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Arcangelo Corelli\u2019s music was the first in European history to go viral. This was caused by the wide dissemination of his twelve violin sonatas\u2014a collection first printed in 1700 and republished in more than forty editions in the eighteenth century alone\u2014that built on the popularity of his earlier collections of trio sonatas. His concertos published in 1714, which we sampled in the previous post in this series, squeezed his style into a more powerful mode: as concert music. The snag with Corelli\u2019s music is that in its written form, as published, it can seem somehow too restrained for its own good: even when suitably embellished, it does not easily convey the extraordinary improvisatory skills, or the passion, with which Corelli himself must have performed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like every efficient virus, Corelli\u2019s style mutated, again and again, and was slow to die out. Variants quickly sprang up all over the place: not even Vivaldi, whose own default style by c1700 was idiosyncratic to say the least, was immune. For many composers, the contagion was transmitted by inevitable community spread, due to exposure to Corelli\u2019s published works and an infectious desire to emulate them or better them. For others, it was caught through direct personal contact. Many Corellian compositions were produced by the violin virtuosi whom Corelli had himself trained in Rome, who became leading exponents in artistic centres far removed from Rome. One was Pietro Castrucci, who settled in London and for many years led the theatre orchestra for Handel\u2019s operas. Another was Francesco Geminiani, who from 1714 also settled in London and was active professionally in Dublin too for several lengthy periods, notably in the 1730s just after the first two sets of his own concertos had been published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, besides the mutations, new species had emerged from cross-fertilization. In the music composed in Rome before 1710 by the Florentine composer Giuseppe Valentini, for instance, one hears the sounds of Corelli alongside characteristics of the concerto of the markedly different type emanating from Venice. Although Valentini might have studied with Corelli (this is uncertain), his music has a level of originality that speaks more of collegial rivalry between the two composers than emulation of the older man’s work. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n