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Although already in 1711 Vivaldi announced -- in the introduction Alli dilettanti di musica to L'estro armonico, Op. 3 -- the forthcoming publication of a second collection of his concertos ("Mi fa corraggio di presto presentarvi un'altra muta de concerti a 4"), it was not until 1716 that La stravaganza, Op. 4 appeared. The delay was due not to the publisher, Estienne Roger, but rather to the delayed sending of the material to Amsterdam by the composer, as I recently documented in my essay "The (lost) violin concerto rv 316 by Vivaldi: its reconstruction and dating" (Studi vivaldiani, xviii, 2018).Thanks to the existence of non-autograph albeit authoritative manuscript versions, of various concertos that transmit a musical content earlier than that later adopted for Op. 4, a collation between these sources draws attention to numerous and significant differences regarding both important aspects of Vivaldi's compositional and reworking processes (cuts, additions, alterations, the rewriting of instrumental parts or entire passages, the replacement of movements), and changes -- or even errors -- introduced by the Dutch publisher in the printed edition. Not only that, but the similarity of some compositional second thoughts of the Red Priest encountered both in a pair of the Op. 4 works and in certain corrections made by Vivaldi himself in a concerto movement (D-Dl, Mus. 2421-O-14) by Johann Georg Pisendel, composed during the Saxon violinist's stay in Venice, can provide further hints about the period when the complete Stravaganza set was being assembled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the aria O golpe suave / O bien amable (for soprano, two violins and continuo) by the Italian composer Ignacio Jerusalem y Stella (1707-1769), who was living in Mexico City around 1742. This aria - which is preserved in the Cathedral of Guatemala and transmitted in four non-autograph separate parts without a score - has one literary text (O bien amable) in the soprano part and a different one (O golpe suave) in the guideline of the basso continuo part. Source-critical and musical analysis of the composition, based on the significant differences identified in these two separate parts, can clarify why two separate verbal texts exist and show which one was originally used for the music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the eighteenth century the most important composer in Europe of concertos for two violins was undoubtedly Vivaldi, who left twenty-eight works written almost throughout the duration of his creative career: this substantial corpus - exceptional in its quantity and variety when compared, for example, with the output of Telemann (of whom fewer than ten concertos of this kind have survived) or J. S. Bach (only one) - offers numerous subjects for analysis, one of which is performance practice. During the first decade of the eighteenth century, or for slightly longer, Vivaldi conceived the functional role of the solo parts in a concerto for two violins as a 'reduced version' of the concertino of a concerto grosso lacking a separate bass part: one of these two solo parts was drawn from the ranks of the first violins, the other from the second violins. Subsequently, but not later than the end of the second decade, Vivaldi switched to regarding the concerto for two violins as an 'augmented version' of the solo concerto, drawing both solo players from the ranks of the first violins. The compositional impetus for a concerto with two solo violins was twofold. On the one hand, it had a pedagogical function: by taking the part of the second solo violin, a pupil could wrestle with a solo piece without becoming too 'exposed'. On the other hand, it represented a genuine competition: a challenge to the technical and musical abilities of both contenders. By examining archival documents and analysing Vivaldi's scores, the article seeks to address questions connected with the performance of thcsc works: the orchestral forces required by Vivaldi at the Ospedale della Pietà (for his concertos in general and his 'double' violin concertos in particular), the instruments employed for the basso continuo, and the different spatial layouts of the two soloists and the orchestra that the composer himself preferred (a subject never explored before). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]