Arcangelo Corelli

Author(s): Stewart Deas

Source: Music & Letters , Jan., 1953, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan., 1953), pp. 1-10
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/730588

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 MJUsic and Letters
JANUARY 1953

Volume XXXIV No. I

ARCANGELO CORFJLJT

BY STEWART DEAS

CONSIDERING the great and widespread reputation Corelli enjoyed

in his own day, astonishingly little is known about his life, and that
little is about equally compounded of facts that have often been
distorted and anecdotes as often embroidered. Most English
accounts seem to have relied more or less on Hawkins and Burney,
both of whom, on the anecdotal side, leaned heavily on Corelli's
pupil Geminiani. Whether by design or accident Francesco
Geminiani seems to have confined his first-hand information about
his master to somewhat unfortunate incidents not calculated to
heighten Corelli's reputation.
There is the story of his performance with Scarlatti at Naples.
Corelli, it appears, took the precaution of taking with him, on this
occasion, the violinist and cellist with whom he was accustomed to
play; but his fears lest the Neapolitans would not be able to do
justice to his music without rehearsal proved unfounded. "His
astonishment was very great to find that the Neapolitan band
executed his concertos almost as accurately at sight, as his own band,
after repeated rehearsals, when they had almost got them by heart."
"Si suona" (says he to Matteo, his second violin), "a Napoli! "
Thus Burney, quoting "a very particular and intelligent friend"
who had it from Geminiani himself. There follows the incident of
Corelli's playing one of his solo sonatas to the king, who was so
bored by the Adagio that he left the room. Worse still; Corelli
was invited to lead the orchestra in one of Scarlatti's masques and
found to his mortification that the regular leader and other players
could play the high passages better than he. Finally Corelli is
I

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2 MUSIC AND LETTERS

supposed to have "led off in C major " a song wh

been in C minor. "Ricominciamo ", said Scarlatti g
Still Corelli persisted in the major key, till Scarla
to call out to him, and set him right.
All this puts Corelli in an unflattering light, an
why Geminiani should recall such things about
preference to the more pleasant ones with which his
surely have been stored. One positive quality he does
he points out that Corelli insisted on uniformity
orchestral playing: " . . . At his rehearsals, wh
preceded every public performance of his concer
immediately stop the band if he discovered one irreg
there is also Hawkins's statement that Geminia
intending to be complimentary, likened Corelli's
C a sweet trumpet ".
Along with Geminiani's disappointing contri
knowledge of Corelli it may be as well to dispose o
two well-worn anecdotes about him. The first is the Handel-
Corelli incident. Authorities seem to be agreed that its origin
Mainwaring's Life of Handel, and it shall be given here in M
waring's words:
There was also something in his (Handel's) manner so very differe
from what the Italians had been used to, that those who were seldo
or never at a loss in performing any other music, were frequen
puzzled how to execute his. Corelli himself complained of
difficulty he found in playing his Overtures. Indeed there was
the whole cast of these compositions, but especially in the open
of them, such a degree of fire and force, as never could consort wi
the mild graces, and placid elegancies of a genius so totally di
similar. Several fruitless attempts Handel had one day mad
instruct him in the manner of executing these spirited passag
Piqued at the tameness with which he still played them, he snat
the instrument out of his hand; and, to convince him how littl
understood them, played the passages himself. But Corelli, wh
was a person of great modesty and meekness, wanted no convic
of this sort; for he ingenuously declared that he did not understan
them; i.e. knew not how to execute them properly, and give them
strength and expression they required. When Handel appea
impatient, Ma, caro Sassone (said he) questa Musica e nel stylo Franc
di ch'io non m'intendo.

To this Mainwaring has a footnote which runs: "The Overt

for 'I1 Trionfo del Tempo' was that which occasioned Co
the greatest difficulty. At his desire therefore he made a symph
in the room of it, more in the Italian style."
It should be noted that the difficulty lay not in the notes but
the " manner of executing " them. It is hardly to be supposed th

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 ARCANGELO CORELLI 3

Handel, whose first instrument was the harpsichord

violin-playing apparently found its level in the " secon
Hamburg opera, could presume to teach the renowned
thirty-three years his senior, anything about violin
It was the " tameness" of Corelli's performance which upset
Handel. It may be further noted that Mainwaring in his footnote
does not exactly say that it was specifically the overture to 'I1
Trionfo' which was being played at the time of Corelli's remark.
All subsequent writers seem to have taken this for granted.
The remaining anecdote is the harmless one about Nikolaus
Adam Strungk who, having introduced himself as one who played
"the harpsichord, and a little on the violin ", surprised Corelli
with such a display of scordatura-playing on the violin that, according
to Hawkins who tells the whole story, " Corelli cried out in broken
German, ' I am called Arcangelo, a name that in the language of my
country signifies an Archangel; but let me tell you, that you, Sir,
are an Arch-devil! ' "
Whatever may be the varying degrees of truth in these stories
they all indicate a certain mildness and courtesy which came to b
associated with Corelli but which some have thought to be contra
dicted by two statements; the first, again quoted by Hawkins, that
"a person who had heard him perform says that whilst he was
playing on the violin, it was usual for his countenance to be distorted
his eyes to become as red as fire, and his eyeballs to roll as in agony
the second, a somewhat indignant letter which Corelli wrote o
being asked to explain his apparent use of consecutive fifths in one o
the trio-sonatas. Marc Pincherle points out that in Italy at that time
such demonstrative violin-playing was the rule rather than th
exception, but also thinks that the portrait of Corelli by the Iris
painter Hugh Howard bears out the idea of a man of character
capable of strong emotion. That is perhaps rather a matter o
interpretation. The portrait was often reproduced and the engrav
ings of, for example, van der Gucht and Cole, differ greatly i
emphasis. Howard painted the original in Rome, but there i
as so often the case with portraits, a great deal of confusion abou
reproductions even among otherwise trustworthy authors. Van
der Straeten, for example, in his 'History of the Violin' gives a
good reproduction of the Cole engraving and attributes it, o
the same page, to van der Gucht. In other cases, alleged reproduc
tions of the portrait itself so often turn out to be reproduction
once or twice removed of one of the engravings.
For the known facts about Corelli's life we may safely turn to
Pincherle whose biography of the composer, published in I933,

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4 MUSIC AND LETTERS

but now unfortunately out of print, remains the o

and fairly easily accessible source of information. It wa
to a certain extent in the supplementary volume of the
of Grove to correct and amplify the original articl
contained an accumulation of the usual Corelli inaccuracies.
Arcangelo Corelli was born on February I7th i653 at Fusign
half-way between Bologna and Ravenna. The family, which s
always to have been of some affluence, has been traced far
but, although it includes poets and priests, has produced no mus
other than Arcangelo, who was the youngest of a family of
His father died shortly before he was born, and all that is known o
early education is that when still quite young he went to Faenza
the beginning of his musical education. In I666, at the ag
thirteen, he is in Bologna where he studies violin playing for
years. The Bologna School has an important place in the deve
ment of instrumental forms and, although Corelli did not re
there, it obviously had a strong influence on his further developm
The older biographers, following Hawkins and Burney, stated
Corelli was a pupil of Bassani. Seeing that Bassani was four y
his junior, this is now thought unlikely, and it is at least certain
he cannot have been his pupil at Bologna, where it has been e
lished that his masters were Giovanni Benvenuti and Leonardo
Brugnoli, both disciples of Ercole Gaibara. Pincherle is inclined to
rule out Bassani altogether, but, bearing in mind the humility with
which Corelli appears to have received "instruction" from the
very junior Handel, it seems not altogether impossible that he may
at some stage in his career have allowed that Giovanni Battista
Bassani, of honourable mention in all works of reference, could
teach him something about his instrument. In any case, the Bologna
influence is acknowledged in some of the early editions of Corelli's
works, where he is styled " da Fusignano detto il Bolognese ".
Between I670 when Corelli left Bologna, and 1675 when he is
known to have reached Rome, there is a gap in the record of his
life which has been ingeniously filled in various ways. It is to this period
that Mainwaring's story of his visit to Paris and of Lully's jealousy
belongs. Hawkins accepts and even embellishes the story. Burney
states cautiously: " It has been said without authority that Corelli
went to Paris in the year I672 but was soon driven thence by the
jealousy and violence of Lulli." Pincherle traces the original
statement to Rousseau, whom he quotes as saying in the ' Lettre
sur la Musique fran;oise': " Lulli meme, allarme de l'arrivee en
France de Corelli, se hata de le faire chasser de France; ce qui lui
fut d'autant plus aise que Corelli etait plus grand homme, et par

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 ARCANGELO CORFEI.T 5

consequent moins courtisan que lui." In my copy of the

-admittedly later than the edition Pincherle quotes-t
" en France " do not occur after " l'arrivee ". Is it possi
we may exonerate Rousseau from the blame of actually sayin
Corelli visited Paris?
From 1675 Corelli's name appears on the list of instrumentalists
engaged on the occasion of the name-day of the church of St.
Louis-des-Fransais in Rome, at first as the third of four violinists and
later as second violinist. On January 6th 1679 he leads the orchestra
at the Teatro Capranica on the occasion of its inauguration as the
second public opera-house in Rome. The opera performed was
Pasquini's ' Dov' e amore e pieta ', not a note of which has survived.
A letter of June 3rd of the same year indicates that Corelli is still in
Rome, but thereafter his movements are obscure until I68I, the year
of publication in Rome of his first collection of Trio Sonatas. There
may have been a visit to Munich in I68o, when the musical
historian, theorist and composer Wolfgang Kasper Printz says he
met him there, but apparently there is no other documentary
evidence of his visit or its further amplification that Corelli was
engaged in the orchestra of the Elector of Bavaria. There is also
Chrysander's statement, apparently unsupported, that Corelli
visited Farinelli at Hanover between I680-85. From I682-I708
Corelli's name appears as leader of the steadily increasing orchestra
for the festivals of St. Louis, and in this office he is associated with
his pupil Matteo Fornari who succeeds him as leader in 1710.
The culminating events of Corelli's career, however, were his
engagement first, in 1687, by Cardinal Panfili as his chief musician,
and secondly, from 1690 till his death in I713, in a similar but
somewhat more exalted position in the princely establishment of
Cardinal Ottoboni. He proved himself a man capable of the
enjoyment of arts other than his own, and amassed a collection of
valuable pictures. The fiction prevailed until quite recently that he
left these pictures along with C6,ooo (Grove even has 60o,ooo) to
his beloved patron Ottoboni. Thanks to the researches of Carlo
Piancastelli and Alberto Cametti, Corelli's will was discovered and
published; it is given in French translation by Pincherle and in a
somewhat inaccurate English version in E. van der Straeten's
'History of the Violin'. The Cardinal was left one picture of his
own choice; there is no mention of money, but Corelli makes his
brothers his " universal heirs "
Corelli's fame rests entirely on his sonatas, trio-sonatas and
concerti-grossi for strings, the only forms of composition he is
known to have practised. The list of his works is as follows:

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6 MUSIC AND LETTERS

Twelve Trio-Sonatas dedicated to Queen Christina of

Opera Prima. Rome, I683.
Twelve Chamber Sonatas (trio-sonatas) dedicated t
Panfili. Opera Seconda. Rome, 1685.
Twelve Trio-Sonatas dedicated to the Duke of Moden
Terza. Rome, 1689.
Twelve Trio-Sonatas dedicated to Cardinal Ottoboni. Opera
Quarta. Rome, I694.
Twelve Sonatas for Violin and Bass (cembalo) dedicated to
Sophia Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg. Opera Quinta. No
place or date of publication given; but reprints at Rome and
Amsterdam 1700.
Twelve Concerti Grossi dedicated to the Elector of the Palatinate.
Opera Sesta. Date of dedication I712, but first published at
Amsterdam 1713-14.
It has often been pointed out that Corelli's strength as a composer
lay in the polish of his style and in his sure grasp of satisfying harmony
rather than in any great originality. The list alone of the works of
the Bologna school of composers, including Vitali and Torelli,
shows many trio-sonatas and concerti-grossi.1 Burney, a little
influenced, one feels, by some of Geminiani's luke-warm remarks,
says: " Indeed, Corelli was not the inventor of his own favourite
style, though it was greatly polished and perfected by him." But
after some rather conflicting statements about the degree of difficulty
and expressiveness of his writing, he adds: " However, if we recollect
that some of Corelli's works are now more than a hundred years old,
we shall wonder at their grace and elegance; which can only be
accounted for on the principle of ease and simplicity . . . Corelli's
productions continued longer in unfading favour in England than
in his own country, or in any other part of Europe; and have since
only given way to the more fanciful compositions of the two
Martini's, Zanetti, Campioni, Giardini, Abel, Schwindl, Boccherini,
Stamitz, Haydn and Pleyel." It may now safely be said that Haydn
alone, of all these " more fanciful" composers, is clearly on a higher
plane than Corelli, and it is doubtful whether any of the others
reach Corelli's level of concise musical expression.
It may be assumed that the tercentenary of Corelli's birth will
provide opportunities, by the performance of his works, of reassessing
his place in the corpus of living music. Small as his total output is,
it would yet be idle to pretend that it is all of equal value. The
sonatas, tidily parcelled into books of twelve each, of which the Opera
Prima and Opera Terza are "s6nate da chiesa ", and Opera
Seconda and Opera Quarta are " sonate da camera " (although
1 See 'The Solo Violin Sonata of the Bologna School', by Henry G. Mishkin in
'Musical Quarterly ', January 1943.

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 ARCANGELO CORELLI 7

it is to be noted that Corelli specifies the actual type on

case of Opera Seconda), adhere more or less to the chara
of these two types. That is, the first and third groups are
" for two violins and Violone or Archlute with organ bass "
a somewhat serious contrapuntal style, whereas .the se
fourth groups are written " for two violins and violone or
and consist of a prelude followed by three or, sometimes, o
dance movements. The first and third groups, however, do not
adhere to their type so strictly as never to have a suggestion of dance
rhythms in the later movements. Of the four (occasionally five)
movements of each sonata the opening one is in the great majority
of cases slow-marked Grave or Largo-but there are also a few
cases of an opening Allegro or Vivace; the third movement is
usually slow and the last invariably fast. There can be little doubt
that Opera Terza is the finest set of all the trio-sonatas. There is
plenty of vigorous independent part-writing in the many fugal
movements and, in the slow introductions and middle movements,
a poise and dignity that might be called Handelian. The third
sonata of this book, for example, opens with a spacious Grave in
which there is a satisfying interlacing of the two violins (the over-
lapping of the parts is one of the attractive features of Corelli's
writing at its best). This is followed by a short, busy, antiphonal
movement with a characteristic cross-rhythm cadence at the end,
and then comes a finely wrought Largo on an ostinato-or quasi-
ostinato, for Corelli is pleasantly free in these matters-bass of the
descending scale of Bb. The last movement, fugal in character,
has a theme which carries in itself the seeds of rhythmic disagree-
ment (6/4 v. 3/4), and lively use is made of this feature both in
Corelli's somewhat sketchy working out (his fugues are always sketchy
and rather Handelian), and in the cadence of the unexpectedly
piano ending. No. 4 of this set is the one from which J. S. Bach took
the subject for his " little " B minor organ fugue. That was perhaps
more a misfortune than an honour for Corelli. The original which
begins with three entries of the subject, all in the tonic, does its
best but seems hardly to be one of Corelli's most successful " fugues "
and is not helped by two outer movements of a somewhat conven-
tional nature. It must be remembered, however, that this word
" conventional " is one of those of which one must beware in writing
about Corelli. In many cases he was establishing a sort of musical
usage which only since his day has become conventional through
over-use.

Neither of the chamber-sonata groups quite comes up

level of Opera Prima and Terza. There is, on account

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8 MUSIC AND LETTERS

comparative monotony of the dance rhythms, less in

individual parts, and too often a tendency to write the
part as a mere accompanying part. Several Allem
ments, for example, have busy quaver basses over wh
violins play in resourceless thirds. In fact, the appea
busy bass is almost always the sign for the entry of
sometimes with a few coy suspensions, but usually fa
One or two of the opening movements have charact
tinction, but in these dance suites it is usually in th
Corelli excels. If, as Professor Dent says, "the lilt
gigues seized him (Alessandro Scarlatti) like a St. Vi
and turns up everywhere ", it is little wonder, so liv
pelling are most of the examples. Oddly unconvincing, o
hand, are most of the Sarabands. One, for some rea
marked "Tempo di Sarabanda-Largo" (Sonata 9, Oper
has in fact little of the saraband character; anoth
Opera Quarto), is in 3/4 time but marked Vivace; a th
ibid.), is an Allegro in 6/8. It is in some of the saraband
that the most obvious examples of what has been called
clash " occur. It is a cadence in which the tonic sounded with
the supertonic-dotted crotchets, let us say-is followed by leading
note and tonic sounded together (quavers) before resolution on the
tonic unison. Examples occur at the end of the saraband of the
8th and the middle and end of the Ioth sonatas of Opera Seconda,
and at the middle and end of the saraband of the third sonata of
Opera Quarta.
The famous Opera Quinta is in two sections, the first consisting
of six sonatas for violin and bass, the second with a separate title
page which describes its contents: " Preludii, allemande, correnti,
gighe, sarabande, gavotte, e follia a violino solo e violone o cimbalo ".
The various dances are, as in the chamber trio-sonatas, grouped
into suites or sonatas, the last of all consisting of the famous Follia
which occupies a similar place to the Ciacona which forms the last
" sonata " of Opera Seconda. This collection of solo violin sonatas
was Corelli's most celebrated work and enjoyed wide circulation
long after fiis death. In it he is regarded as having summed up his
technique of solo-violin playing. Burney speaks of it as the " classical
book for forming the hand of a young practitioner ", and says it
"has ever been regarded as a most useful and valuable work by the
greatest masters of that instrument . . . Tartini formed all his
scholars on these solos." Even the most cursory glance at the book
shows at once the extent to which Corelli distinguished between the
violin as a solo instrument in its own right and as an orchestral or

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 ARCANGELO CORELLI 9

concertante instrument. Here we have violin writing wh

double-stopping and arpeggiated chords of a kind not
in the trio-sonatas or concerti-grossi. True, these th
the most part, confined to the first six sonatas (there a
double-stoppings in the suite-like second six, except
variations), but the style is obviously more flambo
soloistic, than in the chamber music proper. Mor
for the first time, the question of additional ornam
In two of the early editions of these sonatas, the Amste
of Roger (c. 1715) and the London edition of Walsh (c
be found ornaments which, so the publishers say, were
Corelli himself. They are reproduced in the Collect
Chrysander-Joachim,2 and whether they do in fact
Corelli or not-and there seems little reason to doub
certainly represent the practice of the time in the
slow movements. Once again, however, this " mann
of writing is confined to the first six sonatas; it has no
straightforward dance movements of the second part
except perhaps in the slow variations of the Follia wher
the " graces " do not appear to have been supplied. Thes
remain a satisfying piece of writing for their peri
thinks their interest purely pedagogic, but surely this
approach. It was, as Burney indicated, the fate of t
to be treated as " teaching material ", but that does n
in the hands of a sympathetic performer they need soun
exercises-any more than, say, Bach's French Suites,
people seem to put into the same dead " teaching " ca
For the general public of to-day as, no doubt, of C
day, the most acceptable works of all are the twelve con
Opera Sesta. There are grounds for considering the
first fully-fledged concerti-grossi to have been written,
as Dr. Alfred Einstein3 and others have shown, the
humously published there is the evidence of Georg M
had heard concertos (unspecified) of Corelli as early
again there is a division into works of a more or less
puntal nature ( the first eight concertos) and suites of
ments (the last four concertos). The concertino instrum
same throughout, namely two violins and bass with
same group of players, in fact, as that required by the
In the edition of Walsh by Dr. Pepusch, this characte
2Augener Edition No. 4936-alas, out of print. Two of the orn
movements are also to be found in the Appendix to Dolmetsch's ' Inte
Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries'.
3See his prefaces to the Eulenburg Miniature Scores of Concertos I, 3, 8 and 9.

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Io MUSIC AND LETTERS

is, for some reason or other, obscured by the transfere

part from the ripieno to the concertino section of
should be noted, however, that all Pepusch has done
the existing viola line to the concertino section. It i
adding a viola part, as has sometimes been said. Ev
is misleading here.
The' Christmas Concerto ', No. 8, " fatto per la notte
as it is headed by Corelli, has long been a favourite wit
concluding Pastorale marked "ad libitum ". Einst
to mean that this movement may be included or no
surely Corelli would not actually have attached it
G tied over from the previous Allegro if he had me
optional movement. Is it not more likely that the "
meant to apply to the nature and tempo of the perfor
to the possibility of the addition of some gentle ornam
this same concerto, at an earlier slow section, that Core
" Arcate sostenute e come sta ", expressly forbidding a
from the notes as written. The " ad libitum" perh
way, not to be entered lightly however, to a few discr
graces in the manner of Handel's written ornaments in
Pastorale of' Messiah '.
Of the other concertos the third and the fifth seem likely t
be the most rewarding in performance nowadays. There are man
movements, however, throughout the collection as a whole whic
would, but for the greater brilliance and richness of Handel in
similar forms, still have a strong direct appeal. But does the general
public, after all, really know Handel's Concerti Grossi? " I
Bolognese " may not have written on the same scale as "il caro
Sassone ", but his works have a comparable balance and sense o
proportion. It should be remembered, too, that, in his own way
he did not despise the effect of a great mass of sound; for it is o
record that on at least one occasion, at the festival organized b
Christina of Sweden in honour of Pope Innocent XI, Corel
conducted an orchestra of I50 strings. It is not suggested that th
is the best way to perform the concertos, but the incident may serve
as a reminder that Corelli is probably less well served by any preciou
approach of " music in miniature" than by performances which
by a strong force of players in the main body of the strings, emphasi
the contrast between tutti and soli which is of the essence of this
kind of writing.

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