ABSTRACT

This book explores the instrumental music that flourished in the Bolognese region of north-central Italy during the late seventeenth century. It focuses on the concerto idea in Bolognese music and the emergence of the musical features that would characterize the eighteenth-century concerto. The book examines the professional and personal circumstances of the musicians who composed sonatas in Bologna. It addresses the long-troubling complications of sonata genres, performing venues, and musical style. The book addresses two further issues: the liturgical role of sonatas themselves; and the appearance of dance-topoi as sonata finales. It traces the emergence of non-imitative and recapitulatory movement types back from Giuseppe Torelli's Op. 8 concertos to mid-century polychoral sonatas and other works for larger ensembles, and then to trumpet sonatas. The book shows the links between sonatas and the modes, which were a crucial article of Counter-Reformation faith and the typical means by which composers and musicians categorized different tonalities.