The Italian Violin School in the 17th Century

Author(s): Neal Zaslaw

Source: Early Music, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 515-518
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3127981
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Neal Zaslaw

The Italian violin school in the 17th century

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Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) Boy angel playing a violin; red chalk on paper, 165 x 202mm

According to recent thinking on the subject, the violin
was 'invented' in the late 15th or early 16th century
somewhere in northern Italy, probably in or near
Brescia and Cremona. From there it travelled with
astonishing rapidity through all of Europe, within a
few decades becoming a common instrument in many
lands. Its penetrating tone and flexible intonation (it
had no frets) made it the favourite instrument for
dancing, for out-of-doors entertainments, and eventu-
ally for such large, resonant venues as churches,
theatres, and the halls of palaces. During the first part
of its meteoric career, the violin was played in public
by formally trained professionals, servants, and
illiterate folk musicians. Ladies and gentlemen, when
entertaining themselves in private circumstances,
preferred the elegant sounds of viols and lutes to the
raucous power of brash fiddles.
The violin appears first to have entered 'polite
society' as a consort instrument. While today violins
generally come in only three sizes (violin, viola, and

EARLY MUSIC NOVEMBER 1990 515

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cello), in the 16th century they came in at least six,
suited to performing any combination of soprano,
alto, countertenor, tenor, or bass parts. By the end of
the century, violin bands had grown up in several
places, including the courts of England, France, and
Bavaria. Such bands usually did not displace the lutes
and viols in musica reservata, but instead provided
music for court ballets, ceremonies of state, theatrical
entertainments, and large-scale concerts.
In the early 17th century, in Italy again, as the
polyphonic style was giving way to a new style of solo
singing in madrigals and motets as well as in the
newly- created genre of opera, the violin struck out on
its own. Italian composers began to write autonomous
music for one, two, or more violins, usually with basso
continuo. No longer supporting singing and dancing or
serving as an anonymous member of a consort, the
violin abandoned its earlier commitment to scalic
melodies, limited range, and the relatively sturdy
rhythms of polyphonic vocal music and homophonic
dances. Suddenly, it aspired to the same flights of
fancy and bursts of virtuosity granted the heroes and
heroines of opera.
This development constituted nothing less than the
rebirth of the violin as a solo instrument--an
instrument capable of moving listeners to tears or
laughter. As the born-again violin flourished in its new
guise in the hands of several generations of composer-
virtuosos, it gained increasing acceptance in 'polite'
circles as purveyor of high art of Apollonian character
and not, as previously, primarily of low art of an
entirely Dionysian type. The violin band continued to
exist, but its prestige too seemed to rise, and an
institution central to Western culture, the orchestra,
was born of it.
Given the central place of both the violin and the
orchestra in Western music, and given the intrinsic
interest and beauty of much 17th-century music, one
might reasonably expect that the historical circum-
stances that gave rise to all of them would have
received intense scrutiny. Yet, despite some fine
research, these developments are still poorly docu-
mented and understood, and the music remains
largely unheard.
Some of that music, has, of course, been lost and, of
the considerable amount that remains, only a small
portion is available in reliable modern editions.
Surprisingly few instruments survive from the period,
and most of these have been drastically altered. Even
fewer bows survive, and as those that do survive
516 EARLY MUSIC NOVEMBER 1990
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seldom have makers' marks or dates, it is difficult to
determine their provenance, let alone to ascertain the
instruments for which they were intended. Numerous
basic questions of performance practice remain
unanswered (indeed, many remain unasked). Simply
put: the kind of sustained research and trial-and-error
learning that have brought late-Baroque music to a
high level of comprehension and performance in
recent years are still largely lacking for the music and
instruments of the early Italian violin school.
To make a start in remedying some of these
deficiencies, I convened a conference in June 1987 at
the Museum of Fine Arts, sponsored by the Boston
Early Music Festival and Exhibition. In addition to
presentations by performers and scholars working on
17th-century Italian instrumental music, there were
performances followed by discussion every afternoon,
by Baroque violinists Richard Luby, Dana Maiben,
Sonya Monosoff, Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schroeder and
Daniel Stepner, and cornettist Michael Collver. The
hope was that by coming together, we might share old
knowledge, create new knowledge, disseminate under-
standing and interest; and that we would all be
encouraged to continue our research, experiments,
and performance on higher levels than before. The
effort seemed amply justified by the historical
importance and artistic merit of this neglected
repertory.
The present issue of Early Music and the one that
follows it contain revised versions of some of the
papers read at the Boston conference in 1987, along
with other related contributions that came to our
attention subsequently. These essays cover a broad
range of repertory, historical figures, and performance
problems. Taken together, they provide a hint of the
vast musical resources of 17th-century Italy awaiting
fuller rediscovery, publication, and performance as we
approach the 21st century.
In this issue John Walter Hill makes the case for
Antonio Veracini. Antonio is much less well known
than his nephew Francesco Maria Veracini, who,
however seldom his music is heard nowadays, assured
himself at least a footnote in music history by
interacting with Tartini early in his career and with
Handel later, by rewriting Corelli's op.5, and as the
subject of a striking portrait. The uncle apparently
never left Italy and seldom left Florence, but this did
not prevent his music from attaining artistic stature.
One of the principal lessons of the early-music
movement (a lesson perhaps in danger of being lost in
the current rush to re-record Beethoven symphonies)
is that many so-called Kleinmeistern were not so very
Klein-that their music is often elegant and moving in
its own right and provides an indispensable element
for understanding their more famous contempories.
The powerful musical establishment at San Petronio
in Bologna has long attracted the attention of music KING'S MUSIC
historians for its early orchestral manifestations Editions and Facsimiles
(especially trumpet concertos) and its concerted
church music. If the links between these two Autumn 1990 catalogue includes 100 new
repertories have sometimes been underplayed, there is titles, with editions of 20 works by Giovanni
a reason: many have been interested in tracing the Gabrieli (some receiving their first editions),
supposedly revolutionary use of orchestral sonatas, new series of music by Legrenzi, Rovetta,
concertos and sinfonias, but few in dealing with the Rosenmiiller and Fasch, and more facsimile
continuing evolution of Catholic church music. Anne parts of 18th-century orchestral music.
Schnoebelen takes the picture as a whole, however,
allowing us to see that it was precisely in the context of
providing liturgical music for daily worship that the
instrumental developments that somewhat anachro-
nistically fascinate us occurred. Like much music, the
Bolognese repertory was surely intended to lift the
spirits, but we are not yet dealing with a 'museum
culture' or art for art's sake.
This theme of the role of the violin in church is
sustained by Stephen Bonta's meticulous article,
showing that we have examined only a tiny fraction of To earn 20% discount plus a free score with
such sacred repertories, and that attempts at over- your next order, send a list of the 20
views or historical generalizations must seem prema- composers from our 1990 catalogue
ture. But Bonta provides a vantage point from which to concealed in this square (horizontal, vertical,
contemplate the way in which violins, violinists, and diagonal, inverted or cancrizans).
violin music were woven into the fabric of Italian
sacred music. As violinists were necessary to the B I BERLE B E R
smooth functioning of not only church music, but ORHVEOHUNT
chamber and theatre music as well, their numbers YECI PCCNRH
increased, standards rose, and a flourishing musical CKS VSKAOAO
culture produced works of high quality. ECEAU E BDBO
Moving on from Bologna to Rome (as Corelli himself GE F LMY LLE K
did around 1675), Eleanor McCrickard introduces us ABED I UOELC
to two of the many successful but generally neglected
violinist-composers of the period. Colista belonged to
ROD I NWDWKIU
THANDELGAL
the generation of Corelli's parents; his music, or music H INA INIMEG
like it, would have provided the repertory that Corelli
performed and presumably imitated when he arrived
in Rome as an unknown fiddler. Leoni was a famous
NEW CATALOGUE - OLD PRICES
teacher, player, and composer of the generation
before Colista's, and if Corelli's violin sonatas, op.5
(Rome, 1700), are perhaps the most famous published
Redcroft, Bank's End, Wyton,
in Italy, Leoni's Sonate di violino a voce solo, op.3 (Rome,
Huntingdon, Cambs, PE17 2AA
1652), contained the first violin sonatas published tel 0480 52076 fax: 0480 450821
anywhere.

EARLY MUSIC NOVEMBER 1990 517

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 Along with Italian opera, opera composers, and
opera singers, Italian violinists and their repertory
penetrated north of the Alps with increasing frequency
as the century progressed. The history of music in
France, Germany, Scandanavia, and eastern Europe
was profoundly altered by the activities of this Italian
Diaspora. In England this process was effectively
postponed by the Civil War and Interregnum, so it was
only after the Restoration of 1660 that the Italian
influence began gradually to make itself felt. Peter
Walls investigates the nature and extent of this
influence at the end of the century, in a study that
exhibits many of the features of such musical
which he could add. It takes nothing away from
Corelli's contribution to this edifice to say that it was
already an imposing structure when he began his
work. There is nothing tentative or unformed about
the music of Corelli's predecessors or the instruments
on which it was rendered; they are fully-developed
artistic expressions of their own time. We should
study and publish more of this music in a sympathetic
and knowing manner, so that it may provide enjoy-
ment for modern performers and listeners, and so that
it may assume its rightful place in the panoply of
music styles and types that make up the history of
Western music.

acculturations in other times and places. Among the

last to take up Italian 'baroque' instrumental music, Neal Zaslaw is Professor of Music at Cornell University and
the English were also the last to give it up, clinging member of the Graduate Faculty of the Julliard School. His
tenaciously to a repertory of sonatas and concertos by book Mozart's Symphonies was recently published by
Corelli, Geminiani, and others into the beginning of OUP

the 19th century.

Of the six or so sizes of violins mentioned in my
opening section, the smallest continues to intrigue
and mystify. The fact that J. S. Bach called for a violino
piccolo in his second Brandenburg Concerto has
gained this somewhat obscure instrument a per-
manent place in modern musical consciousness; and
the often gaily ornamented, sometimes oddly shaped
dancing masters' fiddles (kit, pochette) proudly dis-
played in the glass cases of many musical instrument
collections seldom fail to catch the eye. But were these
serious instruments or mere expedients, and if they
were serious, how were they constructed and what in association with the South Bank Centre presents

were they used for? Margaret Downie Banks begins to . .. .. ..

answer some of these questions in a systematic way.

The music of Arcangelo Corelli has always been
admired by musicians and, unlike most Baroque
music, which was forgotten, it remained in print and :::. 1--m- - .:I:::i~::r:::
was studied throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. by Luigi R. ssi (1598653)
The traditional attitude to Corelli's compositions (concert performance)
among violinists and music historians long tended to first performed at the Palais-oyal in Paris
be this: violin playing and violin music prior to Corelli on2March 1647 ........... ....: ?.... ???.,.: ?? ??-::: ?;

were poor and chaotic things, and then Corelli brought and now receiving its London premi ere
order to the chaos, richness to the poverty, creating a Choir and Ochestraof Les Arts Florissants,
'classical' model for future generations. The accuracy directed by William Christie
of the latter assertion, that Corelli's music provided
Tuesday 27 November at 7.45pm
some kind of model, cannot be denied, but nothing
could be further from the truth than the former
Queen Elizabeth Hall
?15.0 ?4~12.50 ?310.00 ?7350 J5.00
assertion. By the time Corelli began to perform and
compose, the Italian violin school already had to its THH
credit several decades of brilliant technical and
* CENTRE
artistic achievement, on which he could build and to

518 EARLY MUSIC NOVEMBER 1990

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