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CHAPTER 33
Instrumental Music in Italy
While during the sixteenth
century composers had
written much instrumental
music, not until the
seventeenth century did
composers write and
published music for
instruments in a truly
idiomatic fashion. New
instruments, new styles of
playing, and new genres of
pieces, all emerged during
the seventeenth century.
The place of origin of these
innovations was northern
Italy.
• Cremona: Northern Italian city crucial to the
development of the violin. It was here that many
great violin-makers were born and lived.
• Antonio Stradivari: One of the great Cremonese
violin-makers of the seventeenth century. His
instruments, as well as those of the Amati and
Guarnieri families, are sold for millions of dollars to
this day.
The Violin Then and Now
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In comparison to its modern
counterpart, the Baroque violin
is characterized by:
a shorter fingerboard (and,
consequently, a reduced upper
register);
a longer bridge;
strings made of animal gut;
a bow with narrower band of
horsehair and under less
tension;
no chin rest;
an overall lighter, cleaner
sound
The Formation of the Baroque Orchestra
• The early Baroque orchestra was something of a
"mixed-bag" of instruments which could include—
as was the case for Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607)—
violins and viols, recorders, trumpets, cornetts,
sackbuts, harpsichord, theorbo, harps, organs with
metal and reed pipes. After the mid seventeenth
century, several of these instruments gradually lost
favor. A single harpsichord replaced the theorbo
and other plucked instruments in holding together
the basso continuo, while the instrumental
ensemble progressively coalesced around the violin
family (violin, viola, and cello) with double-bass
sometimes added.
•A sonata (something to be sounded) is a piece for a
single instrument or small instrumental ensemble. In
the second half of the seventeenth century,
composers gradually began to distinguish between
two types of sonatas:
– sonata da camera (of the chamber), made up of a
series of dance-like movements, each of which had
the name and character of particular dances such as
allemande, courante, and gigue;
– sonata da chiesa (of the church), made up of
fewer dance pieces and of movements titled after
tempo markings such as grave, adagio, allegro, or
presto (clear references to secular dances were
deemed inappropriate for the church).
Salomone Rossi: Violinist and composer crucial to the
development of the instrumental sonata
Leaving behind the four-voice imitative polyphony of the late
Renaissance canzona, Rossi adopted the top-bottom texture typical of
vocal music. Clearly influenced by the lyrical monody and duets of
Monteverdi, with whom he worked for several years the Gonzaga
court in Mantua, Rossi's sonatas feature a violin duet on top and
basso continuo on the bottom (Anthology, No. 92).
• Arcangelo Corelli: The first composer in the
history of music to make his reputation exclusively
as an instrumental composer. Educated in Bologna,
Corelli worked in Rome for Queen Christina of
Sweden and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. With him, the
norm took two types:
– solo sonata: for a single melodic instrument and
basso continuo
– trio sonata: for two treble instruments, usually two
violins, and basso continuo
•The Corellian sonata, which soon became the model
for composers throughout all of Europe, are
characterized by
– multiple stops: two or more notes played
simultaneously as chords;
– a succession of four movements alternating
slow/fast/slow/fast, all in the same key (or relative
major or minor);
– binary form: a structure consisting of two
complimentary parts, the first moving to a closely
related key (usually the dominant) and the second
beginning in that new key but soon returning to the
tonic.
– a strong sense of functional tonality, as Corelli's
harmonies are often composed of triads, the roots of
which are a fifth apart.
Walking bass
a bass moving in steady pace, usually in eighth notes, up and down
the scale
The seventeenth century trumpet was a
natural instrument without keys or valves.
The only notes it can produce are those of
the harmonic series (Ex. 33-6). Only in the
highest register, called the clarino register,
could the trumpet play conjunct melodies.
Bologna and its gigantic basilica of St.
Petronio were the most important center for
trumpet music during the seventeenth
century.
• Giuseppe Torelli: violinist and composer at St.
Petronio's in Bologna. He wrote nearly four dozen
trumpet pieces for the virtuoso municipal
trumpeters. Some he called "sonatas," others
"sinfonias," and others yet "concertos," though
there is no difference in form or musical process
from one genre to the next.
• Sinfonia: by 1700 a term used to designate a
three-movement instrumental overture, one that
might preface an opera or a Mass.
• Spiccato: indicated by a small dash placed above
the notes, it requires the performers to play in a
detached fashion, but not quite as short as
staccato.
In his trumpet pieces Torelli developed two procedures that became
hallmarks of the emerging Baroque concerto:
• differentiating the music of the soloist from that of the orchestra;
• having the soloist expand upon material derived from a recurring
orchestral theme.
• Antonio Vivaldi: Virtuoso violinist and composer, he
was fundamental to the development of the concerto,
of which he wrote nearly five hundred. After entering
the Holy Orders in 1703, he served as violinist, music
teacher, and composer-in-residence at the all-female
orphanage Ospedale della Pietà (Hospice of Mercy).
Many of his concertos were written specifically for his
female pupils.
• The Four Seasons: the first four concertos of a set of
twelve solo concertos, comprising Opus 8, called Il
cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (1725). In The
Four Seasons he writes some of the earliest program
music, for the composer inserts a poem about each
season into the first violinist's part and then fashions
the music to match the poetic images.
• Concerto:
– by the end of the seventeenth century, a purely
instrumental piece for ensemble in which one or more
soloists both complemented and competed with an
orchestra.
• Solo concerto:
– a concerto for instrumental ensemble and a solo
instrument.
• Concerto grosso:
– a concerto in which a larger body of performers,
namely the full orchestra (called the ripieno, Italian
for "full"), contrasts with a smaller group of soloists
(concertino, Italian for "little concerto"). Usually in
three movements, fast/slow/fast.
• Ritornello: (Italian for "return" or "refrain") a distinct main theme that
returns again and again throughout a movement, invariably played by the
ripieno. Ritornello form is usually employed in the serious first
movement of a concerto. The harmonic and melodic interplay between the
more stable ritornello, and the more daring and adventuresome solo or
concertino episodes goes to the very heart of the concerto, a spirited giveand-take between opposing musical forces.
• Cadenza: a technically demanding, rhapsodic, improvisatory passage near
the end of a concerto movement.