The Italian Legacy

Abstract Sonaten made specific reference to the master on their title-pages. The assumption that, given this general acclaim, instmmental composers could hardly have failed to fall under his all powerful influence has received much support over the centuries. Hawkins considered that he ‘had introduced a style which all the composers of Italy affected to imitate: as Corelli formed it, it was chaste, sober, and elegant, but with his imitators it degenerated into dulness’,2 while Newman concluded that ‘the influence of Corelli, direct or indirect, and the inevitable mutations of his styles and forms that began even before he died, define the most significant trends of the sonata during the late Baroque Era’.3 Such a categorical statement begs many questions. If this influence began before Corelli’s death, when precisely? Did the publication of Op.