A DUE: Sonate à violino e violone

Composer(s)

Arcangelo Corelli (b Fusignano, 17 Feb 1653; d Rome, 8 Jan 1713). Italian composer and violinist. Despite the modest size of his output, comprising six collections of instrumental music and a handful of other authentic works, and its virtual restriction to three genres – solo sonata, trio sonata and concerto – Corelli exercised an unparalleled influence during his lifetime and for a long time afterwards. This influence, which affected form, style and instrumental technique in equal measure, was most closely felt in Italy, and in particular in Rome, where he settled in early manhood, but soon spread beyond local and national confines to become a European phenomenon. As a violinist, teacher of the violin and director of instrumental ensembles Corelli imposed standards of discipline that were unusually strict for their period and helped to lay the groundwork for further progress along the same lines during the 18th century. To Corelli belong equally the distinctions of being the first composer to derive his fame exclusively from instrumental composition, the first to owe his reputation in large part to the activity of music publishers, and the first to produce ‘classic’ instrumental works which were admired and studied long after their idiom became outmoded.

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre(b Paris, bap. 17 March 1665; d Paris,27 June 1729). French harpsichordist and composer. She came from a family of master masons and musicians (see Jacquet family), and from the age of five played the harpsichord and sang at the court of Louis XIV. Noticed by Madame de Montespan, she stayed for three years in her entourage. On 23 September 1684 she left the court to marry the organist Marin de La Guerre. Their son, as precociously gifted as his mother, died at the age of ten.

In Paris Elisabeth Jacquet gave lessons and concerts for which she was soon renowned throughout the city. Her first compositions were dramatic works, of which only the libretto of Jeux à l'honneur de la victoiresurvives. Her first publication, Les pièces de clavessin … premier livre, dates from 1687. In 1694 her only tragédie en musique, Céphale et Procris, was performed at the Académie Royale de Musique with little success, but the prologue was revived in 1696 at Strasbourg, where Sébastien de Brossard had founded an academy of music. In 1695 Brossard made copies of her first trio sonatas and those for violin and continuo. Only in 1707 did she publish her six Sonates pour le viollon et pour le clavecin and the Pièces de clavecin qui peuvent se jouer sur le viollon, followed later by her two collections of Cantates françoises sur des sujets tirez de l'Ecriture to texts by Antoine Houdar de Lamotte, and by three secular Cantates françoises. Whereas all her other works were dedicated to Louis XIV, this last was addressed to the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel. Le raccommodement comique de Pierrot et de Nicole is a duet which went into La ceinture de Vénus, a play by Alain-René Lesage performed at the Foire St Germain in 1715. Elisabeth Jacquet's last work seems to have been a Te Deum sung in August 1721 in the chapel of the Louvre in thanksgiving for the recovery of Louis XV from smallpox.

Francesco Maria Veracini
(b Florence, 1 Feb 1690; d Florence, 31 Oct 1768). Italian composer and violinist. Veracini was born into a family of musicians and artists. His grandfather was one of the first violinists of Florence; his uncle Antonio Veracini was that and a fine composer as well. Francesco Maria’s father Agostino was, ironically, one of the few Veracinis who did not play the violin even as an amateur; he was a druggist and undertaker. Veracini’s early training was provided by his uncle Antonio with whom the promising boy often performed in public. His other instructors in Florence were G.M. Casini and his assistant Francesco Feroci. In particular, Casini, the organist at Florence Cathedral and composer of church music in a highly individual, neo-Palestrinian style, left his mark upon Veracini’s subsequent works. His last teacher was apparently G.A. Bernabei, with whom he may have studied in 1715 when he was in southern Germany. There is no solid evidence that he studied with Corelli, as is sometimes asserted.

Italian composer and violinist. Knowledge of his life and work is confined to a few documents, the most extensive of which is the preface to a posthumous memorial publication, Sonate a 1. 2. 3. per il violino, o cornetto, fagotto, chitarone, violoncino o simile altro istromento (Venice, 1641/R1985; examples in AMI, vii, 92; HAM, no.198; Mw, xv, 1960; Diletto musicale, xiii–xv, 1962, and cdxlii, 1969; ed. F. Cerha, Vienna and Munich, 1976). He is described as being from Brescia and as having also worked in Venice, Rome and finally Padua. His death was attributed to ‘the voracity of the pestilence’, that raged in northern Italy in the years 1630–31. Another Brescian, Cesario Gussago, dedicated a sonata to him (in RISM 16082). Other documents may refer to the musician. One of them, a property assessment of 1627 for a Gio: Batta Fontana, gives his age as 38, his residence as Padua, and refers to extensive connections with Brescia. An atto di morte dated 7 September 1630 for a “Zan Batta Fontana” aged 50, is the only one among the Paduan death registers of 1625–30 for a person bearing that name (see Baroncini).

The 1641 collection comprises six sonatas for solo violin and continuo and 12 ensemble sonatas for one to three violins and continuo, the latter group often including a technically demanding concertante part for bassoon or cello. None of the individual works can be firmly dated: it can only be stated that they represent sonata composition probably from its beginnings to about 1630. All are divisible into numerous contrasting sections; in about a third of them some sections are repeated, suggesting an arch form. Repeated periods are often elaborated with diminutions. Except for a few short sections recalling the style of vocal recitative, the melodic material is on the whole related to that found in canzonas and dance pieces of the period. A nervous, variegated rhythmic idiom is found in some of these works; the sixth sonata, for example, abounds with sudden bursts of diminutions and triplets. The underlying contrapuntal and harmonic vocabulary is quite conservative, with the bass line often a regular voice part rather than a truly accompanimental line. Works such as sonatas 5, 6 and 16 show Fontana to be a leading figure in the early development of the sonata, especially the solo sonata, of which he and Marini were the first important composers.

Giovanni Mossi
(b ?Rome, c1680; d Rome, 1742). Italian composer and violinist. In the frontispieces of his first five collections he is referred to as Roman. This is probably true, since three other members of the family are known to have been in Rome between the 1670s and the 1730s: his father, Bartolomeo, and brother Giuseppe (both viola players), and Gaetano Mossi, a tenor at the papal chapel. This suggests that it was Bartolomeo who introduced Giovanni into the musical circles of Rome, where he was active as a violinist from 1694. His career there can be divided into three periods. Until 1715 he appeared regularly as an instrumentalist at the private courts of cardinals and princes, or in ecclesiastical cappelle. The second period, 1716–33, is marked by an outburst of compositional activity in instrumental genres; his work as a violinist continued as before, but in a span of 15 years he published in Amsterdam his entire catalogue of works: three sets of sonatas and three of concertos. During the third period, from 1733 until his death, he gave up composition and gradually reduced his professional commitments. His only stable position seems to have been as virtuoso at the court of Baldassarre Odescalchi (from 1709 Duke of Bracciano). It has not yet been possible to establish with certainty the duration of the engagement, but it was probably brief: evidence shows that in 1711 he was already in service, but five years later the frontispiece of op.1 made no mention of it. It is not clear what his relations were with Cardinal Wolfgang Hannibal Schrattenbach, Princess Vittoria Altieri Pallavicini and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, to whom opp.1, 4 and 6 respectively were dedicated.

Giuseppe Tartini: (b Pirano, Istria [now Piran, Istra, Slovenia], 8 April 1692; d Padua, 26 Feb 1770). Italian composer, violinist, teacher and theorist.

Tartini’s father Giovanni Antonio, of Florentine origin, was general manager of the salt mills in Pirano. Giuseppe, destined for the church by his pious parents, was to have been first a minore conventuale, a branch of the Franciscan order, and subsequently a full priest. To this end he was educated in his native town and then in nearby Capodistria (now Koper, Slovenia) at the scuole pie; as well as the humanities and rhetoric, he studied the rudiments of music. In 1708 he left his native region, never to live there again, but carrying in his memory the peculiarities of the local musical folklore. He enrolled as a law student at Padua University, where he devoted most of his time, always dressed as a priest, to improving his fencing, a practice in which, according to contemporary accounts, few could compete with him. This account of Tartini’s youth has been questioned (see, for instance, Capri), but it is supported by contemporary evidence and is consistent with the later development of his personality, characterized by a fiery and stubborn temperament with a strong tendency towards mysticism. These qualities are equally evident in his writings – both letters and theoretical works – and in his compositions.

A few months after his father’s death, Tartini openly rebelled against his parents’ intentions, and on 29 July 1710 he married Elisabetta Premazore, a girl of lower social standing and two years his elder. He was then compelled to leave Padua and took refuge in the convent of S Francesco in Assisi, where he was sheltered by the superior, Padre G.B. Torre, from Pirano. There Tartini remained for at least three years, devoting himself determinedly to practising the violin, always without tuition. Although direct evidence is lacking, he probably studied composition during this period with Padre Bohuslav Černohorský, then organist of the basilica in Assisi.

With the death of Father Torre, Tartini lost his protector and was obliged to support himself as a violinist. We learn from his Trattato di musica that in 1714 he was in the orchestra of the Ancona opera house, and he claimed that it was then that he discovered the ‘terzo suono’ (combination tone), the acoustical phenomenon that was to play a fundamental role in his theoretical system as well as in his composing and playing techniques. In July 1716 he heard Veracini play at a musical academy in the Mocenigo palace in Venice, and was so impressed by his style, especially by his bow technique, that he decided to return to the Marches in order to perfect his own playing; in Carnival 1717–18 he was first violin in the opera house orchestra in Fano. His activities during the next two years are not known, but presumably involved commuting between the Veneto and the Marches in order to play in academies, church services and opera performances, as well as teaching. He was in Venice early in 1721, when he had as a pupil the young Gerolamo Ascanio Giustiniani, the future translator of the Psalms for Benedetto Marcello and the dedicatee of Tartini’s own violin sonatas published as op.1 in 1734 by Le Cène in Amsterdam.

Thanks to the intervention of Gerolamo Ascanio’s father, Tartini was appointed primo violino e capo di concerto at the basilica of S Antonio in Padua (known as ‘Il Santo’) on 16 April 1721; the proceedings of the appointments board expressly stated that Tartini was exempt from the usual examination because of his acknowledged perfection in the profession, and he was at the same time granted complete freedom to play in opera and musical academies whenever he so wished. The document is in itself proof of the high reputation Tartini had by then acquired. Taking advantage of the permission he was granted, he took part in occasional performances in Parma (1728), Bologna (1730), Camerino (1735), Ferrara (1739) and, most frequently, Venice.

In 1723 Tartini was invited by his lifelong friend and colleague, the cellist Antonio Vandini (the source of the earliest biographical information about Tartini), to join him in Prague in performances connected with the coronation of Emperor Charles VI as king of Bohemia. Tartini’s ready acceptance resulted partly from a wish to avoid a scandal about to erupt in Padua, provoked by a Venetian innkeeper who accused him of fathering her recently born child. Tartini remained for three years in Prague in the service of the Kinsky family, and enjoyed contacts there with Prince Lobkowitz’s household as well as with the musicians Fux, Caldara and S.L. Weiss. The bad climate and resulting health problems obliged him – ‘against his will’, as he said in a family letter – to return in 1726 to S Antonio in Padua, where he remained for the rest of his life.

The following year Tartini began his violin school, which soon became famous and was labelled ‘the school of the nations’ because students came to it from all over Europe. It was probably about this time that he began his relationship, mainly epistolary, with Padre Martini in Bologna, which lasted for the rest of his life. Also about this time (c1730) Le Cène of Amsterdam brought out Tartini’s first published works, 12 concertos op.1, books 1 and 3. In spite of repeated invitations from France, Germany and especially England, Tartini firmly refused to leave Padua, just as he always declined to write for the stage. Several travellers visited him: in 1739 De Brosses reported at length in his Lettres familières on the excellent impression the violinist made on him, but there is no evidence of a supposed journey to Rome in 1740. About this time Tartini suffered a stroke which partly paralysed his left arm and affected his playing. Frequent contacts with the cultural milieu in Padua, and especially with his countryman Gianrinaldo Carli, professor of astronomy at Padua University, fostered the change in Tartini’s conception of music from that of a purely abstract construction of sounds to that of an expressive language capable of moving the listeners’ affections. The discussions concerned also theoretical subjects, dealing with the physical and mathematical principles behind musical phenomena; but Tartini’s interest in – or indeed his passion for – these matters dates from much earlier, and was promoted also by the presence in Padua of two Franciscans who were maestri di cappella of the institution in which he served and also deeply involved in the same theoretical matters: Francesco Calegari, who held the office from 1703 to 1727, and his successor Francesco Antonio Vallotti.

As time went by, Tartini devoted himself less to playing and composing, concentrating his energies (apart from those used for teaching) almost exclusively on theoretical speculation. By 1750, as can be inferred from his correspondence, the text of what was to become the Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell’armonia was complete, and it was circulated to the ‘learned world’ (as Tartini himself called it) to be evaluated and discussed. Padre Martini and the mathematician Lodovico Balbi, both in Bologna, were rather sceptical of the hypotheses expounded in the treatise, which was eventually published in 1754 with the financial support of Count Decio Agostino Trento, its dedicatee. Criticism continued after publication, emphasizing that it was written in a deliberately obscure style. Tartini decided therefore on a plainer and more comprehensible presentation of his ideas in his next printed treatise, De’ principi dell’armonia musicale contenuta nel diatonico genere, completed in 1764 and published in 1767. In between these publications, and even after, he wrote several shorter theoretical texts, principally to defend his convictions against attacks coming mainly from Italian mathematicians and foreign music theorists. Not all judgments were unfavourable, however; D’Alembert, in his Elémens de musique, expressed support for Tartini’s ideas, and J.-J. Rousseau took the trouble of including an extensive and thorough résumé of them in the article ‘Système’ in his Dictionnaire de musique (1768). But Rousseau’s concept of harmony was too close to Rameau’s to be acceptable to Tartini, who attacked him in what turned out to be his last published work. Another large theoretical text, Dell’armonia musicale fondata sul cerchio, remained unpublished until modern times.

Throughout his life Tartini was harassed by requests for financial help from his family in Pirano, which obliged him to devote his last years more than ever to teaching; but he was also obsessed by the incomprehension with which his theories and ideas were met. After the death of his wife, Vandini joined him to spend their last years together. Tartini died on 26 February 1770; he bequeathed his musical and theoretical manuscripts to his nephew Pietro.

PIERLUIGI PETROBELLI from The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Michele [Michel, Miquel] Mascitti,
(b Chieti, nr Naples, 1663 or 1664; d Paris, 24 April 1760). Italian composer and violinist. He was taught by his uncle, Pietro Marchitelli, who was attached to the royal chapel of Naples and to the church of S Bartolomeo as a violinist. Marchitelli procured for his young nephew the post of a ‘supernumerary violinist’ in the royal chapel with the prospect of a permanency later, but Mascitti preferred to seek his fortune abroad. Having travelled through Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, he settled in Paris in 1704. He soon attracted the attention of the Duke of Orléans and through him gained the opportunity to play before the king, the dauphin and the whole court. Mascitti became a figurehead of Italian instrumental music in France and was regarded as the peer of Corelli and Albinoni. Possessing the advantage over his fellow-nationals of residence in Paris, where all nine of his published collections were first issued between 1704 and 1738, Mascitti enjoyed enormous popularity with the French public, to whom he was affectionately known by his first name Michele in various gallicized forms. In the Low Countries and England, where his music was extensively reprinted, his reputation was less exceptional, though still considerable. He entered the service of the Duke of Orléans and in later years enjoyed the patronage of the influential Crozat family, lodging at the house of Pierre Crozat. In 1739 Mascitti became a French citizen by naturalization. He married in the following year. His last 20 years seem to have been spent in retirement.