Let us then fix it in our minds that when Corelli was born, in 1653, Nicolò Amati had already made a great number of fine violins and that Stradivari was working all through Corelli’s life and that he outlived him. So that the question of violin-playing was the chief one that engaged the attention of the composers of Corelli’s time. They were all working on the question of how to play the new instrument, just as the makers had been, and were still working on the technique of the instrument itself. Amati and Stradivari, like those who had gone before them, were trying for tone. The composers were now trying to show off the voice, or tone, of the new instrument to the best advantage.
This question is of the greatest importance for us to remember, because the violin is the very foundation of our modern Orchestra.
At first the violin was the prima-donna of the Orchestra; but eventually the other members of the Violin Family—viola, violoncello and double-bass—also became singers. In short, the Violin Family became the very backbone of the Orchestra.
ARCANGELO CORELLI
Corelli had much to do with making this the case.
Before Corelli was born in Fusignano in 1653, the Italian composers, particularly those who were attached to the cathedrals and private Orchestras of the wealthy princes and lords of Lombardy—Brescia, Cremona, Mantua and Padua—who were right in the midst of the activities of violin-making, had been writing sonatas, “Flowers” and dances of all kinds for the new violin, to be accompanied by the spinet, the organ, or two or three other stringed-instruments. Their compositions gradually grew more elaborate as they discovered the possibilities of the last new model sent from the workshop of Gasparo di Salò, Maggini, Amati, or Stradivari. There was a great deal more Italian music—and good music, too—composed at that time than most people have any idea of.
Arcangelo Corelli studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Bassani, a musician who is almost forgotten to-day, but who was a great violinist, a composer, a conductor of the Cathedral-music, first in Bologna and afterwards in Ferrara; and he was particularly happy in his writings for the string-quartet. Bassani was about the same age as Corelli; and to his pure instrumental style and knowledge of counterpoint Corelli and modern music owe not a little.
After studying the violin with this master, Corelli went to Rome and studied with Matteo Simonelli, who had had a splendid musical education.