Concerto

• 1. Introduction

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  The concerto began not as an instrumental showpiece but as a genre of vocal music. In 1587, the very first compositions bearing the title "concerto" appeared in a music print. The word itself comes from the Italian for accord or gathering, though its Latin root, concertare, points toward something more combative: competition, battle. That tension between cooperation and contest has never quite left the form.

  What transforms a piece of music into a concerto? Why did the form explode outward from Italy in the late Baroque period and never stop expanding? How did composers take the concerto from a sacred choral tradition and end up, centuries later, writing one for a rock band? These are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. From Church to Concert Hall

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  Giovanni Gabrieli's "In Ecclesiis" and Heinrich Schütz's "Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich" stand as early examples of the concerto in its original form. In the 17th century, sacred works combining voices and orchestra carried the concerto label as a matter of course. Johann Sebastian Bach himself titled many of his works "concerto" that we now know as cantatas.

  The distinction that mattered was independence. Renaissance practice had instruments merely doubling what the voices sang. These early concertos gave the instruments their own parts, their own voice. That idea of separate forces in dialogue is the seed from which everything that follows grows.

  The shift toward purely instrumental music came gradually, carried by Italian composers. Arcangelo Corelli developed the concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists called the concertino played against a larger ensemble. His concertino was typically two violins, a cello, and basso continuo. The form invited a kind of musical argument: the few against the many, neither dominating the other for long.

• 3. Vivaldi and the Baroque Explosion

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  Antonio Vivaldi wrote hundreds of violin concertos and is the composer most associated with the Baroque form reaching its full power. His output for a single instrument across collections including L'estro armonico, La stravaganza, and Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione shows a composer essentially inventing the vocabulary of solo concerto writing in real time.

  In J. S. Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, the concertino is a flute, a violin, and a harpsichord. The harpsichord is a featured solo instrument but also sometimes joins the larger ensemble as a continuo keyboard. Bach also adapted a concerto for four violins by Vivaldi into a concerto for four harpsichords, a sign of how composers across Europe were watching the Italian example closely. The practice was explicitly described as composing all'Italiana, in the Italian fashion.

  Keyboard concertos remained comparatively rare in the Baroque period. George Frideric Handel wrote twelve organ concertos and Bach wrote thirteen harpsichord concertos. Those figures stand out precisely because keyboard soloists were the exception, not the rule, before the piano arrived.

• 4. The Classical Pivot

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  The sons of Johann Sebastian Bach serve as the bridge between Baroque and Classical concerto writing. C. P. E. Bach's keyboard concertos include virtuosic solo writing with movements that run into one another without a break and thematic references that cross between movements. Mozart, as a child, arranged keyboard versions of sonatas by composers who are now little known, and then arranged three sonata movements by Johann Christian Bach.

  Mozart wrote five violin concertos, all but the first in 1775. He also produced 27 piano concertos, of which the last 17 are particularly valued. By the time he was twenty, Mozart had developed the concerto ritornello to a point where the orchestra could present five or six sharply contrasted themes before the soloist entered to work through the material.

  Beethoven wrote five piano concertos and one violin concerto, the latter remaining obscure until violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim revealed it as a masterpiece in a performance on the 27th of May 1844. Haydn's concerto for double bass was lost to history in the fire of Eszterháza in 1779. What survived points to how wide the classical repertoire might have grown, had circumstance allowed it.

• 5. The Romantic Virtuoso

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  Baroque concertos typically lasted around ten minutes in performance. Beethoven's concertos could run half an hour or longer. That expansion was not merely about time; it reflected a shift in what the concerto was for. The 19th century turned it into a primary vehicle for virtuosic display, with soloist and orchestra growing equally more ambitious.

  Franz Liszt's mastery of piano technique was compared to Paganini's mastery of the violin. His two piano concertos left a lasting impression on how composers thought about the instrument, influencing both Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose First Piano Concerto opens with a rich chordal passage that became one of the best-known moments in the repertoire.

  Johannes Brahms wrote a Double Concerto for violin and cello, a rare example of two soloists sharing equal weight. His Second Piano Concerto in B major, published in 1881, has four movements and is written at a larger scale than any earlier concerto, symphonic in its proportions. Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote four piano concertos between 1891 and 1926; his Second and Third became among the most frequently performed in the piano repertoire.

  The cello rose steadily through the Romantic period. Brahms's Double Concerto contributed to that trajectory, and Antonin Dvorak's cello concerto came to be regarded as one of the finest examples from the era. The instrument that had long served as the bass voice of the string section was now a lead voice.

• 6. Expansion and Experiment

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  Mstislav Rostropovich's technique and playing prompted dozens of composers to write for him. The works that resulted include Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto, Dmitri Shostakovich's two cello concertos, Benjamin Britten's Cello-Symphony, Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain..., and Witold Lutoslawski's cello concerto, among many others. His influence on 20th-century cello writing was singular.

  The 20th century also saw composers reach past the standard orchestral instruments entirely. Paul Hindemith wrote a Concerto for Trautonium and String Orchestra in 1931. Andre Jolivet wrote a Concerto of Ondes Martenot in 1947. Tan Dun produced a Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra in 1998. John Serry Sr. wrote a Concerto in C Major for Bassetti Accordion in 1966. Deep Purple recorded a Concerto for Group and Orchestra, placing a rock band in the role of soloist.

  Schoenberg and Stravinsky both wrote violin concertos. The material in Schoenberg's concerto, like that in Alban Berg's, is organized by the twelve-tone serial method. Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, completed in 1945, inverted the standard relationship entirely: the orchestra itself functions as the virtuosic force, with no single soloist at the center. Walter Piston, Zoltan Kodaly, Michael Tippett, and Elliott Carter followed with their own concertos for orchestra.

  The tradition of the composer-performer writing concertos for personal performance, once common, has continued through figures such as Daniil Trifonov. Peter Maxwell Davies's series of Strathclyde Concertos extended the solo repertoire to instruments that had rarely occupied that central role, including instruments from the 9th Strathclyde Concerto: piccolo, alto flute, cor anglais, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, and string orchestra together.