The Italian Solo Concerto 1700-1760

<p>The solo concerto a vast and important repertory of the early to mid eighteenth century is known generally only through a dozen concertos by Vivaldi and a handful of works by Albinoni and Marcello. The authors aim to bring this repertory to greater prominence and have since 1995 been involved in a research programme of scoring and analysing over nine hundred concertos representing nearly the entire repertory available in early prints and manuscripts. Drawing on this research they present a detailed study and analysis of the first-movement ritornello form the central concept that enabled composers to develop musical thinking on a large scale. Their approach is firstly to present the ritornello form as a rhetorical argument a musical process that dynamically unfolds in time; and secondly to challenge notions of a linear stylistic development from baroque to classical instead discovering composers trying out different options which might themselves become norms against which new experiments could be made.</p><p>SIMON McVEIGH is Professor of Music Goldsmiths College University of London; JEHOASH HIRSHBERG is Professor in the Musicology Department Hebrew University of Jerusalem.</p><p> </p>