The Concertos

Abstract ‘GEMINIANI with all his harmonica! abilities, was so circumscribed in his invention, that he was obliged to have recourse to all the arts of musical cookery, not to call it quackery, for materials to publish.’ The charge that Burney levels against the composer refers to his alleged lack of imagination, which caused him to recycle the same compositions several times over. Indeed, if we exclude all his numerous elaborations and transcriptions, the musical output of Geminiani seems rather exiguous: two sets of violin sonatas (Opp. I and N), one of cello sonatas (Op. V), three of Concerti grossi (Opp. II, ill, and VII), The Inchanted Forrest, and the compositions published in his treatises. Nevertheless, the same reproof could be addressed to Corelli and several other contemporary composers of note. Burney’s irritation probably stemmed from the disproportion between the success of Geminiani in England, where he had no rivals in the instrumental domain and was considered the equal of Handel, and the reason for this same success, which was almost entirely connected with his Op. ill concertos. His other compositions, with few exceptions, were rarely performed and little appreciated; in contrast, his Op. ill enjoyed an extraordinarily wide circulation, which even rivalled that of the celebrated works of Corelli. ‘Handel, Geminiani & Corelli’, Burney notes elsewhere, ‘were the sole Divinities of my Youth, but I was drawn off from their exclusive worship before I was 20, by keeping company with travelled & heterodox gentlemen, who were partial to the Music of more modem composers whom they had heard in Italy.’ The openmindedness of the young Burney was an exception in contemporary English musical circles, which in the years around the middle of the eighteenth century remained faithful to Corelli and Geminiani and showed little interest in what was going on beyond the English Channel.