CONCERTO GROSSO

Concerto Grosso in the Baroque Period

Bill Winton

MUS-355

November 18, 2011

Juan hernandez

Concerto Grosso in the Baroque Period

Introduction

Baroque music style possesses certain similarities with the Western Classical Music style. Major portion of classical music cannon correlates with this form which is learned, performed and listened (Strunk, 1952). Due to the expanded size, range and complexities, baroque music establishes opera as a new music genre. Composition of music in the mid baroque is different from early baroque compositions. Increasing harmonic focus and creation of traditional music teaching system is the main idea behind the new theory of music (George, 2006). The instrumental concerto of the middle and late Baroque comprised three basic types. The earliest of these was the concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists is set against a larger orchestra. The smaller group, consisting most often of two solo violins and continuo, is known as the concertino (little ensemble). The larger group, generally a string orchestra plus continuo, is known variously as the concerto grosso (large ensemble), grosso, tutti, or—perhaps least confusingly— ripieno (from concerto ripieno, full ensemble, i.e., with doubled parts).

Concerto grosso (large, heavily studded concert that is, large ensemble) was an important genus of the high and late baroque orchestral music. Concerto grosso was characterized by alternating between mostly three soloists (Concerto) and full orchestra ( tutti , ripieno). The small group of soloists or solo concertino, however, was called concertino. The term Concerto Grosso in 1700 was the century of orchestral group over to the musical form. The rate of technology concerto grosso was formed in the mid-17th Century in the Venetian school. With the end of the bar was the concerto grosso ockzeit replaced by the symphony, however, came in the 20th century as a form type out again.

Discussion

Background

Several Baroque genres contributed to the creation of the concerto grosso. One was the multivoiced canzona and sonata, especially those polychoral works in which the groups of instruments contrast with one another (e.g., Giovanni Gabrieli's famousSonata pian e forte). Another was the trio sonata, which not only supplied the normal instrumentation of the concertino, but was also performed with doubled parts as the occasion demanded. In the latter case, division ad libitum into soloists and ripienists was an obvious stratagem, and this practice can be documented in Rome beginning in the 1660s. During the 1670s, numerous vocal works written by Alessandro Stradella for performance in Rome explicitly require concerto grosso instrumentation, both in their sinfonias and in accompaniments to arias. Stradella was also the composer of the earliest known independent concerto grosso (entitled "Sonata" in one source, "Sinfonia" in another, but with clearly specified concertino and ripieno groups). In this work, the similarity of the material given to each group evidences a close relationship with the polychoral canzona and the trio sonata with ad libitum textural contrast.

It is against this background in Rome that Arcangelo Corelli produced his earliest concerti grossi, several of which were already in existence by ca. 1682 according to the composer Georg Muffat, who ...