Of the many remarkable violinist-composers Italy produced during the Baroque era, the most remarkable of all was Antonio Vivaldi.

It is significant in this regard that the great composers of the Italian Baroque – men like Arcangelo Corelli, Guiseppe Tartini, Pietro Locatelli, Francesco Veracini, Giovanni Legrenzi and Francesco Geminiani – tended to be violinists rather than keyboard players, as the leading musicians of northern Europe were. At the same time, their efforts to maximize the natural expression of instruments, particularly of the violin, resulted in writing of unprecedented rhythmic verve. Their fondness for lyrical expression resulted in an unprecedented melodic warmth and sweetness, along with an increasingly expressive harmonic vocabulary. Eventually, composers began taking advantage of the natural expressive abilities of new instruments developed by virtuoso instrument makers.īy exploiting the specific traits of each instrument, Italian composers brought a new sort of liveliness to music in the years around 1700. In the fist half of the Baroque, composers mainly tried to mimic the homogenous sound of vocal music in their instrumental works. Among other things, they adapted the type of sensuous and dramatic singing born in the opera house to other genres, including instrumental music. Italian composers led the way in exploring these new areas of musical expression. The two most important developments in Baroque music were the emergence of non-religious vocal music, opera, and the rise of purely orchestral music.

Before this time, in the Renaissance and Middle Ages, European music had been largely religious and choral. This period, known in music history as the Baroque era, was one of great innovation. The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw an extraordinary flowering of musical culture in Italy.

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