Classical Music | Music for Trio

Recorded on 04/21/2010, uploaded on 10/26/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Arcangelo Corelli is most famous for his Opus 5 violin sonatas, which were published on January 1, 1700 and signaled the dawn of a new era for instrumental music. Corelli eschewed the abstractness found in violin music of earlier 17th century Italian composers in favor of structure, symmetry, and regularity of form befitting contemporary Age of Enlightenment ideals.

Corelli’s new style took Europe by storm, influenced contemporaries like Bach and Handel, and became so important that all instrumental music from that point forward came to be characterized as pre- or post-Corellian.

The Sonata in C Major follows one of Corelli’s new formulas that modern theorists have dubbed the sonata de chiesa or 'church sonata'. This form usually opens with a slow, introspective movement that invites or even obligates the violinist to decorate a simply-notated melody with improvised embellishments according to his or her own fancy. A fast fugal movement follows that first presents a catchy Corellian theme several times in the violin before it is then taken up, verbatim, by the continuo team of cello and harpsichord. Such sonatas continue with at least one contrasting movement (in this case, two) before concluding with a playful romp in the form of a triple meter Gigue.       Jason Moy