Francesco Geminiani: (1687-1762).

Hill, John Walter

This is the first modern study of the life and works of Francesco Geminiani, a student of Arcangelo Corelli and London colleague of George Frideric Handel, who is well known by name but whose music has remained relatively little explored or performed in our times. The book, consisting of a brief biography, reception history, stylistic study, and thematic catalogue, is a "very slightly abridged" and updated version of the author's doctoral thesis (University of Liverpool, 1990).

Geminiani's father was a violinist in the Cappella Palatina of Lucca with earlier connections to Rome. At his death in 1707 Francesco took his place, but after two years he left, apparently for Rome, although Enrico Careri has found no documentary evidence that helps specify the dates of Geminiani's studies with Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Carlo Ambrogio Lonati there or for his brief stay in Naples.

Geminiani arrived in London in 1714 according to the eighteenth-century writer Charles Burney, who, along with contemporary John Hawkins, is still the source of most of the information about the composer's first two decades there. A few newspaper notices and unpublished letters by aristocrats in the circles of his patrons adds somewhat to the picture of Geminiani's later life, when he became an art dealer, as he declined in importance as performer and composer. But the overall portrait of the composer remains essentially as Burney and Hawkins left it.

In addition to those two, Careri quotes extensively from the written opinions of Charles Avison, John Potter, Jean-Adam de Sere, William Hayes, Charles Henri Blainville, Francesco Maria Veracini, Thomas Busby, and a few modern commentators, who are often influenced by those earliest evaluations.

Geminiani's reputation as a composer during his lifetime rested principally upon his Op. 3 concerti grossi, which, along with the Opp. 2 and 7, form the subject of the author's first chapter on the music. The Opp. 2 and 3, both published in 1732, are considered together: number and types of movements, movement forms (e.g., ritornello form versus "spontaneous germination"), phrase structure, rhythmic variety, harmonic balance, and orchestration. The Op. 7 of 1747 is discussed separately because of its experimental character and self-conscious French influences.

Careri next considers the continuo-accompanied solo sonatas, Opp. 1, 4, and 5. The first of these, published in 1716, is examined largely in the light of its similarities and differences with Corelli's Op. 5, and to a lesser degree in comparison with works by other composers of Geminiani's generation, mostly as to such readily verifiable features as quotation of the opening material in the dominant at the beginning of the second reprise or extension of the violin's range. In the Op. 4 sonatas of 1739, Geminiani provides the elaborate, written-out ornamental passagework that was the hallmark of the galant style of that and the succeeding decade. The new interest in thematic recapitulation and simplified harmonic style shown in these works are additional updated features. The Op. 5 (1747) cello sonatas generally follow the style of the previous set for violin.

Geminiani's orchestral music for the ballet-pantomime The Inchanted Forrest is given a chapter of its own. The work, which was first performed in Paris, 1754, had five acts, based on episodes taken from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. For it, Geminiani supplied eighteen movements ranging in length from a single measure to 112 bars, at least in the concert arrangement of the music, which is what survives. Even in this arrangement, however, many of the movements clearly relate to the action, implied passions, and scenic atmospheres of the poem and, implicitly, of the pantomime, using, for the most part, the vocabulary of conventions native to Italian opera seria of the first half of the eighteenth century.

Careri's final chapter on the music concerns Geminiani's many reworkings and transcriptions of his own and Corelli's music, which greatly outnumber his wholly original compositions. Here the author performs the useful service of sorting out the multiple dependencies, but he also provides some interesting insights into Geminiani's growth as a composer by analyzing his revisions, particularly his simplifications and rationalizations, in some detail.

Next Careri considers Geminiani's six treatises, published between 1748 and 1760. Characterizing them as "little more than practical manuals for musicians" (p. 161), the author nevertheless shows that they can be useful for the reconstruction of eighteenth-century performing practices, particularly in the areas of embellishment, dynamic shading, vibrato, and continuo accompaniment. In addition, Geminiani's Guida Armonica, written prior to 1740 but published around 1751-53, is one of the first practical and systematic guides to chordal syntax, providing the student with over two thousand harmonic tropes, each consisting of between three and five notes of figured bass, which could be connected according to a system of indexing keys to form the basis of passages and movements of almost any length, when given rhythmic form and fitted out with appropriate melodic lines.

A very short discussion of Geminiani's few vocal compositions leads to the author's brief conclusions, in which he apologizes for the remaining biographical and bibliographical lacunae and calls for a critical editions of Geminiani's most important compositions as a stimulus for further analysis and performance. One must agree that this well summarizes what remains to be done.

JOHN WALTER HILL University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign