Concertato
Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from Italian concerto which means "playing together"—hence concertato means "in the style of a concerto." In contemporary usage, the term is almost always used as an adjective, for example "three pieces from the set are in concertato style."
A somewhat oversimplified, but useful distinction between concertato and concerto can be made: the concertato style involves contrast between opposing groups of voices and groups of instruments: the concerto style, especially as it developed into the concerto grosso later in the Baroque, involves contrast between large and small groups of similar composition (later called "ripieno" and "concertino").
The style developed in
In the early 17th century, almost all music with voices and basso continuo was called a
The concertato style made possible the composition of extremely dramatic music, one of the characteristic innovations of the early Baroque.
Composers of music in concertato style
- Giovanni Croce
- Ignazio Donati
- Andrea Gabrieli
- Giovanni Gabrieli
- Alessandro Grandi
- Johann Kaspar Kerll
- Claudio Monteverdi
- Michael Praetorius
- Samuel Scheidt
- Johann Hermann Schein
- Heinrich Schütz
- Lodovico Viadana
Sources
- ISBN 0-393-09745-5)
- The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. (ISBN 0-674-61525-5)
- Article "concertato" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. ]