Format:
Notenbeisp., Tab.
ISSN:
1722-3954
Content:
During a period running approximately from 1700 to 1750, what English writers called the ‘double-stopped’ fugue was widely cultivated in Italy. Its first prominent examples occur in the group of six ‘church’ sonatas standing at the head of Arcangelo Corelli’s Op. 5 (1700), each of which has a second movement of this kind. The basic feature of a ‘doublestopped’ fugue is that the single violin simulates the polyphonic texture of two violins, as in a trio sonata, but a degree of textural variation also occurs: extra polyphonic strands or reinforcing notes may be added to the violin line, and from time to time a single strand may replace the polyphony. The sixth of Corelli’s Op. 5 sonatas is in A major, a key equally favourable to polyphonic and to conventional virtuosic writing for the violin. It so happens that similar fugal movements in the same key by Martino Bitti (two examples), Tomaso Albinoni (three examples), Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli (1729) and Carlo Zuccari (c.1747) survive. A comparison between the eight movements reveals not only interesting aspects of the artistic personality and approach to fugue of each of these composers but also some more general coeval trends in the evolution of fugue itself, such as the increasing thematic derivation of the subsidiary material (in codettas, concluding passages of musical periods and episodes) from the subject - whereas in Corelli, such material is related top the subject only in its basic musical contours (termed ‘subthematic shapes’) - and the gradual admission of modally altered entries of the subject. In Corelli, fugal imperatives have to share the composer’s attention with the claims of conventional display writing, such as semiquaver passage-work, but in Zuccari’s hands fugal processes have become absolutely paramount: despite the unusual nature of the medium, we have already attained the ‘classic’ fugue, the foundational model of the fugue d’école.
In:
Ad Parnassum, Bologna : Ut Orpheus Ed., 2003, 3(2014), 2, Seite 1-29, 1722-3954
In:
volume:3
In:
year:2014
In:
number:2
In:
pages:1-29
Language:
English
Keywords:
Italien
;
Komponist
;
Fuge
;
Kontrapunkt
;
Virtuosität
;
Geschichte 1700-1750
Author information:
Talbot, Michael 1943-
