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m \ u n ■ The Italian ‘Trio’ Sonata From its Origins Until Corelli PETER ALLSOP CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 1992 Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petalingjaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © Peter Allsop tgg2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, tored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any mean electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data (Data available) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Allsop, Peter. Dr. The Italian ‘trio' sonata: from its origins until Corelli/Peter Allsop. —(Oxford monographs on music) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Trio sonata. 2. Music—Italy—17th century—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. ML1156. A4418 igg2 785' .13183'0945—dc20 ISBN o-ig-8i622g-4 Typeset by Pentacor plc, High Wycombe, Bucks Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk a Claudio Sartori senza la cui Bibliografia questo libro non sarebbe stato possibile PREFACE This book is the outcome of almost twenty years of research into Italian instrumental music of the seventeenth century, beginning, like so many similar undertakings, as a doctoral thesis (Oxford, 1976). It is devoted to lengthy free compositions (i.e. not dances, sets of variations, or short introductory sinfonias) scored for instrumental combinations of two trebles, or two trebles and one melodic bass instrument and continuo which today frequently masquerade under the misnomer of ‘trio’ sonatas. My intention at the outset of this extended period of study was to explain the enormous stylistic chasm which separates the improvisatory rhapsodies of the early seventeenth century from the controlled formalism of Corelli’s so-called Sonate da chiesa. My point of departure was in fact the concluding chapter of Eunice C. Crocker’s comprehensive dissertation on the Italian Canzona francese (Ph.D. Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass., 1943), in which she drew attention to the sketchiness of current knowledge about the precise nature of the sonata’s development, while issuing a provocative challenge for future research: We know in a general way that the ‘sonata’ eventually took over features of the canzona- style and mingled them with features of the sonata-style, meanwhile evolving from the variform principle a scheme of six, five, and finally four contrasting movements, arranged in an effective sequence, that the center of gravity eventually fell upon the second, which is commonly referred to as the ‘fugal’ movement. This fine-sounding generalization is of no value to the cause of research in the seventeenth century, however, if it cannot be supported by specific findings. Such findings must come from a careful study of the complete works of each composer of the period, and then they must be correlated both with past trends of the history of the ‘canzona’ and the ‘sonata’ and with the developments which were consolidated in the sonata da chiesa. Many of these ‘fine-sounding generalizations’ handed down to us from the pioneering studies of Hugo Riemann and others were based largely on the modicum of randomly selected examples to be found in the anthologies of Wasielewski and Torchi. No one could seriously claim these to be representative of the period as a whole, yet the validity of many of the theories based upon them has remained almost unquestioned until quite recent times. The years since Crocker’s study have seen a considerable growth of interest in Italian music of the seventeenth century, yet the problems of source material still remain a formidable impediment to a fuller understanding of the period. Much research has focused on individual composers, or perhaps on a single location Preface Vlll (no doubt due to the exigencies of a three-year doctoral programme) but apart from William S. Newman’s Sonata in the Baroque Era, few systematic attempts have been made to relate this material to the development as a whole. This study aims precisely at that correlated appraisal of the complete works of each composer advocated by Dr Crocker, and as such is based on the vast majority of surviving ‘trio’ sonatas from the earliest known examples until the publication of Corelli’s Op. I in 1681. The time-consuming task of transcription in no small measure accounts for its long gestation period. Despite determined efforts to the contrary, the overall form (if not the content) has come more and more to resemble the bipartite arrangement adopted by Newman. Although working from fundamentally different premises, he nevertheless outlined some thirty years ago many of the problems and pitfalls that all researchers in this field must encounter. Part I therefore deals with matters of a general nature—instrumentation, terminology, genre, performance practice, etc. Its prime aim is to present the sonata and its composers in the widest historical context as a social and cultural phenomenon, the product of the interaction of discernible environmental forces, and hopefully to arrive at some clear understanding of the relevance of these works to the society which produced them. Such an undertaking relies heavily on the many excellent biographical and archival studies which have appeared recently, and these are fully acknowledged in the appropriate places. I am nevertheless aware that in some instances my indebtedness amounts almost to plagiarism: Bonta (Legrenzi), Selfridge-Field (Venice), Schnoebelen (Bologna), Wessely-Kropik (Rome). Above all, I wish to express my deep appreciation to Claudio Sartori, whose Bibliografia remains the indispensable tool for any researcher in this area. Part II, on the other hand, is based largely on primary sources. This includes nearly every known ‘trio’ composition of composers who began publishing instrumental music before 1681 and may therefore have contributed to the development of the ‘Corellian’ sonata. However, a few exceptions have been found necessary. First, composers such as Farina, Bertoli, and Viviani, all of whose known instrumental collections were the products of service at foreign courts, have been excluded on the grounds that they cannot properly be said to represent Italian practice. Secondly, whereas in the sparse early years of the century a few isolated works may assume a significance far beyond their numerical importance, by the mid-century it seemed pointless to include those composers such as Allevi and Placuzzi whose surviving contributions amounted to no more than about half a dozen sonatas. Some substantially incomplete printed editions have also not been included. One ever-present problem in any analysis of seventeenth century music is the question of terminology. Much research carried out at the turn of this century