Context , 1747,
Musée du Louvre) Corelli's artistic figure flourished at the height of the
Baroque, a cultural current characterized by an ornate and luxuriant artistic expressiveness, rich of strong contrasts. His music developed from the Renaissance
polyphony, but was characterized by a transition towards greater independence between the voices. New socio-cultural and religious factors, as well as a strong influence of theater and
rhetoric, led to the development of a renewed musical language that could better express the spirit of the time, thus developing a wide range of new harmonical, vocal and instrumental techniques. It is the period in which the
tonal system is definitively consolidated, abandoning the old
modal system, and which has its most typical expression in the writing style called
continuo or figured bass, in which the bass line and the top line are written in full, leaving the execution of the harmonic filling attributed to the other parts to the discretion of the performer, indicated synthetically by the author by numbers. The great importance attributed to the superior voice, which relegated the other parts to a subordinate role, brought out the figure of the virtuoso soloist. The
tempered tunings were also introduced, the melody often had popular inspiration and the
dissonances began to be used as an expressive resource. Polyphony remained omnipresent especially in
sacred music, generally more conservative, but the complexity that characterized it in previous centuries, which often made the sung texts incomprehensible, was abandoned in favor of a much clearer and simplified counterpoint, in which primacy was often given to the loudest voice. Furthermore, in the field of symbolism and language, the development of the theory of affects was of great importance, in which figures, melodies, tones and specific standardized technical resources became a musical lexicon at the service of expression. Such resources were very common in opera, the most popular and influential genre of the time, also exerting a decisive influence on the direction of instrumental music, Rome, on the other hand, had much greater traditions, wealth, and importance on several levels, starting with being the seat of
Catholicism. Furthermore, it was a cosmopolitan capital that welcomed artists from all over Europe, eager to establish themselves in such rich, varied and influential settings, where the great patrons of the Church and the aristocracy challenged each other by organizing sumptuous presentations and promoting numerous artists. However, few churches and brotherhoods had stable musical bodies and there was a great exchange of professionals between one celebration and another. Unlike Bologna, in Rome the Church had a decisive influence on cultural life, and the guidelines in this regard varied according to the preferences of each pontiff.
Pope Clement IX, for example, was himself a librettist of operas and oratorios and promoted secular music, and Corelli apparently found himself in this environment without any difficulty, although it is not known who introduced him to it. In any case, he soon gained the favor of patrons who were among the city's most prominent. During the 18th century he was considered a great virtuoso, but critics of the 20th century have sometimes doubted the ancient testimonies. Boyden, for example, stated that "Corelli cannot claim a prominent place in the history of violin technique";
Pincherle considered him "inferior to his German and even Italian contemporaries in terms of pure technique", and McVeigh said that he was "certainly not one of the great virtuosos of his time". However, according to Riedo, such opinions are based on what can be deduced from the technical requirements contained in his compositions, but this method is not entirely faithful to reality, since the score only offers a vague idea of what could be a live performance, also observing that the style developed by Corelli was characterized more by sobriety and singability than by extravagance. Furthermore, his compositions, in their published version, are addressed above all to a heterogeneous audience and not only to specialists and virtuosos. At the same time, his works cannot be exemplary of his ability to interpret works by other authors, where he may have taken a different approach. The failures of the Naples recital and the confrontation with Handel in Rome, where he supposedly claimed to have no experience in French technique, are often cited as evidence supporting his limited violin technique, although they are not firmly demonstrated. Although Corelli did not write anything about it, the treatises published by Geminiani, Francesco Galeazzi and others influenced by him probably faithfully reflect the master's principles. It is known that he had many students, among them: Matteo Fornari,
Giovanni Battista Somis,
Pietro Castrucci, and
Francesco Geminiani. Corelli was of vital importance in the process of transformation of the traditional orchestra. In the previous generation, ensembles were quite small even for opera performances and only on very exceptional occasions were large groups recruited, especially for open-air festivals. The orchestra of San Luigi, for example, did not exceed twenty members, even on prestigious occasions, and most of the time it consisted of about ten or fifteen members. Thanks to the legacy of ancient polyphonic practices, ensembles made use of various instruments of balanced proportions, grouped in "choirs", each composed of several types of instruments. Corelli's generation began to change this balance of forces towards an increasing predominance of the string section, with an emphasis on the violins, significantly expanding the number of musicians, grouping the instruments into homogeneous sections and separating the singers from the orchestra. . Its spatial arrangement also changed, adopting a distribution that favored the typical language of the Grosso concert, with a small solo ensemble, the
concertino, separated from the large
ripieno group. In addition to conducting and being a concertmaster at the same time, Corelli was responsible for recruiting musicians to form occasional orchestras, paid salaries, and performed all the functions of a modern event manager. On some occasions he employed an immense number of musicians, up to 150, far above all the standards of his time. According to Crescimbeni's testimony, "he was the first to introduce ensembles in Rome with such a number of instruments and such diversity that it was almost impossible to believe that he could make them play all together without fear of confusion, especially since he combined wind instruments with strings, and the total very often exceeded one hundred elements." Although the number of musicians varied greatly in each performance, the balance of Corelli's orchestras was constant, with at least half of the musicians playing violins and a quarter occupied with cellos,
violons and double basses. The remaining fraction was filled with a varied instrumentation of violas, wind instruments,
lutes,
theorbos,
organs,
harpsichords and others, and depended largely on the character of the music of the occasion. His intense activity at different levels in the field of orchestral music dominated the Roman scene and his role as organizer, dynamizer and standard bearer can be compared to that of
Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of
Louis XIV. By extension, one could say that all the Roman orchestras between 1660 and 1713 were “Corelli's orchestra." He was rigid also in the choice of genres to deal with: the trio sonata, the sonata for solo instrument and the concerto grosso. All his production is for strings, with continuo accompaniment, which could be performed by a variable combination of organ,
harpsichord,
lutes or
theorbos. He left no works for voice, but his compositions reveal a strong influence of vocal music in their expressiveness, as well as in the treatment of polyphony. Among his influences are mainly the masters of the Bolognese school, such as , An 1827 music dictionary still echoed what Burney had said more than thirty years earlier: "Corelli's concerts have withstood all the onslaught of time and fashion, more firmly than his other works. Harmony is so pure, the parts so clearly, judiciously and ingeniously arranged, and the overall effect, played by a large orchestra, is so majestic, solemn and sublime, that they disarm any criticism and make one forget everything that has ever been composed in the same genre". In the opinion of Michael Talbot, writing for
The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto, it is difficult to explain the enduring popularity of this collection, considering the simplicity not the cause of its popularity, but only a precondition. He continues stating: Corelli composed 48
trio sonatas, 12 violin and continuo sonatas, and 12 concerti grossi. Six sets of twelve compositions,
published between 1888 and 1891 by
Chrysander, are authentically ascribed to Corelli, together with a few other works. • Opus 1: 12
sonate da chiesa (trio sonatas for 2 violins and
continuo) (Rome 1681) • Opus 2: 12
sonate da camera (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1685) • Opus 3: 12
sonate da chiesa (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1689) • Opus 4: 12
sonate da camera (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1694) •
Opus 5: 12
Suonati a violino e violone o cimbalo (6
sonate da chiesa and 6
sonate da camera for violin and continuo) (Rome 1700) The last sonata is a set of
variations on
La Folia. •
Opus 6: 12 concerti grossi (8 concerti da chiesa and 4 concerti da camera for
concertino of 2 violins and cello, string
ripieno, and continuo) (written in the 1680s, publ.
Amsterdam 1714) • op. post.: Sinfonia in D minor,
WoO 1 (for Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier's Oratorium
Santa Beatrice d’Este 1689) • op. post.: Sonata a Quattro, WoO 2 (Rogers, Amsterdam, 1699) • op. post.: Sonata a Quattro, WoO 3 (Rogers, Amsterdam, 1699 – incomplete/dubious) • op. post.: Sonata a Quattro for Trumpet, 2 Violins & B.C, WoO 4 • op. post.: 6
Sonate a tre, WoO 5–10 (Amsterdam 1714) ==Legacy==