The Trio Sonata Standardised

Rome in 1681, when Corelli turned two trebles plus continuo into a publishable template

Related

BaroqueCounterpointFigured BassSonata

The name misleads: a trio sonata has three parts but often four players. In Rome in 1681 Corelli wrote the combination into a template that others could play and publishers could reprint.

Time and place

Rome, 1681. Corelli published his trio sonatas as Opus 1, followed by Opp. 2, 3 and 4, and then the solo sonatas of Opus 5 in 1700. The prints were reprinted in Rome, Bologna and London and became among the most widely used instrumental music of the late seventeenth century.

What happened

The scoring is two treble instruments plus continuo: two violins, or flute and oboe as substitutes, with a bass string and a keyboard realising the figured bass. Corelli split the genre in two. The church sonata moves through slow and fast sections without dance titles; the chamber sonata opens with a prelude and continues with allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue. He did not invent the texture, since Italian canzonas and sonatas had prepared it. His contribution was to fix the texture, the order of movements and the printed format.

What changed

The trio sonata became the most general instrumental genre of the Baroque, shared by church, court and amateur household. It trained listeners for two equal treble parts and prepared the way for the string quartet and the concerto; realising a figured bass became a basic skill. Publishers turned it into a staple that could be used in different cities by players of different levels.

Listen for the turn

Begin with Bach's Trio Sonata in G major BWV 1039, the two flutes imitating each other over a moving bass. Then Purcell's trio sonata in B flat, where the same texture turns chromatic. Finally the slow movement of Tartini, with parallel thirds pressing on the bass. The catalogue holds no Corelli recording, but these three works use the same grammar, which is exactly the point of a template.

Related

This turn belongs to Baroque; its texture is at Counterpoint, its bass at Figured Bass and its form at Sonata.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Trio sonata" — definitions and Corelli opus dates checked, not quoted
• Peter Allsop, Arcangelo Corelli, New Orpheus of Our Times (Oxford University Press, 1999) — Roman publication context checked, not quoted

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