The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 8 (2002) No. 1

An answer to Peter Allsop

Gregory Barnett*

1. Ferrante Franchi's Territorio di Fusignano

2. Genre and function

3. Antonio Veracini, Opp. 1-3

4. Modes, again

5. Conclusion

References

0.1 In "Corelli Defended,"1 Peter Allsop takes issue with my review of his Arcangelo Corelli: New Orpheus of Our Times,2 on several points. Along with some straightforward matters of fact, these concern the "problems" of late-Seicento sonata genres, style, and function, and the relationship between seventeenth-century modal theory and Corelli's tonal style. Both of these fascinating topics merit attention in any forum, and I am happy to debate them here with Allsop.

1. Ferrante Franchi's Territorio di Fusignano

1.1 There are three points of contention that Allsop airs in his response; I will deal with these in the order that he makes them. The first, simplest because it deals with a clear matter of record, is Allsop's denial of any knowledge of a census that I claim he cites. The document in question is Ferrante Franchi's Territorio di Fusignano, dated around 1670 and now located in the Archivio di Stato in Modena. The document is a plan of the town that details the individual properties and lists the family names of the owners of these properties.3 Allsop refers to it on page 16 of his book:

Toward the end of his life his family did indeed hold large possessions in the region, as two legal documents of 18 and 19 January 1696 confirm, but this affluence may have been attributable directly to Corelli's success, although from Ferrante Franchi's Territorio di Fusignano (c. 1670), which includes a detailed plan of the town naming its inhabitants, it would seem that the Corelli were indeed extensive property owners. (emphasis added)

Franchi's Territorio is in there, and I am nonplused by Allsop's denial of an important citation included in his own book.4

1.2 I am equally puzzled by his position on a larger question that concerns Franchi's Territorio, because that particular source contradicts him. One of the claims made by Allsop in his book is for a revised view of Corelli's family circumstances. Since the early eighteenth century historians have passed along as accepted wisdom the notion that Corelli came from a wealthy family. On the basis of a document located in the Biblioteca Communale in Bologna, Allsop suggests the contrary, that "Corelli's childhood may not have guaranteed him the life of ease and comfort on the family estates which tradition has ascribed to him"5 because this source describes Corelli as "born humbly but of noble talent" (nacque umilme ma di nobile ingegno).6 The document is undated, but serves as the source for a later entry made by Olivo Penna in his 1736 history of the Accademia Filarmonica, the Cronologia, o sia Istoria Generale di questa Accademia....7 Penna drew heavily on the earlier version, but either changed or miscopied the earlier quoted phrase to read "born nobly but of noble talent."

1.3 The earlier version makes better sense, and Allsop deems it a more reliable account of Corelli's origins. Indeed, were our information limited to the undated manuscript and Penna's later alteration of it, I would be convinced by Allsop's conclusions. But our information is not so limited. There is the Ferrante's 1670 census, and previous scholars have noted its importance. In 1980 Adriano Cavicchi cited it as testimony that Corelli came from money--that is, Penna's Cronologia seems to have been closer to the mark after all.8

1.4 As I pointed out in my review, the issue is hardly resolved; we simply do not have enough information. I fault Allsop, not for coming to any wrong conclusion, but rather for relying too heavily on his one discovered source and for discounting other evidence that contradicts it. Moreover, there are still further documents that bear on this issue that Allsop never cites. For instance, Carlo Vitali mentions documentary evidence that bears directly on Corelli's background in a study of the manuscript dissemination of the composer's Op. 3.9 In the context of Corelli's connections with the Congregazione Filippina di Bologna, Vitali refers to archival documents that record rents paid by members of the Corelli family between 1603 and 1652. These were paid to the Filippini for properties owned by the Congregazione in the municipality of Fusignano. This is directly relevant to Allsop's argument, but he fails to mention it even though Vitali's article appears in his bibliography.

1.5 Contrary to Allsop's assertion that "Barnett, it seems, would prefer to base his judgments on a non-existent census and the later corruptions of these Philharmonic manuscripts," I show no such preference; I simply remain unconvinced by Allsop's insufficiently supported argument.

2. Genre and function

2.1 The second point of contention brings in the music. The matter is less simple here, if only because Allsop, in his miscontrual of my argument concerning the sonata genres, da chiesa and da camera, claims that we agree and that I fail to grasp this.10 To the contrary, we do disagree, and our divergent views stem from a fundamental and misleading conflation of genre and function on Allsop's part. To begin, Allsop correctly notes that the designation da chiesa never appears in Corelli's music:

Some degree of caution is also necessary in the customary functional distinction of [Corelli's] sonatas a 3 into sonate da chiesa (Opp. 1 and 3) and sonate da camera (Opp. 2 and 4), for while he recognized the latter category, the former was not a designation he ever employed, and it remains to be proven whether he did envisage a specific "da chiesa" function for the odd-numbered opera.11

He therefore terms Corelli's Opp. 1 and 3 "free sonatas" instead of church sonatas, and then proceeds to argue a trickier point: da chiesa and da camera sonata genres were much less distinct among Italians than has been assumed. The clear distinction between church and chamber sonatas, according to Allsop, was instead imposed by non-Italians on Italian instrumental music, particularly Corelli's:

The belief in a clearcut functional distinction was nevertheless soon firmly established in northern Europe after the publication of the much-quoted Dictionnaire of the Abbé Sebastian de Brossard in Paris. . . . Through Brossard the distinction became widely accepted outside Italy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was generally felt that Corelli's Op. 1 by virtue of its stylistic content was designed specifically for use in church.12

To counter this misrepresentation on the part of non-Italians, Allsop argues that the so-called church sonatas of Corelli were used by the composer in the palazzi of his patrons and not exclusively in churches.

2.2 This, however, is an issue of function that does not impinge on the issue of genre distinctions, and it is here that Allsop fails to recognize the distinction between music destined for the church and music suitable for the church. The former concerns function, and we know from composers' prefaces and dedications that both genres of sonata served a variety functions. The latter concerns style and happens to be a fundamental criterion by which sonata composers understood distinct genres of instrumental music. The origins of that understanding may be found, not among eighteenth-century northern Europeans, but in the seventeenth-century Italian theorists who spoke unequivocally of music in terms of da chiesa, da camera, and da teatro venues: Marco Scacchi, Breve discorso sopra la musica moderna (1649), and Angelo Berardi, Ragionamenti musicali (1681) and Miscellanea musicale (1689).13

2.3 For both theorists and composers of the Seicento, appropriateness of musical style to these respective venues sets forth a stylistic framework that roughly defines the genre. One of the most fascinating aspects of late-Seicento instrumental music, including Corelli's, is the manner in which composers used these genre categories as a point of departure and then played with convention by subtly mingling styles. This, however, is not to question the applicability of the genres themselves or to argue, as Allsop does, that a clear distinction between the genres did not exist before it was imposed from outside Italy. Italian composers had already recognized this distinction as applicable to their music, and this is evidenced by Benedetto Vinaccesi's preface to his Sfere Armoniche overo Sonate da Chiesa..., Op. 2 (1692):

This third work of mine being published [venendo alla luce] as the second, I would not want its sequence, which came to be corrupted by a supreme command, to remain faulted, but rather that the mistakes of my instruments be forgiven. All the more so that when these are heard in church, they invite you to a place where errors are more readily pardoned and where a virtuous spirit extends its mantle of protection more easily over such defects that can be discovered by modern Aristarchuses of this genre, on whose small heads are Ears of Syracuse larger than a mountain.14

The association between sacred venue and compositional propriety is clear as is also the possibility of performing sonatas da chiesa somewhere other than in church. And yet, it is precisely the idea of music appropriate for the church that Allsop too easily dismisses by quoting Roger North's description of the "ecclesiasticall style" as one of "rigorous chastity, and ever serious."15 Allsop proclaims that "only a Northern European from a Protestant tradition could have proposed so austere a definition." But this is to use North's fanciful description against an idea common among Italian theorists and composers. A church style of sonata did exist for late-Seicento musicians, and Corelli's Opp. 1 and 3 exemplify it. We need not assume, as does Allsop, that the description of style or designation of genre as da chiesa implies a function limited to the church.

3. Antonio Veracini, Opp. 1-3

3.1 Another line of arguing that Allsop pursues muddies otherwise clear waters. But before engaging his argument, I hasten to retract a miscorrection in my review. On p. 74 Allsop refers to Veracini's Op. 3 sonatas da camera by date (1696) and then correctly lists the title of that print.16 Shortly afterward (p. 75) he refers to Veracini's Op. 2 sonatas da camera (published in or before 1696) by opus number.17 I mistakenly believed him to be referring to the Op. 2 sonatas in both cases and therefore miscorrected his listing of the Op. 3 Sonate da camera a 2. My miscorrection stands corrected: Allsop commits no error in writing out the title of that work.

3.2 His arguments based on it are another matter. Here he cites the existence of sonatas designated da camera that do not contain dances as evidence of an inconsistency on the part of sonata composers:

As it happens, at precisely the same period [in which composers began to employ the term sonata da chiesa more frequently] a contrary fashion disconcertingly arose of entitling free sonatas 'da camera'. Before then, the term had very occasionally been so applied to individual pieces in a set, as in Merula's Book 4 (1651), which contains three abstract 'sonate per camera', and Bononcini's Varii fiori del giardino musicale (1669) with its two 'sonate da camera'. These, however, are quite distinct from the composers' normal abstract style, representing a separate category of light free sonatas. By the 1690s, however, entire collections so entitled consist of pieces in every way comparable with the type of 'sonata da chiesa' which for Brossard was exemplified in Corelli's works. Despite its title, Antonio Veracini's Sonate da camera a 2 (1696) complies in all respects with the proposed church plan. For Veracini, then, this particular style was by no means associated specifically with a da chiesa function.18

Here Allsop's term "free sonata" introduces confusion into the discussion. As I point out in my review, Veracini's sonatas are suitable for the chamber and not for the church because of their lighter style and choice of continuo instrument. For that very reason and without introducing confusion or inconsistency, Veracini designates them sonatas da camera—appropriate for the chamber.

3.3 Allsop, however, takes Brossard's descriptions of the sonata genres and uses them to correct Veracini, who, not having included dances in his Op. 3 (1696) sonatas, has written pieces that Allsop thinks better to call free sonatas rather than sonatas da camera. Allsop then places Veracini's Op. 3 and others like it (including Veracini's Op. 2) within a distinct sub-genre of "free sonata" that is lighter in style, but otherwise linked stylistically in Allsop's mind with Corelli's Opp. 1 and 3. All of this is to illustrate that some late-Seicento sonatas which "comply with the proposed 'church plan,'" were nonetheless not intended for the church. By doing this Allsop is only creating a problem and then laboring to solve it: Veracini's sonatas do not comply with any "church plan" precisely because of their style; and the fact that they were not intended for church is given by Veracini's title—sonate da camera.

3.4 Three examples from Veracini's Opp. 2 and 3 illustrate this point concerning da camera style. Example 1 contains an excerpt from the second movement of Veracini's, Op. 3, Nº 9. Looking at this vivace, which occurs in that position within the piece where a church sonata would usually include a fugue, we see no imitation, but rather a modest texture of treble (violino) and bass (cimbalo and violone or arcileuto). This is unambitious, non-fugal music, and Veracini deems it right for the chamber, as indicated by the title of the print: Sonate da Camera a due. Examples 2 and 3 show excerpts from Veracini's Sonate da Camera a Violino solo, Op. 2. He specifies slightly different instrumentation for this earlier print (violino solo accompanied by cimbalo or violone), but the music, again da camera, is stylistically akin to his Op. 3. The second movement from the Sonata seconda (example 2) illustrates a simple, binary-form movement in which violin and bass trade motives. Example 3, the second movement from the Sonata quarta, contains music dominated by the violin, which plays in moto perpertuo against a discreet accompaniment. The violin part is showy, but the composition, like the previous examples, is otherwise unassuming music. In the case of his Op. 2, Veracini even mentions his desire to provide music for principianti (beginners) as a motivation for composing it.19 This is not the stuff of church, and we do not need dance titles to know this.

3.5 In case this point needs further evidence, example 4 from Veracini's Op. 1 sonatas (1692)—entitled Sonate a trè and not given a designation of venue—shows the style which late-Seicento composers took to be appropriate for the church.20 This last example shows a second movement actually labeled fuga from the Sonata terza. The contrast in style between Veracini's Op. 1 and his Opp. 2 and 3 points up the distinction between music deemed appropriate for church and chamber respectively. Moreover, Veracini's dedication to the Grand Duchess Victoria of Tuscany, which describes the contemplation of the divine as inspired by musical sound, underscores the significance of the more elevated style that typifies his Op. 1 sonatas:

That the human soul is none other than a harmony was the view of Aristoxenus, musico and philosopher of antiquity. This opinion is born out in the great soul of your most serene highness, in which resounds a wondrous tuning of all of the virtues. So it is that you are nourished by the spirit of our music, which consists of fleeting sounds and songs. Yet your delight is solid when it is served by this [music], not for the simple titillation of the ears, but to return the soul to contemplation of the immortal and heavenly, then passing to the consideration of the divine....21

3.6 In sum, the terms sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera reflect historically valid distinctions of genre based on clearly perceptible discrepancies of style that Seicento musicians considered appropriate to these respective venues. These distinctions hold for Corelli and his contemporaries. Allsop makes a revisionist thesis out of the fact that Corelli's Opp. 1 & 3 and other prints do not bear the label da chiesa, and he complicatedly attempts to improve upon or correct late-Seicento habits of genre designation. But there is ample evidence that composers considered such unmarked sonatas to be of the church style. Beyond the stylistic evidence presented here, my review quotes an explicit instance of that very assumption on the part of Giovanni Bononcini in 1685.

4. Modes, again

4.1 The third and final point of disagreement set forth in Allsop's response concerns modal theory and its relationship to Corelli's music. In this case, because Allsop's reply does not actually address the evidence or arguments of my review, I should restate my views. My objection to Allsop's work stems from his attempt to explicate Corelli's music primarily according to the twelve-mode theory of Giovanni Maria Bononcini's Musico prattico (1673). Corelli left no clues apart from his compositions concerning his ideas on tonal organization, and Allsop relies on what he finds in the music and how these findings are corroborated in Bononcini—and, when not explained by Bononcini—by Lorenzo Penna and Angelo Berardi. The most immediate problem for Allsop is the existence of a plurality of modal theories during the late Seicento: Bononcini set forth twelve modes defined strictly according to interval species and finals;22 but Penna, Li primi albori musicali (1672), enumerated only eight modes which are, moreover, defined by different criteria from Bononcini's;23 Berardi, Corelli's closest contemporary, who mentioned the composer in one of his treatises, detailed twelve modes in his Miscellanea musicale (1689) and Il perchè musicale (1693), but these too are distinct in several features from those of Bononcini.24

4.2 Three theorists—three modal theories. Allsop smooths over this problem by creating a single theory out of parts from each of the three: he uses Bononcini's modal categories and Penna and Berardi's cadence patterns (whose respective systems for identifying the mode by means of specific cadence points are not mutually compatible). In short, Allsop makes the fatal assumption that he can cobble together a single theory out of the three authors and then use this late twentieth-century pasticcio with the authority of a seventeenth-century theorist. In doing so, he rides roughshod over the theorists closest to Corelli by employing a contrived theory that he claims is representative of the period.

4.3 His concluding assertion that "Corelli and his contemporaries knew best how to classify their own music, and for that matter how to describe the theoretical basis of their own methods" is untenable: Corelli made no modal-theoretical pronouncements, and his contemporaries made none about him. Allsop instead fabricates a modal system that misrepresents both late-Seicento theory and instrumental practice. An example of such fabrication is Allsop's Table 6.6 Cadences Proper to the Tones (p. 103), which—although introduced with undocumented references to Bononcini, Penna, and Berardi—corresponds only to the clausulae harmoniche in Berardi's Il perchè musicale (1693). But Berardi's cadences conflict with Penna's. Bononcini, in his own modal duos, follows neither the prescriptions of Berardi nor Penna; nor does he make a listing of cadences for the modes.

4.4 Allsop's arguments thus explicate not late-Seicento theory, but Allsop's own; yet he is so certain of his position that he does not bother to address the evidence, much less the arguments, presented in my review. There I reproduce Bononcini's modal duo in mode 12 to illustrate how Allsop departs from Bononcini in the attribution of that mode to Corelli's Op. 3, Nº 8. I then show how Allsop mis-analyzes Berardi's mode 12 cadences, which further weakens Allsop's modal analysis of Corelli. I conclude by furnishing examples from Adriano Banchieri and Zaccaria Tevo—author of Il Musico Testore (1706) and Corelli's exact contemporary—that display the very characteristics Allsop cites as mode 12, but which bear the designation of quinto tuono within a system of eight tones that are based on the features of the psalm tones. (My focus on Allsop's putative mode 12 might seem narrowly construed, except that he goes into detail in that one case only.)

4.5 Allsop responds to none of this, and his parting comment on modal theory illustrates only the problems with his perspective on the matter: "As Barnett is bold enough to dismiss the explanations of Corelli's contemporaries and associates it is hardly surprising that he will not accept mine based on them."25 In short, to disagree with Allsop is to disagree with Corelli and company. I actually make no such dismissal as Allsop claims, but I am bold enough to introduce evidence from Corelli's contemporaries and associates that refutes Allsop's theory.

5. Conclusion

5.1 This last point raises a larger issue of perspective. At various times in his response, Allsop assumes an authority that I question: presumably as Corelli's representative, he defends the composer against the "myths" and "anachronisms" imposed by others, myself in particular. One instance concerns Corelli's Op. 5 where Allsop finds fault with a categorization he imagines I might make of a piece I neither mention nor refer to in my review:

As it happens, Barnett overstates his case, since in Corelli's Op. 5 a 'cimbalo' is suggested for the Parte prima which he (but not Corelli!) would presumably categorise as 'da chiesa'. (emphasis added)

This amounts to a caricature derived from my actual statements on scoring and genre; but, more significantly, it construes my arguments as contradictions of Corelli's own views rather than Allsop's. Neither Allsop nor I can claim such authority in the interpretation of the evidence. To do so undermines the spirit of dialogue and debate between scholars that leads to new insights and raises further questions. In the spirit of ongoing inquiry and debate, I commend Allsop for calling received wisdom into question in his Corelli monograph. And in that same spirit, both here and in my review, I offer my criticisms of Allsop's own conclusions.

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