Giuseppe Torelli e le musiche oboistiche per la Cappella Musicale di San Petronio

Johann Joachim Quantz, in his Versuch einer Anweisung, die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752), credited Giuseppe Torelli with the invention of the concerto form. Detailed historical research has limited the reliability of this old and influential assumption. Nevertheless, the contribution of the Veronese composer to the development of the Baroque concerto remains undeniable. It can be summarized as the fashioning of a new kind of musical writing – ritornello form, solo‒tutti alternation, thematic differentiation of instrumental groups, a tendency towards homorhythmic textures – which marked the transition from 17th-century polychoral sonata to the mature concerto. In addition to this, there is a preference for the trumpet as solo instrument: a stylistic feature of Torelli’s Bolognese period, who was employed on several occasions between 1684 and 1709 by the Cappella musicale of San Petronio. This well-established historiographical picture, however, is not entirely accurate. Only part of Torelli’s oeuvre was published during his lifetime (Op. 1-6; Op. 8 is posthumous), while a large number of manuscript pieces remain unpublished and difficult to date. Among them are a dozen works from the last Bolognese period (1701-09), in which the oboe stands out as a concertante instrument. This nucleus of compositions – variously labelled as ‘Concerto’, ‘Sonata’, ‘Sinfonia’ – displays innovative features with regard not only to instrumentation but also to its morphological-stylistic arrangement. The variability of definition also suggests cross-fertilization of genres, contexts and functions. A careful analysis of these works can implement a more complete definition of the Torellian production framework and, more generally, of the instrumental output of the Bolognese School.