concerto, a stable solo in
the submediant, immediately preceding the return to the tonic.(Fr. concert; Ger. Konzert).
An instrumental work that maintains contrast between an orchestral ensemble and a smaller group or a solo instrument, or among various groups of an undivided orchestra. Before 1700 the term was applied to pieces in a variety of forms for an even greater variety of performing media, voices as well as instruments; it was also used in the sense of ‘ensemble’ or ‘orchestra’. Not until the beginning of the 18th century was it applied consistently (though not exclusively) to works in three movements (fast–slow–fast) for soloist and orchestra, two or more soloists and orchestra (concerto grosso) or undivided orchestra.
In the late 18th century and during most of the 19th and the solo concerto was a prominent form of virtuoso display, while, in the same period, the concerto grosso fell out of public favour; some of its aspects were subsumed by the short-lived form of the Symphonie concertante. During its long history, the concerto has built on forms and procedures adopted by Corelli, Torelli, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach and later composers, particularly Mozart, to develop into a form that ranks with the symphony and the string quartet in the range of its artistic expression.
2. The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750.
ARTHUR HUTCHINGS/R (1), MICHAEL TALBOT (2), CLIFF EISEN (3), LEON BOTSTEIN (4), PAUL GRIFFITHS (5)
‘Concerto’ probably comes from the Latin concertare, which can mean both ‘to contend, dispute, debate’ and also ‘to work together with someone’. The primary Italian meaning of concertare is ‘to arrange, agree, get together’, but both this and the other Latin definition (they are not mutually exclusive) were in use in the course of the form’s development. Thus the first known musical application, ‘un concerto di voci in musica’ (Rome, 1519), clearly refers to a vocal ensemble, a ‘getting together’ of voices. A mixed ensemble of voices and instruments is implied by the description of the first intermedio for the marriage of Francesco de’ Medici (1565): ‘La musica di questo primo intermedio era concertato da …’ (there follows a list of instruments). Here and in many later instances the word concertato can be approximately translated as ‘accompanied’; the meaning ‘ensemble’ or ‘orchestra’ survived throughout the 17th century. Thus Trabaci (Il secondo libro de ricercate, 1615) referred to a ‘concerto de Violini, o Viole ad Arco’; and from 1671 G.M. Bononcini described himself on title-pages as ‘del concerto de gli strumenti dell’altezza serenissima di Modana’ (a member of the Duke of Modena’s orchestra).
About the beginning of the 17th century writers began to recognize the other latinate meaning of ‘concerto’, that is, ‘strive, contend with’. Michael Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, iii, 1618) offered this more erudite definition; and Bottrigari (Il desiderio, ovvero De’ concerti di varij strumenti musicali, 1594) also showed himself to be aware of the term’s etymology. It is unclear how widespread was the acceptance of this definition at this time, however.
The term concerto was originally used to refer to vocal and mixed vocal and instrumental forms. The earliest publication to have used it is the Concerti di Andrea, et di Gio. Gabrieli (Venice, 1587), which contains church music and madrigals in six to 16 parts. Performance by combinations of instruments and voices is implied in the preface, and these pieces are typical, in their short cadence-aimed motifs and frequent changes of grouping (flexible in the smaller works, fully antiphonal in the larger pieces), of much music for large forces that went under the name ‘concerto’. The motets by Giovanni Gabrieli in this collection are little different from those of his Sacre symphoniae of 1597; in the early period there was often no clear distinction of usage between ‘concerto’ and the Greek-derived ‘sinfonia’.
A similar practice is implied in the Intermedii et concerti for the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici, the publication of which (Venice, 1591) gives directions for the use of instruments. Most informative in this regard was Praetorius, who provided numerous and elaborate instructions for concerto performance (Syntagma musicum, iii), and whose own music was crucial in transmitting the Italian practice to German-speaking lands.
Early concertos for small forces, such as Lodovico Viadana’s influential Cento concerti ecclesiastici for one to four voices and continuo (Venice, 1602, but composed in the mid-1590s), represented the adaptation of similar principles of limited forces. The connection is shown quite clearly in Fattorini’s Sacri concerti a due voci (1600), whose second edition (1602) has four-part ripienos added with instructions for their use.
Throughout the first half of the 17th century, ‘concerto’ was a common term for Italian vocal music accompanied by instruments, applied with special frequency to church music. Works that use the term, or the entirely equivalent adjective ‘concertato’, include Simone Molinaro, Concerti ecclesiastici a due et a quatro voci (1605); Balbi, Partitura delli concerti ecclesiastici (1606); Ercole Porta, Giardino di spirituali concerti (1609); G.P. Cima, Concerti ecclesiastici (1610); Giulio Belli, Concerti ecclesiastici (1613); Francesco Milleville, Concerti (1617); Ghizzolo, Messa, salmi … concertati a cinque, o nove voci (1619; two choirs, with piano–forte effects and ripienos); Valerio Bona, Otto ordini di letanie … concertate a doi chori (1619); Milanuzzi, Armonia sacra di concerti (1622); Tarquinio Merula, Il primo libro de motetti sonate concertati (1624); Giovanni Rovetta, Salmi concertati (1626); Michel’Angelo Grancini, Sacri fiori concertati (1631); G.B. Faccini, Salmi concertati (1634); Guglielmo Lipparino, Sacri concerti (1627, 1635); and Cavalli, Musiche sacre concernenti messa e salmi concertati (1656). Some such works continue the large-scale antiphonal tradition of the Gabrielis, but most are for smaller forces, such as Banchieri’s Primo libro delle messe e motetti concertato con basso e due tenori nell’organo (1620). The continuo is a constant element, and sometimes the substitution of an instrumental part for a vocal one, an integral part of concertato practice, is explicitly permitted, as in Banchieri’s Vezzo di perle musicali (1610).
Among published secular concertos are Milleville, Il primo libro de’madrigali in concerto (1617); Monteverdi’s seventh book of madrigals (1619); P. Lamoretti, Primo libro de’madrigali concertati (1621); Banchieri, Il virtuoso ritrovo academico … con variati concerti musicali (1626); G.G. Arrigoni, Concerti di camera (1635); Martino Pesenti, Il quarto libro de madrigali … alcuni concertati con violini (1638); Filiberto Laurenzi, Concerti ed arie (1641); and Biagio Marini, Concerto terzo delle musiche da camera (1649).
Occasionally works otherwise entitled are described as concertos within a publication, for instance in Franzoni’s Apparato musicale di messa, sinfonie, canzoni, motetti (1613), Porta’s Sacro convito musicale (1620; ‘dovransi i presenti concerti cantar a battuta larga’) and Allevi’s Terzo libro delle compositioni sacre, for two to four voices (1668; ‘questo terzo libro de’ spirituali concerti’), a late application of the term to Italian vocal music.
In Germany all forms of the sacred concerto were developed by a large number of composers, Protestant as well as Catholic. The new Italian concerto practice became known in Germany through the writings and musical works of Michael Praetorius. The first four parts of his Musae Sioniae (1605) are subtitled ‘Geistliche Concert Gesänge’, and these and other works reflect the influence of the Gabrielis in their use of opposing groups of voices and instruments. Viadana’s Concerti ecclesiastici, for solo voices and basso continuo, which were reprinted in Germany, were also much emulated in technique and form by composers such as Praetorius and J.H. Schein.
Praetorius was the first of his generation to combine elements of Italian practice with German traditions to create works combining polychorality and continuo-accompanied solo singing, as in his Polyhymnia caduceatrix (1619), containing mostly large-scale choral concertos for vocal soloists and choirs of instruments and voices. Also in 1619, the first publication of sacred music by Schütz appeared: the Psalmen Davids sampt etlichen Motetten und Concerten. Schütz used both ‘concerto’ and ‘motet’ for his polychoral works, but those that incorporate elements of solo vocal writing are only called ‘concerto’. In the wake of these publications the geistliches Konzert became the central form of Protestant church music. The direct successors of these pieces are to be found in works published in the 1620s by Samuel Scheidt, Daniel Selich and Melchior Franck; and Praetorius’s influence can be traced even beyond the middle of the century.
Schütz’s Kleine geistliche Concerte (1636–9) reflect an interest in Italian secular music, for example that of Monteverdi (e.g. the seventh book of madrigals, 1619) and Caccini. Indeed, his Symphoniae sacrae (1629, 1647, 1650) contain reworkings of pieces by Monteverdi and Grandi. The first volume contains concertos for one to three solo voices with instruments; these differ, in their freedom and flexibility in the use of voices and instruments and in their declamatory text setting, from the works of composers who emulated Viadana. Most significant is the increasing independence of the instrumental ensemble. In the third part of Symphoniae sacrae the works for up to four solo voices, two obbligato violins (or equivalent) and up to two four-voice choirs of singers and instruments exemplify Schütz’s approach to the concerto form, combining expressive monody, exchange between solo and tutti, and contrast between solo vocal and instrumental passages and polychorality.
In the subsequent generation both this larger-scale construction and the smaller-scale kleines geistliches Konzert remained influential. However, the German vocal concerto began to take on aspects of secular chamber music (more wide-ranging use of the instrumental ensemble) and opera (the use of da capo form). Some composers (e.g. Christoph Bernhard) incorporated aria-like settings of free poetry in between the settings of biblical text, thus creating cantata-like works. Even so, others, such as Dedekind and Schelle, continued to compose unified sacred concertos, setting biblical texts only, until the end of the 17th century; Weckmann’s concertos were also important in the development of the form in the last part of the century, incorporating as they do elements taken over from cantata and oratorio as well. In this sense the term ‘concerto’ continued to be used for multi-movement works for many years afterwards, including for a number of Bach’s church cantatas.
(i) Preconditions and ancestry.
(ii) The two models: Roman and North Italian.
(iii) The Vivaldian revolution.
(iv) Typology of the Baroque concerto.
(ix) The Netherlands and Sweden.
(xi) The significance of the Baroque concerto.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
The instrumental concerto came into being in the last two decades of the 17th century. As originally conceived, the genre was a progressive offshoot of the sonata designed for performance by a string orchestra. Performance with only one instrument per part was rarely precluded but did not influence the basic conception. Orchestras on the modern pattern, with doubled string parts, began to emerge around 1670, notably in Rome and Bologna. From the start, the style and form of the concerto accommodated differences of status (between salaried and hired players) and ability (between advanced players and the rank and file) among the members of the orchestra, breaking with the more egalitarian tradition of the sonata.
Large ensembles need large – which often means reverberant – performing spaces. It was normal in early orchestral music, represented by the sonatas and sinfonias (the terms are synonymous) of the ‘school’ of S Petronio, Bologna, under its successive maestri di cappella Cazzati (1657–71), Colonna (1674–95) and Perti (1696–1756), to prefer a robust style that brought into prominence only one instrument at a time. The imitative interplay of the traditional sonata was replaced by a homophonic texture employing thematic requotation, brilliant passage-work and concertato dialogue as substitutes for contrapuntal elaboration. The many sonatas with one or more obbligato trumpets written at Bologna from the 1660s onwards by such composers as Cazzati, Gabrielli and Torelli exemplify this new style, which is directly ancestral to that of the concerto. Indeed, several Bolognese trumpet sonatas contain passages for solo strings indistinguishable from those in early concertos. Moreover, the highly characteristic thematic repertory of the natural trumpet, based on permutations of the major triad, the diatonic scale and the repeated note, was taken over unaltered into string writing, imparting a new vigour and directness. The first concertos might with justice be called ‘trumpet sonatas without a trumpet’.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Since the layout of string orchestras in Rome and in northern Italy (Venice, Milan, Bologna etc.) differed, correspondingly different approaches to the scoring and structure of the concerto developed in the two localities. Despite considerable cross-fertilization and hybridization of the two types, they remained distinct up to the end of the Baroque period. In Rome the core of the orchestra was a ‘concertino’ of two violins, cello (or lute) and continuo – identical with the players needed for a trio sonata (who were often employed as a group by a princely court). Complementing them was a larger body (termed ‘ripieno’ or ‘concerto grosso’) made up of the same instruments, freely doubled, plus contrabasses and, usually, violas; this ripieno was commonly recruited from freelance musicians. Roman concertos, therefore, normally employed four distinct violin parts.
In contrast, north Italian concertos were usually written for a simple orchestra in four parts. Where required, principal (solo) violin or cello parts were added to the corresponding ripieno parts (a second principal violin was usually drawn, like the first, from the ranks of the first violins). The most common type of string concerto after 1700, the concerto a 5, employs principal violin, two violins, viola and cello (the continuo is either identical with the cello or separate). If the Roman model can be said to treat the ripieno as an extension of the concertino, the north Italian concerto prefers to treat its soloists as offshoots of the ripieno. This difference explains why the former adhered closely to the sonata tradition, whereas the latter struck out along new paths.
Among the earliest Roman concertos were probably those written by Corelli (1653–1713), 12 of which were published in 1714 as his Concerti grossi op.6. Works of the same kind were certainly in existence by the early 1680s, when Georg Muffat heard them, but at that stage they were probably modelled very closely on the trio sonata. The published works, which Corelli revised in his last years, reveal some additional sources of influences – the solo violin sonata (shown by the preference for a five-movement plan), the trumpet sonata (seen in the concertato dialogue opening the first Allegro of the 12th sonata) and the north Italian concerto (as in the brilliant semiquaver figurations for the first concertino violin later in the same movement). Nevertheless, their description as ‘amplified’ trio sonatas, with effects of light and shade supplied by the ripieno, remains a useful simplification. Corelli’s careful distinction between ‘church’ concertos (with ‘abstract’ movements) and ‘chamber’ concertos (with dance movements), paralleling the same division in his sonatas, was rarely observed by his successors and imitators in Rome, who included Giuseppe Valentini (1681–1753), Francesco [Antonio] Montanari (d 1730), Giovanni Mossi (fl 1716–33) and P.A. Locatelli (1695–1764). However, the Roman concerto – or, at least, Roman-style instrumentation – gained a new lease on life by being transplanted abroad, first to Germany and then to England.
Quantz (1752) identified Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) as the inventor of the concerto. There is little doubt that the six concerti a quattro published alongside six sinfonie a tre in Torelli’s op.5 (Bologna, 1692) were the first works of their kind to appear in print. Moreover, they conform to the earliest published definition of the concerto, in Mattheson’s Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (1713), by having a dominant first-violin part, as opposed to the more contrapuntal style of the companion sonatas (sinfonias). Whether or not Torelli composed the first purely instrumental concertos, his were indisputably the first to circulate in print. Even more significant are Torelli’s Concerti musicali a quattro op.6 (Augsburg, 1698). This set of 12 concertos includes two containing short passages for solo violin and one with similar passages for two violins. As in all concertos before Vivaldi, the solo passages are decorative rather than structural in function. In a preface Torelli explained (the need for the explanation is itself historically significant) that where ‘solo’ is written, only one instrument should play; elsewhere, as many as three or four players per part are acceptable.
Other sets of concertos published before 1700 include the concertos (appearing alongside sinfonias) in the Brescian composer Giulio Taglietti’s op.2 (1696) and the Concerti grossi a più stromenti op.2 (1698) by the Lucchese composer Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori. The latter works, musically very mediocre, are noteworthy for their collective title (Concerti grossi could be translated as ‘Concertos for full band’) and for the fact that, in the last movement of the fourth concerto, separate parts are provided for the solo violin and the orchestral first violins. The significance of the second feature is that it introduced the option of using orchestral violins, rather than merely continuo, to accompany the soloist.
In 1700 the Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni brought out a landmark collection of sonatas (sinfonie) and concertos, op.2. The six concertos advance beyond Torelli by observing the three-movement (fast–slow–fast) plan regularly and adopting some of the stylistic mannerisms of the contemporary operatic sinfonia. Albinoni’s Concerti a cinque op.5 (1707) go still further, reintroducing fugal texture (but now in combination with solo writing) and providing examples of lyrical slow movements – these had previously favoured simple chordal textures, sometimes enclosing a central section with rapid solo passage-work. Albinoni normally provided a separate volume for the principal violin, but the independence of this part from the orchestral first violins varies greatly from work to work, never dictating the structure. Other Venetian composers (Giorgio Gentili, op.5, 1708, and Benedetto Marcello, op.1, 1708) took a similar approach.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
The earliest concertos of Albinoni’s fellow citizen Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), written in the years leading up to the publication of his epoch-making collection L’estro armonico op.3 (1711) mark the first regular use, in the outer fast movements, of ritornello form. This form, adumbrated by Torelli but never clinched, is an adaptation of a scheme already in use for a few decades in the ‘A’ sections of da capo arias. The ritornello – one or more ideas constituting a refrain played by the full ensemble – is used to establish the opening tonality and subsequently to affirm the various other tonalities reached in the course of the movement; the alternate sections (episodes), scored for the solo instrument with a generally light accompaniment, accomplish the structurally important modulations and supply contrasting themes or figurations. Since the number of ritornello statements is not prescribed (in slow movements, the number of its statements may even be reduced to two, framing a central solo portion), the form is extensible almost without limit. Normally, however, the ritornello statements number between four and six, of which a central group visits, in succession, a series of related keys (beginning with the dominant or relative major and nearly always including keys offering modal contrast). Ritornello form was in fact the first musical form routinely to present the same material in the major and the minor mode at different points in the movement. Leaving aside their structure, Vivaldi’s concertos introduced an exciting new musical language full of simple, strong effects such as the orchestral unison, hitherto little employed outside opera. His solo parts in the fast movements set new standards of virtuosity and, to a limited but growing extent, started to offset the mandatory rapid passage-work with lyrical moments that prefigure the ‘singing allegro’ style of the later 18th century. All these features speedily became part of the universal language of the concerto – and, through stylistic osmosis, also of other genres. Vivaldi’s nine published collections of concertos, supported by hundreds of other concertos circulating only in manuscript, were suited to performance in many different locales, including churches, theatres, banqueting rooms, concert halls and music societies. Their appropriateness for so many functional contexts – sacred or secular, ceremonial or recreational, public or private – lay behind their immense popularity. Not by chance, the rise of the concerto coincided exactly with that of music publishing in north-western Europe; each proved greatly beneficial to the other.
Vivaldi’s style continued to develop after op.3. Opp.4, 6 and 7, all published before 1720, crystallize still further the formal and stylistic traits introduced in L’estro armonico (ironically, in view of its great historical impact, op.3 evidences these traits often rather unclearly, since the collection is overlaid by eclectic features, including the use of four violin partbooks, Roman style). During the 1720s Vivaldi wrote several ‘allusive’ (i.e. picturesque or programmatic) concertos, of which Le quattro stagioni op.8 nos.1–4 (rv269, 315, 293, 297) are the most highly developed examples. These import into purely instrumental music a repertory of onomatopoeic and pictorial effects that had long existed in opera, a genre to which Vivaldi dedicated himself assiduously from 1713 onwards. Strangely, his programme concertos had no real successors within their own genre (except, perhaps, for Locatelli’s Il pianto d’Arianna), although they certainly exerted considerable influence on music in such other genres as the symphony and oratorio. In his last concertos, written towards 1740, Vivaldi adopted some of the galant mannerisms of his younger rivals.
Most of the favoured styles of treatment of the slow movement in the Baroque concerto are present in Vivaldi’s concertos. At one extreme, we encounter fully scored movements employing standard ritornello form (albeit on a reduced scale), besides the simple ‘frame ritornello’ mentioned earlier. The other extreme is represented by movements for one or more soloists, accompanied only by continuo and usually cast in binary form, that would be perfectly in place in a sonata (the middle movement of Il gardellino op.10 no.3 (rv428) is a good example). Through-composed slow movements, with full or reduced scoring, are also common, although close inspection reveals that many such movements are in a binary form lacking the normal repeats. In solo concertos the emphasis of the solo part is predominantly lyrical; it is usually notated in ‘outline’ form in the expectation that the performer will, through improvised embellishment, produce a more flowing, expressive and individualized melody.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
All the main types of concerto (leaving aside the Roman concerto as already described) were cultivated by Vivaldi. The most common type, totally dominant after 1710, was the concerto for one solo instrument and string orchestra, or ‘solo’ concerto. Originally, the principal part was entrusted only to a violin – and the violin remained by far the most popular choice – but in the three decades following L’estro armonico most other instruments acquired a repertory of solo concertos. Those for the cello, oboe and transverse flute are particularly extensive. Only the double bass and the viola, it seems, were excluded (the latter not wholly, however, since Telemann left one example of a viola concerto).
Concertos for two solo instruments, either of the same kind or of different kinds, are, in structural terms, basically identical with solo concertos. There remains the problem of how to combine the two soloists in the solo episodes. Four solutions are favoured: (1) the two instruments team up in parallel 3rds or 6ths; (2) they play alternately, dialogue fashion; (3) they play in imitation or some other kind of counterpoint; (4) one instrument plays a melody, while the other provides accompanimental figuration.
Concertos for more than two solo instruments follow the same pattern. The potential for giving the solo instruments (especially when wind instruments) independent or semi-independent parts in the tutti sections is often exploited. This feature, seen in Vivaldi but more particularly in his German imitators (J.S. Bach, Telemann, Pisendel), looks forward to the orchestration of the Classical symphony. No satisfactory short form of description for concertos with multiple soloists exists in English (the Germans have Gruppenkonzert, literally ‘ensemble concerto’). Following Quantz, many present-day writers use ‘concerto grosso’ indiscriminately for any concerto with more than one soloist, but this practice is best avoided since it too often conflicts with the general usage of the period and proves confusing (using the same term for the Baroque concerto tout court is even less justifiable).
Concertos for a group of solo instruments (generally between three and six) with continuo but without orchestra were written in some quantity by Vivaldi and occasionally imitated by others – for example, by Boismortier in France and J.S. Bach in Germany (in his Third and Sixth Brandenburg Concertos). In German sources such works often masquerade as sonatas, although their characteristics are entirely concerto-like. The distinction between ‘tutti’ and ‘solo’ (hence of ritornello and episode) is maintained by interpreting the former as the entire ensemble, the latter as a subgroup, either constant or variable in its composition. The ultimate reduction of the performing ensemble was to a single instrument, as seen in Bach’s Italian Concerto for solo harpsichord (1735), many aspects of which had been worked out in the same composer’s much earlier harpsichord and organ transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi and others.
Finally, one should not ignore the tenacious survival, mostly in Italy, of the concerto a quattro (sometimes known as the ‘ripieno’ concerto), a linear descendant of the genre’s prototype. Such works are stylistically very heterogeneous. They sometimes adopt a complex contrapuntal language and, freed from the necessity to gratify a soloist, contain concentrated thematic development; on the other hand, they may appropriate the simpler, treble-dominated style of the contemporary sinfonia.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Italian composers contemporary with, or slightly older than, Vivaldi (Albinoni, E.F. Dall’Abaco, F.A. Bonporti) rarely accepted his formal innovations completely, although they were influenced by his musical idiom in general and by the virtuoso character of his solo parts. The first Italian ‘Vivaldian’ was the minor Bolognese composer Giuseppe Matteo Alberti (1685–1751), whose op.1 (1713) distils – albeit in rather jejune, stereotyped form – the essence of the solo concertos in L’estro armonico. The most significant Italian composers for the genre during the last phase of the Baroque period were P.A. Locatelli and Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770). Born in Bergamo but trained in the Roman school, to whose practice his first set of concertos (op.1, 1721) conforms, Locatelli internationalized (one could as easily write ‘modernized’ or ‘vivaldianized’) his style after settling in Amsterdam in 1729. His solo concertos published in 1733 as L’arte del violino op.3 are significant in two respects. First, they contain exceptionally long, polythematic opening ritornellos that prefigure those of the Classical concerto. Second, their fast movements all have an extended written-out cadenza (or ‘capriccio’), a feature that shows the growing importance of this device, encountered earlier in a few violin concertos by Vivaldi. The concertos of Tartini, who was born in Istria but spent most of his life in Padua, are noteworthy for the cantabile quality of their solo line, their highly symmetrical phrase structure (anticipating Classical style) and their characteristic way of accompanying a solo violin on the orchestral violins (in two parts) alone. Tartini’s activity as a teacher provides an important connecting link between the Baroque and Classical concerto. The production of concertos by composers of the Neapolitan school was low in comparison with northern Italy, but not negligible; those by Leonardo Leo (1694–1744) and Francesco Durante (1684–1755) are especially fine.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Several general features characterize the German concerto. Because the genre was imported from outside, its evolution was more discontinuous, more inclined to make bold leaps than in its country of origin. The German cultural preference for contrapuntal rigour and thematic economy favoured the moderation of technical difficulties and the close integration of principal and subsidiary musical material – features associated above all with J.S. Bach but shared in some degree by most of his German contemporaries. The popularity at German courts of French instrumental music, typified by the ouverture, led to considerable hybridization; Bach’s First Brandenburg Concerto, which begins as a three-movement concerto but ends as a suite, is no isolated case. The substitution of rondo (rondeau) form for ritornello form, occasionally seen in Bach and Telemann, is another French-inspired feature. Lastly, the wider cultivation (and manufacture) of wind instruments in Germany, as compared with Italy, left its mark on the choice of solo, and sometimes also orchestral, instruments.
At the head of the line stands Georg Muffat. The five sonatas of his Armonico tributo (Salzburg, 1682), capable, according to the composer’s instructions, of being performed as concertos by observing the ‘solo’ (S) and ‘tutti’ (T) cues marked in the parts, were reworked as six concertos and partnered by six further compositions to make up the 12 concertos of his Ausserlesene Instrumental-Music (Passau, 1701). Benedict Anton Aufschnaiter, Muffat’s successor as Kapellmeister at Passau, published at Augsburg in 1703 a set of sonatas, Dulcis fidium harmonia symphoniis ecclesiasticis concinnata op.4, that, by their use of two solo violins, resemble concertos. All these works stand in the Roman (i.e. Corellian) tradition. The vital link with the north Italian concerto was made by the Swiss (or possibly Bavarian) amateur composer Henricus Albicastro (Heinrich Weissenburg), whose sole published set of concertos (op.7, c1705) unites the progressive formal and technical features of Torelli’s and Albinoni’s works with the dense contrapuntal writing and rich harmony of the south German school (Schmelzer, Biber, Muffat). J.G. Walther’s transcriptions for organ of concertos by Torelli, Albinoni, Gentili and other Italians, made in Weimar around 1710, attest the growing popularity of the concerto in Germany.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Vivaldi’s first concertos struck Germany like a whirlwind; almost overnight, a generation of native composers began to imitate him. One of the earliest was Telemann (1681–1767), who, despite avowing a dislike for the genre, wrote close on 100 concertos in an incredible variety of instrumental combinations, large and small. Telemann’s approach was individual and eclectic. More often than not, he retained an introductory slow movement (something by no means general in Germany), and his fondness for binary form similarly harks back to sonata models.
More purely Venetian in inspiration are the concertos of the Dresden composers J.D. Heinichen (1683–1729) and J.G. Pisendel (1687–1755), both of whom spent some time in Venice during the 1710s and moved in Vivaldi’s orbit. The merit of being the first German composer to publish concertos (Amsterdam, c1721) belongs to the Kapellmeister at Eichstätt, Joseph Meck (1690–1758), whose style is thoroughly Vivaldian. Other prominent names are those of Christoph Graupner (1683–1760) at Darmstadt, J.F. Fasch (1688–1758) at Zerbst, J.M. Molter (1696–1765) at Karlsruhe and G.H. Stölzel (1690–1749) at Gotha. One should also remember the many Italian musicians who worked at German courts, notably E.F. Dall’Abaco (1675–1742) at Munich and Fortunato Chelleri (c1690–1757) at Kassel.
J.S. Bach fits comfortably into this picture. There are echoes of Torelli in some of his ‘self-imitating’ melodic lines (for example, in the first solo entry in his Concerto for two violinsbwv1043). Mostly, however, he departed from Vivaldian norms only when following some ingenious plan of his own (as when he reduced the middle movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto to a single bar containing only two chords). He was familiar with the genre well before the appearance of L’estro armonico, some of whose works are included among his 16 keyboard transcriptions of c1713. The Prelude of his Third ‘English’ Suite (c1715) demonstrates his already perfect mastery of ritornello form. Although individual concertos were probably written in his Weimar years, most extant examples come from the Cöthen period (1717–23), when, exceptionally, his duties revolved around secular music. In later life Bach returned to the precedent set by the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, writing a series of concertos for one or more harpsichords, all of which were intended for performance at the Leipzig collegium musicum. These, and their successor works within the Bach circle, established the primacy of Germany in the domain of the keyboard concerto.
Germany carved out another special niche in the shape of the flute concerto. Vivaldi’s pioneering op.10 concertos (1729) spawned a huge progeny in north and central Germany. Best known and most numerous are those of Quantz (1697–1773), but Hasse (1699–1783), Scheibe (1708–76) and the Swedish-born Johan Joachim Agrell (1701–65) are other important names. The late Baroque flute concerto exemplifies in the highest degree the galant sensibility that reigned supreme in northern Europe in the mid-18th century.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Like the opera, cantata and sonata genres before it, the concerto was an exotic plant that took a while to become acclimatized to French musical culture. Not until the 1730s did it take firm root. To do so, it needed to make several compromises with native taste. The style of melodic ornamentation remains French (ornamentation is applied to individual notes rather than to whole phrases), slow movements are most often conceived as airs tendres, and alternatives to ritornello form (especially binary form) are common in the fast movements. The earliest concertos published in France were a group of four, largely Corellian in inspiration, in the op.7 of the Neapolitan immigrant Michele Mascitti (1664–1760) and a set of six concertos, op.15, for the unlikely combination of five flutes with optional bass by J.B. de Boismortier (1689–1755); both publications appeared in Paris in 1727. More conventional collections, by Michel Corrette (1709–95) and Jacques Aubert (1689–1753), date from 1728 and 1734 respectively. About 1735 J.-C. Naudot (c1690–1762) brought out a set of flute concertos in imitation of Vivaldi’s. The first French concertos to match the best of the Italians for substance and technical accomplishment were the 12 for solo violin by J.-M. Leclair (1697–1764), equally divided between op.7 (1737) and op.10 (1745). Leclair had an almost Bachian gift of developing, rather than merely restating, the material of his ritornellos. Of his French contemporaries, only Boismortier and Corrette continued to write concertos in any quantity after 1740. The surprisingly small number of concertos in relation to sonatas owes something to the continued popularity of the ouverture and its variants but even more to the rapid rise of the concert symphony, the dominant orchestral genre in Paris by 1750.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Although publishers based in Amsterdam (Roger, Le Cène, Mortier, Witvogel) played a key role in disseminating the concerto in the first half of the 18th century, the composers represented in their catalogues were overwhelmingly Italian and German. The most significant Dutch-born composer of concertos was Willem de Fesch (1687–?1757), three of whose collections (opp.2, 3 and 5) were issued by Roger; a further set, op.10 (1741), was brought out by Walsh in London after de Fesch settled there in the early 1730s. Like several English and some German composers, de Fesch inclined towards Roman style and scoring but north Italian form. The other noteworthy Dutch composer of concertos was the gifted amateur musician Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692–1766), whose Concerti armonici, published anonymously in The Hague in 1740, were formerly attributed speculatively either to their publisher, Carlo Ricciotti, or to one of a number of composers, including Pergolesi. These remarkable works, all with four violin parts, join a Roman fullness of scoring to Neapolitan lyricism.
Musically speaking, Sweden, like the whole of the Baltic region, was under strong German influence in the 18th century; its musical community included many Germans and their descendants. Despite the widespread cultivation of concertos in Sweden, to judge from surviving sources, only one important native composer, Johan Helmich Roman (1694–1758), contributed to the genre – and that sparingly. Roman inclines most strongly to Vivaldi, although echoes of Handel can also be heard.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
The British public was introduced to the concerto for the first time in 1704, when John Walsh brought out, in the July issue of a periodical publication, the last concerto of Albinoni’s op.2. A trickle of concertos of the north Italian type – imported from Roger, ‘pirated’ by Walsh, acquired by visitors to Italy or brought in by immigrant musicians – had arrived by 1714, when Corelli’s Concerti grossi op.6 burst upon London. The impact of Corelli’s concertos in Britain was comparable to that of Vivaldi’s op.3 elsewhere. Their sobriety and solidity struck a chord in a culture that still took its values from 17th-century consort music. The Vivaldian type of concerto, dominant elsewhere outside Rome, did not quit the scene but led an uneasy existence alongside, and to some extent mixed up with, the Corellian type, which generally enjoyed the status of senior partner. Vivaldi’s concertos were mistrusted by many for their emphasis on virtuosity (easily viewed as ‘freakishness’); even solo concertos tended to rein in their exuberance.
The first concertos composed in England were possibly those of the German immigrant J.C. Pepusch (1667–1752). Some of them, including works with recorder or flageolet (both instruments were especially popular in England), predate his published set (op.8, c1718). In the 1720s the first native composers emerged – Robert Woodcock (1690–1728) with his XII Concertos (1727) and William Babell (c1690–1723) with his op.3 (1730). In the next decade immigrant musicians strengthened their grip. The Concerti grossi op.2 and 3 (both 1732) of Corelli’s pupil Francesco Geminiani (1687–1762), resident in England since 1714, reaffirmed the spirit, and approached the popularity, of his master’s concertos. Geminiani gratified the British liking for ‘full’ harmony by transferring the viola to the concertino group. The op.3 (1736) of Pietro Castrucci (1679–1752), another pupil of Corelli, is cast in the same mould.
Geminiani’s greatest successor was his rival Handel (1685–1759), who had hitherto shown little interest in the genre. His op.3 set of 1734 (the misnamed ‘Oboe Concertos’) was his first, not entirely satisfactory, response. The definitive answer came in 1739, when Handel wrote his Twelve Grand Concertos op.6, a perilously heterogeneous but wonderfully inventive collection in which Corellian, Vivaldian and totally original formal elements are applied to music whose stylistic allegiance moves freely between the church, the ballroom and the opera pit. No other collection provides a better conspectus of the Baroque concerto in its totality. Op.6 shows how risky it is to draw conclusions about the nature of a collection from the number and nomenclature of its partbooks. At first sight, these are typically Corellian concertos, with a three-part concertino and four-part ripieno. Closer inspection, however, reveals one entire work (no.6) and several individual movements without any solo content; other movements feature a single violin soloist exactly as in a solo concerto. Handel’s most original contribution to the genre was his invention of the organ concerto, originally conceived as entr’acte music at performances of his oratorios. The two sets with opus number, op.4 (c1738) and op.7 (posthumously issued in 1761), supplemented by a few extra works, make up a sizable corpus to which Handel’s many English followers, who included Henry Burgess, William Felton, Thomas Chilcot and John Stanley, also contributed. The sketchiness of the solo parts in many of Handel’s published organ concertos (with entire movements marked to be extemporized ‘ad libitum’) throws into relief a conflict of interest that inevitably arose whenever a composer was also a virtuoso on the featured instrument. By simplifying the notated solo part, Handel left space for the improvised filling and embellishment by which he, as soloist, would establish his superiority (in a similar spirit, Vivaldi often wrote complex arpeggiated figurations for the solo violin as block chords).
As the rest of Europe passed via the galant style to the early Classical style, composers of concertos in Britain remained by and large faithful to Baroque models. Neither the op.3 of Francesco Barsanti (Edinburgh, 1742) nor the otherwise accomplished op.3 of Pieter Hellendaal (London, c1758) advances beyond Handel. Several native composers, including Charles Avison (1709–70), Richard Mudge (1718–63), Michael Festing (d 1752) and Capel Bond (1730–90), kept alive the popularity of the concerto in London and the provinces but produced little of enduring value.
Concerto, §2: The instrumental concerto: origins to 1750
Its stimulus to the development of instrumental technique (and, indirectly, instrumental design, as illustrated by the progressive lengthening of the violin’s fingerboard) was only the most obvious of the concerto’s achievements. More strongly cultivated throughout Europe than either the ouverture or the operatic sinfonia, and much more widely available in published form, it shaped the nature of orchestral sound and orchestral playing in their first hundred years of existence. It acted as an effective vehicle for bringing new instruments (for instance, the transverse flute) and new performers to the attention of a mass public in almost all European countries. It bridged (even as it widened) the gulf between the virtuoso and the rank-and-file player by providing a type of music in which each could find a place. Its wide acceptance contributed to the growing internationalization (on a largely Italian basis) of style and taste. Briefly, in the second and third decades of the 18th century, it energized the whole of Western art music by proposing new styles, forms and textures that, because of their radical simplicity, offered immense scope for further creative development. It was the first purely instrumental genre to exert a strong influence on vocal music, both sacred and secular, and in so doing raised the profile and reputation of instrumental music in general. The textural opposition between tutti and solo and the thematic opposition between ritornello and episode provided models of contrast that influenced all larger, sectionalized forms.
The surprisingly rapid replacement of the concerto by the concert symphony as the dominant orchestral genre in the middle of the 18th century has not been adequately explained in musicological literature. Indeed, the nature of the relationship between sinfonia (symphony) and concerto between 1700 and 1750 remains an insufficiently explored area. Unlike the symphony, the concerto did not adopt sonata form but instead continued in the second half of the century to rely on its tried and tested ritornello form, although certain increasingly common features such as the reprise of the material of the first solo towards the end of the movement are evidence of convergence between the two forms. In fact, the division between Baroque and Classical is invisible, structurally speaking, in the concerto.
(i) Composition, performance, dissemination.
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
By mid-century, the solo concerto had effectively supplanted the concerto grosso as the favoured form; works of this type were widely cultivated in Italy, Germany, France, England and elsewhere. During the 1760s and early 70s, the most popular solo instruments were the violin and flute, although concertos were also written for the full range of string and wind instruments as well as harp, guitar, mandolin and more exotic instruments (including the lira organizzata, five concertos for which were composed by Haydn for the King of Naples in 1786). By the late 1770s and 80s, however, the piano had become the most frequent soloist. The increase in the popularity of the keyboard concerto is documented by the Breitkopf thematic catalogues, which in 1762 included 177 violin concertos and 105 keyboard concertos; between 1766 and 1787, the number of newly listed concertos amounted to 270 for the violin but 393 for keyboard.
The circumstances surrounding the composition, performance and dissemination of concertos varied. Not all of them were intended for a single audience, or for professional and semi-professional musicians. C.P.E. Bach's concertosh471–6, written for amateurs, were advertised as ‘differ[ent] from the other concertos of this composer in so far as they are more adapted to the nature of the harpsichord, are easier both in the solo part and the accompaniment, are adequately ornamented in the slow movements and are provided with written-out cadenzas’; later Bach wrote, ‘Among my works, especially those for keyboard, there are only a few trios, solos and concertos that I have composed in complete freedom and for my own use’. Many of Wagenseil's concertos were written in the first instance for private performance by the Imperial family in Vienna (although they eventually circulated through commercial music publishers; in 1762 the Mozarts purchased more than 20 Wagenseil concertos from Viennese music dealers). The ‘Advertisement’ for Thomas Arne's posthumously published concertos recommends the work not only to ‘all Ladies and Gentlemen’ performers, but also to ‘every skilful Professor … to cultivate among their pupils an elegant and masterly stile of performance’. Some concertos were first performed at public concerts (this was especially true at the Concert Spirituel in Paris); many others, however, were given in more restrictive settings, often as part of a court entertainment, or privately, at domestic concerts (this was apparently the case with Mozart's concerto k449, composed in 1784 for his pupil Barbara Ployer). Additionally, concertos were performed between the acts of oratorios (notably in London, following the tradition established by Handel) and occasionally operas or other theatrical productions; in Italy, in particular, they were given in conjunction with celebrations of the Mass.
This diversity of intended audience, performer and venue is reflected not only in the style of the works themselves but also in the make-up of the concerto ensemble. Many, such as J.C. Bach's op.1, call for a minimal accompaniment of two violins and bass; others, such as Mozart's mature concertos, are scored for a full complement of strings and wind. It is difficult to say if concertos were performed more frequently by their composers or by other executants; in Vienna at least, just under half of all documented concerto performances during the 1780s and 90s were given by other performers. Most concertos distributed in northern Europe were available in printed editions; in Germany and Austria, circulation in manuscript copies was more usual.
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
The Italian concerto, cultivated notably by Giuseppe Tartini, Pietro Nardini (whose playing was praised by Leopold Mozart in 1763), Luigi Boccherini and Giovanni Giornovichi (active in Paris), represents a tradition based primarily on binary forms and sonata-like procedures (Freeman, 1985–6). Giornovichi in particular is credited with introducing the romance as the most characteristic concerto slow movement, and for popularizing the rondo finale (White, 1986); his galant-style concertos include occasional formal novelties, among them solo openings to the first movements of nos.3 and 16, and joined second and third movements in nos.7 and 13. While Giornovichi's concerto first movements closely approximate to sonata form, the violin concertos of Mysliveček are more old-fashioned: the second tutti of the four-ritornello concerto in D major begins with the opening theme, although it largely serves a closing function in the dominant; and the third tutti is a transition, cadencing in the submediant before leading to a recapitulatory solo, beginning in the tonic minor, that omits the ‘head theme’. Mysliveček's concertos were not widely disseminated, but may have influenced Mozart, who became acquainted with them in Vienna in 1773.
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
The
north German violin concerto is associated primarily with J.G. Graun, a pupil
of Tartini, and Franz and Georg Benda, the flute concerto with Quantz and the
keyboard concerto with Christoph Nichelmann, whose 16 keyboard concertos were
composed between 1740 and 1759, and in particular with C.P.E. Bach, who between
about 1733 and 1788 composed numerous concertos, mostly for harpsichord (a
double concerto for harpsichord and piano dates from 1788; Bach's ten surviving
concertos for non-keyboard instruments are all transcriptions of keyboard
originals). Bach's keyboard style is usually brilliant, the themes arresting
and, as in his symphonies, the movements sometimes follow without a break;
occasionally material from one movement recurs in another, as inh474
and 475. His first movements, like Nichelmann's, elaborate on the ritornello
forms favoured by Vivaldi and J.S. Bach, where the soloist is left relatively
free to present thematic material different from that of the tuttis; at the
same time, both introduce elements reminiscent of binary forms. The
approximately 15 keyboard concertos by J.W. Hertel (who additionally composed
concertos for violin, cello, flute, oboe, trumpet and bassoon), on the other
hand, are novel for their inclusion of a recapitulation combining both the
opening ritornello and the first solo – this after three tonally stable tuttis,
in the tonic, dominant and submediant, and three solos including, in the E concerto, a stable solo in
the submediant, immediately preceding the return to the tonic.
Tartini's violin concertos also influenced the first generation of composers at Mannheim, particularly Johann Stamitz; his sons Carl and Anton, however, as well as Holzbauer, Fränzl, Cannabich, Toeschi and Eck, were increasingly inclined to the French models of Gaviniès and Devienne, which chiefly consisted of a sonata-based Allegro and a rondeau of lighter character and smaller dimensions – although they are more conservative in style than contemporary Mannheim symphonies (see Ward Jones, 1969–70). Stamitz's earlier concertos, however, are based on the ritornello principle, with three or four tuttis in various keys; many of his final movements are rondos. Wind instruments were particularly favoured at Mannheim: it was for the Mannheim instrumentalists Wendling, Ramm, Punto and Ritter that Mozart composed the Sinfonia Concertante k297b (Paris, 1778, lost).
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
In France, where works for violin dominated, no new concertos were composed between Leclair's second set (1745) and Pierre Gaviniès's six published in 1764 (a single violin concerto in E major also survives), although concertos, chiefly by foreign composers such as Pugnani, Ferrari and Johann Stamitz were popular. Gaviniès's concertos follow a four-tutti, three-solo plan, with the second tutti in the dominant and the third modulating from the submediant to the tonic; the song-like solos, restrained in their virtuosity, are variable in their relationship to the tuttis, sometimes relying on themes first given out by the orchestra, but often including new material. The most important later French concertos are Viotti's, 19 of which were composed in Paris: the early nos.1–10 for performance at the Concert Spirituel in 1782–3, five in 1783–9 while Viotti was based at Paris and Versailles (in the service of Marie Antoinette) and four works, all in minor keys, written during his tenure, from 1789, at the Théâtre de Monsieur (later Théâtre Feydeau). Ranging in character from the galant to the operatically dramatic, Viotti's ritornello-based concertos are brilliantly conceived for the soloist but only rarely include discursive or developmental passages; there is little engagement between violin and orchestra, which for the most part is straightforwardly accompanimental, with limited wind participation. At the same time, Viotti's concertos are stylistically modern in their abrupt modulations and mode changes. Among the early concertos, the opening tutti frequently modulates, presenting a contrasting theme in the new key before returning to the opening idea as closing material; recapitulations frequently vary in the order of their material and content, sometimes including new themes (no.2) or omitting significant material from earlier in the movement (no.1); it is only from no.5 that a double return is standard. Slow movements are generally in binary form; finales are rondos. The E minor concerto, no.16, begins unusually with a slow introduction which returns at the recapitulation in doubled time values. Mozart apparently knew this concerto; about 1789 he composed additional trumpet and timpani parts for it (k470a).
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
In England, Baroque traditions – including the composition of concertos for organ, a precedent set by Handel – survived in the works of Avison, whose concertos are based on the model of the Corelli concerto grosso, and Thomas Chilcot (1756, 1765), which derive their keyboard technique and structure from Alessandro Scarlatti's sonatas. Arne's six concertos (published posthumously, c1787) are more modern in their phrase structure but variable in their movement-to-movement formal designs: two concertos (nos.1 and 5) have slow introductions; three (nos.1, 4 and 6) include minuet and variation movements: and two (nos.2 and 4) have jigs. For the most part, Arne's concertos are ritornello-based: the G minor, for example, includes five tonally stable tuttis and four solos, all of which modulate, except the last; this non-modulating solo is also the only section of the movement that does not begin with the head theme. Abel's concerto op.11 no.3 – one of only a handful by him – also represents a hybrid: the opening tutti makes a strong half-cadence, but the first solo, although it includes a new theme, remains in the tonic. Successive sections include a passage of extended keyboard virtuosity and a third solo that begins in the dominant with new material, before working its way to the submediant; the intervening tuttis recapitulate the opening ritornello, reproducing the closing material in the tonic only at the very end of the movement.
J.C. Bach's three sets of concertos for harpsichord or piano (op.1, 1763; op.7, 1770; op.13, 1777) represent a departure for the English concerto: composed after the Italian style, they are characterized by fluent melodies and clearly defined themes, distinctive secondary themes presented in the dominant by the soloist (beginning with op.7) and modulating free fantasy sections following the central ritornello, as well as full recapitulations (an exception is op.7 no.2, where the recapitulation begins with the ‘new’ theme). Op.7 no.6 includes other typical features, including a medial ritornello confirming the dominant and repeating much of the opening tutti, with a prominent half-cadence; a free fantasy solo that leads to the submediant; and a recapitulation, at first shared by soloist and orchestra but then dominated by the keyboard (although not recapitulating the new theme from the first solo) that leads to a final, concluding tonic tutti. Later generations of English concerto composers, including J.B. Cramer, were influenced not only by J.C. Bach but by other similar concertos, including a set of six by J.S. Schroeter (op.3, c1774; Mozart composed cadenzas to four of Schroeter's concertos). Cramer was also influenced by Mozart (he had performed k414 as early as 1785 meetings of the Anacreontic Society); by the late 1780s, other Viennese works, by Kozeluch and Vanhal, were readily available from English music dealers. At the end of the century, the most prominent composer of concertos in London may have been Dussek, the majority of whose keyboard works were composed there after he fled Paris at the time of the French Revolution. Characterized by frequent remote modulations and expressive chromaticism, they are brilliant virtuoso vehicles, foreshadowing developments in the 19th century. Particularly characteristic is the sprawling G minor concerto op.49 (published 1801) with its gesture-rich orchestral introduction.
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
In
Vienna, the most important early composer of concertos was Wagenseil, who wrote
numerous works in the genre. One concerto (Scholz-Michelitsh 262) in particular
already adumbrates some aspects of the form adopted by later Austrian
composers, including a ‘new’ theme specifically assigned to the soloist, the
use of distinctive closing material and a recapitulation that follows the first
solo rather than the orchestral exposition. Although the opening tutti of
Wagenseil's concerto only hints at an imperfect cadence, it includes at least
four different ideas; and, like Mozart's mature concertos, the central fantasy
section and recapitulation must be understood as a lengthy solo – the form of
the movement is not a Baroque-like alternation of ritornello and solo, but a
form more closely approximating the sonata style of Mozart's concertos of the
1780s. Wagenseil's pupil Josef Antonín Štěpán also figures prominently in
the history of the Viennese concerto; his output includes 38 works for solo
keyboard and two for two keyboards. Unusually, eight of his concertos begin
with minor-key Adagio introductions, for soloist and orchestra, substituting
for an opening tutti (in one case, the concerto in B, the introduction is in the relatively
distant D minor). Early concertos include three or four tuttis, on the model of
Wagenseil; later ones have three tuttis and look towards the sonata-style concerto
of the 1780s. Haydn's early concertos include works for keyboard, violin,
cello, violone, baryton, flute, bassoon and horn; a particularly fine work is
the horn concerto of 1762 (hXIId:3), with its
atmospheric slow movement exploiting the horn's lowest register. By and large
Haydn's early concertos are conservative in style, similar to those of
Wagenseil and the younger Georg Reutter, although they also show the influence
of C.P.E. Bach (see, for example, the organ concerto hXVIII:1,
1756, which includes a strong move to the submediant and a modulating
ritornello leading back to the tonic; the binary form second and third
movements, however, recall an older style); the late Trumpet Concerto (1796) is
a fully realized example of the end-of-century sonata-based concerto.
Concerto, §3: The Classical period
Unquestionably the most important late 18th-century concertos are those of Mozart: his surviving works include five for violin (k207, 211, 216, 218 and 219, 1773–5), one each for bassoon and oboe (k191, 1774, and k314, ?1777) and 23 for keyboard (from k175 tok595, 1773–91, including k242 for two and three keyboards and k365 for two keyboards); a concerto for trumpet (k47c, 1768) is lost. The early concertos show diverse influences, including the Italian style of Nardini and Pugnani, the south German concerto represented by the works of Agrell and Leffloth (which were readily available in Salzburg at the annual book fairs), and works from as far afield as the concertos of John Stanley, the Amsterdam edition of which was distributed by Leopold Mozart's Nuremberg publisher, Haffner. Among local Salzburg composers, Anton Ferdinand Paris, Anton Cajetan Adlgasser and Michael Haydn all composed concertos before c1770; of Leopold Mozart's numerous works in the genre, only a concerto for two horns (1752) and one of five for flute (1755) survive.
A dominant influence was Wagenseil; the proto-sonata principles found there, sometimes including internal repeats in first movements, were later applied by Mozart in his concerto transcriptions of sonata movements by C.P.E. Bach, Eckard, Honauer, Raupach and Schobert (k37 and k39–41, 1767), all of whom, except Bach, were German expatriates in Paris at the time of Mozart's visits there in 1763 and 1764. A similar set of transcriptions, after sonatas by J.C. Bach, was prepared about 1771–2. The Salzburg orchestral serenade, a multi-movement work traditionally performed to mark the end-of-year ceremonies at the Salzburg Benedictine University or to celebrate important occasions such as weddings and namedays, was similarly influential; traditionally these works included three or four symphonic movements and three or four concerto movements. Leopold Mozart was the prime local exponent of the orchestral serenade; by 1757 he had composed more than 30 works of this type, although only one survives, a serenade in D that includes the famous trumpet concerto as well as a trombone concerto. Mozart's earliest independent concerto movements are also found in serenades, including k63 (oboe and horn) and k100 (violin). Mozart continued to write concertos in his serenades of the 1770s, among them k185, 203, 204 and 250 (all for violin); k320, the so-called ‘Posthorn’ serenade includes a concertante that Mozart performed independently at his Burgtheater concert on 23 March 1783. Related to both the serenade and the concerto traditions are the Concertone for two violins (k190, 1773) and the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola (k364, 1779–80).
The form of Mozart's mature concertos has been a subject of continuing debate. Some authorities describe the first movements as based on the ritornello structure of the ‘pre-classical concerto’, inherited from the Baroque and adapted to the newer style, including four tuttis and three solos. More recent thinking derives Mozart's concerto form from the model of the operatic aria, a tradition grounded in 18th-century music writings: Koch in 1793 described the concerto as an imitation of an aria – although this refers more to the expressivity of the works rather than, necessarily, form or structure. These differing accounts reflect ambiguities in descriptions of concerto found in 18th-century treatises. Vogler (1779) described the form of the concerto as identical to the sonata, except that the two parts are not repeated; similar sonata-based derivations are described by Galeazzi (1796) and Kollmann (1799). Scheibe (1745), Quantz (1752), Kirnberger (1771–4) and Türk (1789), however, saw the form in terms of ritornello structures. Koch was of two minds: his 1793 Versuch describes a four-tutti form with a third modulating solo, based on the model of C.P.E. Bach; in his 1802 Lexikon, however, where Mozart is the model, he advocated a three-tutti sonata-form model.
The classic formulation is Tovey's, who described Mozart's concertos as a realization of the concerto principle in sonata form (1936). The tuttis do not function exclusively, or even primarily, as structural pillars around which concerto movements are built, but as contrasting sonorities, projecting points of tonal departure and arrival: the three tuttis represent the establishment, through texture, volume and sonority, of the tonic, while at the same time presenting important thematic material and serving as a foil to the later entrance of the piano; the arrival and consolidation of the dominant; and, at the end of the movement, the strongest possible confirmation of tonic and closure. It is incorrect to describe Mozart's concertos as having a recapitulatory fourth tutti: the material at the return is almost invariably shared between soloist and orchestra; except possibly in k467 there are no extended, purely orchestral passages comparable in scale to the beginning, medial or final tuttis; and the expressive function of the commingling of tutti and solo functions at the recapitulation is intended to represent the rapprochement of the participants, not antagonism. These principles of construction – in which the character and ordering of the material reflects specific structural concerns – appear to have been worked out first in Mozart's vocal music (Feldman, 1996). However, the various aria types usually equated with the concerto are traditionally described as ‘bithematic ternary’ or ‘sonata form’ arias; accordingly, the basic idea behind each type is the sonata. By and large, the sonata principle of the early arias and concertos remained valid for the Viennese works as well, while the dramatic form of the aria moved decisively away from the earlier model (Webster, 1996).
Within this larger complex, the first movements of Mozart's concertos follow a pattern consistent in its outlines, and the movements can be divided conveniently into a number of large structural units: (1) an opening ritornello, including a first theme, extended to a perfect cadence in the tonic, an active half-cadence on the dominant, a more lyrical group (up to c1778 this lyrical group tends to appear again in the first solo, as the principal theme of the second group; after that date there is usually a different solo second theme) and a concluding group; (2) the first solo, reiterating the first theme, followed by an orchestral flourish confirming the tonality, a modulation to the dominant with new material from the soloist, a flirtation with a stable new key followed by a secondary group, and an extension to a perfect cadence in the dominant and a coda; (3) a medial ritornello usually based on one of the forte passages of the opening ritornello; (4) a free development-like section representing the first part of the second solo and usually including two parts, the first a drive to a distant key (often the relative minor), the second culminating in a retransition to the tonic; (5) a recapitulation, incorporating the second part of the second solo, largely following the first solo but omitting the modulation; and (6) a concluding ritornello, using material from the medial ritornello and interrupted by a cadenza (Leeson and Levin). The specific thematic details, and their arrangement, vary from work to work. Even some of the basic principles of construction are subject to occasional change: the opening ritornello of k449, for example, is the only example among Mozart's concertos to include a modulation (first to the relative minor and then to the dominant where, uniquely, distinctive ‘secondary’ material is presented), while in k488 the first solo is thematically identical with the opening ritornello and does not include a new theme in the dominant for the soloist although new material is presented, first by the orchestra and then the soloist, in the medial ritornello.
Second and third movements are less fixed in their structural patterns. Romance-type movements, such as that of k466, occur as second movements, as do binary types (albeit of considerable complexity), rondos (k491) and variations (k450, 456, 482). Variation movements are also found as finales (k453, 491), as well as sonata forms (k175, original finale, and the violin concerto k207), although the more usual pattern is the sonata rondo (notable examples include k271, 456, 459 and 482). Mozart's treatment of the form is not static, and significant developments take place between his first independent keyboard concerto and his last; while adhering to basic structural principles, no two concertos are exactly alike in structure and rhetoric.
Beyond formal design, Mozart's significant contributions to the development of the concerto include novelties of piano figuration and texture as well as a new conception of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. Developments in figuration can already be traced in the earliest solo concertos: k238 marks a break from k175 by including a greater variety of left-hand textures, while a noticeable increase in difficulty is apparent in the concertos from 1784 and later (Mozart himself described k450 and 451 as concertos ‘to make the performer sweat’). This difficulty derives in part from Mozart's greater simultaneous use of the full range of the keyboard and the ways in which material is divided between the hands (compare, for example, similar passages in k456 and 467; ex.1). Perhaps the most significant development, however, is Mozart's generous orchestral writing; the orchestra does not merely accompany en masse but also takes part in dialogue, sometimes corporately, sometimes individually – both as antagonist and co-protagonist – with the soloist. This trend is markedly expanded in the concertos from 1784 on – the symphonic character of the concertos from k450 is unmistakable – and in particular in k482, 488 and 491, where the wind instruments achieve parity with the strings as part of the ensemble. Koch in 1793 described the concerto as ‘somewhat similar to the ancient tragedies, in which the actor expresses his feelings not to the audience, but to the chorus which, in turn, links itself intimately to the action, thus qualifying itself to take part in the expression of feelings’ (Versuch, iii, 32); and Kollmann in 1799 wrote that ‘The best specimens of good modern Concertos for the Piano-Forte, are those by Mozart, in which every part of the accompaniments is interesting, without obscuring the principal part’ (Composition, 15).
Mozart's new conception of the relationship among soloist, orchestra and audience is expressed not only in the dialogues and participation of the orchestra but also in his continuo practice. Unlike other 18th-century concertos, where the keyboard soloist has two functions – as continuo player in the tuttis and soloist elsewhere – Mozart's soloist typically has three: within the large solo sections of his concertos, orchestral outbursts are often accompanied by a soloistic continuo that does not literally duplicate the orchestral basses, projecting a solo personality even in these apparently accompanimental sections; expressive manipulations of continuo writing and meaning can be found in k271 and k450 among others. In this respect Mozart's works look forward to concerto styles of the 19th century where continuo function disappears, as does the general character and expressivity of his works which, like the last three symphonies, are sometimes described as ‘alienating’, a reflection of Enlightenment ideals or a critical response to contemporary thought.
Mozart's keyboard works dominated concerto performance and publication in Vienna from 1785 to about 1810, a period when concertos by Kozeluch, Hofmeister, Paul Wranitzky, Gyrowetz, Gallus, Viotti, Dussek and Sterkel were advertised in the Viennese press; several older keyboard concertos were also available, including works by Schuster, Zimmermann, J.C. Bach and Beecke, as well as violin and flute concertos by Carl Stamitz, Giornovichi, Cambini, Zimmermann, Hofmann and Eck, among others. Few of these works strictly follow the Mozartian model. Sterkel's C major concerto op.20 includes new lyrical material in the opening ritornello and development, but not the first solo, and returns to the tonic well before the recapitulation. Similarly, Vanhal's D major keyboard concerto op.14 (1789) gives the new theme in the dominant to the first oboe rather than the keyboard soloist; it also includes a strong cadence to the submediant in the development. Neither is characterized by the diversity of orchestral participation typically found in a Mozart concerto. Beethoven's two piano concertos (no.2, op.19, begun before 1793 and later revised; no.1, op.15, 1795, also revised) are modelled on Mozart's. The C minor (no.3, op.37, c1802), however, represents an attempt to move beyond the ‘classical’ form, at least dramatically. A reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described it as ‘one of the most outstanding ever written’. It is noteworthy as the only concerto in which Beethoven modulates forcefully and substantially in the orchestral introduction – a procedure Tovey described as ‘symphonic’ and an experiment that Beethoven abandoned in nos.4 and 5.
During the 19th century the concerto was a pivotal and defining form in musical culture. Conflicting tendencies within audience tastes and compositional ambitions played themselves out through the concerto, a form that by 1800 was a synthesis of traditions dating back to the Baroque (such as the use of the ritornello) and Classical sonata form. It was nevertheless ideally suited to express the ambitions of early Romanticism, through its exploitation of possibilities inherent in the juxtaposition of soloist and orchestral forces. But in 1880 August Reissmann, editor of the respected and popular multi-volume Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon, lamented that the widespread ‘misuse’ of the concerto form was primarily responsible for hindering the spread of a ‘refined aesthetic taste’ in music within the public. The contemporary concerto repertory seemed to be dominated by works empty of content; it had become prisoner of salon-style artifice in expression and a formulaic and mechanistic construct of virtuosity. Despite the examples of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann, it had failed to live up to the highest ideals of form and spirit associated with instrumental music. The question is whether this widespread and conventional assessment of the bulk of the works produced throughout the century, based on the distinction between superficial and entertaining virtuosity and higher musical values – a veritable cliché of concerto criticism from Schumann to the present – should be accepted at face value, in the precise terms suggested by the critics themselves. 20th-century taste, as mirrored in conservatory training and concert programmes, absorbed and accepted the dismissive verdict of the 19th-century observers; the result has been the banishment of the vast majority of 19th-century concertos from the concert stage. That group of works actually contains many concertos deserving of re-examination and performance. The barrier to the revival of many fine concertos, some of them by performer-composers with few other compositions of note to their name, has been the legacy of a 20th-century puritanical rejection of the popular aesthetic tastes of 19th-century audiences as well as the undeniable difficulty and time commitment required on the part of soloists (who can expect little in the way of reward or praise for extending their repertoire) to learn such works.
(viii) The cadenza and formal innovation.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
By
1880, three distinct types of concerto had come into being – the virtuoso
concerto, the symphonic concerto and the narrative concerto – though many
individual works possessed aspects of all three. Despite Reissmann's
pessimistic diagnosis, the trajectory of the 19th-century concerto had been
decisively influenced by Beethoven; the persistent comparison to Beethoven only
heightened the sense of decline in quality. Practically all subsequent forays
into the concerto genre hark back to Beethoven's innovations. The opening of
Piano Concerto no.4 in G op.58 (1806), using the solo piano, the drama of
rhetorical exchange between orchestra and soloist before the first orchestral
tutti of no.5 in E
op.73 (1809), the monumental plan of the first movement of no.3 in C minor
op.37 (c1800) and the distinctive figuration and interplay between
soloist and orchestra, particularly the startling use of orchestral timbres
with the solo line in the Violin Concerto in D op.61 (1806), served as models
and benchmarks for subsequent generations of composers and listeners. In the
case of the Violin Concerto (which Beethoven adapted for the piano in 1807),
since its popularity receded quickly after its first performance and was
revived by Joseph Joachim only at mid-century, its influence was somewhat
delayed. In Beethoven's piano concertos the balance between solo instrument and
orchestra seemed ideal; the prominence given to the solo instrument as dramatic
protagonist never detracted from the coherence and formal logic of the three-movement
concerto structure with its convention of a sonata-form first movement, a slow
song-form second movement, and either a fast rondo or modified sonata allegro
final movement. Beethoven was a pioneer in controlling and integrating the
dialogue between orchestra and soloist. The orchestra was not reduced to
background accompaniment; the soloist was not primarily engaged in decorative
elaboration and variation designed purely to show off technical proficiency.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
Despite the respect accorded Beethoven by succeeding generations, the evolution of the cult of the virtuoso in the three decades after 1815 more often than not overwhelmed the Beethovenian model, as Schumann never tired of pointing out in his criticisms of the 1830s. From the 1820s, the virtuoso concerto flourished as the favourite vehicle for the display of the full range of instrumental technique. A concerto was performed in orchestral concerts held in larger spaces than the solo recital. It was subject to considerable journalistic attention. The orchestral accompaniment could provide an innocuous but helpful frame or an imposing if not monumental sonic backdrop to the soloist's arsenal of pyrotechnics. The three-movement form inherited from the 18th century ensured that the soloist would have the opportunity to show velocity, dexterity, grace and accuracy in the finale, lyricism and intimacy of expression in the middle movement, and dramatic power, gravity, profundity and a wide palette of sound and register in the opening movement. A.B. Marx, writing in 1839, conceded that the bravura dimension of the solo line needed to be in the foreground of a concerto, even though the orchestra, from time to time, could and should assert a role of greater musical importance.
By the mid-1830s the popularity of the concerto as a vehicle of virtuosity had sparked a reaction (led by Schumann) against an anti-Beethovenian use of the concerto for the exhibition of empty and often predictable, patterned and formulaic rhetoric designed to accommodate dazzling prowess, particularly on the violin and piano. Schumann made a distinction between mere passage-work and the ‘free and poetic’ use of a solo instrument's potential to elaborate material when juxtaposed with an orchestra. Inspired improvisation and flights of fancy were the only justifications for what appeared to be bravura solo episodes and figuration; Chopin's two piano concertos from 1829–30 (in E minor and F minor) became the models of how virtuosity could be aesthetically legitimated. Furthermore, Schumann argued, the orchestra should function as more than an observer of virtuosity and should suffuse the music in an ‘artistic’ manner, using its own complex and diverse sonic qualities.
This
line of criticism was a symptom of the tension inherent in the concerto form
between the allure of the solo part as a vehicle of virtuosity and the
pretensions to higher aesthetic ideals derivative of compositional conventions
and formal procedures associated with the quartet, the solo sonata and
symphony. One solution was to subordinate or supplant the sonata structure and
extend the model of the single-movement solo piano fantasy using solo and
orchestral forces. Some composers were inspired to shape the concerto even more
explicitly along Beethovenian lines in the direction of the symphony. The
Brahms D minor Piano Concerto op.15 (1854–8), despite its great demands on the
soloist, is perhaps the pre-eminent example of the anti-virtuoso
counter-tendency audible in the symphonic concerto. His B Piano Concerto op.83 (1878–81) even has a
scherzo, making it a four-movement work, like a symphony. Henry Litolff's Piano
Concerto no.3 op.45 (c1846), entitled Concerto symphonique, is a
less familiar but once highly respected symphonic concerto, one of five such
works he composed.
The symphonic trajectory in concerto writing spurred a transformation in the character of solo piano writing. The solo piano part was designed increasingly to match the sonority and power of the orchestra. The orchestral character of the piano writing in the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos can be traced back to Beethoven's innovations, such as the use of double octaves in the ‘Emperor’ Concerto. Clara Wieck Schumann's Piano Concerto op.7 in A minor (1836) is an early example of the employment of the solo piano in an orchestral manner; it anticipates Brahms's style of piano writing in his concertos.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
By the mid-19th century, as a result of the innovations of Liszt and the early Romantic pursuit of instrumental music as a medium through which the poetic, epic and dramatic could be expressed, the narrative concerto developed, sometimes written in one-movement form and often possessed of an explicit extra-musical programme. Berlioz's four-movement Harold en Italie op.16 (written in 1834, published in 1848) for viola, in which the solo instrument personifies the hero in a detailed narrative, and Weber's Konzertstück op.79 (1821) are two contrasting examples. The one-movement Weber work was among the earliest and most influential 19th-century innovations in concerto form since its poetic, illustrative programme defines its striking sequential and expository dramatic structure, whereas the Berlioz retains the scale and ambitions of symphonic composition. Richard Strauss's Don Quixote op.35 (1897), a set of ‘fantastic variations’ for cello and orchestra, is an example of a later contribution to this category of narrative concertos. It has been argued that Beethoven's Piano Concerto no.4 in G is structured along the lines of the Orpheus legend. Another memorable narrative concerto is John Field's Piano Concerto no.5 in C (1817), entitled ‘L'incendie par l'orage’: in it the solo piano (supported at times by a second piano in the orchestra, calculated to augment the soloist in the creation of sound effects) functions together with the orchestra and alone to emulate a storm and catastrophe, which is then followed (as in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony) by a ‘Hymn of Thanksgiving’, an Adagio in C which is in turn followed by a rondo. Concertos with quite general programmatic designs, particularly tied to evoking national characteristics, became popular later in the century. Alexander Mackenzie's ‘Scottish’ Piano Concerto op.55 (1897), Litolff's Concerto no.2 (1844), subtitled ‘Nationale’ (based on Dutch folk material) and Edouard Lalo's Symphonie espagnole op.21 (1874) and Concerto russe op.29 (1879) for violin are notable cases in point.
The narrative dimensions of the 19th-century concerto, including the appropriation of rhetoric and theatrical gesture as devices without an explicit programme, can be directly traced to the intimate connection between opera and concerto writing in the 18th century, particularly in Mozart. The suggestion of recitative, aria and an operatic scene was often explicit. In Spohr's Violin Concerto no.8 in A minor, op.47 (1816), entitled Gesangsszene (‘in modo di scena cantante’), the violin takes on the role of the voice in both aria and recitative. The influence of bel canto is evident throughout the first part of the 19th century, as the concertos of Chopin and Paganini reveal. In these several ways the concerto in the 19th century provided composer, performer and audience with an ideal formal paradigm of music as a mirror of the struggle for individuality and subjective expression in the contemporary social and economic context. Mood, expression, the stirrings of the soul and even a sense of melancholy could be realized as a solo instrument worked against, resisted, displaced, led and triumphed over orchestral sound. The concerto's solo instrument functioned as a metaphor of the individual's engagement with the conflict between freedom and order.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
The popularity of the concerto after 1830 was a consequence of the explosion in the number of public concerts and the growth of urban life and literacy that brought an expansion in music education, music journalism and the teaching of instruments within the European and North American middle class. The concerto attracted the keen enthusiasm of auditors who themselves played, as the popularity of the student violin concertos by Fritz Seitz (1848–1918) suggests. It defined the standard of consummate instrumental proficiency. Amateurs, much as in 20th-century spectator sports, marvelled at the public professional display of uncanny facility and brilliance by one voice, and particularly at how that single voice could hold its own against the orchestra. By the end of the century, the expansion of the market for pianos led to the subsidy by manufacturers of tours to new markets using famous soloists playing concertos, as in the cases of Hans von Bülow and Anton Rubinstein: Chickering, Steinway and Bösendorfer sponsored tours in America and Russia. Bülow took Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no.1 (1875) to America, where its première took place in Boston.
The
concerto thus became a crucial avenue for advancement in the careers of
virtuosos. As Adolf Ruthardt observed in 1888, the purpose of the piano
concerto went beyond offering ‘interesting and easily understood content, based
on compelling, clear and coherently presented and developed themes’; rather, it
had to ‘give sufficient room to the performing artist to display his prowess,
his technical apparatus and his individuality (particularly in the sense of
spiritual inspiration) so that these attributes could be seen in an
illuminating and even electrifying light’. The ‘nature and advantages of the
piano as a solo instrument’ had to be in the foreground. Composer-performers
wrote their own concertos. Ignaz Moscheles composed eight, of which only the G
minor op.60 (completed in 1820 and embodying elements of recitative) held its
own in the second half of the century; his op.93 in C minor, subtitled
‘Pathétique’, has been noted for its pianistic innovativeness. Anton Rubinstein
composed five piano concertos of which three, op.45 in G (1853–4), op.70 in D
minor (1864) and op.94 in E (1874) are worthy of note. Such pianists as Amy
Beach, Moritz Moszkowski, Ferdinand Hiller, Emil Paur, Eduard Schütt and Hans
von Bronsart all wrote concertos for their own use, as did the cellists David
Popper, Friedrich Grützmacher, Victor Herbert, Jules de Swert, Julius Klengel
and Bernhard Romberg. The virtuoso concerto in the 19th century was also
expected to communicate novelty in instrumental sonority, the latest in
virtuosity, idiomatic usage and expressive range. Initially, as audible in the
piano concertos of Mendelssohn and Chopin, technique meant primarily digital
dexterity and complex and rapid figuration in a manner reminiscent of Mozart.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
The
first important Romantic virtuoso violin concertos were those of Pierre Rode,
Rodolphe Kreutzer and G.B. Viotti (his Violin Concerto no.22 in A minor,
written around 1797 and published in 1803, a favourite of Joachim's). However,
Ludwig Spohr's 15 violin concertos, composed between 1802 and 1844, were among
the most influential works in this genre from the first half of the century.
They became recognized as exemplary idiomatic expressions of the use of the
violin. Spohr's concertos reveal aspects of all three types of concerto; no.12
in A, op.79 (1828), for example, combines the operatic narrative with the
symphonic. Spohr's efforts clearly reflect Beethoven's influence. The
19th-century virtuoso violin concerto truly came into its own with Paganini's
six concertos, written between 1815 and 1830, of which the first two, in E (but usually performed in
D) and B minor, from 1826, are the most famous. Paganini extended the use of
the full range of the G and D strings, single and double harmonics, left-hand
pizzicato and double stops. His example was followed by Heinrich Ernst, whose
daunting and brilliant F
minor Concerto pathétique op.23 (1851)
remained in the essential repertory of young violinists (including Joseph
Szigeti) well into the 20th century. Notable successors to Paganini's concertos
include the ten concertos by Charles de Bériot (1802–70) and the seven by his
pupil Henri Vieuxtemps, written between the late 1830s and the late 1870s.
Later in the century the virtuoso violin concerto found its most elegant
realization in the hands of Henryk Wieniawski who wrote two great concertos,
op.14 in F minor
(1853) and op.22 in D minor (1862); the latter was particularly influenced by
the 1861 Concerto no.5 in A minor of Vieuxtemps. The amalgam of virtuoso
display, ambitious compositional intent and symphonic ideals characteristic of
Spohr found a more extensive and sophisticated realization in Joachim's
Concerto ‘in ungarischer Weise’ in D minor, op.11 (1861), in which a grand
compositional scale is merged with the theatre of technical brilliance and
stamina.
The most influential and distinctive mid-century violin concerto, one that reconciled the apparent conflict between virtuoso display and compositional seriousness, was the Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64 (1844), of Mendelssohn. Not only did Mendelssohn dispense with the orchestral introduction, link all three movements into a continuous whole and displace the first movement cadenza so that it preceded the recapitulation, but he also demonstrated how the use of a solo instrument could create a uniquely Romantic form in which the soloist became the protagonist of musical ideas. Mendelssohn's concerto eclipsed those by worthy contemporaries such as Ferdinand David and Ferdinand Ries. In the wake of its success and the re-emergence of the Beethoven Violin Concerto on the concert stage, composers during the second half of the century sought to escape falling prey to the superficial display of Paganini-style technique by redefining virtuosity. Concertos were written that included frequent opportunities for the display of skill, but these moments went beyond the established expectation of violin technique used by such composers as Wieniawski. New demands were made on the violin that at first seemed atypical and against the grain of the instrument. The two most important late 19th-century virtuoso concertos, both highly symphonic in nature, both in D major and both completed in 1878, were those of Brahms (op.77) and Tchaikovsky (whose op.35 concerto was influenced by Anton Rubinstein's fine Violin Concerto in G, op.46, of 1857). These two works redefined and extended violin technique.
The harmonic inventiveness and intricate thematic elaborations exhibited in those works opened up new vistas for the instrument. Similarly, the highly popular concertos of Max Bruch (no.1 in G minor – the most famous – from 1868, two later ones in D minor and the Scottish Fantasy op.46), the concertos of Albert Dietrich, Dvořák (in A minor, op.53, 1880, written for Joachim and influenced by his ‘Hungarian’ Concerto), Arensky (an underrated work, in A minor, op.54, from 1891), Hermann Goetz, Saint-Saëns (particularly no.3 in B minor, op.61) and Goldmark (a brilliant concerto, in A minor, op.28, of 1877 and one of the most difficult in the repertory, with an extended third movement containing the cadenza) reflect the later 19th-century subordination and redefinition of conventional virtuosity. End-of-the-century examples of reconceptualized virtuosity include the youthful violin concerto of Richard Strauss (in D minor, op.8, 1882), and the concertos of Busoni (in D, op.35a, 1897) and Glazunov (in A minor, 1904), all of which show debts to Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
The
most important instrument in the history of the 19th-century concerto, however,
was the piano. More concertos were published for the piano than for any other
instrument. The first important concertos after Beethoven include those by
Field, Weber and Hummel. Other concertos popular before 1850 include those of
J.L. Dussek, Henri Herz, Norbert Burgmüller, Frédéric Kalkbrenner and Ignaz
Moscheles. Adolf von Henselt wrote an important virtuoso concerto in 1847, in F
minor. Mendelssohn also composed two important piano concertos, in G minor
(op.25, 1831) and D minor (op.40, 1837). However, the concertos by Liszt and
Chopin, and the unique Schumann A minor Piano Concerto (op.54, 1841–5), emerged
as the key Romantic concertos from the first part of the century. The Schumann
concerto is notable for its first movement (originally conceived as an
independent work) which is written in fantasy form; it relies on sustained
thematic transformation rather than on the conventions of sonata form. The
Chopin concertos reflect the influence of Mozart, particularly in the use of
extensive flowing solo flights of ornamentation and decorative fancy against a
simple changing harmonic background provided by the orchestra. Two of Hummel's
concertos, op.85 in A minor (c1816) and op.89 in B minor (1819), are
worthy precursors of Chopin; of his remaining five only the one in A (1827) has sustained
critical interest. Liszt's E concerto (1849) exemplifies his tendency to
monothematicism: he amalgamates the separate movements and sections into one
continuous work by framing the work with an opening movement whose actual
resolution and completion are achieved at the end of the last movement.
Although
the influence of the Beethoven piano concertos and their continued presence in
the repertory can be seen most clearly in the two concertos of Brahms,
throughout the 19th century composer-pianists continued to write works tailored
specifically for their own pianism. Nevertheless, this emphasis on the display
of technical brilliance did not prevent these composers from attempting
ambitious compositional strategies in concerto form. The concertos by Eugen
d'Albert (modelled after Liszt), F.X. Scharwenka (whose B minor Concerto no.1 Mahler played for his
graduation from the Vienna Conservatory), I.J. Paderewski, Ignaz Brüll,
Friedrich Gernsheim, Salomon Jadassohn, Wilhelm Stenhammar and Robert Fuchs
have fallen out of today's repertory but point to the large output of
high-quality late 19th-century virtuoso concertos. The most popular and highly
regarded later 19th-century piano concertos include those by Tchaikovsky
(excluding the less well-known no.2 in G, op.55, of 1880 and the even less
familiar no.3 in E
from 1893, op.75), Grieg (in A minor, op.16, 1868–perhaps the most popular
concerto in its time), Saint-Saëns (whose no.2 in G minor, op.22, and no.4 in C
minor, op.44, remain the most highly regarded of his five piano concertos), and
Dvořák (a large-scale work from 1876 in G minor, op.33, but not noted for
any particularly flashy or idiomatic piano writing). Tchaikovsky also
contributed to the virtuoso fantasy-style concerto with his less well known
two-movement Concert Fantasy op.56 in G (1884). Alkan's massive concerto for
piano alone–part of his Douze études op.39 (1857) in which the piano
takes on all the roles of soloist and orchestra–and his op.10, the Concerto
da camera in A minor from the early 1830s, can be considered the extreme
logical consequence of the virtuoso tradition. Other notable later 19th-century
concertos for piano include those by MacDowell (two from the 1880s),
Rimsky-Korsakov (1883), Delius (1897–1904), Sinding (1889), Dohnányi (1898) and
Reinecke (four, 1873–1900).
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
The 19th century witnessed the rapid evolution of the cello concerto. Although the Beethoven Triple Concerto op.56 in C (1804) features the cello, it was the Schumann Concerto in A minor op.129 (1850, first performed in 1860) that set a new standard of how the solo cello could be used with orchestra. Written in three movements but, like the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, played without a break, it successfully featured the special attributes of the cello and remains more highly regarded than the composer's posthumously published and controversial Violin Concerto (in D minor, 1853). The Cello Concerto in D (1853) by Bernhard Molique, also modelled on the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, was once held in high esteem. The concertos by Saint-Saëns (particularly no.1 in A minor, op.33, 1872) and Lalo (in D minor, 1876) helped sustain the importance of the cello as a solo instrument in the concerto form. Many worthy 19th-century cello concertos have fallen out of the standard repertory and deserve scrutiny and revival; they include works by Volkmann (A minor, op.33), Raff (D minor, op.193, 1874 – highly praised by Tchaikovsky), Foote (op.33, 1887) and Eugen d'Albert (C, op.20, 1899). Brahms's Double Concerto op.102 in A minor from 1887, written for Robert Hausmann and Joachim, must be regarded as an important contribution to the concerto repertory for the cello, as should Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme op.33 (1876). However, the greatest of all cello concertos is Dvořák's second foray into the genre, in B minor, op.104 (1895), a large-scale symphonic work inspired by Victor Herbert's much shorter second concerto which Dvořák heard in New York in 1894.
Concertos
were also written for wind and brass instruments, usually of shorter duration.
The example of the Mozart clarinet concerto was followed by Spohr, who wrote
four concertos, and Weber, whose two concertos and one concertino for clarinet
represent the finest early 19th-century concertos for that instrument. Again
following Mozart's lead, Weber produced a concerto for bassoon, op.35 in F
(1811). Bassoon concertos were also written by Franz Berwald (F, 1827) and
Hummel (F, 1805), who also composed concertos for mandolin (1799) and trumpet
(1803). Weber, following up Mozart and Haydn, wrote a Concertino for horn
(1815, in E minor). Schumann composed a remarkable F major Konzertstück
for four solo horns and orchestra (1849). Richard Strauss (following his father
Franz's example) wrote his First Horn Concerto, in E, early in his career (1883).
Rimsky-Korsakov wrote not only a concertino for clarinet and military band but
one for trombone as well. The output of multiple-instrument concertos in the
18th-century tradition (in the manner of the symphonie concertante, such as
those by Mozart and Haydn) declined as the century progressed: Spohr's
concertos for string quartet (in A minor), violin and cello (in C minor), two
violins (in A and B minor) and violin and harp (in C minor and G) inspired few
imitators other than Brahms and Bruch, who wrote two concertos, one for viola
and clarinet and one for two pianos late in his career (1911). Busoni's massive
Piano Concerto in C, op.39 (1904), includes a male chorus; only Beethoven's C
minor Choral Fantasy op.80, for piano, chorus and orchestra (1808), can be
regarded as a precursor of Busoni's striking achievement.
Concerto, §4: The 19th century
A
crucial feature of practically all 19th-century concertos was the cadenza,
usually placed immediately before the close of the first movement, after the
orchestra pauses on a dominant or a 6-4 chord. Cadenzas could also be placed in
the third and final movements. This offered an opportunity for the soloist to
improvise on the movement's thematic material. In the 19th century, composers
increasingly chose to write these cadenzas out. They did not rely on the
unequal skills of contemporary performers to improvise. This tendency (e.g. in
the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Schumann Cello Concerto) reveals the
separation of composing and performing as professions during the century.
Nevertheless, solo performers were expected to produce their own cadenzas.
Certain prominent virtuosos who composed (such as Joachim or Auer) wrote what
would later become standard cadenzas for particular works (e.g. the Brahms and
Beethoven violin concertos) used by most subsequent performers.
Pianist-composers in the 19th century (e.g. Brahms, Saint-Saëns and Busoni)
also wrote cadenzas for Mozart and Beethoven concertos. In many 19th-century
concertos, the expectation of a cadenza is deflected. The cadenza becomes
distributed, fragmented and less highlighted; solo moments, as in the Liszt
concertos, become integral aspects of the composition and function more as
transition passages, much in the spirit of Beethoven's ‘Emperor’ Concerto, in
which the orchestra eventually participates in the solo episodes in the first
and third movements (e.g. the final duet with the timpani). Short cadenza-like
moments also occur in the second and third movements, as in the Brahms D minor
Piano Concerto and in the Violin Concerto. Some concertos in the 19th century
dispensed with the cadenza entirely, as in the case of the Brahms B Piano Concerto.
The
placement of a written-out cadenza by Mendelssohn before the recapitulation in
his Violin Concerto hints at the many formal innovations in concerto form that
occurred during the century. In this work Mendelssohn dispensed with the
opening tutti and used the solo instrument to frame not only the exposition but
the development and coda as well. The Liszt E Piano Concerto served as a model of an organic
structure in which the last movement completes the first; the earlier thematic
material recurs and the unresolved exposition of the first movement is brought
to a close. This idea is taken up and elaborated on in the Saint-Saëns Cello
Concerto in A minor. Grieg's Piano Concerto offers a response to the
traditional over emphasis on the first movement: he shifts the balance from
opening movement to closing movement; the third movement is the longest and the
most complex. The heritage of the Baroque ritornello was challenged by the
collapsing of tutti and solo exposition into one, as in the Mendelssohn
concertos, and the suppression of the opening tutti idea, as apparent in the
Grieg Piano Concerto. In the 1903 Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, op.47,
the violin opens the work and leads the first subject to a dramatic arrival
point, after which there is a cadenza; only then does the orchestra come to the
fore, when it introduces the second subject. The Schumann Piano Concerto
dispenses with the ritornello idea entirely. Similarly, in the Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto the development of thematic material is the consequence of a
novel but unified treatment of solo instrument and orchestra. In the first
movement the soloist enters after a brief orchestral introduction, but its
expressive material and figuration are not associated with any thematic
exposition; that occurs abruptly only in bar 28, with the soloist entirely in
the lead. There is ultimately an important tutti in the middle of the movement
before the development, but it is in the dominant, although it uses the primary
theme; and the cadenza, prepared by a prominent tutti, precedes the
recapitulation. A coda using both solo instrument and orchestra closes the
movement in place of any final tutti. Similar deviations from late 18th-century
tutti-solo patterns of exchange and assignments of role in formal structures
were already present in Clara Schumann's A minor Piano Concerto of 1835. The
effect was to set aside the convention of using the orchestra as either
background or theatrical and dramatic structural frame for the solo instrument;
rather, the solo instrument assumes an equality if not dominance in the musical
form. One memorable example of the reversal of roles is Mendelssohn's use of a
solo, open-string pedal g as background for the woodwind statement of
the second theme in the first movement of the Violin Concerto.
The
expectations of listeners, in terms of the categories associated with symphonic
writing – thematic presentation and transformation as well as harmonic logic
and formal symmetry – are explicitly broken. Liszt's Piano Concerto in A (1839)
is a one-movement work designed not on narrative principles but on a
reconsideration of the formal consequences of reliance on first-movement sonata
practice. The classical first movement defined the character of subsequent
movements, creating a pattern of slow and then final rondo, ‘lighter’ finales.
The shorter works of Chopin (the Variations op.2 on Là ci darem la mano,
1827, the Grande Polonaise brilliante op.22, 1831) indicate the
intention of early Romantic composers to circumvent the expectation derived
from a multi-movement structure. The advance beyond Classical and Baroque
models took the direction of adaptation not only of symphonic practice (such as
the addition of a fourth movement and the tendency to monumental sonorities) but
also of the free-fantasy strategy associated with solo keyboard writing,
beginning with Schumann's generation. A remarkable and late contribution to the
fantasy strategy of concerto writing is Schoeck's Violin Concerto in B op.21, ‘quasi una
fantasia’ (1912). The use of both varied structure and fantasy opened up the
possibility that the form of the concerto could integrate the ideas of
contrasting motifs and thematic development with narrative logic in which the
soloist might be comparable to the protagonist of a novel. This justified a
dynamic construct of dramatic form that leads to a grand finale, as well as the
use of first-movement thematic materials at the end of the work and a concentration
on closely related motivic ideas throughout all movements. In Bruch's famous G
minor Violin Concerto, the first movement is itself an extended rhetorical
introduction, led by the violin, to the following two movements, the first of
which – although an Adagio – is in modified sonata form. Experimentation in the
formal role of the solo instrument during the 19th-century evolution of the
concerto led composers to utilize instruments within the orchestral sound as
secondary soloists: individual instruments from the orchestra are used
alongside the primary soloist, as for example in the horn and cello solos in
the piano concertos of Grieg and Brahms, the oboe solo in Brahms's Violin
Concerto and the viola solo in Strauss's Don Quixote.
The essence of the concerto – that of a soloist playing with an ensemble – was one of the 20th century’s most inexpugnable inheritances, and the term is even a title in the catalogues of many of the century’s most radical composers, including Cage. There must be many reasons for this longevity of the genre, and they would have to include the wish of virtuosos to play new works, the enthusiasm of audiences, the relative looseness of ‘concerto’ as a formal definition, and the continuing challenge of a musical type which models what happens in music generally: the one communicates with the many.
One of the finest concertos of the early years of the 20th century, and a work that followed the Brahmsian Classical design, was Elgar’s for violin (1909–10). The effectively delayed entry of the soloist, the containing of several themes within subjects dramatically opposed as wholes but ‘manipulated’ in sections – these are only the more easily identifiable of Elgar’s constructive methods. His secure control of the classical shape is retained even during the suggestions of improvisatory rhapsody to which the ‘accompanied cadenza’ contributes. By contrast, the subsequent Cello Concerto is a four-movement work designed with the freedom of a sonata with orchestra. A more or less free handling of the conventions of the Romantic concerto – in terms of form and of the treatment of the relationship between soloist and orchestra – continued throughout the century in the works of Rachmaninoff, Walton and Shostakovich, in some of those of Prokofiev, and in those of their many successors. Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, with Bartók, were perhaps the last notable composer-virtuosos, and their concertos were written at least in part as vehicles for their executive skills. Many 20th-century concertos were written to the order of outstanding performers other than their composers (Piatigorsky in the case of Walton’s Cello Concerto, for example, and Rostropovich in that of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante), a circumstance that has often resulted in works remarkable above all for difficulty and bravura.
The violin concertos of Schoenberg (1935–6) and Berg (1935) certainly require enormous virtuosity of the performer, but so they did of their composers. Schoenberg’s writing for the orchestra is as brilliant and demanding as that for the solo violin. The work’s lyrical invention is prolific yet controlled and unified by the 12-note serial method; the finale contains a long, partly accompanied cadenza, which includes recollections of the previous two movements. In the Piano Concerto (1942) Schoenberg carried this linkage further in returning to something like the all-encompassing single-movement forms of the First Quartet and the Kammersinfonie no.1. Berg’s Violin Concerto is in two movements, each in two sections, and here 12-note serialism is treated with such skill that it can embrace a Carinthian ländler and a Bach chorale. Serial writing again binds a lyrically expansive form, whose intention was partly programmatic: to some extent Berg provided in the solo part a portrait of Manon Gropius, to whose memory the concerto was dedicated. In a similar way Nielsen had composed the solo line in his Clarinet Concerto (1928) as an expression of the personality of its dedicatee and first performer, Aage Oxenvad. ‘Characterization’ as a principle of concerto writing was to be pursued in the 1960s and 1970s by Carter and Musgrave (see below).
Schoenberg, Berg and Nielsen were, in their very different ways, alike in seeing their concertos (and other works) as extending 19th-century practice. Even when Schoenberg went to the 18th century for the materials of his concertos for cello (1932–3, after Monn) and string quartet (1933, after Handel), his aim was not to return to the Baroque but to bring the Baroque up to date. On the other hand, the Second Horn Concerto (1942) and the Oboe Concerto (1945) of Strauss show a nostalgic attempt to regain the spirit if not the form of Mozart’s concertos. With Stravinsky and Hindemith, and their many followers, the neo-classical tendency took a more radical turn. Hindemith’s earliest concertante pieces, the Kammermusiken (e.g. no.2 with piano solo, 1924; no.5 with viola solo, 1927), took forms analogous to the Baroque suite, filled with music of fluid, dissonant counterpoint. These works are scored for small orchestras, generally containing more wind than strings, and their solo–ensemble writing follows models of the 18th century rather than the 19th. In the several concertos Hindemith composed between those for violin (1939) and organ (1962), attention is once more fixed on the soloist, the orchestra is of conventional size, and in form and tonality there is a rapprochement with the 19th century.
Stravinsky’s neo-classical concertos, from the Piano Concerto (1923–4) to the Concerto in D for strings (1946), consistently keep their distance from the forms, conventions and aesthetics of the 19th century, which is not to say that they are not referred to: Tchaikovsky (admittedly in his more Mozartian guise) is in a sense the object of the piano Capriccio (1928–9), and the Violin Concerto (1931) seems at times to be written ‘against’ the great D major predecessors that Stravinsky studied before writing it. The short Ebony Concerto for clarinet and jazz band (1945) uses the melodic, rhythmic and instrumental techniques of jazz in a manner that had been attempted, more tentatively, in the piano concertos of Copland (1926) and Ravel (1929–31). Something similar was achieved in the reverse direction by Gershwin in his Piano Concerto (1925).
Apart
from the solo instrumental concertos Stravinsky composed two concertos for
chamber orchestra: those in E (Dumbarton Oaks, 1937–8) and D (‘Basle’,
1946). Like the Violin Concerto, these pieces are Baroque concertos in form and
polyphonic conception, but they return still more decisively to Baroque scale:
the first of them was likened by Stravinsky himself to the Brandenburgs. Many other
composers in the 1930s and 1940s produced concerti grossi and concerti da
camera on Baroque models, but small-scale concertos were not the
prerogative of Paris-centred neo-classicism. Berg’s Chamber Concerto for piano,
violin and 13 wind instruments (1923–5) has a quite original form: the first
movement is for piano and wind, the second is a palindrome with concertante
violin, and the finale employs both soloists; the whole work, obsessed with
triple events, develops themes derived from the names of Schoenberg, Berg and
Webern. Webern’s Concerto for nine instruments (1931–4) has three movements of
perpetual, symmetrical variation on a three-note motif. Although the piece was
at first planned as a piano concerto, the piano is the foundation rather than the
protagonist of the music, and the melody instruments are treated as equal
individuals.
This tendency to concertos of equality, seen in the compositions of Stravinsky and Webern, expressed itself in large-scale concertos for orchestra, a genre that gave each section its solo opportunities (as in Bach’s Brandenburg nos.1 and 3). Works of this type were composed by Hindemith (1925), Kodály (1939–40), Bartók (1943), Tippett (1962–3) and Gerhard (1965), among others. Bartók’s five-movement concerto lacks the close thematic connections of his immediately preceding compositions, but it is a splendid display piece. In terms of concertante writing, the second movement, ‘Giuoco delle coppie’, is the most notable: it introduces in turn pairs of bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes and trumpets, and then mixes them.
Among Bartók’s solo concertos are three of the most important 20th-century contributions to the genre. The first two piano concertos (1926 and 1930–31) have five-part arch forms such as were prominent in Bartók’s music at the time: each of the central movements is an ABA' structure and each finale uses variants of first-movement ideas. Bartók’s studies of Baroque music did not lead him to take over Baroque forms (the outer movements of the piano concertos can be related to sonata and rondo patterns), but it did show him how to compose music of brilliant streamlined polyphony, particularly in the Second Piano Concerto. In the central movement of the First Concerto Bartók achieved an unusually close contact between soloist and ensemble by setting the percussively treated piano against an ensemble of wind and percussion. The Violin Concerto (1937–8) again has a finale that can be regarded as a complex variation of the opening movement, and the middle movement is itself a set of variations. There is also an early violin concerto that was published posthumously. The Third Piano Concerto represents a decline in comparison with the other two; and the Viola Concerto had to be constructed after Bartók’s death by Serly.
A notable feature of concerto composition after World War II has been the conception of the solo–ensemble relationship as a dramatic one, with each side expressing ‘characters’ involved in calm discussion, violent argument or independent development. The principal exponent of this technique, which relates to the concertos of Berg and Nielsen mentioned above and also to Ives’s Second Quartet, has been Carter in his Double Concerto for harpsichord and piano with two chamber orchestras (1961), Piano Concerto (1964–5), Concerto for Orchestra (1969), Oboe Concerto (1986–7) and Violin Concerto (1990). In the Piano Concerto, for example, the soloist is seen as a capricious individual whom the orchestra and a concertino group attempt to influence. Such characterization of material (a technique that includes differentiation of interval and rhythmic structures) provides a ready means of generating perceptible forms in atonal music, and it has also been used in several concertos by Musgrave, in which the dramatic situation is heightened by the soloist’s physical movements within the orchestra. Henze’s Violin Concerto no.2 (1971) pushes the technique to the borders of music theatre.
By this stage, the word ‘concerto’ has lost any residual formal meaning; it could therefore be used simply to indicate a work with one or more soloists: examples include Barraqué’s Concerto for clarinet, vibraphone and six trios (1962–8) and Babbitt’s Piano Concerto (1985). Barraqué even said that he had chosen his title for its neutrality. But the wide spectrum of late 20th-century concertos also includes works that look back to ideals from the 19th century and from the 18th (Schnittke’s Concerti grossi, Davies’s ten ‘Strathclyde concertos’), works that communicate with the past at the level of language rather than form (Berio’s Concerto for two pianos of 1972–3 and his Concerto II (Echoing Curves) for solo piano and orchestra of 1988–90), and works that, conversely, are cast in contrasted movements but have little in common with previous concertos in matters of content, such as Ligeti’s concertos: his Cello Concerto (1966), Chamber Concerto (1969–70), Double Concerto for flute and oboe (1972), Piano Concerto (1985–8) and Violin Concerto (1989–93). On one level these last works re-run older structural patterns – a balance of slow and fast movements (Cello Concerto), quasi-symphonic four-movement form (Chamber Concerto) and symmetrical five-movement form having Bartókian echos (Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto) – but the material and processes are new. Most essentially, Ligeti has preferred forms which, by contrast with sonata-style dialectic, appear to be self-generating, growing from motifs and rules given at the start. In the same measure, his concertos are not so much dialogues as works in which one instrument (or a pair in the case of the Double Concerto) is at the music’s origin, focus or summit.
Many other composers have simply dropped the work ‘concerto’ and found other names for concertante works that have little in common with the concertos of earlier periods. Some diverse examples are Stravinsky’s Movements for piano and orchestra (1958–9), Messiaen’s many pieces for piano and ensemble (though his last, unfinished composition was a Concerto à quatre in several movements with piano, cello, flute and oboe soloists), Boulez’s Domaines for clarinet and six instrumental groups (1961–8), Stockhausen’s Michaels Reise um die Erde for trumpet and orchestra (1978–81) and Gubaydulina’s Offertorium for violin and orchestra (1980).
MGG2 (‘Konzert’; V. Scherliess, A. Forchert)
ScheringGIK
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E. Rapp: Beiträge zur Frühgeschichte des Violoncellkonzerts (Würzburg, 1934)
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J.R. Stevens: ‘Theme, Harmony, and Texture in Classic-Romantic Descriptions of Concerto First-Movement Form’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 25–60
BlumeEK
StrunkSR1
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La LaurencieEF
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