Giuseppe Torelli was active in the orchestra of the huge Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna, first from 1686 to 1695 as a violist and then, from 1701 to 1709, as a violinist; in the intervening years, during which the basilica’s orchestra was disbanded, he worked in Ansbach and Vienna. His main historical contribution was to the development of both the violin concerto and the concerto grosso, but he was also the most prolific Italian composer for the trumpet, with some three dozen pieces, variously entitled sonata, sinfonia, or concerto, for one, two, or four trumpets.
The so-called Concerto by Torelli is not to be found among the rich collection of manuscripts still surviving in Bologna, but instead appeared in about 1715 as the sixth in a series of concertos by Bitti, Vivaldi, and Torelli published in Amsterdam by Etienne Roger, who, incidentally, was also Corelli’s publisher. The fact that Roger did not assign the concertos individually to specific composers has led Franz Giegling, the compiler of the standard thematic catalogue of Torelli’s works, to doubt the authorship of this work and to omit it from his catalogue. In my opinion, however, the work displays many features otherwise characteristic of Torelli, such as the use of unison violins in the outer movements and the highly expressive and virtuosic writing for the strings in the tripartite middle movement in which the trumpet is silent. Its structure, too, resembles that of several other Torelli pieces in which the trumpet serves as a foil to the continously operating string body, so that it is not to be considered as a trumpet concerto, but rather as a (group) concerto with trumpet. It is true, however, that in his other works with trumpet, Torelli tended to oppose this instrument, accompanied only by the basso continuo, to the full string body, while in the present work the strings often fill out the continuo part during trumpet passages. Be that as it may, the concerto with its marked themes and motoric rhythms has become a staple of today’s Baroque trumpet repertoire – and justifiably so, because of its indisputed quality.
The Sonata a 5 in D, G.7, which still survives in the Bolognese basilica archive, is without doubt an authentic work of Torelli’s. It appears to date from the composer’s early period, and for several reasons: because the theme of the second movement (which the composer used again in his Concerto, G.32) is also to be found in Giovanni Bononcini’s Sinfonia, Op. 3, No. 10, published in 1685 when its composer was only fifteen years old; because of a handwriting analysis performed by the former basilical archivist, Sergio Paganelli; and also because the piece contains more contrapuntal errors than any other of Torelli’s compositions. (To be sure, the parallel fifths and octaves – most of them in the viola part, played by young Torelli himself – are discoverable only after a minute analysis of the score and cannot be discerned at a mere listening.) The overall form of the sonata is that of a six-movement sonata da chiesa, of which the fourth movement, featuring a duo between the trumpet and solo cellist, probably derives its inspiration from similar ones by Domenico Gabrielli (1651-90), a noted pioneer in cello writing who was a member of the S. Petronio orchestra between 1680 and his death. The solo trumpeter at the first performance(s) was probably Giovanni Pellegrino Brandi, noted in the church’s records of payments between 1679 and 1699. Brilliant trumpet music, by the way, was regularly performed in Bologna at the opening of High Mass on the feast day of St Petronius, the patron saint of both the basilica and the city, on 4th October – an old tradition going back at least to 1508.
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Discography
