CONCERTO

plural concerti, or concertos since about 1750, a musical composition for instruments in which a solo instrument is set off against an orchestral ensemble. The soloist and ensemble are related to each other by alternation, competition, and combination. In this sense the concerto, like the symphony or the string quartet, may be seen as a special case of the musical genre embraced by the term sonata. Like the sonata and symphony, the concerto is typically a cycle of several contrasting movements integrated tonally and often thematically. The individual movements are usually based on certain recognized designs, including sonata form, A B A (the letters refer to large distinct musical sections), variations, and rondo (such as A B A C A). But the concerto tends to differ from the sonata, too, in certain ways that set it apart. Thus, in the sonata form of the concerto's first movement, the exposition often remains in the tonic key while played by the entire orchestra the first time through. The expected departure to a nearly related key and the introduction of the soloist are reserved to a characteristically more elaborate repetition of the exposition. Moreover, to meet a felt need for a more brilliant ending in the same movement, the concerto provides or at least invites an improvised cadenza near the end of the movementan extended, free flourish that may go on for as long as several minutes. A shorter cadenza may also occur at a strategic point in one or more of the other movements. In addition, the concerto has followed much more consistently than the sonata the plan of three movements, in the order fastslowfast. The second movement leads, often without pause, into the finale, or last movement, and the finale has shown a more consistent preference for the rondo design. But, importantly, all of these distinctions of musical form are secondary to the dialogue inherent in the concerto's interrelationship of soloist and orchestra. This dialogue influences the very nature of the solo part by almost forcing the soloist into a virtuoso's role so that he can compete on an equal footing with his adversary, the orchestra. The dialogue, furthermore, influences not only the construction of individual musical phrases but also the musical textures chosen. In addition, it affects the ways of developing musical material (e.g., themes, rhythms) according to the logic of musical form, and even the broader blocking off of sections within forms, as in the concerto's repeated exposition, with its sections for full orchestra (tutti) and soloist. The literature of the concerto since 1750 is extensive in all categories, although the standard repertoire is limited to scarcely more than a few works for each main solo instrument. Being a prime ingredient of popular concert fare, the concerto is subject, much as is opera, to the exigencies of the box office. The film and phonograph industries have helped further to give disproportionate promience to a few highly successful and undeniably effective examples like those for piano by the Norwegian Edvard Grieg (in A minor) and the Russians Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (in B flat minor) and Sergey Rachmaninoff (in C minor). Taking music's commonly accepted eras for its framework, this examination of the concerto starts in the late Renaissance (16th century), with the origins and first uses of the term. It proceeds to the Baroque era (about 1580 to 1750), which was the first main era of the concerto, including the vocal-instrumental concerto in the late 16th and 17th centuries and, especially, the concerto grosso in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The discussion progresses next to the Classical era (about 1730 to 1830) and the Romantic era (about 1790 to 1915), which mark successive though dissimilar heydays of the solo concerto partially discussed above. Lastly it reaches the modern era (from about 1890), which has witnessed further vitality in the solo concerto and a renaissance of the older concerto grosso principle of contrasting instrumental groups. Within each era examined, the prime considerations of the discussion are the meanings of concerto as then current; the concerto's place in the social life of the time; its scoring, or particular use of musical instruments and voices; its means of achieving opposition and contrast (if any); its musical structure; and its output by chief regions and masters. plural Concerti, or Concertos, a musical composition for instruments in which a solo instrument is set off against an orchestral ensemble. They interrelate by alternating, competing, or combining. The forerunners of the concerto were the concerti grossi of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in which a group of players were set off from another, larger group. The chief proponents of this genre were Arcangelo Corelli and George Frideric Handel, who both wrote extensively in the form. In his famous Brandenburg concertos, Johann Sebastian Bach introduced solo instruments, and Antonio Vivaldi and Handel also began writing concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, developing the three-movement form, which became standard. Vivaldi introduced virtuoso solos and expressive passages, which were followed by his successors. Bach's sons and their contemporaries carried on the tradition until the appearance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose 27 piano concertos remain a unique contribution to the genre in both their command of form and their expressive range. The works became longer and more complex than they had been in the Baroque era, with a greater daring in harmony and in the treatment of the solo instrument. Though Mozart was a greatly accomplished player himself, display is not the most significant part of his concerto writing. Nor is it in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, who carried the innovations of Mozart even further in his five piano concertos and one violin concerto. In the works of both Mozart and Beethoven, the first movement usually conforms to sonata form (though highly varied), the second tends to have an ABA form, sometimes with episodes, and the finale is customarily a rondo. In the Romantic era the concerto took on an increasingly virtuoso character. Robert Schumann (one piano concerto) and Johannes Brahms (two for piano, one for violin, and one for violin and cello) considerably expanded the role of the orchestra, and Felix Mendelssohn and to a greater extent Frdric Chopin and Franz Liszt not only loosened the form of the concerto but also increased the role of the soloist. Niccol Paganini did a similar service for the violin in his concertos for his chosen instrument. Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's three concertos for the piano and one for the violin are conceived on idiosyncratic lines, at once rhetorical and impassioned, imbued with the composer's particular kind of melancholy, and structurally fairly free. Edvard Grieg and Sergey Rachmaninoff chose a similar approach, original in concept yet conforming largely to the structure of the Romantic concerto as conceived by their predecessors. Edward Elgar's violin and cello concertos, though written in the 20th century, conform to the Brahmsian ethic, though they are imbued with a specifically English feeling. More recently Bla Bartk, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Dmitry Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, and Sir Michael Tippett have been the most prominent contributors to the concerto. As in other spheres of music, it has been broadly adapted in the present century to many differing modes of composition. Often the solo instrument is set in opposition to the orchestra or instrumental ensemble, and the piano has been used more percussively than in the past. In still more recent times, the musical term concerto has often been bypassed to allow the composer even greater freedom in writing for solo instrument and orchestra. Elliott Carter, Thea Musgrave, Hans Werner Henze, and Alexander Goehr, however, have usually kept the term, even if they have each interpreted the form in private ways. Additional reading Abraham Veinus, The Concerto, rev. ed. (1964), the only broad survey in English, with good knowledge of the subject but generally not well documented; David Boyden, When Is a Concerto Not a Concerto? in the Musical Quarterly,43:220232 (1957), an essential clarification of the word itself; Arnold Schering, Geschichte des Instrumentalkonzerts bis auf die Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (1927), the principal survey in any language, although now somewhat outdated and inadequate; Hans Engel, Die Entwicklung des deutschen Klavierkonzerts von Mozart bis Liszt, 2 parts (1927), the main survey of its topic, completed by Theophil Stengel, Die Entwicklung des Klavierkonzerts von Liszt bis zur Gegenwart (1931); Norman Carrell, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (1963), an analytic discussion, well illustrated by examples and cuts; C.M. Girdlestone, Mozart's Piano Concertos (1948), separate analytic chapters on each of the main concerti; Ralph Hill (ed.), The Concerto (1961), an anthology of 29 articles primarily on the Romantic and Modern concerto; A.J.B. Hutchings, The Baroque Concerto (1961), inadequately documented and organized, but keen and authoritative in its observations; Pippa Drummond, The German Concerto: Five Eighteenth-Century Studies (1980), a summary of current research on five composers.