What if Michelangelo Rossi's keyboard Toccatas had been played by harpists in Rome 400 years

ago? Of all the 17th-century Italian keyboard repertoire I have attempted to play over the last thirty

years, I find the Toccatas by Rossi to be by far the most organic, idiomatic and intuitive music to play

on the arpa doppia, the chromatic triple-row Baroque harp of seventeenth-century Europe. At least

ten harpists are known to have been active in Rome during this time, and archives are full of documents

and correspondence that detail performances, commissions for instruments, purchases of

strings, harp covers and cases, and other fascinating information, which together create an idea of the

wealth of music and culture before and during the reign of Pope Urban VIII.