Sinfonia

One word that meant an opera opening, a symphony and a three-part invention

Related

BaroqueClassicalOvertureSymphony

Sinfonia is one word that meant three different things across three centuries, which is why it causes so much confusion in catalogue titles.

Origins and era

At the end of the sixteenth century a sinfonia was merely an instrumental passage, something sounding together, used to separate scenes in Venetian and Florentine intermedi. By the late seventeenth century it had settled into three instrumental sections before an opera, its fast-slow-fast layout fixed in Naples. In the eighteenth century the sinfonia left the opera house and became the independent symphony. A separate line is Bach's, who called his three-part inventions sinfonias, meaning three lines moving at once. Italian composers kept the word for a single-movement orchestral piece well into the nineteenth century.

What you hear

An operatic sinfonia has three sections, the first an allegro on a repeated figure, the second short and lyrical, the third back to allegro, all in one key. Bach's keyboard sinfonias are three-part imitations, the theme passing through three lines and denser than the two-part inventions. The nineteenth-century Italian sinfonia stays in one movement with singable themes, scored mostly for strings and oboes. Count the sections first, then decide whether you are hearing an opera prelude, an independent symphony or a keyboard study. The same word also appears in manuscript titles of oratorios and concertos, where it usually means nothing more than an instrumental introduction. Dictionaries translate it as symphony in the post-1750 sense, so an earlier title has to be read as an instrumental introduction.

Key figures

Monteverdi and the Venetian school first used the name for instrumental sections, Scarlatti and Sammartini fixed the Neapolitan sinfonia, Bach used it for three-part inventions, and the early sinfonias of Donizetti and Rossini keep the shape of an opera overture.

Lineage

It comes from Renaissance instrumental ensembles and opera openings, forks into symphony and overture, and Bach's usage leads separately to the invention and the fugue.

Common misunderstandings

Translating every sinfonia as symphony misreads a great many titles, since a seventeenth-century sinfonia often lasts under a minute. Nor is it a synonym for overture, because Italian composers performed their sinfonias away from the theatre.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Sinfonia, 用于核对三种用法的年代
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 2, 用于核对意大利序曲到交响曲的过渡

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