Violin music in mid-18th-century Madrid: Contexts, genres, style stars

Résumé

The 18th century was key for the dissemination and consolidation of a new way of playing and composing for the violin all over Europe. To date, research on specific composers and genres have been carried out, but global studies on the use of this instrument in specific cities are scarce. In the case of Madrid, some investigations in Spanish pay attention to the increase of violin compositions that took place around the 1750s, and some modern music editions exist. Nevertheless, neither the style of this music nor the process that led to its composition and consumption have been studied in depth. In addition, this repertoire is virtually invisible in the international literature. This study offers for the first time a global view of the violin repertoire composed and performed in Madrid between ca. 1730 and ca. 1776, discussing its relative importance in national and international contexts. Departing from over 170 musical sources, of which over forty were virtually unknown to date, three main lines of research are combined: the composition and performance contexts, the shaping of musical genres and the analysis of the style. The study is completed with three appendices that include descriptions of the located musical sources, the critical edition of eight unpublished works and a video showing the recuperation of one of them for performance nowadays. In the period studied here, the most popular violin genres in Madrid were the violin sonata and the trio for two violins and accompaniment. There was also demand for violin duets, small ensemble overtures, solo concertos and ensemble concertos. The located works, which amount to 163 in total, were composed by twenty different composers. This includes roughly the same number of Italians (such as Mauro D'Alay and Francesco Montali) and Spaniards (such as Jose Herrando), among other nationalities. These musicians worked for prestigious institutions (e.g. the Royal Chapel) and private patrons, including members of the royal family (e.g. Elisabetta Farnese), other members of the royal court (e.g. Farinelli), aristocrats (e.g. the XII Duke of Alba) and foreign diplomats (e.g. the Swedish Baron Carl Leuhusen). The systematic analysis of these 163 works (which contain over 400 movements in total) shows the assimilation in Madrid of pan-European compositional trends, such as the use of standardized multi-movement cycles, dance topics, an idiomatic instrumental technique and a melodic writing in the galant style. The main models for these compositions seem to have been Italian, as was usual in other European capitals. Parallels are detected not only with Arcangelo Corelli, whose reception in Spain was already known to some extent, but also with other composers whose impact in this country had not been researched before, such as Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Pietro Antonio Locatelli and Giovanni Battista Sammartini. This stylistic similarity confirms that the repertoire that was in fashion internationally was introduced in Madrid shortly after its composition, as the inventories of local private libraries show since the 1730s. The dance music that was performed on the violin in mid-18th-century Madrid is also studied. Its models were mainly French: minuets and contredanses predominate. This repertoire, normally left in a secondary position in the studies on instrumental music, had, however, a great social importance at the time. In fact, dance music was very demanded both in public and private contexts, and it was central for the dissemination of violin performance among the middle classes. In 1760, the buyers of violin publications in the city were around 200 people that consumed not only dance pieces, but also didactic treatises and chamber works. Before 1776 fifteen collections of sonatas, duets and trios for violins were published in Madrid, despite the scarce printing of instrumental music in Spain. Moreover, some collections of violin music by composers based in the Spanish capital were published in London and Paris. This intense assimilation of new styles, genres and music-consumption practices paved the way for a deeper integration of the Spanish capital in the European music market, which was intensified from 1770 onwards. Thus, violin music played a central role in the updating of the instrumental music cultivated in Spain during the so-called 'central 18th century', and portrays Madrid as a dynamic musical centre, aware of the latest international trends. In addition, this study sheds new light on the circulation of violin repertoire between Spain and other European countries, especially Italy, but also Germany or Sweden, further away from its scope of political-cultural influence. The violin music composed in Madrid also relatively quickly reached some countries of Latin America, such as Bolivia and Mexico; this opens up new avenues of research.