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In his concertos Torelli was the direct precursor of Corelli, Vivaldi, and Handel. His influence, however, was not so intense as that of Giovanni Battista Bassani (1657-1716), whose music had more unity and definiteness and on the whole ranked very much higher artistically. This, added to the fact that he was Corelli’s teacher, gives him a prominent place in the history of violin music. While the single movements of Bassani’s sonatas on the whole show little improvement in form, the composer established a higher standard in the evenness and uniformity of his figures, in the smoothness of his modulation and chromatics, in rhythms that were far superior to those of earlier composers, in phrasing that was clear, especially in slow movements, and in the almost complete abandonment of the ‘fugal’ treatment. His influence upon Corelli is so evident that one could hardly distinguish one of his later compositions from an early sonata of his famous pupil.
A few examples of Bassani’s writing may be of interest:
