Concertos & Sonatas for Three Violins

Giovanni Battista Buonamente (circa 1595–1642)
Sonata seconda a tre violini
from Sonate, et canzoni a due, tre, quattro, cinque, et a sei voci, libro sesto (1636)

Marco Uccellini (circa 1603–1680)
Sinfonia Nona à tre violini
from Sinfonici concerti brevi e facili, Opus 9 (1667)

Biagio Marini (1594–1663)
Sonata in Ecco con tre violini
from Opus 8

A captivating, imaginative, and evocative style of compositions for violin (or multiple violins) and continuo, developed at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Italy, brings to the foreground the topic of florid passagework in vocal and instrumental compositions. For centuries, voices and instruments passed between themselves various compositional and expressive traits, almost always reflecting the evolution of increasing virtuosity. By 1600, the capabilities of instruments and their performers' abilities to incorporate elaborate ornamentation had equaled if not superseded the technical prowess of vocalists. In fact, the first decades of the Baroque era are essentially defined by the fioritura, or florid embellishment that was either notated by composers or improvised in performance. But the truly essential characteristic of that floridity is that it was highly expressive of a particular mood or affect, and not intended to be heard as showy or gymnastic.

Giovanni Battista Buonamente began his professional career in service to the House of Gonzaga in Mantua, followed by serving the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in Vienna. He performed at the coronation of Ferdinand III in Prague in 1627, before relocating to Parma where he was the violinist at the Madonna della Steccata church. Then moving on to Assisi in 1633, he served as maestro di cappella. The Sonata seconda a tre violini is hauntingly beautiful and alternates between a sweet conversation of sorts among the violins that gives way to energetic passages. Dance-like interpolations, almost joyful in nature, eventually return to the opening ascending and descending melodic exchange before another lively section concludes with just one note in the last bar, played only by continuo.

Marco Uccellini, like Buonamente, was also a violinist as well as a composer. It is likely that he studied under Buonamente in Assisi at the Basilica of Saint Francis. Following in his teacher’s footsteps, he enjoyed a series of appointments, first in Modena where he was well rewarded for his talents, receiving almost eight times the salary of other violinists at the Este court. And it was through the support of the Este family that he found his subsequent position in Parma, where he composed opera and ballet, none of which has survived. Uccellini’s Sinfonia Nona a tre violini, like his other sonatas for violin(s) and continuo, represents the style that would become an idiomatic standard of the early Italian Baroque. This particular sonata is unusually highly structured. In fact, it is in the “binary” form of A-A-B-B wherein the first half is repeated in its entirety before the second half follows suit, and each of those halves are composed in two contrasting sections.

Biagio Marini was known as a virtuoso violinist. Born in Brescia, his travels took him to Brussels, Düsseldorf, Venice, Padua, Parma, Ferrara, Milan, Bergamo, and then back to his hometown of Brescia. Not only a busy traveler, his personal life was busy, too: He married three times and fathered at least five children. His compositions, especially for violin, are innovative, incorporating several “special effects,” including double and triple stops and the technique of retuning the violin’s strings (known as scordatura) to create greater sonority from the instrument. In the Sonata in Ecco con tre violini, the primary violinist appears to be performing a complex solo sonata until, quite surprisingly, two violins begin to echo the ends of some phrases. Marini's dramatic intention is described quite literally in the surviving score which indicates for the second violinist (the first echo), “Chi sona questa parte non deve esser visto” (“Whoever plays this part must not be seen”), and even more emphatically for the third violinist (the second echo), “Quello che suona non deve esser visto” (“What is heard is not to be seen”).