CONCERTATO STYLE

musical style characterized by the opposition of two often-unequal groups of instruments or voices. The term is derived from the Latin concertare, to compete, a fact that suggests the essence of the style, the competition between different performing groups. The advent of the concertato style took place in Venice during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. There, the polychoral music (using two or more choirs) of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli made frequent use of the alternation between various combinations of singers and instrumentalists, thus producing novel antiphonal effects (i.e., of alternating groups of performers) in the spacious Cathedral of St. Mark. These compositions (which were occasionally entitled concerti) demonstrate those traitssimple homophonic (chordal) texture, strong declamatory rhythm, varied alternation and combination of blocks of soundthat became prominent in Baroque instrumental and choral music. The concertato style continued throughout the early 17th century and is exemplified by the choral works of the Italians Lodovico Viadana, Adriano Banchieri, and Orazio Benevoli; the German Heinrich Schtz; and others. The aesthetic of this style was taken over in the purely instrumental mid-Baroque concerto grosso, in which a large body of players (ripieno, or tutti) alternates with a small group of soloists (concertino).