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Mont’ Albano’s music was thought out rather than invented and it would give little pleasure to the modern ear. In the history of the development of violin music these early compositions should be considered simply as efforts or studies to advance violin technique and musical form.

While Merula helped the progress of left hand technique, Marco Ucellini (1669) made more demands on the bow, writing rapid thirty-second notes for certain tremolo effects in his sinfonia entitled La gran Bataglia.

A more pleasing musical quality is to be found in the sonatas of Massimiliano Neri, who was the first to make a distinction between the Sonata da chiesa and the Sonata da camera. In his Sonate e Canzoni a quattro and in his Sonate da suonarsi con vari strumenti, Neri followed the path of Gabrieli in writing for as many as twelve instruments. The frequent change of time and the restless rhythm are also reminiscent of Gabrieli’s peculiarities. Although Neri’s structure of phrases and periods is more normal, his modulation more fluent, and his music on the whole more agreeable to the modern ear than that of Fontana and Merula, his works still belong to the practical experiments of violin music, and are without great intrinsic merits. The same may be said of the sonatas of Biagio Marini whom we have already discussed. He may be termed one of the originators of the cyclical form of the modern sonata, since his sonatas were in four movements. The first, usually in slow tempo, was followed by an Allegro, this by a longer or shorter piece that led to the last movement (Allegro). While his style was still distinctly polyphonic, the development of his motives was considerably more pleasing. Improvement in harmony and modulation is found in the Sonate da chiesa and Sonate da camera of Giovanni Legrenzi (1655), who did not otherwise accomplish much in forwarding solo violin music.

Turning to Germany, it is to be regretted that the works, which, to judge by their titles, might have shed some light on the development of early violin music, are irretrievably lost to us. They are Auserlesene Violinen Exercitium aus verschiedener Sonaten nebst ihre Arien, Balladen, Sarabanden, etc., and Musicalische Tafelbedienung von fünf Instrumenten, als zwei Violinen, zwei Violen, nebst den General Bass, by Wilhelm Furcheim (1674), concert-master at Dresden. The most important figure, among the earliest German composers for the violin from the standpoint of technical advance, is evidently Jacob Walter. His twelve Scherzi da violino solo are in the style of the Sonate da Camera (Suite) or in the form of variations. Eight of them are called sonatas, and contain three or four movements, mostly in the same key but in a variety of tempi. From a musical point of view most of Walter’s compositions are unattractive, as the form is stiff, the rhythm awkward, modulation poor, and the melody heavy and clumsy. His importance lies exclusively in the advanced claims his writings make upon execution, for he ascends as far as

and writes many difficult double stops, chords, and arpeggios. Walter was also fond of imitating other instruments, birds, echoes, and so forth. In a set of variations we meet with imitations of the guitar by playing pizzicato, of the pipes by going up high on the E string, of fanfares by playing on the G string. In another composition the imitation of the call of the cuckoo was his chief purpose; but we would hardly recognize the cuckoo’s call, had he not in every case taken the pains to mark the imitation. In another instance, in Hortulus Chelicus, he endeavored to imitate the voice of some other bird. This work as a piece of art is more valuable, since here he attempted to write a duet for one violin. Another composition that is characteristic of Walter’s musical ideas is a Capriccio, where the C major scale is used as basso ostinato in forty-nine variations, as though the composer wanted to give as many kinds of motions and figures as he could.

Stradivarius at Work: Antonio Stradivari.