ABSTRACT
In many histories of baroque music, the music of the later seventeenth century has been dominated primarily by studies of the very influential music of Italy, especially that of Arcangelo Corelli. Scholars and listeners developed over the past 100 years or so various approaches to this music, none more pervasive than the distinction between sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera.1 The convenient and easily recognized presence or lack of dances, the use of typical “church” instruments such as the organ, and the “pious” or “entertainment” value of the music itself have all been factors used to categorize the creative work of many composers during this period. To some extent, modern scholarship has even decided the relative importance of various compositions on their adherence to or deviation from these standard idealized models. However, the validity of these distinctions recently has been questioned, even in the case of Corelli.2
