Concerto

From Music-Web Encyclopedia

A term often applied in the 17th century to ensemble music for voices and instruments; since then it has usually denoted a work in which a solo instrument (or instrumental group) contrasts with an orchestral ensemble. The Concerti grossi op.6 of Corelli, some of which probably date from the 1680s, resemble amplified trio sonatas and could be played by as few as three or four players or by orchestras of over 100. They were imitated by his pupils in Italy and by composers in Germany and England, where Handel's Grand Concertos op.6, while drawing also on other traditions, represent the summation of the Corelli type. Most were heard as interval music in oratorios, as were Handel's organ concertos, a form he seems to have originated and one which became popular among English composers.

The six Brandenburg Concertos of Bach derive less from this tradition than from the type of ripieno and solo concertos composed by Torelli and others at Bologna and by Vivaldi and others at Venice. It was the three-[[movement] solo concerto of the Vivaldi type, with the quick movements usually in ritornello form, that survived the [Baroque period]] and developed into the Classical concerto represented at its finest and most sophisticated in the 23 piano concertos of Mozart. Beethoven's are on a larger scale, but they adhere to the principles of the Classical design despite innovations such as the linking of movements, the participation of the soloist in the initial ritornello (adumbrated by Mozart in K 271 and the writing of a cadenza into the score (Piano Concerto no.5).

While many early Romantic composers, including Chopin and Paganini, retained the ritornello design as an effective framework for virtuoso display, the 15 violin concertos of Spohr, dating from 1802-27, show structural innovations which anticipate Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was influential in dispensing with the rigid solo-tutti division of the ritornello structure, in linking all the movements of a concerto and in the placing of cadenzas. Liszt treated the form even more freely, at the same time introducing an element of passionate rivalry between soloist and orchestra which established the expressive climate for concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and others.

A more conservative late Romantic tradition, retaining the ritornello design for the first movement but in a strongly symphonic manner, is represented by the concertos of Brahms, Dvorak (for cello) and Elgar (for violin). 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky and Bloch have tumed to Baroque models for concertos, while others (Bartók, Tippett etc) have exemplified a new type of orchestral concerto in which different instruments or groups are highlighted in turn. But the traditional three-movement solo concerto inherited from the 19th century has proved remarkably resilient, and on the whole resistant to the programmatic elements that have often invaded the symphony.