor to the margrave of Baden-Baden. One of the most important collections of string music from the period, it ranges from serious works in the tombeau and funerary genres, such as Schmeler s Lemento on the death of the Emperor Ferdinand III, through non-programmatic sonatas and suites, to music clearly designed with earhier sentiments in mind, such as C.H. Abel s Bataille and Schmelzer s humorous celebration of Polish bagpiping