Johann Jakob Walther

Violinist and composer Johann Jakob Walther was a key figure in the development of virtuoso violin technique in the 17th century. Written for his own use, his music poses formidable technical demands but is also formally novel. Walther appeared in the 1732 Musikalisches Lexikon by Johann Gottfried Walther, who was a cousin to Johann Sebastian Bach, and from this entry come the main outlines of his career. His two extant collections of music are the Scherzi da Violino solo con il basso continuo and Hortulus chelicus. By 2022, some two dozen of his 68 pieces had been recorded; that year, violinist Bojan Čičić and his Illyria Consort issued a complete recording of the Scherzi da violino.