The book attempts to provide a comprehensive outline of the concerto music written in a
region that was the most fertile center credited with the most impressive and outstanding
results in this regard. The Venetian instrumental concerto from Vivaldi’s time is portrayed
here through an extensive and thorough survey of the most complete and representative
musical material that allowed for the making of conclusions as to its typology, form, style
and technique. Such an approach not only gives an exhaustive, but also more objective view
on the history of the Baroque concerto in its Venetian variant. It provides enough details
to identify composers of lesser and greater stature, as well as pinpoint relationships, similarities
and stylistic differences between various authors and localities. In musicological
literature, this book is the first monograph tackling this issue in such a way. The concertos discussed here include not only those written in the city of Venice, but also in other centers of the Republic of Venice. Every composer from the Serenissima
whose works have survived to our day is examined. The material investigated includes also
the concertos of Florence-born F. M. Veracini, who started writing them during his several-
year-long stay in Venice. Likewise, Locatelli’s L’Arte del Violino, Op. 3 that he wrote in
Venice where he spent few years is among the works that have been thoroughly explored.
Given the indisputable Venetian traits revealed not only in the collection’s title, Pensieri
Adriarmonici, Op. 1, by Facco, a Padua-born composer in the service of the Spanish
Crown, has also been closely looked at.
The book covers the period spanning the years 1695 to 1740. The first date, 1695,
marks the beginnings of the concerto as a genre in the Republic of Venice, with Albinoni’s
early concerto Co1 being dated for that year. The following year, by entering the Arte dei
Sonadori and participating in the traditional Christmas concert at the San Marco Basilica,
Vivaldi began the documented part of his musical career. March 1740 saw the last performances of his concertos during an academy presented in honor of the Polish Crown
Prince Frederick Christian. That same year, in May, Vivaldi sold over 20 of his most recent
concertos, and there is no evidence to suggest that he composed any new ones prior to his death. The fourth decade of the eighteenth century brings also an end to the golden age of
printing the concertos of Venetian masters, with the works by Albinoni, A. Marcello and
Tartini as the last representatives of the genre to leave the printing presses.
Between the years 1695–1740 the most prominent musical centers of the Republic
of Venice where instrumental concerto was cultivated were the cities of Venice, Padua,
Brescia and Bergamo. This order is a reflection of each location’s quantitative share of all
preserved concertos from the Serenissima that comprises 974 works by 15 composers:
G. and L. Taglietti, G. Gentili, A. and B. Marcello, F. J. de Castro, C. A. Marino, T. Albinoni,
G. Facco, A. Vivaldi, P. Gnocchi, C. Tessarini, F. M. Veracini, G. Tartini, P. Locatelli.
While taking up such a broad and complex issue that involved surveying such a large
number of mostly unpublished music, it was necessary to limit the scope of the subjects covered.
Therefore, the issues concerning the biographical data of the composers, the purpose
of the works discussed, their reception and the area of influence, as well as the intricacies
of authorship, variants, pasticcios, hybrids, sketches and transcriptions are not central to
this publication and have only been briefly touched upon in the Introduction and the
Appendices.
