Veracini, Antonio: Sonate da camera, a violino solo (Opera seconda)

Composer(s)

(b Florence, 17 Jan 1659; d Florence, 26 Oct 1733). Italian violinist and composer, uncle of Francesco Maria Veracini. He presumably had his early training from his father Francesco di Niccolò, a noted violinist with whom Antonio frequently performed in his youth. For example, they played regularly at the opera performances produced for Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici at Pratolino, 1677–85. Veracini entered the service of Grand Duchess Vittoria of Tuscany on 3 March 1682. After her death in 1694 he received a pension of half pay. At the death of Pietro Sammartini in 1700, he became maestro di cappella at S Michele Berteldi (now S Gaetano) in Florence, and he provided music to other churches of the city on at least an occasional basis. Veracini was an important freelance musical director, providing oratorios for the company of S Marco (1703–5), S Jacopo del Nicchio (1720) and S Niccolò del Ceppo (1702–30). From at least 1718 he was a member of the musicians’ company in Florence, serving at various times as councillor and sexton. Around 1708 Veracini assumed direction of his father’s music school, in which he trained his nephew Francesco Maria. Unlike his nephew, he rarely travelled. He visited Rome twice, where he seems to have met Corelli, whose portrait he owned. In 1720 he made a brief visit to Vienna, but he was certainly at home at least every Easter from 1685 to 1733 since his name is in every parish census from those years.

Only Veracini’s printed violin music survives. The treatment of tonal harmony in it is not as clear as Corelli’s. But the music generally possesses grandeur, derived from the unusually long phrases extended by frequent deceptive suspensions at cadences and broad melodic contours, and strength resulting from energetic and emphatic, often fanfare-like, rhythms and triadic motifs. The extensive use of repetition in place of sequences and an expanded rhythmic vocabulary were taken up by his nephew, who established these among the features of the galant style of the early 18th century. Veracini's occasional singing melodies recall G.M. Casini’s statement about him and his nephew, that ‘the heart, rather than cleverness, guided and accompanied the finger and bow of these virtuosos’.