Corelli's importance as a trailblazer is based on his commanding influence on a whole host of musical directions and techniques both practical and profound. His consistent use of score notation, major and minor modes, and idiosyncratic scoring, are all established standards and directions in music making followed to this day. He was a prime mover in establishing the violin family of instruments as the central dominant voice in both sacred and secular ensembles. He made significant contributions to string technique and standards of performance. He did not inventany of these ideas and techniques, but pulled them together: using them consistently, effectively distributing them throughout his compositions, performances and teaching. Generations that followed him had a remarkably clear route to follow in both composition and performance.
It was an age in which Italian violins, Italian violinists, and Italian string music dominated all of Europe. The violin family of instruments (violins, viola, and 'cello) had a unique history in European music. This family of instruments was, in effect, born perfect and rapidly became almost universally popular in many different musical settings. Unlike other instruments that went through gradual evolutions in construction and design as composers and performers made greater demands upon them, the violin family could do everything the composers and players wanted from the start. The original instruments, developed in the mid 16th century in Cremona, become and remained the standard for more than two full centuries. Even the late 18th century changes (Tourte bow, more acute neck angle, and new string materials) made only a small increase in power and corresponding loss of color from the16th century originals.
Corelli's music was string music. In an age that tended to favor vocal music and melodic material that could be performed on a variety of interchangeable instruments, Corelli wrote for strings. He developed and took advantage of the many specific capabilities of bowed strings. He helped set strings as the central voice of the entire pallette of all European art music. This voice was to dominate western music in solo and ensemble settings in both secular and sacred genres. His clear and extensive exploitation of the variety of ensemble capabilities of the strings laid the groundwork for the string core as the fundamental central sound of the symphony orchestra.
Corelli's output was small and yet, in its own way, comprehensive and systematic. He wrote collections of solo sonatas for violin and continuo, trio sonatas for two violins and continuo, and concerto grosso with two solo violins, solo cello, and a complete string section consisting of two violins parts, violas, 'celli/bass and continuo. In his sonatas, he identified church sonatas with four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast, and secular sonatas with suite type collections of dance movements. These formal structures were to become the standard working models for several succeeding generations of composers.
In an age when composers wrote works in part books, sometimes in unmeasured notation, Corelli wrote strictly in score notation with barlines. This gave the composer far greater control of musical events and made large scale ensembles far easier to control and co-ordinate. Corelli himself, on occasion, performed with ensembles of over one hundred string players.
In an age that still produced a good deal of music in the older church modes, Corelli wrote in major and minor. Within these two polar modalities, he could portray a really wide variety of moods and affects. By sticking to the stability of major and minor, he could anchor the tonic of any given movement securely. This in turn allowed him the possibility of greater modulatory distance from the tonic. Corelli himself did not stray very far from the tonic but later generations of composers were to use this path of tonic stability as a platform for modulatory wandering foundation for building larger and larger forms. Poems could become chapters; chapters, novels; and novels, great epics.
Corelli's influence as a teacher was extraordinarily significant. Young musicians from every part of Europe traveled to Italy to further their musical education. Corelli, in his time, was one of the leading violin virtuoso maestros in all of Europe. His students included Vivaldi, Locatelli, Pisendel, Geminiani, Veracini, Salieri and many others. Within a generation, every major musical center in Europe had students of Corelli in positions of great musical significance.
Corelli was more famous for the expressive, heavenly warmth his tone than for his virtuosity. He was the most outstanding teacher of violin technique. His popular La Folia variations can be considered a compendium of bowing, articulation and other technical possibilities for the violin. A careful and precise perfectionist, he amazed his contemporaries at his performances involving sometimes over one hundred strings with completely coordinated bowing. He published his works only after years of polishing, and many preliminary performances. Contemporaries were especially amazed by the standard of quality in his performances.
Interestingly, Corelli's greatest influences may be the most difficult to quantify. Surely one of the most subtle but powerful directions would have been set by having an entire generation of Europe's musical leaders infused with the same ideas about warmth and expressive tone and precision and polish of performance in string sound.
Overall, Corelli's contribution was pervasive. Corelli blazed a trail for a whole culture of music: solo and ensemble music, sacred and secular, with a core string sound, set in major and minor modes, notated in scores with barlines, polished with great precision, and finally performed with great warmth.
Philip Bayles