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unpublished letters by aristocrats in the circles of his patrons adds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