The Concerto Through Time: The Baroque Era (1650-1750)
What Is a Concerto?
The word ‘concerto’ comes from the Italian for ‘to contend’ or ‘to bring together’, and both meanings matter. A concerto is a piece for one or more solo instruments set against a larger instrumental group, and the drama of the genre comes from the constant dialogue between them — sometimes competing, sometimes agreeing, sometimes handing ideas back and forth. Across the four periods studied in this area of study, that basic relationship stays the same, but everything around it changes hugely: the size of the orchestra, the instruments chosen as soloists, the length and structure of the movements, the level of technical difficulty expected of the player, and even where the music was performed and who paid for it.
In your listening exam you may be asked to identify features that place an extract in a particular period, so it helps to think of the concerto’s history as a timeline with four clear stops: the Baroque solo concerto and concerto grosso (roughly 1650–1750), the Classical concerto (about 1750–1820), and the Romantic concerto (about 1820–1910). This lesson focuses entirely on the first of those stops, because Baroque practice set up conventions — particularly ritornello form and the basso continuo — that later composers would either follow or deliberately break away from.
A concerto always involves a soloist (or small group of soloists) set against a larger ensemble. The Baroque solo concerto uses one soloist against the orchestra; the concerto grosso uses a small group of soloists, called the concertino, against the full body of players, called the ripieno or tutti.
The Baroque World: Courts, Churches and Small Orchestras
Baroque music was written for specific patrons rather than for a paying public in the way we might imagine today. Composers were employed by wealthy aristocratic courts or by churches, and their music had to suit the room it was written for. Antonio Vivaldi spent much of his career at the Ospedale della Pietà, a charitable institution in Venice for orphaned and abandoned girls, where he taught the resident orchestra and wrote a huge quantity of concertos for its talented young musicians to perform in the institution’s chapel. Johann Sebastian Bach worked for church authorities in Leipzig and, earlier in his career, for aristocratic patrons such as Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen; in 1721 he also sent a set of six concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg hoping to win his patronage, though the Margrave never employed him. Arcangelo Corelli worked in Rome under the patronage of cardinals and princes who hosted private concerts in their palazzos.
Because performing spaces were relatively small — a chapel, a court chamber, a cardinal’s salon — the orchestras used were modest by later standards. A typical Baroque string orchestra consisted of first and second violins, violas, cellos and double basses, with a keyboard instrument providing the harmonic foundation. There was no need for the large wind and brass sections or the huge string body that Romantic composers would later demand, because the venues, budgets and expectations of Baroque patrons simply did not require them.
The Concerto Grosso: Corelli and the Concertino versus Ripieno
The concerto grosso was the dominant concerto type in the earliest Baroque period, and Arcangelo Corelli is usually credited with establishing its conventions. In a concerto grosso the ensemble is divided into two groups: the concertino, a small team of soloists (commonly two violins and a cello), and the ripieno (or tutti), the larger body of strings and continuo. The music constantly alternates between these two forces, contrasting the light, detailed texture of the concertino with the fuller, weightier sound of the ripieno joining in. This creates the terraced, block-like contrasts so typical of Baroque texture, since the two groups simply swap in and out rather than gradually blending into one another.
Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op. 6 is an excellent model of this style. The set of twelve concertos was published in 1714 (shortly after Corelli’s death, though composed earlier) and demonstrates how the concertino and ripieno trade short, often sequential, ideas within a texture built from simple diatonic harmony and clear phrase structures.
Concertino = the small solo group (often two violins and cello). Ripieno (or tutti) = the larger supporting body of strings and continuo. Their alternation, rather than blending, is the defining texture of the concerto grosso.
The Baroque Solo Concerto: Vivaldi and Bach
Alongside the concerto grosso, composers developed the solo concerto, featuring a single virtuoso soloist against the orchestra. Antonio Vivaldi wrote hundreds of these, and The Four Seasons (published in 1725 as part of a larger collection called Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione) is the most famous example. Each of the four violin concertos is programmatic, meaning the music depicts an extra-musical idea — in this case a season of the year — and Vivaldi even published accompanying sonnets describing scenes such as birdsong, storms, or ice cracking underfoot, which the solo violin part illustrates through virtuosic figuration.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 is a fascinating hybrid: it behaves like a concerto grosso, since its concertino group is made up of a solo violin plus two recorders (flauto dolce) set against a string ripieno and continuo, yet the violin part is so demanding that it also functions like a solo concerto.
Ritornello Form and the Basso Continuo
Almost all Baroque concerto movements, whether solo concertos or concerti grossi, are built using ritornello form. A ritornello (Italian for ‘little return’) is a tutti theme played by the full ensemble that returns repeatedly throughout the movement, always in the tonic key at the very start and end, but often returning in related keys (such as the dominant or relative minor) in between. Between these returns come solo episodes, where the soloist (or concertino) takes centre stage with new, more virtuosic material, often modulating to a new key ready for the next ritornello. This structure gives Baroque concerto movements a satisfying balance of familiarity (the returning ritornello) and contrast (the changing solo episodes), and it is the direct ancestor of the more elaborate structures used in later Classical concertos.
Underpinning almost every Baroque orchestral texture is the basso continuo, a continuous bass line usually played by a cello (or bassoon) together with a chordal instrument, most commonly a harpsichord, which improvises chords above a figured bass (a bass line marked with numbers indicating the harmony to be filled in). The continuo group plays throughout the entire piece, providing constant harmonic and rhythmic support beneath both tutti and solo sections, and its presence is one of the clearest aural clues that you are listening to Baroque music rather than a later period, since the harpsichord’s continuo role largely disappeared by the Classical era.
Ritornello form alternates a returning tutti theme (the ritornello, always tonic at the start and end) with contrasting solo episodes that modulate. The basso continuo, typically harpsichord plus cello, plays throughout, realising the harmony from a figured bass.
Terraced Dynamics and Recognising Baroque Style
Baroque instruments and performance conventions naturally produced a distinctive dynamic style called terraced dynamics: sudden shifts between loud and soft, rather than the gradual swells of crescendo and diminuendo we associate with later periods. This partly reflects the instruments available — a harpsichord cannot get gradually louder or softer, since its volume is fixed by its plucking mechanism — and partly reflects the block-contrast aesthetic of alternating small and large groups of players (concertino against ripieno, or soloist against orchestra) rather than blending them smoothly.
When you listen to an unfamiliar extract in the exam and suspect it is Baroque, check for a cluster of features together rather than relying on just one: a small string orchestra with harpsichord continuo audible throughout; ritornello form with a recognisable returning tutti theme; terraced rather than gradual dynamics; a soloist or small concertino group given decorative, ornamented, sequential melodic writing; and clear, mostly diatonic major or minor tonality without the chromatic drama of later Romantic writing. Corelli, Vivaldi and Bach between them show you both concerto types — grosso and solo — and the shared conventions that unite them.