Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli

The first performance of Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, at the Edinburgh Festival in 1953, was to have been conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, then chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Having examined the score, however, Sargent declined to perform it – “too many notes that don’t add up” – and the composer had to conduct the strings of the BBC SO himself. Although, as the subsequent success of the Fantasia Concertante has shown, Sargent was wrong, one cannot help feeling a little sympathy for his point of view. Constructed in one continuous movement, it is twice as long as the four-movement Corelli work that inspired it (see above note on the Concerto Gross in F Op.6 No.2) and twice as complex in texture. How, Sargent must have wondered, do I balance all these strands of counterpoint and at the same time clarify the minute detail of the melodic figuration?

One factor that makes the Fantasia Concertante so much more complex in texture is that, while retaining Corelli’s contrast between a solo trio of two violins and a cello (concertino) and a larger string ensemble (concerto grosso), Tippett added a third group (concerto terzo) to replace the continuo which in the 18th century would have been supplied by a keyboard instrument. So Tippett’s strings are divided into 13 parts whereas Corelli’s are in 7 parts supported by a harpsichord or organ. The function of Tippett’s concerto terzo, moreover, is not just to fill in harmonies indicated by a figured bass. It also has a melodic role, which it performs from the start as it adds a fluent counterpoint to the even crotchets of the Corelli Adagio quoted by the rest of the orchestra in the opening bars. The Adagio is immediately confronted by its Vivace rival, just as it is in the middle of Corelli’s first movement. Tippett chose to base his Fantasia Concertante on this dual material, two themes rather than one, largely because of the vivid contrast between the “dark, passionate” nature of the Adagio and the “brilliance” of the Vivace. It was a duality fundamental to his thinking: “I would know my shadow and might so shall I at last be whole” sings the tenor soloist in A Child of Our Time.

Shadow and light intermingle through the rest of the work which, though it is designed as one continuous movement, falls into five sections, most but not all of them derived from Corelli’s Adagio and Vivace. The first, beginning after a short pause, consists of two variations, both of them based on the Adagio and Vivace in turn. One is elaborately melodious and the other throbs with repeated notes until, in each case, the concertino adopts the bright rhythms required by the Vivace material. The next section develops both elements at greater length. First the Adagio theme is sweetly varied by the upper strings of the concerto grosso and the concerto terzo before the solo violins offer a series of five different versions of the Vivace theme over an ostinato ground in the rest of the orchestra. The most expressive section in the whole work features the concertino cello and another solo cello from the concerto terzo later joined by high violins in a supremely lyrical treatment of the Adagio.     

The fourth and penultimate section is a fugue based on neither the Adagio nor the Vivace theme but on an organ fugue by Bach (BWV 579) on a theme from a Corelli trio sonata. Much elaborated by Tippett with an additional counter-theme, the fugue is scored for strings in nine parts. The tension it creates is ultimately released in a very beautiful Adagio where the strings are restored to the original layout, the solo violins soaring above the others, and where the gently articulated siciliano rhythms recall the Pastorale at the end of Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto” (Op 6 No.8). The work would not be complete of course without a last recall of the brilliant Vivace material.   

In celebrating “four centuries of the violin”, which was the theme of the 1953 Edinburgh Festival, and marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Arcengelo Corelli, Tippett’s Sinfonia Concertante could scarcely have been more successful.