Between Composition and Performance: Generic Norms and Poetic Choices in The Work of Arcangelo Corelli

Since the rise of Corellian scholarship on an international scale, musicologists have attempted to determine Corelli’s musical style both on its own terms and in relationship to that of other contemporary masters. In the historically bent approach, the constituent elements of Corelli’s music are separated out to show how the composer blended distinct compositional styles. In this essay I offer a different kind of negotiation between music analysis and contextual history, by attempting to strike a balance between the agency of the composer Corelli and the traditions that made his music possible. I study Corelli’s compositional strategies against the body of technical procedures and generic norms he shared with musicians active within his own socio-cultural environment. I argue that Corelli’s distinctiveness may be found at the intersection between musical performance and composition: his professional experiences, coupled with a specific focus on string music, determined his musical mentality and thus shaped his very poetics of the sonata.