The ritornello as a recurring
tutti passage can be traced back to the music of sixteenth-century Venetian composer
Giovanni Gabrieli. According to
Richard Taruskin, these repeating passages are "endemic to the
concertato style" which Gabrieli is credited with developing. The idea of an orchestral ritornello played an important role in the structure of
opera in the eighteenth century. The most common form for an
aria during the Baroque period was
da capo form, which essentially consisted of an A section followed by a contrasting B section, which was in turn followed by a return of the A section. Many
da capo arias could be subdivided further, with ritornello sections framing each of the singer's solo sections, forming the scheme | R--A1—R--A2—R | B | R--A1—R--A2—R ||. The ritornello was also crucial in the development of the Italian instrumental
concerto during the Baroque period.
Giuseppe Torelli wrote many violin concertos in which the fast movements used a recurring ritornello in between two extended solo passages of entirely new material. This form was standardized by
Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote hundreds of concertos using a modification of Torelli's scheme. Vivaldi's ritornello form established a set of conventions followed by later composers in the eighteenth century: • Ritornellos for the full orchestra alternate with episodes for the soloist or soloists. • The opening ritornello is composed of several small units, typically two to four measures in length, some of which may be repeated or varied. These segments can be separated from each other or combined in new ways without losing their identity as the ritornello. • Later statements of the ritornello are usually partial, comprising only one or some of the units, sometimes varied. • The ritornellos are guideposts to the tonal structure of the music, confirming the keys to which the music modulates. The first and last statements are in the tonic; at least one (usually the first to be in a new key) is in the dominant; and others may be in closely related keys. In these visits to different keys, ritornello form differs from the later
Classical form
rondo, in which the recurring section remains in the same key. Vivaldi also established a convention of using ritornello form for the quick opening and closing movements, with a contrasting slow movement in between. Many later Baroque composers such as
Bach and
Telemann followed Vivaldi's models in composing their own concertos. Some scholars argue that "ritornello form quickly disappeared as a general constructive principle" in the early years of the nineteenth century, due to the structural innovations of
Beethoven. Others such as
William Caplin suggest that the ritornello form did not disappear, but "was transformed into concerto form through the incorporation of classical formal functions, especially those associated with the sonata." Caplin argues that the outlines of ritornello form persist in the alternation of solo and tutti sections, albeit subsumed within the tonal and formal plan of the
sonata. Ritornello construction faded with the advent of the new
sonata form but received renewed interest in the 20th century. ==See also==