Editing Arcangelo Corelli (section)

=== Context ===
[[File:Pannini, Giovanni Paolo - Musical Fête - 1747.png|thumb|Teatro Argentina ([[Giovanni Paolo Panini|Panini]], 1747, [[Musée du Louvre]])]]
Corelli's artistic figure flourished at the height of the [[Baroque]], a cultural current characterized by an ornate and luxuriant artistic expressiveness, rich of strong contrasts. His music developed from the Renaissance [[polyphony]], but was characterized by a transition towards greater independence between the voices. New socio-cultural and religious factors, as well as a strong influence of theater and [[rhetoric]], led to the development of a renewed musical language that could better express the spirit of the time, thus developing a wide range of new harmonical, vocal and instrumental techniques. It is the period in which the [[tonal music|tonal system]] is definitively consolidated, abandoning the old [[Modal music|modal system]], and which has its most typical expression in the writing style called [[Basso continuo|continuo]] or ciphered bass, in which the bass line and the top line are written in full, leaving the execution of the harmonic filling attributed to the other parts to the discretion of the performer, indicated synthetically by the author by numbers. The great importance attributed to the superior voice, which relegated the other parts to a subordinate role, brought out the figure of the virtuoso soloist.<ref name="Ecyclopædia Britannica">Western music". In: Encyclopædia Britannica Online</ref>
The [[Musical temperament|tempered]] tunings were also introduced, the melody often had popular inspiration and the [[Consonance and dissonance|dissonances]] began to be used as an expressive resource. Polyphony remained omnipresent especially in [[sacred music]], generally more conservative, but the complexity that characterized it in previous centuries, which often made the sung texts incomprehensible, was abandoned in favor of a much clearer and simplified counterpoint, in which primacy was often given to the loudest voice. Furthermore, in the field of symbolism and language, the development of the theory of affects was of great importance, in which figures, melodies, tones and specific standardized technical resources became a musical lexicon at the service of expression. Such resources were very common in opera, the most popular and influential genre of the time, also exerting a decisive influence on the direction of instrumental music,<ref name="Ecyclopædia Britannica"/> a language that Corelli contributed significantly to articulate and affirm.<ref name="Indiana University"/> At a formal level, the Baroque consolidated the forms of the [[suite (music)|suite]] and the [[sonata]] into multiple movements, which gave rise to the [[sonata da chiesa]], the [[sonata da camera]], to the [[sonata]], to the [[concerto grosso]], to the [[solo concerto]] and, later, to the [[symphony]].<ref name="Ecyclopædia Britannica"/><ref name="Indiana University"/> In general, the changes introduced by the Baroque constituted a revolution in the [[history of music]], perhaps as important as those promoted by the emergence of ''[[ars nova]]'' in the 14th century and [[avant-garde music]] in the 20th century.

Bologna, where Corelli originally studied, with its 60,000 inhabitants, was the second most important city in the Papal State, seat of the oldest university in the world and center of an intense cultural and artistic life. There were several large churches that maintained permanent orchestras, choirs and schools, three large theaters hosted dramatic and operatic performances, several publishing houses published sheet music, and there were at least half a dozen academies maintained by the nobility and higher clergy in their buildings. All of this defined trends and aesthetic canons, some dedicated exclusively to music, among which the most famous was the Accademia Filarmonica, founded in 1666 by Count Vincenzo Maria Carrati. An illustrious violin school was formed in this city, founded by Ercole Gaibara, whose principles were assimilated by Corelli.<ref name="Scherzo">Galán, Manuel Martín. "Arcangelo Corelli. Un compositor sin Vida privada". In: ''Scherzo'', 2003 (181)</ref>

Rome, on the other hand, had much greater traditions, wealth, and importance on several levels, starting with being the seat of [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]]. Furthermore, it was a cosmopolitan capital that welcomed artists from all over Europe, eager to establish themselves in such rich, varied and influential settings, where the great patrons of the Church and the aristocracy challenged each other by organizing sumptuous presentations and promoting numerous artists. However, few churches and brotherhoods had stable musical bodies and there was a great exchange of professionals between one celebration and another. Unlike Bologna, in Rome the Church had a decisive influence on cultural life, and the guidelines in this regard varied according to the preferences of each pontiff. [[Pope Clement IX]], for example, was himself a librettist of operas and oratorios and promoted secular music, and Corelli apparently found himself in this environment without any difficulty, although it is not known who introduced him to it. In any case, he soon gained the favor of patrons who were among the city's most prominent.<ref name="Scherzo"/>