Concerto Grosso

A small solo group and the full band answer each other in the Baroque art of dialogue.

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BaroqueConcerto GrossoConcertoViolin

The concerto grosso divides the band into a small group and a large one, letting the same music pass between two weights. It relies not on a star soloist but on contrast built into the ensemble.

Origins

In late seventeenth-century Rome, Corelli enlarged the trio sonata into a dialogue between a concertino and a ripieno. The concertino is usually two violins and a cello; the ripieno is the full string band with continuo. His Op. 6, published in 1714, became the model, and Handel, Bach and Avison extended it.

Listening features

Listen to the texture: the concertino thins the voices and clears the colour, while the tutti adds volume and parts. The band states the theme, the solo group decorates it, and the tutti takes it back. Dance movements and church movements coexist, the first with a clear beat, the second alternating slow chords and imitation.

Composers and works

Corelli's Op. 6 fixes the format. Bach's Brandenburg No. 6 omits violins and gives the dark contrast to violas and gambas. Handel's Op. 6 brings the French overture and dance into the genre. Bloch and Vaughan Williams revived it in the twentieth century.

Lineage

It grows from the trio sonata and the instrumental canzona and leads to the solo concerto and the sinfonia concertante; its two-group contrast also feeds the concerto.

Misconceptions

A concerto grosso is not a large concerto, nor a soloist against an orchestra. The tutti need not be loud, and the concertino is not a chamber accompaniment. Composers kept writing it after the Baroque.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Concerto grosso" — definitions and dating checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2 — context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.