allViolin.com

Italy

If violin making was virtually an Italian preserve at the beginning of the 17th century, so too was the development of an idiomatic soloistic repertory for the instrument. It is, of course, coincidence that the greatest stile moderno composer, Monteverdi, came from Cremona – though his realization of the violin's rhetorical power and his exploration of its technical resources in such works as Orfeo (1607) or Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) may owe something to his origins.

Works by other composers of the period also seem to be born of excitement at the possibilities of the instrument: notably, Tarquinio Merula, also Cremonese, G.P. Cima from Milan; Salamone Rossi from Mantua, one of Monteverdi's colleagues there; Biagio Marini, a Brescian composer and instrumentalist who also worked under Monteverdi, this time in Venice; Marco Uccellini from Modena; Maurizio Cazzati, associated primarily with Bologna; Giovanni Legrenzi, whose career took him from Bergamo to Ferrara and elsewhere; and Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, who played throughout Italy. Their contributions to the repertory, and many others, are surveyed in Apel (F1983). Their works poured from the presses in Venice (which dominated Italian music publishing in the first 60 years of the century), and then also from Bologna and, to a lesser extent, other Italian cities.

Allsop (D1996) noted that the paucity of surviving manuscripts means that we are hugely dependent on printed sources for our knowledge of 17th-century Italian violin music, which may give us a distorted view of the technical achievements of these composer-violinists. It is possible that Italian violinists were just as adept at multiple stops, for example, as their German confrères; but the limitations of movable type ensured that, if this was so, it has not been recorded.

In the early part of the century the terms ‘canzona’, ‘sonata’ and ‘sinfonie’ were largely interchangeable. Many pieces were based on popular songs (and were often given titles which point to their origin); others (with titles like ‘Sonata sopra l'aria di Ruggerio’) were variations on stock themes or bass lines (the numerous ciaccone and passacaglias). Single-movement pieces, in which contrasting sections initiated by new thematic material or different metre run on one into the next, gave way in the 1620s to single-movement sonatas with sections separated by full cadences. In the early 1640s the first sonatas divided into distinct movements appeared. (See also Sonata, §§I–II.)

Almost all publications were miscellanies for different combinations of instruments, often unspecified (‘per ogni sorte d'istrumenti’) and often, at least until around 1640, naming cornett as an alternative to the violin. Hindsight, moulded by the way these genres developed in the early years of the 18th century, has encouraged the notion that two combinations were especially important in the violin repertory of the Baroque era: the trio sonata and the sonata for solo violin and continuo. Any examination of the full range of violin music of the period, particularly before 1650, gives a rather different picture: these were only two possibilities in a wide range of dispositions. It was not until the later 17th century that collections of pieces for any one standardized combination involving violin appeared. Corelli's orderly arrangement of Sonate a tre in opp.1–4 (Rome, 1681–94) was a new development in the 1680s. The inadequate modern term ‘trio sonata’ is used to describe music written both for two treble instruments and basso continuo and for two treble instruments with a more thematically significant bass part plus, often, a continuo part which may be identical to, or a simplification of, the melodic bass. Italian practice in the 17th century (even then not properly understood outside Italy) was to designate pieces a2, a3 etc. by the number of melodic lines, disregarding any basso continuo part. A sonata a2 may well involve two violins and basso continuo while a sonata a3 might also require only three players, not four.

Italian virtuosity was exported as violinists and composers for violin moved around Europe. G.B. Buonamente left Mantua to work at the Viennese court. Biagio Marini spent long periods in Düsseldorf between 1623 and 1645, and Carlo Farina worked in Dresden with Schütz. The Florentine G.B. Viviani spent substantial periods between 1656 and 1676 at the court at Innsbruck. It is in the eccentricities of these composers that the connections are most easily seen; virtually every special effect (see §(iii) (e) below) in Farina's Capriccio stravagante (1627) is matched in J.J. Walther's Hortulus chelicus (1688), except col legno, which was, however, used by H.I.F. von Biber. However, these are obviously symptoms of a more general cross-fertilization, a shared enthusiasm for the violin's potential. Other Italian composers of violin music, not necessarily violinists themselves, who spent part of their careers north of the Alps include G.M. and G.F. Cesare, Tarquinio Merula, Massimiliano Neri, Antonio Bertali and P.A. Ziani. The violinist and composer Giuseppe Torelli, most closely associated with the orchestra at S Petronio in Bologna, was from at least 1698 to the end of 1699 maestro di concerto for the Margrave of Brandenburg in Ansbach.

The steady stream of musicians into Italy was another way in which the Italian style was disseminated. Schütz had two periods of study in Venice, first with Gabrieli and then with Monteverdi. Johann Rosenmüller spent more than 20 years working in Venice. As a young man Johann Jakob Walther entered the service of Cosimo III de Medici in Florence. The influx of foreign musicians seeking instruction, inspiration and good instruments in Italy reached flood proportions by the later 17th century, especially after Corelli came to prominence; notably, Georg Muffat, N.A. Strungk and J.G. Pisendel all studied in Rome.

Arcangelo Corelli had an extraordinary influence. To him more than to any other composer of the central Baroque period may be attributed the acceptance of certain instrumental genres as deserving of composers' attention: what we now call trio sonatas, continuo sonatas and concerti grossi. He thus had a classicizing role; and this extended beyond the broader structures into musical detail of all kinds. Sir John Hawkins was later to comment that ‘Men remembered, and would refer to passages … as to a classic author’ (1776). Corelli's reputation as a violinist was already well established by 1686 when the Roman agent of Francesco II d'Este reported that ‘There is much doubt that he would leave Rome because he is so highly esteemed, cherished, and paid here’. The op.5 violin sonatas, published in Rome in 1700, were eagerly awaited by a European-wide audience. The collection went through a prodigious number of editions in the course of the 18th century. The edition published in Amsterdam by Roger in 1710 purporting to contain embellishments for the Adagio movements ‘as M. Corelli himself plays them’ (for an illustration from the third edition of 1715, see Roger, estienne), was controversial from the outset; whether or not the ornamentation was supplied by Corelli (which seems likely), the publication provides evidence of the performing practice expectations surrounding Italianate slow movements in the period.

Corelli's op.5 provided a model for many other sonata collections. Francesco Geminiani's op.1 sonatas (London, 1716), though technically more advanced than Corelli's op.5, acknowledge a debt to them in the opening sonata, which has a first movement alternating between short adagio passages and brilliant allegro passage-work. Other works also take their points of departure from one or another of Corelli's sonatas. Tartini's L'arte dell'arco (1758) is a set of 38 variations on the Gavotte from op.5 no.10. The Dissertazioni … sopra l'opera quinta del Corelli by Francesca Maria Veracini is a more back-handed compliment since, as J.W. Hill (The Life and Works of Francesco Mária Veracini, Ann Arbor, 1979) demonstrated, it consists of reworkings of the op.5 sonatas to enhance the compositional structures (tightening up the counterpoint etc.). Telemann's Sonate metodiche (Hamburg, 1728 and 1732) provide models (rather different in approach from the Roger edition) for playing Corelli-style Adagios, while the Sonates corellisantes (Hamburg, 1735) represent a more general tribute.

The violinists who either learned from Corelli or acknowledged his influence were legion. According to Roger North, ‘divers young gentlemen [travelled] into Italy, and after having learnt of the best violin masters, particularly Corelli, returned with flourishing hands; and for their delicate contour of graces in the slow parts, and the stoccata, and spirit in other kinds of movements, they were admired and imitated’. Many Corelli disciples (both pupils and other violinists who were perceived as wearing his mantle) made their careers outside Italy. Giovanni Steffano Carbonelli (d 1752), Pietro Castrucci and his brother Prospero all, like Geminiani, ended up in London, Michele Mascitti in Paris, and P.A. Locatelli in Amsterdam. Locatelli’s L'arte del violino, 12 concertos with written-out cadenzas and 24 virtuoso caprices for unaccompanied violin, have earned him the title ‘the Paganini of the 18th century’. Corelli's pupil Giovanni Battista Somis taught Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, Louis-Gabriel Guillemain and Gaetano Pugnani, who, in turn, was Viotti's teacher. Geminiani's pupils included Matthew Dubourg, Michael Christian Festing and Charles Avison. Many of these musicians seem to have regarded the ability to perform a Corelli sonata as the touchstone of musical sensitivity. Hubert Le Blanc wrote that ‘one of the most beautiful things to hear was an Adagio of Corelly played à la Geminiani’. Though Locatelli was famous primarily for the strength of his playing, his rendering of the opening Adagio of Corelli op.5 no.4 was, according to Blainville, enough to make a canary fall from its perch in a swoon of pleasure.

Unlike Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi died in reduced circumstances, and his music fell out of fashion within a few decades. Yet he had been both prolific and popular. He had a formidable technique: in 1715 Uffenbach heard him play a cadenza in which ‘he brought his fingers up to only a straw's distance from the bridge, leaving no room for the bow – and that on all four strings with imitations and incredible speed’. Two enduringly important Vivaldi collections were published in Amsterdam during his lifetime: L'estro armonico in 1711 and Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (the collection which includes the ‘Four Seasons’ concertos) around 1725. The first is an orderly presentation of four concertos each for four, two and one solo violins (some also with cello obbligato). Forkel asserted that Bach studied these works as models, and Bach transcribed several of them as harpsichord concertos or solo organ works. Quantz (in his autobiography of 1754–5) also said that ‘the magnificent ritornellos of Vivaldi served me as excellent models’. Certainly Vivaldi established a three-movement template for the solo concerto which was to become the norm during the 18th century. The ‘Four Seasons’ concertos prompted imitations (G.A. Guido's Le quattro staggioni dell'anno op.3) and arrangements (Nicolas Chédeville's Le printems ou Les saisons amusantes, 1739). They became a standard part of violinists’ repertory; Michel Corrette (c1782) gave fingerings for some of the more difficult passages (this is not the only work by Vivaldi to have received his attention in this way).

Giuseppe Tartini was a figure of immense importance. His early biographers insist that, after hearing F.M. Veracini play in Venice (probably in 1716), Tartini went into seclusion for several years in order to perfect his technique (which, as his more than 125 concertos reveal, was prodigious). In 1721 he became first violinist at the basilica of S Antonio in Padua. In about 1728 he founded what became known as the ‘School of Nations’, attracting students from all over Europe, including Pietro Nardini. Some of his teaching principles are encapsulated in the Traité des agréments de la musique (Paris, 1771), which also survives in various manuscript versions copied by his pupils and in the letter to Signora Maddelena Lombardini, published in Venice in 1770 and then in English (1771), French (1773) and German (1784) translations. Quantz, who had heard him in Prague around 1723, recorded his impressions in his autobiography:

Tartini is a violinist of the first order; he produces very beautiful sounds. His fingers and bow obey him equally well. He executes the greatest difficulties with ease. He does trills and double trills with all his fingers perfectly and he plays in high positions a great deal. But his performance has nothing moving about it; his taste is not noble and often it is absolutely contrary to good style.

Tartini's favourite and most illustrious pupil was Nardini, known particularly for the beauty of his tone and his expressive performance of Adagio movements. Nardini, in turn, taught or influenced many others who were to affect the development of violin performance and repertory: Thomas Linley (ii), Antonio Lolli, Pollani (the teacher of Pierre Baillot), Bartolomeo Campagnoli (whose violin method was influential) and Cambini (another author of a violin method). Nardini and Lolli were both employed at the Stuttgart court in the 1760s; Lolli subsequently toured throughout Europe.

Gaetano Pugnani was similarly influential. His playing was characterized by power and richness. He is said to have adopted a straighter, longer bow and used thicker strings. Viotti, who came to prominence at the end of a two-year European tour with his teacher, described himself as ‘pupil of the famous Pugnani’.

© Oxford University Press 2007