The treatment of the violin in these twelve sonatas has, and well may have, served as a model during the years which have passed since they were written. Music cannot be conceived more fitting to the instrument. It is true that none calls for brilliant virtuosity. Corelli never goes beyond the third position; but within this limit no effect in sonority or delicacy has been neglected.
The polyphonic style of the first six is worth mentioning. It will be observed that in all the first allegros, and in the last as well, the violin is given a certain amount of two-part music to play. Usually there is a strong suggestion of fugal style. The violin announces the subject, and continues with the answer. Then the figured bass takes it up. The first allegro in the fourth sonata offers a clear example. Throughout the entire movement the instrument is called upon to play more or less in polyphonic style—carrying two parts. It is, however, a graceful and flowing style. There is no suggestion of learning too heavy for sound. The short, slow preludes at the beginning of each sonata are all beautifully wrought. The smooth imitations in No. 2, the use of a rhythmical figure in the bass of No. 3, and in all the free independent movement of the two parts, speak of a composer of finest instinct and true skill.
In the second six, on the other hand, the violin is not called upon to carry more than one part. The style is consequently lighter, and on the whole more brilliant. The rhythmical elements of the dances are brought out prominently, and here Corelli shows himself no less a master. Take for example the allemande in the eighth sonata (E minor), or the gavotte in the tenth (F major).
The variations on La folia present Corelli’s technical resources in a nut-shell, so to speak. Such variations as the first, second, and third show a command of counterpoint; but the fifth begins to reveal his instinct for effects upon the violin, which is given freer and freer play in the eleventh, thirteenth, and fourteenth. The contrast between upper and lower strings is brought out in those mentioned. In the twelfth and sixteenth he uses the rich thirds and sixths destined in the course of the century to displace the polyphonic style altogether. Finally the twenty-third brings an astonishing effect of vibration and resonance.
It is neatness of form, surety of technique, and perfection of style which give these sonatas their historical importance, which have made them a foundation for further development. Their beauty, however, is not a matter of history. We know of no music that speaks of an age that is passed with more gentleness, more sweetness, or more dignity. There is none that is more admirable. It is gratifying to note that such music as this was in its own day beloved. The Apothèse de l’admirable Corelli written by the great French clavecinist, François Couperin, is among the few whole-souled and disinterested tributes of one contemporary to another. It describes in quaint music the entrance of Corelli into the company of Lully in the Elysian Fields. Couperin held that the combination of what was best in Italian music with what was best in French would produce an ideal music; and obviously he prized Corelli as representative of the best that there was in Italy.
Early Masters of the Violin. Top: Archangelo Corelli.
Bottom: Antonio Vivaldi. Giuseppe Tartini.
It would be hard today to point to the music of any other Italian master which has endured through radical changes of style and taste and has lost nothing; or indeed to that of the masters of any nation. Yet no subsequent developments have made a single quality of these sonatas dim or stale. The reason may be found in the just proportion in them of all the elements of music. The forms are slight; but they are graceful and secure, and there is not in the emotional quality of Corelli’s music that which calls for wider expression than they afford. The treatment of the violin shows a knowledge of it and a love of its qualities, tempered always by a respect and love for music as an art of expression. Therefore there is no phrase which is not in accord with the spirit and the law of the piece in which it is written, nothing which, written then for the sake of display, may make a feeble show in the light of modern technique. There is no abandonment to melody at the cost of other qualities; nor even a momentary forgetfulness of the pleasure of the ear in the exercise of the mind. Nothing has come into music in the course of two hundred years which can stand between us and a full appreciation of their beauty.
This can hardly be said of the music of his contemporaries, three of whom, however, have lived to the present day, and one in more than name. Tommaso Albinoni (1674-1745) and Giuseppe Torelli (d. 1708) were both important in the establishment of the form of solo concerto which J. S. Bach acquired from Vivaldi.[48] Albinoni was a Venetian dilettante and spent most of his life in Venice in connection with the opera. Besides the fifty-one operas which he wrote, there are several instrumental works, from some of which Bach appropriated themes. A beautiful sonata in D minor has been edited by Alfred Moffat and published in a Kammer-Sonaten series (B. Schott’s Söhne, Mainz). Notice the cadenza at the end of the slow movement. Torelli was a native of Bologna, but he spent at one time a few years in Vienna and also a year or two in Ansbach.
Antonio Vivaldi, likewise a Venetian, is one of the most significant composers in the history of musical form, and was second only to Corelli as a composer for the violin and a player, if indeed he was not fully Corelli’s equal. Among his works are eighteen sonatas for solo violin and bass, opus 2 and opus 5, and a great number of concertos for a single violin and a varying number of accompanying instruments. Commonly it is said that much of Vivaldi’s music is touched with the falseness of virtuosity; and to this is laid the fact that his work has been forgotten while Corelli’s has lived. The fact itself cannot be denied. Yet there is a fine breadth and dignity in some of the concertos and in the sonatas, and warmth in the slow movements. He died in 1743 as director of a school for girls in Venice. On account of his red hair and his rank as priest he was known as il prete rosso.