The Baroque

The term ‘concerto’, implying an aggregation of performing forces large or small, described many musical genres in the early seventeenth century. These ranged from vocal music accompanied by instrumentalists, to purely instrumental music in which the element of contrast was prominent. The development of the concertato style is witnessed both in the later madrigal books of Monteverdi and in the church music and madrigals of Venetian composers such as Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. The Gabrielis' Concerti per voci e stromenti musicali (1587), comprising sacred music and madrigals in six to sixteen parts, is the earliest known publication to use the term ‘concerto’ in its title. The instrumental concerto emerged as an independent form towards the end of the seventeenth century and soon evolved into a genre in which virtuosity was a significant ingredient.

Italy

The earliest type of purely instrumental concerto, the concerto grosso, contrasted a large (concerto grosso) and a small group (concertino) of performers. The first essays in this genre emerged with Stradella in Rome in the 1670s, but Corelli brought the form to its first peak with his collection of twelve concerti grossi for strings Op. 6 (1714). these are essentially elaborations of Corelli's trio sonata ideal, the ‘concertino’ section consisting of two violins and a cello. Eight of the set conform to the da chiesa (church) slow–fast–slow–fast pattern, excluding movements of a dance character but including fugal fast movements; the other four comprise largely sequences of dance-like movements in da camera (chamber) fashion.