The "Stylized" Dance in Italian Sonatas of the late Baroque (original) (raw)

2006, De Musica Disserenda

The “Stylized” Dance in Italian Sonatas of the late Baroque Michael Talbot Taking as its main points of reference the “Manchester” violin sonatas of Vivaldi (c. 1726) and the Trattenimenti armonici per camera, Op. 6 (c. 1712), of Albinoni, the paper argues that the highly variable nature of movements bearing a given dance title in the Italian sonata of the late Baroque cannot be fully explained by the traditional reference to their “stylization” or “idealization”. The adoption of binary form also by abstract movements during the seventeenth century, a trend that gathered momentum after 1700, created a borderland in which the composer had a degree of choice in deciding whether to use, or not to use, dance titles. The “Manchester” sonatas employ dance titles even in cases where the title has clearly been added post factum. The Trattenimenti armonici, in contrast, do not use them even when a clear dance character is present. To explain this apparently contradictory situation, the concept of “stylised” dances needs to be complemented by another concept: that of using dance titles as “paratexts” (a term coined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette). A paratext is a description external to the text proper that aims to guide the reception of the piece by the consumer (which in music embraces both the executant and the listener). Because of the association of the “standard” dances (allemanda, corrente, sarabanda, giga, gavotta) with the courtly lifestyle, the inclination among composers was to retain or invent dance titles for music destined for a courtly milieu. Conversely, for music aimed at a bourgeois market or intended for possible performance in church, dance titles were less appropriate. The paper ends with the reflection that Genette’s concept of the paratext, which has an obvious connection to Jeffrey Kallberg’s idea of the “generic contract”, has wide relevance to the study of music.