As the vocal aria was the result of the simple folk-song
combined with the intense craving of song's master molders for
individual expression, so instrumental music striving to walk alone,
without support from words, gained vital elements through the discovery
that various phases of mental disposition might be indicated by
alternating dance tunes differing in rhythm and movement, according to
Nature's own law of contrasts. That unity of purpose was essential to
the effectiveness of the diversity was instinctively discerned.
The touch of authority was given to this kind of music, during the last
two decades of the seventeenth century, by Arcangelo Corelli when he
presented in the camera, or private apartment, of Cardinal Ottoboni's
palace, in Rome, his idealized dance groups, thoroughly united by
harmony of mood, yet affording a wholly new tone-picture of this mood in
each of several movements. These compositions were usually written for
the harpsichord and perhaps three instruments of the viol order, the
master himself playing the leading melody on the violin.
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